No April Fool's: I got a job

When it came down to it, I had 3 job interviews, and 3 job offers. Nothing terribly exciting, but job offers nonetheless. First, there was the Maihaugen museum shop position. Then I interviewed with the kommune (municipality) for a nursing assistant-type position for a one-on-one patient assignment at a local assisted living center, and was essentially offered the job on the spot. The third position was in a nursing home, but on a short-term floor with patients who are in-between the hospital and perhaps another nursing home, or between hospital and home. This third position would likely have been the best position in terms of speaking Norwegian, learning medical terminology and being in the most "nursing" type of environment. However, since my main goal right now is to Make Money As Soon As Possible, job #2 fit the bill. Job #3 didn't start until June. Job #2 starts. . . . drumroll please. . . the 10th of April. 


The next two weeks will be busy: we have two birthdays here in the next two days--a Pappa and a Greta, so the kitchen will be put to good use. I already put in a solid afternoon making going a little Martha Stewart for Greta's barnehage birthday treat: 30 frosted Winnie-the-Pooh sugar cookies, about the size of the palm of my hand. 





Greta was hurra'd, crowned, cloaked and tossed in the air and sung two birthday songs this past Friday. She celebrated early, seeing that next week is påskeferie (Easter vacation) and there will only be 6 kids at barnehage on her actual birthday. This seemed to be fine with her, as now she has "three birthdays" (barnehage, home and a small yet-to-be-determined-when friend party). 

April 10th, job starts;  April 14th, enormous Norwegian test, which I should be studying for right now. On that note: vi snakkes. (We'll talk). 

Nor-glish

When one is learning a foreign language, it is very common to swap words between the languages, or fill in the blanks in one's memory with a word from the other language. Sometimes I just "norwegian-ize" an English word, and surprise! It works!


Greta is particularly good at throwing Norwegian words into her English sentences. One of the steadfast switcheroos is using the verb å bruke (to use) instead of "use". For example: "Can I bruk this spoon for breakfast?" or "I don't want to bruk that color!" I have tried to break this habit, playing a "game" in the car of "What to we use when we have cold hands?  We use mittens!" She thought it was really fun, and played along well, only to fall back on her use of bruke almost instantaneously. Often they are more amusing substitutions, such as this gem from yesterday: "I don't know which pappa I'm going to gifte meg (marry myself) to when I'm a mamma!" We completely understand her patched together sentences; it's our English speaking relatives who have trouble.


I admit I do the same thing--using Norwegian words in my English sentences. My use of the word barnehage is probably the best example. It does literally translate to kindergarten, but in the British sense of the word (preschool/daycare), not the American sense (first year of school at the age of 5). One of Greta's barnehage teachers, who is married to an American and speaks excellent English, would translate barnehage to kindegarten when she was speaking to us in English, as well as translating pappa to daddy. That one amused me--and confused Greta--more than anything: Erik is Pappa to Greta, and has been since Day 1 of Life, not Day 1 in Norway. He has never been "daddy", so it seemed particularly bizarre to hear that translated for our benefit.


With the number of new words we are immersed in, we sometimes find ourselves searching for the English word. This seems to be happening to Erik most often with the whole building process. He's been doing so much reading and research on home-building, products and supplies in Norwegian that he sometimes doesn't even know the English word. Our carpenter is Irish, but has lived in Norway for over 20 years, so we generally all speak with one another in English. But from time to time, the two of them stumble onto a construction word or phrase that they can't remember, and briefly switch to Norwegian just to get the point across.


Erik and I were at a tile store a few days ago, and were discussing the options with each other and a sales clerk. We both stumbled to find the word "grout" in English. It was as if my lips couldn't make the vowels come out correctly. It sounded too much like "gråte" (grow-tah), which means to cry or shout. Certainly we couldn't keep our tiles together with crying?? What is that word?  Ow, ow, grout!


Other times a Norwegian word sounds similar enough to an English word that my mind makes a leap of faith that they mean essentially the same thing. Take this story for example:


You might recall that Greta had "camp week" at the barnehage, and they spent the week learning about fall, hunting, animals, and exploring the woods. One days activities included a "skatt jakt". I knew that jakt meant hunt, and my Nor-glish brain took a leap of faith that "skatt" meant--well? What does it sound like to you? Scat! You know, animal poop!


This made sense to me. It fit perfectly into the week. The kids were learning about hunting. They were identifying animals that live in the forest. They were going out on hikes every day studying nature. Of course they were going to find animal poop and learn what was rabbit poop, what was moose poop, what was fox poop, etc. . . Maybe some die-hard teacher would even "plant" it out in the woods so they would have a great variety of poop to discover on their jakt.


Side note: Tika often accompanied us to the laavo (tent) to pick up Greta that week. She loves running through the woods, sniffing around, finding leftover grilled food, and the kids love seeing her. I noticed her making her own deposit of, you know, poop on the perimeter of the camp area one day (and seeing that I did not have a poop-bag with me, it was left to nature).


The afternoon of the skatt jakt I picked up Greta from the "camp" and chatted with Greta and her teacher about her day--what did she find on the jakt? "Did you find any rev bæsj? (fox poop) Any ku bæsj? (cow poop) Did you find any Tika bæsj? Because I think Tika left some the other day!" Greta is all giggles. . . "Noooo Mamma!" and the teacher just smiles and says something unintelligible in Norwegian, as she has a northern dialect that I can't always understand.


A week later, Erik and Greta come inside from a little walk they had done around the neighborhood. Greta collects stones, leaves, flowers, sticks, feathers, and we are often assigned to carry them all. Erik came in, displayed the fine array of flowers and leaves, and said "Look at Greta's skatt!" 


Huh?


Erik said, "Skatt. . . her treasures! We were on a skatt jakt looking for treasures. And look at them all!"


