Month: January 2015

Can it really only be 7 days!?! It seems longer, but  perhaps that is the struggling with jet lag speaking. Though, this was our most “normal” day of being awake. Anya even made it to 7 PM. Perhaps the fresh air and long walk helped.

Our housemate, 19-year-old Torbjørn, spent his first night at the house last night. He had 3 friends crashing at the house. While they were not crazy, it was nice to have plenty of quiet and a run of the place. The friends are here again tonight.

Just after lunch, we went for a walk into Sandnes, which is about 1 km (or .6 miles). I showed the promenade, where a street has been blocked off for walking down a cobblestone area lined with shops. We went up a block to see the old Lutheran church, built in 1882. We went on to the bus stop, seeking to buy a “flexi pass” but their customer service is closed on the weekend. Good thing that the website says that I should be able to buy one on board tomorrow, as we’ll head to the International Church of Stavanger worship service which meets at my school. While the tourist information office was closed (though the door sign indicated that it should be open), we found the local mall, where we sought out the apotek–or drug store. Anya stated, “It sure isn’t Bartells!” which is one of her favorite stores, as it has a bit of everything. This place was tiny, but I was scoping out what over-the-counter meds are available (that I can understand) for when I need to replenish the meager stock I brought. (They do have ibuprophen cream, which we can’t get in the USA.)

Our trip home brought us past the grocery store to stock up for the weekend, as grocery stores are closed on Sunday. We are limited to what we can comfortably carry for 1 km home in my back pack and lighter things in the shopping bag Anya carried.

One little detour on the way home brought us to a yarn store I discovered earlier in the week. It was filled with beautiful yarn and not-so-beautiful prices. I miss the 40% off coupons for Michael’s and Joanne’s! Anya has an online English course to keep up with her Washington state graduation requirements. She can’t stand it! She says that it is so slow and so boring and so easy–things she has studied before. So, I invested in the yarn to have some crocheting (in Norsk “hekling”) when she’s listening to the “slow and boring” teachers. This activity runs in the family! When my dad was studying Mandarin at Yale and had to listen to hours and hours of audio tapes, his farm boy hands needed something to do. So, he knit my mom a dress–one of her most prized possessions that she recently passed on to me.

The last bit of news is that my gracious PhD supervisor drove about 12 miles to pick me up and take me to the “big” mall. Because I don’t have my Norwegian ID number yet (which may take 2-8 weeks), I needed help to get SIM cards for the phones that I brought for Anya and me. I knew that phones would be expensive here, but I needed unlocked GSM phones for Europe, so I bought and brought two iPhone 5cs. I figured that I can sell them when I leave, as they would be 25% less as ALL purchases of goods have a 25% tax. (Food is only—15%!)  Knut let me buy SIM cards for a pay-as-you-go plan under his name. While it will be less expensive to call or text me with a Norwegian phone, we’ve mostly been communicating through email, so not a significant expense. This again is just the blessing of Knut as a full-service PhD supervisor. Airport runs, schleping bags, being hosted for a meal by he and his dear wife, taking me to get SIM cards under his name, what a blessing!

Anya’s better! The fevers are gone. However, she stayed home following typical school guidelines of not attending school for 24 hours after a fever to be clear of being contagious.  It also means that she can do the dishes and help with the laundry!

We tried out the bread machine!

The instruction panel is in Norsk, so with the help of Google translate, we figured out our settings. The result is not beautiful, but tastes good. If you have tips how to get the loaf out with two fixed paddles in the bottom, just let me know.

Shopping for groceries this year seems less expensive. Actually, it is! The dollar is really strong right now.

In January 31, 2013, $1 = 5.46 Norwegian Kroner. Today, the markets closed at $1 = NOK 7.81. In other words, I can buy 43% more groceries for the same dollar! No wonder my Scandinavian students were complaining this past semester, as they were trying to buy things in the USA. So, if you want to do international travel, now is a great time to get more bang for your buck.

There was more Hebrew study for me today, working from Van der Merwe, Christo et al. A Biblical Hebrew Reference Grammar. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999. This is a more technical grammar than what I use when I teach beginning Hebrew, so it has more explanation of the rationale for vowel changes, but as a reference grammar, it does not lay it out in a friendly and instructional format. However, I’m using this one, as it is in my Logos software, and thus, nothing more that I had to carry.

