Journey back to Norway: 42 hour door-to-door trip. 7 pieces totaling 110kg checked luggage; 3 pieces totaling 30kg carry-on.
- It boded ill for what was to come that I wanted to take a nap along with the girls on the drive to the airport in Taiwan. Super tired and just starting out. Ugh.
- Thankfully we had no trouble checking in our luggage despite being some kilos over our limit (just a reminder that next time flying with them car-seats count as our quota)
- Arriving in Hong Kong we had to walk approximately one kilometer (at least. No joke) to get to the transfer desk to get our boarding passes on to Turkey and Oslo. Tired.
- 12 hours to Turkey - we were lucky enough to get a basket for Eliana to sleep in…just too bad she she’s super mobile so I wasn’t able to sleep really while she was in the basket in fear that she would flip over and then out of the basit; I was able to relax at least. On the flip-side she was only ok to sleep there a short stint, the rest of the time she had to be held (but at least she didn’t need to nurse the whole flight like Leona had done when we moved to Norway last time at the same age)
- Once we got to Oslo and only had a five hour wait before our 6 hour bus-ride and 1 hour taxi-ride, I felt like we were home already. It was strange, this time around it was though I was looking at Norway totally differently than last time. Last time we were here perhaps a year, perhaps three, and the uncertainty kind of made me hold back to belonging, in a way. This time, looking around the airport at people and things, I had a sense of settling in. It was great.
- The bus-ride was FANTASTIC. We all slept the whole trip basically, and the girls both had car-seats so I was arms-free. It was bliss.
And then just like that we were back in Innvik, welcomed by my mom who had come down to help and visit for a week.
It ended up being a week of sick, unfortunately. And a day or two after my mom headed back to Tromsø I threw out my back.
The stark contrast between the convenience of Taiwan in terms of transportation (we had access to a car and valid driver’s licenses) and medical care (Chinese and western medicine doctors available morning, afternoon, and evening seven days a week pretty much, and emergency visits easy to get to too when necessary) to what we have here (no car, no valid driver’s licenses, doctor here in the village only two days a week…which is better than I expected actually) coupled with the sicknesses, injuries, and stress of Judge’s job-hunt, well, suffice it to say we were feeling pretty down.
Now, though, we’re all feeling a lot better, and settling in to the village life of not-so-uber-convenient-but-nice-all-the-same.
Yesterday all of a sudden everything kind of got moving for us, as I finally got a hold of the adult-education center that holds the free Norwegian classes for immigrants. Today Judge took the bus in to the town his classes are held and got the paperwork done. Now we just have to wait a few days for his bus-pass so he can ride for free (yay! Otherwise it would cost us NOK140 or so each round-trip with a discount-pass he could have gotten – at 22 days/month that would have been a lot of money for our non-income family right now) and he will take the 50-min bus-ride to Stryn Monday through Friday, getting 19 hours of Norwegian classes and maybe 2 hours of social classes each week.
We’re super excited about this. He has 600 free hours, 300 of which he has to complete within the next 2 years otherwise they all expire. We now suddenly hope to stay here at least 7-8 months so he can complete all 600 of them, as once he starts working it will be hard to find the time to study. This also takes the pressure off of us in terms of finding him a job. Not that we will let up in the search, but we don’t need to stress about it right now at least.
And in terms of the job-hunt, we’ve re-vamped his two of his cover letter templates a few nights ago, making them a lot stronger for process and mechanical engineering positions, as there are way more of these compared to material technology ones. We’ll see if it helps. The engineering job-market is in a slump right now, or so we’ve heard, so we’re also looking at other alternatives.
Actually, one of our 'ideally'ies is he’d find a job around here. Innvik is a long-shot, but perhaps in Stryn (the town where he’s going to take Norwegian classes). We’d be totally down with living there long term. Mentioned it to an aunt of mine who lives here in Innvik and is connected with everyone, so who knows, maybe something will trickle down the grape-vine :) Other ideally'ies are Oslo and Trondheim...and Tromsø to a certain extent.
In other news. Leona decided she was done with diapers during the day a week or so before we left Taiwan. I’ve been waiting for this a long time, as I knew her use of diapers was just her choice. So we are now going on about 1 month of diaper-free days, with only three or so accidents. We are also going on 2 weeks of diaper-free nights – also her choice, and (knock-on-wood) accident free so far. Pretty cool. Yes, it is a bit late considering she was diaper-free at 20 months the first time, but with our upheaval kind of life-style it’s not surprising really.
And Eliana, well she LOVES food. Especially feeding herself. Broccoli, califlower, bread, banana, all a big hit. And then of course rice-porriage with sweet potato and carrots (no milk), but that's one that I'm not letting her try to get in her mouth on her own quite yet ;)
She lets us know she wants to eat by saying ‘um um’, lets us know she wants to nurse by signing nurse and saying amamama (or so), can now sit herself up by herself (she was sitting on her knees for a long time if she had something to push herself up on), and of course standing and crawling and investigating like there’s no tomorrow. She loves shaking her head, especially if she can knock it against something (like the back of her chair) while she's doing it. She has all her four front teeth (the two top ones were breaking during our trip), and one or two more almost breaking. And today she discovered clapping – that she can make sound by whacking her hands together. Cutest thing ever.
[Leona trying to keep her stuff out of reach from Eliana]
[Leona making a new sign: snowing]
[Leona wearing her auntie Katrina's spring/fall suit]
I also applied for Leona’s kindergarten spot for the fall today. Actually, funny that. I got a call from the head guy of the kindergarten today, saying that he had heard we had been by yesterday (we had done a walk-by to scope it out a bit), and that we may be wanting to apply for a spot, so he had done some investigative work to get my number and was hoping it was ok that he called me, because today was the last day to apply for spots, and if we didn’t apply today, the chances of getting a spot here in Innvik would be practically nill – we would only get a spot in Utvik if we decided to apply later.
It is something I love about living in a small village like this. I am a bit unsure who he spoke with…if it was my neighbor/relative or more likely the mom of an old classmate of mine who works (worked?) at the elementary school…which is right by the kindergarten. In any event I was impressed he found my number, as our numbers are listed under my mom’s name at the moment. Then I realized he may have got it from the flyer I posted on the bulletin board outside the convenient store saying we want to buy tripp-trapp chairs and some other stuff. He was worried I’d think he was meddling too much, but I was super grateful. I love the look-out-for-each-other that you get living in a small community like this.
And there you are updated again.
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