Back to Reality

We have been in the apartment for a little over two weeks and life is returning to normal. Our air shipment arrived on Monday so we now have 6 boxes of stuff to make the apartment feel a little more like "home". According to our relocation website our sea shipment has yet to leave Norway- which is more then fine with us.

Work is going fine for Jason and I am trying to fill my time - Target seems to be a constant draw. I do think I have OD'd on reality TV- particularly House Hunters and anything having to do with weddings. I have an unnatural draw to those shows I think. The company has scheduled us for a repatriation workshop in two weeks but I have to admit there are already things that I notice that are weird for me. Obviously none of them are so strange that I can't deal with it but I do notice them a lot. They include:

• People not wearing helmets on motorcycles or bikes (really you are going 75 mph without a helmet!)
• The lack of ability to recycle- I still find myself folding cardboard and rinsing plastic
• How in the world does the dryer dry things so quickly? I swear I put a load in the other day and it was dry in 10 minutes....
• I continue to leave the oven on- it doesn't make any noise to tell me it's on- our old oven had a loud fan
• The over abundance of plastic bags at the grocery store - I swear the bagger must be instructed to use as many bags as possible on each customer and they seem to be multiplying under my sink
• Radio edit (and TV censoring too) I am still thrown off when the words in the song are different. And I had to laugh at just how conservative the US is - last night on Survivor they were blurring the crotch area of men in full coverage underwear...really?

And now for a Dopler update. The vet ran all kinds of tests and we found out that he is healthy as a horse. Still not interested in food so we got his teeth cleaned (which went really well). And he is still being really fussy so we are now chalking it up to grief. So with our vets guidance we are letting him eat when he wants and see if he can work it out on his own.

For anyone that knew both dogs....Dopler never used to hold his ears straight up....strange

Unfamiliar Views

After spending two days in Beaumont with Jason's parents and Dopler we headed to Houston to check into the new apartment and get settled before Dopler joined us. The apartment is in the Medical Center part of town and is in a really great location - only about 20 minutes from downtown for Jason. The apartment is fully furnished and very nice but it will be an adjustment for us to go from 1900 square feet to 750 square feet. After checking out the apartment we headed down the street to one of my favorite things about the new area:

The next day we headed out to look at homes in Houston with our realtor. We were pleased to see there are some nice options in some decent areas within our price range. We also spent part of Thursday with our realtor and feel pretty good about our options if we stay in Houston. Then we did what I was excited about and dreading at the same time- the grocery store! It was as overwhelming as I expected. So many choices! I had a hard time remembering what we used to eat, plus there are so many new options and of course so many more choices then Norway! At one point I had 5 different boxes of cereal in my hand, trying to read the labels with Jason laughing at me!

On two different evenings we were able to catch up with our good friends Natalie and Gavin and Phil and Crystal (and ate some good food!). On Friday went to Rudy's BBQ which was amazing- we haven't had Texas BBQ for over 2 years. We forgot how good it was and were surprised how good potato salad was! Then Jason's parents arrived with Dopler- he was very excited and he got to ride in the elevator. We had a quiet weekend trying to give Dopler some stability since he has had a lot of change recently. But alas he is not interested in food and struggling to eat so we are off to the vet first thing this morning.

So here are my initial observations about living here again:

• My workout view has changed from the Trondheim fjord to the Astrodome (which is the 8th wonder of the world)
• There are a LOT of obese people (so much more then I remember)
• People talk to you randomly - which kind of scares me each time
• Things are really inexpensive but many things are not as cheap as I remember (like cases of soda!)
• The roads and traffic are slightly overwhelming- 5 lanes in one directions is crazy
• It is SO diverse here- standing in the US Citizen line at immigration in Newark I must have heard 6 different languages
• Many things are exactly as I remember them in Houston but it is taking awhile to remember all the details of places, food and roads. We drive along like tourists!

Ready, Set, Go....

The movers arrived wearing kilts and packed us up quickly. By noon on day two all our worldly possessions (minus 6 checked bags and 4 carry-ons) were on a truck on the way to Oslo. We originally planned to leave on Sunday but since the packing was finished early we moved the flight to Saturday. We sold the car, finished cleaning the house, said some final good-byes then had a nice dinner with our expat friends.

All packed- I would like to note that the curtains are not ours!

Our last night in Trondheim

Then Saturday morning we headed out pretty early and got on the plane. We had nice easy flights with no problems. And we avoided extra baggage fees which was pretty impressive! We were welcomed back to the US by a nice immigration agent in Newark after waiting in a ridiculously long line. Jason's parents picked us up in Houston and after about 75 minutes on the road we were truly greeted home by Dopler. He was pretty excited to see us and we were more then excited to see him. He has stuck pretty close to us - I think he was unsure what was going to happen next. Sunday morning we had homemade french toast and did some shopping. It is strange to think we aren't returning to Norway. We don't need to eat as much good food as possible or buy everything we can't get- we have lots of time....

Things I Will Miss

Our time in Norway has been challenging at times but for me it has overall been a pretty amazing experience. I learned a lot about myself and how I view the world. I also learned a lot about how the world views Americans which was surprising at times. There are a lot of things I won't miss but there are many, many things that I will miss greatly. So here they are in no particular order.

Things I Will Miss:

The absolute beauty of Norway and Trondheim

The safety

The view of the fjord from the gym

The ease of recycling

Walking the dogs in beautiful and quiet surroundings every day

How well trained Norwegian dogs are

Being able to tune out random conversations

The metric system!!