What I re-learned today:

• autochthonous:
  1:  indigenous, native <an autochthonous people>
  2:  formed or originating in the place where found<autochthonous rock> <an autochthonous infection>

  — au·toch·tho·nous·ly adverb

More of my favorite things:

• Washing machines! When we lived in Africa for 3 years, clothes were washed by hand by our helper, Diana. However, with machines, which provide pretty clean clothes with little effort, the economic impact on society is huge! See Hans Rosling’s argument that the washing machine is the greatest invention of the industrial revolution? http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine
  (Oh, and front loading washing machines are great!)

Anya’s fevers continued today, which means she won’t be going to school at all this week. The weekend should be good for plenty of time to return to wellness. However, the body’s need to sleep while sick will delay Anya’s jet lag adjustment. Again, the weekend will provide more time.

I stayed home with Anya working on online banking, Hebrew, Norsk, and preparing for laundry and bread making (using the breadmaking machine) tomorrow. So, I now know that the Norsk word for yeast is tørrgjær. I can spell it, but I don’t think I can pronounce it.

With a light snow outside, I felt warm inside all day.

Here’s some of what I learned today (I’ll spare you the Hebrew and Norsk):

• A hard slate roof can last up to 200 years!
• Schools in Norway don’t provide lunch. Everyone brings their own.
• Norwegian paper currency: I read a bit about each of the five people on the five bills. Two of five people are women! The woman’s face on the 200 kroner bill is Kirsten Flagstad, an opera singer who made it big in the USA at the Metropolitan Opera but returned to Norway during WWII. Evard Munch is on the 1,000 kroner bill. Others include a Nobel literature prize winner (the other woman), a multiple Nobel science winner, and a collector of folk tales.

A few of my favorite things:

• Heated tile floor in the bathroom!
• Good tasting water, drinkable from the tap.
• Knowing that we’re thought of and prayed for here in Norway!
• Congratulating (and thanking) my parents on their 59th wedding anniversary!

What was going to be Anya’s first day of school is put off due to her developing a fever. All the airplane and airport germs with the stress of jet lag took its toll. She was feeling physically miserable and emotionally disappointed. Fortunately, she was wise to determine that sleeping to get well was more important than not sleeping to get on this time zone.

When she was in a good place of not fevering and while sleeping, Anya knew that I’d be taking off to walk to town to hit the ATM and the grocery store.

I spent the day (between naps) taking care of Anya, doing some Hebrew review, learning more about residency in Norway, and reading about my PhD adviser, Knut’s, research grant on Maasai biblical interpretation (http://www.mhs.no/?597). How wonderful is my adviser? He gets so interested in my project about the Maasai that he submits and his competitively selected for a research project on Maasai biblical interpretation to the Norwegian Research Council (NRC). The NRC is the Norwegian governments vehicle for funding research, which I hear mostly funds petrochemical and health care research, but has a generously funded Knut’s project on Maasai biblical interpretation. This prestigious grant will fund a PhD student and a postdoc student, who are both from Tanzania, raising up a scholarly conversation group related to my work! While this is Knut’s project and my priority here is research and writing my dissertation, this is tangential support for me and helps position me in intercultural scholarship.

What I learned about Norway today:

• Next time I walk around town in the rain, I’m wearing my rain pants. I’ve seen many Norwegians do this on prior trips, and I packed them along, but didn’t wear them today. Fortunately, my Hot Chilis long underwear kept me dry and warm. (They are even Helly Hansen, a Norwegian brand, that I bought many years ago at REI.)
• For us introverts, Norway is great! Even the grocery store workers in the aisles won’t ask you if you need any help finding anything. I was going to get out without any conversation (though I did reply “Nei” when the cashier asked in Norwegian if I wanted a bag–which you pay for) until the stevia jar I was buying wouldn’t scan on the register.
• In Norwegian news: “It was another challenging day of being prime minister for Erna Solberg on Wednesday: More than a million union members walked off their jobs nationwide in the afternoon to protest her minority government’s work rule changes…” (http://www.newsinenglish.no/). That’s one in five Norwegians! It was focused on public transportation, so being home with Anya meant that I was oblivious to this until I checked the news.

Anya woke up at midnight again and I made it to 3 am but with a nap before the day really got rolling. We don’t do jet lag well, but I’m adjusting a bit better, probably thanks to black tea.

