The Things YOU Take for Granted

Here is my ongoing list of things you take for granted living in the US:

• Automatic garage door openers
• Central air and heat
• Doing a load of laundry in less then 3 hours
• Free plastic bags at the grocery store
• A "bag boy" at the grocery store (I can't imagine being offered helped to my car in Norway!)
• Being able to hire someone to do anything you don't have the time or energy to do yourself such as a maid, lawn care etc
• Watching a movie (in English) at the theater without subtitles
• Having to wait up to 3 months after the US release date for new movies to be released here (sometimes we can rent them on iTunes before they make to the theater here!)
• Bagged ice (or ice in general really)
• Not having to think "will that fit in the oven?" about anything
• Appliances that are larger then what you find in a college dorm room or studio apartment

It is funny the things you never think twice about in the US that are completely different here.  

Nothing much new to report.  After a week of warm temps and us looking forward to Spring --- it snowed another 6 inches!  Grr!  But it is warmer each day so the snow that fell has already melted.  I do think I saw one of the first real signs of Spring though - the city trucks sweeping up the tons of gravel they use on the roads.  But we are not changing out of snow tires yet :)  We are looking forward to our Easter Week trip to the Canary Islands in two weeks. Interesting note- Norway has three and a half days of national holidays surrounding Easter (not including weekends) and from what we hear everything closes down including the grocery stores - can you imagine?  

Spring? Maybe soon..

As you can see from the new photo on the blog Spring is slowing making it’s way to Norway.  These flowers are called “Snow Drops” and they are literally coming up through the snow all around the house. We have had minimal snow this week and it is usually followed by rain.  The temperatures have been warm (33-46 degrees) and it has been mostly sunny.  We are defiantly getting excited for no more snow and warm weather.   We used to laugh at the Norwegian idea of spending all your time outside but now we are really starting to understand it.  When there is snow on the ground for 6 months and the weather is nasty (and it is dark) it REALLY makes you appreciate the little changes like melting snow, warmer temperatures and sunshine.  We have found ourselves craving time outside even though it is still pretty chilly by our standards.  

Funny story from the weekend- we are at the grocery store and I am looking at some stuff while Jason is off with the cart getting ice cream.  I hear a loud crash and think to myself “I hope that is not my husband”.  Sure enough it was – he knocked over an entire display of candy – maybe 500 boxes!  Luckily a worker came running and proceeded to spend the rest of her shift picking them up and sorting them!  We felt pretty bad so we bought a box.  There is not much else to report.  Work for Jason is slow and due to budget cutbacks we don’t think he is going to get to the States for work at all this year. School for me has been drama filled but it is still going just fine.

Turning 30

So it was my turn to get old this week – so sad. I turned 30 on Monday. We had a nice evening out the Saturday before with Matt and Kathryn. We went to a burger place downtown for some good American food and a beer – which is a rarity these days. We followed that up with a nice dessert at a local pastry shop and then we went BOWLING! It was pretty fun and felt like home except that it was only 10 lanes! It was tiny and I swear that everything was sold at auction from a defunct bowling alley in America. It was all about 20 years old and to top it off it cost $50 an hour! So we kept it short and had a good time. Monday rolled around and I was sick so Jason stayed home in the morning with me and we had pancakes. That evening we had a simple dinner and I got my present from Jason, which was a cool speaker system for the kitchen that I can use with my computer or iPod. And he even surprised me with a cake!

There is not much else to report. I was mildly sick most of the week but I am feeling much better. One of my students showed our home economics class how to make sushi so we had homemade sushi tonight for dinner, which was a great change. And the most exciting news would be that we have booked a trip to Istanbul for June! We are excited to get to experience a new part of the world and a completely different culture. We are both pretty excited about it and have been researching all there is to know and see while we are there.

Valentine's Day Snow

We woke up Valentines’ morning to about 2.5 feet of new snow. So we ate a hearty breakfast and headed out to shovel. It took about 30-40 minutes but we got it done. Not sure we have already mentioned this but the Norwegians are not snow shoveling people. They just let it pile up in their driveways until they can’t drive over it and then they use a “snow sled” to push the snow to another location – like the road or their neighbors yard. It is pretty humorous! But on this morning they were all out pushing snow around and we even saw one guy with a snow blower! We later saw a snow blower at the store – they cost a minimum of $1200 which we thought was an okay price until we asked Jason's dad - he bought his in Wisconsin for $350 over 10 years ago! After we cleared the drive I decided it was time to pull out our landlady’s ancient “spark” from the garage and ride it. A spark is like a kick scooter for the snow. You see old people riding them anytime we get a foot or more of snow. You also see them chained up outside stores and next to bus stops just like bikes. You can check out videos of Jason and I riding the spark here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcccSBnWinU&feature=channel_page

YouTube video quality is not great but you can get the idea.

