Waiting

The chimney sweep turned out to be a woman. Her name was Kristin. She shook my hand as she entered in her smart fire department uniform.

She doesn’t need to sweep our chimney because it’s new, but she said it would be “smart” of us to clear the soot from behind a loose piece of metal in our fireplace.

“That’s your responsibility. Mine is only the chimney,” she said.

She checked our basement with a torch, shook our fire extinguisher to make sure it wasn’t empty and looked at our smoke detectors. She thought it would be “smart” of us to put another smoke detector upstairs.

She gave me a calender from the fire department with all sorts of tips on how to avoid fires, as well as stickers with the ambulance, fire brigade and police telephone numbers.

As Kristin was leaving, she noticed my Norwegian books on the kitchen table. When she sees me next year, she hopes I can speak perfect Norwegian, she said.

“The days are so grey and short now. It’s horrible,” she said sadly while she put on her boots. “But have a good Christmas.”

I think Christmas is so special to Norwegians because it’s something to look forward to in all the gloom. And I now know the true purpose of Christmas lights.

We’re down to about six hours of light now. By light I mean grey, as opposed to pitch black. Even though the sun comes up around 8.30, we don’t really see it through the grey cloud cover. It starts getting dark around 3.30 in the afternoon.

We’ve only had two brief spells when the temperature has dropped below freezing. Here people consider the weather mild and nice if it’s above 0 ºC, which it has been for most of winter so far. Most days it’s  around 5 ºC. But it’s early days yet.

It’ll be strange to go back to long summer days in two weeks’ time. Although, I’m not finding the dark as depressing as I thought I would. The girls speak constantly of how much they’re going to enjoy the sun in Cape Town, though.

I’m hoping I’ll go for a job interview before we leave. On Monday I got an email from the recruitment company to say the application deadline has been extended to next Monday, but they want to assure me I’m “still an applicant”. Time can really drag when you’re waiting for something.

The Norwegian word for wait is vente. It fits in nicely with the word advent, which is a special period of waiting in Norway. After she sang the advent song today, Lise told us she would be leaving early to go to the doctor and that we would work on our own after break.

Ja, right. If there’s one thing I can say without a shadow of a doubt, it’s that a bunch of foreigners will never work on their own when the teacher goes out. We have too much to talk about.

After we’d finished our coffee and assorted snacks from the canteen, we started chatting. I asked Marta from Poland if she was in a dårlig humør (bad mood) today. I had two reasons for asking.

Firstly, we were all supposed to give a talk on the weather, climate and nature in our home countries. When it was Marta’s turn, she said she had nothing to say because Poland was exactly the same as Norway.

Lise said it couldn’t be exactly the same, but Marta insisted it was. Every time Lise asked her questions about Poland, she shrugged and said she had nothing to say.

Then, when Lise left for the doctor, she told us to write a short piece on how we would start a conversation with a stranger sitting next to us on a bus. Marta said she wouldn’t bother because the person most likely wouldn’t want to talk.

“Then I would do this,” she said, showing her middle finger.

“Marta, du er så vennlig,” (You’re so friendly) said Lise. “Vennlighet selv.” (Friendliness itself.)

When I asked Marta if she was in a bad mood, Nivin said she didn’t think Marta was happy in Norway.

Marta replied that she was in a bad mood whether she was here or in Poland. Then she spent most of the rest of the lesson telling us about her terrible marriage and divorce in Poland.

Earlier on in the lesson Marta told Lise she also had to go to the doctor, but that she was going to the hudelege (skin doctor). If you don’t say your vowels right in Norwegian, you end up saying bizarre things. In this case, Lise heard hodelege (head doctor).

“I really do need to go to the head doctor,” she told us.

Nivin, a Christian from Iraq, then said that she is also litt deprimert (a little depressed). I’m not surprised. She is 20 years old and has to attend Norwegian classes with us old fogeys when she should be chatting with girls her own age. Sadly, she can’t go to high school just yet because her Norwegian isn’t good enough. When we ask her what she does on the weekends, she says “nothing.”

“So, are we going to do this work, then?” I asked towards the end of the lesson.

“Nah,” we all said.

As we packed up our books it struck me that many of us are waiting: Marta for her driver’s license, Nivin to go to high school, me for a job, Elias to move to Tønsberg.

Yesterday the girls asked me what they could do to make the time go faster until they go to Cape Town.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just carry on with life as usual.”

The dummy tree

“Oh look! A dummy tree!” I said to my American friend Michele today as we walked through the park. “Have you heard about dummy trees in Norway?”

I had but hadn’t actually seen one.

Michele looked at the tree, looked at me, looked back at the tree. She seemed to be examining it’s roots.

She touched a dummy hanging from one of the branches, then went back to examining the roots.

Undaunted by her strange behaviour, I continued: “There are dummy trees all over Norway. Mothers take their children to the tree and tell them to leave their dummies on it.”

“Look at this one,” I said, pointing to a dummy on a long blue ribbon.