So, Anya was eager for the day, but probably because she was hoping we would be able to get the identity number we need to buy a SIM card and get local cell phone access. Well, it looks like we have to wait about 2 weeks to get our ID number, which we need for the SIM card and to open a bank account.

We learned a lot today about Norway’s immigration, but our first lesson was about Norway’s weather. It was raining a light mist when we started uphill for the #2 bus. However, the sidewalk had considerable ice and made it difficult to ascend. Fortunately, the Norwegians coming downhill demonstrated that walking in the street is more manageable.

Off to the school on the bus. Fortunately, Tina told me that road construction means the bus doesn’t stop right at the library, so we were prepared to get out and walk a bit–more uphill–but with less ice in Stavanger.

I’ve been given the former office of the rector from his faculty role days (the head of the school), who now has the rector’s office. The rector let me in and welcomed me among his plethora of books. I had a quiet place to do some work on my laptop. Anya had a quiet place to nap, as she pulled the two sitting chairs together as a small bed.

After our “brown bag” lunch, we were taken to the police station to deal with our immigration paperwork. I guess in a peaceful country, you need to find things for the police to do!

Our airplane tickets have us in Norway almost 6 months–6 days short of a full 6 months. This means that I won’t be a “resident” and I will have a different number (a D-number instead of a personnummer). While it is not a huge issue, it would have been nice to be a real resident!

I’m so grateful that most Norwegians are very fluent in English, like our bus driver.  However, tomorrow, Anya has a Norwegian immersion experience, as she is off to school. Fortunately, she has met her teacher, who was very welcoming and relayed that the class is excited to welcome an American. English and Spanish should be pretty easy classes, and it sounds like most of the subject matter she has covered already in Bellevue’s aggressive educational environment. This will be good for learning Norwegian as she won’t have to focus on both subject matter and language learning! However, she’ll have quite a challenge of language learning ahead! I can’t wait to hear her stories tomorrow!

Anya woke up at midnight or so. I stayed asleep to about 3 AM before we got up and started getting more settled.

At 10 AM we walked up to Anya’s school, Giske Ungdomsskole, to meet her teacher, Jan Magne Johansen. He was very welcoming and said that the class was excited to meet Anya! He clarified what we hoped to get out of this educational experience, and I think he was encouraged that our focus was learning Norwegian and a cultural exchange. Most of Anya’s prior school work has covered the content she will see this spring semester, but she’ll be doing it in her third language.

I’m just pleased that in this lower secondary school for 8-10th grade is homeroom based. So, Anya will have Mr. Johansen and the same students for what seems to be about half of her classes (not math, PE, art, or Spanish). So, it will be easier for Anya to make friends.

On the way back, we took a little walk to the grocery story and explored this cross-cultural experience. Our Norwegian is limited, but we figured out mostly what we wanted. Anya has an intriguing description on her blog. http://recentlyrelocatedtonorway.blogspot.no/

It is tough staying awake this afternoon, so I went for a walk to downtown Sandnes, which is about 1 km (.6 miles) away downhill, toward the fjord. There’s a section that has been closed to traffic and makes a nice walking promenade with a collection of shops and restaurants. It was pretty quiet mid afternoon on a Monday.

We’re really dragging now and will be crashing tonight at 5 PM, which is 2 hours later than Anya made it to yesterday! Tomorrow we’re off to immigration!

With blessings,
Beth

A 9.5 hour flight gave us time to catch up on some movies but neither of us got any sleep on the plane, as it is our typical awake time. A tight time frame to go through Schengen (EU) customs with security and to our connecting flight had us walking fast and passing by our favorite duty free chocolate and candy. Yet we made it with about 5 minutes to spare!

My PhD adviser, Knut, and his new PhD student, Zephania from Tanzania, picked us up. I wasn’t sure he’d get 4 rolling duffel bags, 2 rolling carry ons, and 2 back packs with 4 people in his Rav4, but then I learned that he was a tour guide in Israel for a time, and picked up 8 people with luggage to fit in a van. He is really good at packing, and that is something coming from me and my missionary packing gift.

Knut and his wife, Berly, hosted us for lunch, which is wonderful because grocery stores are closed on Sundays in Norway and restaurants are really expensive. After lunch, Knut brought us to Sandnes, about 10 miles (16 km–as we have to get comfortable with the metric system!) south of Stavanger.