Being able to reserve seats at the movies and bring in our own snacks

Waiting for the first snow

Watching the dogs frolic in the snow

Stretch

20 hours of daylight (4 hours of daylight should have been on my "won't miss" list!)

Having more vacation time and utilizing it to travel to interesting places

Leaves changing color

Mild summers

The adventure of daily life

The friends we have made

3 more days until we get on a plane. Movers are here now- I was a little worried when only two arrived but they had a helper arrive a while later and have made quick work of the packing. The best part- their truck has a viking helmet on the dash and one of our movers (who is Swedish) is wearing a moving kilt! It is seriously the coolest kilt ever- it even has utility pockets.

Things I Won't Miss

The end is drawing near. As with everything in life this experience has been full of both good and bad. Personally I think there has been more good then bad but I thought I would share with you the things I won't miss first. I will post the things I will miss later in the week but don't be surprised if some of them contradict each other!

Things I Won't Miss:

People wearing just socks at the gym (and watching the terrible form they use)

Not having a garbage disposal

Not having air conditioning anywhere (including the gym)

Not having screens on my windows

Norwegian TV

Dreading calling a business and having to deal with not speaking Norwegian

Bad customer service (or none at all)

Spending a small fortune to go to the movies or out to eat

Norwegian subtitles on everything

Struggling with the language and being embarrassed at my lack of skill

The lack of variety in almost everything including food

Produce that travels so far that it is almost rotten when it gets here

The mounds of snow and ice on the roads for 5 months

Not understanding the small details of life at times due to the language barrier

That the summer never gets really hot

Being constantly cold in the winter

Having to go to four grocery stores to find one item I need for dinner

The "major" highways which are one lane in each direction with a sidewalk

I am sure there are more but these are the most prominent in my mind. Needless to say we are excited for many things when we get home but for me it will be bitter sweet. We have lived here longer then Houston now....which is strange. Four days left- movers arrive tomorrow to start packing! Coming up next- things I will miss....stay tuned.

Sorting, Painting and Baking (and cats!!)

This week has been full of sorting and semi packing. We learned that we needed to have our living/dining room ceiling painted. We installed a light fixture and the landlady asked us to remove it- we did and tried to patch and paint. We went to the hardware store and as I expected there is one ceiling paint - no color options, no matte or gloss but just one paint. But of course the ceiling has not been painted in 10+ years so the white paint was too white. SO we had to paint the whole stinking thing. In theory we could have hired someone or paid the landlady to have it done but we expect that would have cost at least $500. We did learn that if we ever return to Norway we will pack an extra suitcase of blue painters tape to sell on the black market. One roll was $36 - say what! Luckily we had enough half finished rolls at home to avoid shelling out for that. The painting took us three evenings to complete and looks pretty good. Unexpectedly, the landlady paid for our paint and supplies after the fact (should have bought that tape!) so that made the ridiculous task slightly easier to swallow.

Almost forgot the funny story. We painted the room in two sections so we could move the furniture accordingly. Last night we were moving it all back. The ottoman seemed much heavier then I remembered and after we put it down and turned to get the next thing I saw a huge black cat out of the corner of my eye. I screamed and we tried to chase it but it was gone... somewhere in our house. After searching for 20 minutes we finally found it under a table in our TV room. After a sealing off all escape routes and opening the front door I attempted to "shoo" it out- it was having none of that. It was unhappy that I found it and was bothering it. After a few attempts it finally ran out of the house. I guess it snuck in our back door which I leave open and found a nice napping spot while we painted. Dopler and Stretch would have made quick work of finding that cat....it was lucky.

In better news - we sold our car! Thank god! The couple we sold it to are great- they are being really flexible with the pick up date and are transferring the money into our bank account in advance. What? That would never happen in the US. We also learned this week that we have been driving on the expired car title for oh 2 years. Nobody told us we had to transfer the title to us or how to do that. We actually didn't even know we needed to have the title in the car at all times it just happened to be there. Car title is a good Norwegian word- it literally translates as "wagon card".

We have also started saying good-byes. It is weird to think we will most likely never be back to Trondheim or even Norway. We have meet some really nice people and learned a lot from them- they will be missed. We have started to plan our final week of packing, loading, cleaning and dinners out. I have baked my last item in Norway. Today was M&M cookies since we have about 40 packs of M&M's left. Here is the recipe - I made them much smaller then the recipe calls for and cooked them for only 10 minutes to get the best consistency. But sadly I used the last of the sugar and vanilla so baking is over for now. Only 8 days left.

Boller

Norwegian Boller is a hard one to explain -- it is almost a sweet dinner roll. It is a staple in many households here, you can buy them fresh at most grocery stores and by the bag. They come plain, with raisins or our favorite with chocolate chips. We really enjoy them and I wanted to attempt to make them before we left so I could recreate that piece of Norway for us in the States. I have been looking for an authentic recipe for a while and I finally found a recipe in English. I did have a few technical difficulties. Number one - during the first rise the dough overflowed the bowl- opps! Number two - when I was rolling them into balls - I ran out of flour and they became a sticky mess - luckily I found some whole wheat flour that I used to correct that. After some nervous anticipation we tried them out and.....they were excellent! I am so excited that they came out well and I will be able to take this bit of Norway with us! Maybe you will be lucky enough to try these one day when we get back the States!

Sixteen days and counting.....