Oh boy. . . that explains a lot. I did think it was a little weird to go out looking for animal poop, but I just thought it was all part of the Norwegian experience. So, maybe the barnehage kids didn't think that finding my dog's pile of poop to be such a great skatt after all. . .

Tranquility in the midst of Chaos

Greta wanted a picture with Tika--how
can I resist?

We are about to launch ourselves into full-blown chaos of home renovation and living like gypsies for the next month, or likely more. We have 50+ boxes of stuff in the basement of the new house, and tomorrow a friend will help Erik move some of the more major pieces of furniture to the house. Our landlord has been generous enough to allow us to keep a few of the bulkier items in the barn for the summer--sofa, mattress--and the piano in the house (thanks Thorstein!).

Damn, she's a good-lookin' dog.

Someone's been working hard.

We'll spend a few night this week in the home of one of Erik's vacationing colleagues, and then 3 weeks in the home of another vacationing colleague. Hopefully this will allow us enough time to get some walls up, maybe some electrical work done, and a bathroom roughed in. It is eerily reminiscent of last summer--1 night in East Thetford, 2 nights in Burlington, 2 nights in Princeton, 4 weeks in Shoreview, 4 nights in Texas, 4 nights in Washington DC, 2 weeks in Minneapolis. . . .

But notice I said his colleagues were "vacationing". This is a strangely Norwegian, or more probably European, phenomenon. Definitely not American. It is summer, thus, workers vacation. They do not seem to stagger their vacations, as all of my previous jobs have urged and demanded that we do (granted, I worked in more life-threatening/dependent workplaces). Instead, everyone seems to go on vacation in July. Regularly scheduled meetings are cancelled; the gym classes at the gym are cut back significantly; the barnehage closes for 3 weeks--sorry parents, you need daycare? you're on your own;  and we've been warned that the staff at city hall are at a bare minimum, so good luck in getting a building permit quickly. 

So if my blog posts are spotty, you'll understand. We're "vacationing", as I keep telling Greta. . . "We're going to stay in vacation houses! Right here in Lillehammer."

Enjoying the tranquility for one last weekend.

The views haven't been half bad

There could be far worse places in the world to be right now.

Cuppy Cakes for Greta

Mmm. . . deilig!

There are moments, as a newish mother, that it hits you that you are actually a mom. Making 36 cupcakes for Greta's upcoming 3rd birthday to bring to the barnehage tomorrow was one of those moments.

The cups are pink with balloons, the cake is chocolate, the frosting pink, and sprinkles pink, green, yellow, brown (and applied very carefully by Greta herself).

Tomorrow (is Friday, and her birthday is Sunday) at the barnehage she will be Hurra'd and get to wear a crown and a cape and sit on a thrown cut out of a tree, and kids will dance around her and bow, curtsey, nod, spin, jump and dance. Norway has a very lively birthday song. No wonder they don't mind that we're bringing sugary goodness: they burn off all the calories singing their birthday song!

Week Two: the Barnehage

Week Two was an effort of easing into normalcy. On Tuesday both Erik and I brought Greta to her new barnehage (kindergarten or daycare). It is known as the Birkebeineren Friluftsbarnehage, which focuses on outdoor activity and play in rather unstructured and natural spaces. The barnehage is a 5-minute drive along the hilltop to one of the buildings used at the cross-country ski venue (the Birkebeiner Ski Stadium) in the 1994 Olympics. It is incredibly convenient to our current location, and we were placed here really just by chance.

Our first impressions were great. Some of you might remember my laments of the quality of child care providers in the US as we searched for daycare when Greta was 13 months old. The teachers here are all have degrees in child development, and seem genuinely invested in their work. The teachers were very welcoming—both to Greta as a new student, but also to us as Americans totally new to the Friluftsbarnehage method. Greta is in a room of 7 children ages 1 to under 3 years (she is the eldest), and there are 2 teachers and often a student teacher as well. We provider her lunch, but every afternoon the teacher prepare a 2pm snack, often including the children in the preparation and baking.

We’ve been excited to witness Greta’s language development now that she is surrounded by Norwegian speaking teachers and children. One of her teachers, Kristopher, stated that she has no trouble understanding when they speak to her in Norwegian, but if there is any doubt, they also address her in English. There is one other 2 year old in her class who has a British father and Norwegian mother, and apparently they are hearing more of his English now that Greta is around!

The other thing that we have been most curious about is how Greta would nap at the barnehage. It is customary for Norwegian babies to nap outside in their prams, even in the winter! They are bundled up under layers of wool, snowsuits, down and more blankets, and apparently sleep quite soundly. Greta is a prize-winning napper, still sleeping for 2-3 hours in the afternoon, but in a crib in a dark room. This would be a change!

One day two, when I stayed with Greta in the playyard for the early afternoon, I talked with Greta about how the little kids were taking their naps in their strollers, and how she would do that the next day. She was very excited about this. So excited, in fact that the next day when Kristopher put her in the borrowed pram, she announced, “I’m ready” and rode around for an hour, never sleeping. We would have been shocked if she had, quite frankly. But by Friday, she reportedly slept for 45 minutes! 

New rainsuit, which she really
does like!

After Greta’s second day it became obvious that her head-to-toe American rainsuit was not going to be adequate in the barnehage play yard. That evening we made a trip down to the recommended children’s store and bought a 599Kr rain overalls and matching jacket, with room to grow.

At bedtime after her second day, she talked about what would happen the next day: “I get to go to my barnehage tomorrow! And play with new toys, and the play food, and the dress-up clothes! And my teachers—what’s their names? And I get to sleep in the stroller! And wear my new rainsuit and play in the water in the boat. . . “ and on it went.

I think we’re off to a great start.