Our house is a classic Norwegian home, I think built in the early 1900s, with wood siding and round slate (real stone) roof tiles.

Anya was so jet lagged, that she slept and didn’t join me for a walk up the hill to my friend Tinas. We stayed there in 2012 for an overnight. I was hosted to a wonderful meal and time with friends and their 2 boys (4th grade and kindergarten). They bought some groceries on Saturday as a welcome gift to get us going. I’m learning so much about hosting others having been welcomed so well. Tina also gave me important news about road construction, which changes the bus stop–which is no longer right at our school–and where the closest grocery store was.

Off to bed and deep sleep until…

It takes an inordinate amount of time to leave the country for 6+ months, at least to attempt it well. I wonder how I did! Time will tell, as I find out when I unpack gear trying to anticipate a life I don’t know see if all my bills will be paid in a timely fashion. This year my taxes were prepared prior to receiving all the mailed forms, so it is an estimate with an extension in process. It is wonderful to have a reason to clean out closets and get a bit of the clutter out of the way. What did I miss? I wonder!

JaLynn, Annaliese, Peter, and Kristi came over last night to say farewell with warm snickerdoodles. My check list was fairly well accomplished, allowing me to enjoy this gift of friendship. My pages of notes for Janet are posted. While some were admiring my preparation of these details (i.e., where the fire extinguishers are located), I think a couple saw a side of me that many of my work colleagues are aware of–the detail-oriented me.

So, we are in the airport, in the lull before the flight. The saved Starbucks gift card goes unused, for while it could be used in another part of the airport, here in the south terminal, Seattle’s Best Coffee rules.

We are blessed. Not only did we have 3 offers for airport pickup, it ends up that we will be guests for two meals on the first day. Then because grocery stores are closed, my PhD student colleague, Tina, offered to pick us up some groceries to tide us over. Wow!

We have much to learn about a new culture and new systems (bus, phone, school, online student interfaces, libraries, grocery stores, etc.), but fortunately, we have a loving God who goes ahead of us and friends and colleagues to walk with us whithersoever we go.

With blessings,

Beth

Dear friends and family,

My To-do-before-we-go list is getting smaller, but it still is substantial! I’ve realized that it takes a village to send me off. (Note: this list is not inclusive, but I don’t have the time to make sure I mention everyone.) John helped me get my car ready for long-term storage. Mark J. and Sue H. are colleagues sharing wisdom from their sabbaticals, encouraging me to really get away and make the most of this sabbatical opportunity. Janet is house-sitting, reading through my long list of notes. Beth H. and Mark J. prepared thoughtful cards with something special for Anya. Karen and Ed prepared a beautiful card. Carol sent a card with 3 Bible verse promises for this sabbatical journey. There has been friends gathering before we leave, Scott, Ruth, the Boysens, the Middleton-Youngs, Ann. Matt is helping me get my research laptop tuned up.

It’s a good thing I have a research laptop, because my laptop for work shut down out of the blue. Fortunately, Mark B. at Trinity was able to diagnose a battery problem, but I can still use my laptop with out the battery. Now I had backed up just recently, so I didn’t freak out, but it was one more thing on the home stretch.

My unplanned trip to Trinity today for the laptop gave me time to practice Pimsler’s Norwegian language learning. I can tell you in Norwegian, “Yes, I would like to have something to eat and also drink later,” (but it will take me some time to get the words out!)

With our preparations, I also had numerous offers to take us to the airport! And, I had 3 offers to pick us up in Norway! Wow! I even have lunch and dinner offers on the day we arrive. My adviser, Knut, and his wife Berly, will host us for lunch. My PhD student-colleague, Tina, will host us for dinner. This is good because grocery stores are closed on Sunday. We are so blessed!

In my preparations, I emailed Knut, asking if I should bring a Maasai dress. He said that he was not a good source for clothing advice, but when I clarified that it would be a “costume” for either an international student event or to highlight his Maasai research project, he thought that would be good. So, space and weight available, its going to Norway. (I have to tell you about Knut’s research project someday. It is another amazing connection!)

Anya decided not to leave the journey to my viewpoint alone, so she has started her own blog. Check it out at” http://recentlyrelocatedtonorway.blogspot.com/

With blessings,

Beth