holding our breaths

Last month Judge applied for a trainee position within Elkem, a company that seems made for him.

Taken from their website:

"Elkem is one of the world’s leading companies for environment-friendly production of materials. Its principal products are solar grade silicon, silicon, special alloys for the foundry industry, carbon and microsilica."

Judge has a BSc and MSc in Material Science and Engineering, and has worked with carbon and other related stuff in the process of getting those two degrees.

He's applied for positions with them before, prior to having Norwegian work experience, but never got an interview even, perhaps because of his limited work-experience in general. But this trainee position, it would be perfect for him. (Of course if he got a non-trainee position with them we'd be more than happy, but the prospects of that happening...in any company it seems, are slim, we have found).

With the trainee program, he would start next August, which would allow him to complete all his free Norwegian classes. It seems so perfect! And then for the next two years he would work in three of their locations, getting mentored and trained and molded into the perfect position for him based on his background and skills.

OK, so the moving three times in two years isn't super enticing, but it lets us check out more places in Norway, right?

Anyhow, yesterday he received an email from them asking for his transcripts from Taiwan (! good sign!).

So now our fingers are even more crossed, and we are starting to hold our breaths in hope, while trying not to get too attached to this.

And so I need to ask you all a favor. If you are someone who prays, please say some prayers for us, for this to be the right position for him and for him to get it, so we can finally lower our shoulders and breathe more freely again. And if you are someone who is into sending positive thoughts and energy, then please send those our way. We need this. Though we have a solid plan B (for if he doesn't get an engineering job within the next year) it isn't one either of us really want as the plan we execute.

[These two pictures were taken from approximately the same spot - just high and low tide differences and a slightly different angle. The log floated over here (in the top photo you can see where it originally was parked...where it's been for ages) during the floods we had last week.]

.