We also took the dogs for a romp in the deep snow near our house. Here is another video of Dopler bounding in the snow up to his belly. He really seems to LOVE the deep snow!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtZ2mq4CXHQ

We had friends over for V-Day dinner and I made my first attempt at a Red Velvet Cake with butter cream frosting. I did a bad conversion with the food color (fluid oz and ML are not an easy conversion!) so it ended up being a Pink Velvet Cake but it was still pretty good.

GRRR!

I have had a frustrating few days.  First I had to go to a FOUR hour "training" session for work.  I found out about it on Friday afternoon - it was the following Tuesday from 4pm-8pm.  Oh yeah I work on Tuesday from 8:30a-3:15pm - so it means a long day.  The training session is part one of two which concludes next week with another four hours. To top it off the training was about hands on learning also known as "experiential education" - which is useless for me since I have worked ropes courses and in outdoor recreation where the process was invented!  So it was a complete waste of time as I already knew everything that was taught.

Second I need to go to the doctor here so I called the office of my government assigned doctor and asked the receptionist in Norwegian "do you speak English" she says NO.  So I try to struggle through my limited Norwegian skills to get an appointment - the lady is blabbing at me in Norwegian.  After 2 minutes of my struggling she says in perfect English "what do you want"?  So she does speak English perfectly!!!  So we continue in English and now I have an appointment but I was so frustrated that she let me struggle for 2 minutes on top of lying about her English ability especially since I have no choice in my doctor and can't go elsewhere.

Third the Norwegian government took 50% of my paycheck this month!  Usually it is a mere 36% but each year you need a new "tax card" which shows your place of employment how much tax to deduct.  You have to apply for the card from the government and it is due to your work by the last week of January.  So we applied in December when we got the notice and didn't get the tax card in time so as punishment the government takes 50% tax.  Seems like a stupid process since they are the ones that control when the tax card gets sent.  

So those are my frustrations for the week.  On a good note (sorta) it snowed another 3 feet this week so it is winter wonderland again and we got to ski last weekend.  And the sun is finally starting to come out again.  It is rising at 8:30am and setting at 5:00pm!  I even had to wear my sunglasses yesterday for the first time in months!

The Big 3-0

Jason turned the big 3-0 on Thursday.   We agreed that we would not really do presents for either of our birthdays since we have planned a nice vacation in April – which is how I wanted to spend my 30^th– on a beach with a umbrella drink in my hand!  So I decided to go against Jason’s wishes and surprise him with 30 presents on his 30^th.  Needless to say many of them were crappy since there is no “Dollar Store” equivalent here.  So his presents included a box of twine, a banana holder, marshmallows, a Norwegian politi car, candy, really hard Hubba Bubba, a fireplace DVD etc.  The better presents included a new DVD to play on our recently purchased region free DVD player.   And the grand present was a Norwegian waffle maker – the Norwegian’s are crazy for their waffles and they have a really cool type of heart shaped waffle.  So I wrapped all the presents and hid them around the house and in his work bag so he could find them throughout the day.  I think he liked it- maybe not the ball of twine but the idea J  

On Friday I made his favorite dinner (Gorgonzola Pasta) and Matt and Kathryn came over to have a nice meal.  Dinner was good and then we had one of Jason’s favorite desserts (Boston Cream Cupcakes).  It was a nice time but it was somewhat strange to not have a bigger event for such a milestone birthday – but that is what you do I guess when you are in a strange country.  

Randoms

Two funny observations recently:

 #1 The entire Norwegian Police Force went on strike on Thursday for 2 hours.  It was announced and they fully admitted there would be no police to respond to any events.  Talk about crazy!  Imagine living in a country so safe that the police have no moral issues with striking and the criminals (or lack of) don’t rob banks etc during the announced lapse in police enforcement.

 #2 We have discovered that the Norwegian language is really simple.  I don’t mean easy to learn I mean simple – as in they do not have many words.  For instance Jason learned last week at work that the word in Norwegian for Carpel Tunnel Syndrome translates as “sore arm”.