I could see the light-bulb going on in Michele’s head.

“Oh, now I get it!” she said. “In America we would call that a pacifier. I thought you were talking about some sort of fake tree.”

She laughed. “Even when we both speak English we don’t understand each other.”

On the subject of not understanding, I got a message in my postbox yesterday on a bright yellow piece of paper. I battled to understand the Norwegian officialese. (I don’t even understand English officialese.)

Being husbandless,  I took the notice to class today and asked Lise to translate. It turns out a chimney sweep is coming to the house on Thursday to check our chimney. If he thinks it necessary, he’ll clean our chimney – for free. This is a service offered by the kommune (municipality).

I’m not sure whether anyone else in the class received this notice. They weren’t listening when Lise explained because they were admiring something Marta from Poland had bought. Marta is back in the class, so now we are seven, and eight on Friday.

Marta was showing off a bottle of vodka in a fancy leather casing with a zip and studs. It was a punk rocker of a bottle. I asked if the vodka was a Christmas present and she shrugged. Marta, who has a stud on her eyebrow, doesn’t drink. I think she bought the bottle because she likes the way it looks.

“Where did you get it?” I asked, then immediately realised the stupidity of the question.

There’s only one place in town where you can buy beverages with an alcohol content over 4.7% : the Vinmonopolet. It’s owned by the State and each town has one. Sandefjord’s is open from 10 am to 3 pm on a Saturday. Being the small place that it is, we tend to bump into everyone we know if we go there on a Saturday.

We asked each other in class who drinks what. Marta, Ebrahim and Nivin don’t, Elias likes whiskey, I like wine (but only one glass). Mariko wasn’t there today as she has språkpraksisplass. I wonder if she’d say saki. Mary-Claire likes wine and sometimes cognac, which is quite popular here.

Mary-Claire prefers to be called Mary. During break I remarked that her Norwegian is good. She said she has a Norwegian mother and grew up hearing a lot of Norwegian. Although she speaks well, she said her writing isn’t good. She’s not really American, but lived there for 14 years.

“Everyone here thinks I’m American, but I’m really British,” she said.

I asked Mary what job she does and she said she has been on sick leave for two years. You hear this a lot in Norway, so I wasn’t too surprised. It’s as normal as someone saying “I’m a lawyer” or “I’m in marketing.”

But what did surprise me was the reason for Mary’s sick leave – whiplash. I was so fascinated by this that I went and read up about it. I found that whiplash is taken very seriously here. In the nineties whiplash reached epidemic proportions. There was a whiplash organisation comprising  70 000 people (out of a population of 4.2 million) claiming millions of kroner in compensation.

This prompted Norwegian researchers to study 212 people in Lithuania who were involved in rear-end collisions. The researchers found that not one of these people developed “whiplash syndrome.” It was a uniquely Norwegian epidemic.

At present about 10 percent of the working population are on sick leave. Reasons can be vague, like pain, depression, anxiety.

Nobody seems to know why so many Norwegians get too sick to work. Is there something in the society? Are they a nation of complainers? Or do they give their dummies away too early?

Risk and hope

“Okay, this isn’t funny anymore. I want to go home,” I thought as I stood brushing the snow off my bottom. My feet had slipped from under me, making me land with a bump on the ice.

I’d hardly had time to get over this mishap, when I realised a giant vehicle was heading straight for me. I had to jump out of the way fast because this wasn’t your average pedestrian-conscious Norwegian driver. It was the snow plough about to plough me down.

That was Friday morning. The snow from the night before was turning to ice and I was on my way to Rimi. There was no way I’d be walking back with shopping bags after my fall, though. I needed both hands free to walk on the ice.

I killed time in Rimi by paging through VG until the next bus came. There was a story about an 18-year-old Norwegian girl who died of leukemia. She wrote a daily blog about her experience. The day after she died 100 000 people read her final post, which her sister published.

And there I was feeling sorry for myself for falling in the snow. Not only that, but how many South Africans wouldn’t kill to feel snow crunch under their boots or see the proverbial Winter Wonderland?

Today we learnt a gem of a saying in class: Å våge er å miste fotfeste for en liten stund; å ikke våge er å miste noe av seg selv. (To take a risk is to lose your footing for a little while; not to take a risk is to lose something of yourself.)

Anyone who moves countries takes a huge risk. I’ve met people who’ve been here for three years and  say they still feel wobbly. I hope my “little while” doesn’t last that long.

On the other hand, while I may have all of myself with me, sometimes I wouldn’t mind losing some of myself. The part that wants to fly home when things go mildly wrong, for instance. Or the ungrateful wretch who has the golden opportunity of experiencing a new country and learning a new language.

Speaking of which, I got a surprise in the postbox on Saturday: the certificate to say I’d passed Norsk Prøve 3 skriftelig (written).

“I knew you would,” said Lise when I told her. “You know lots of words. The difficult part is putting them all together and using the right prepositions.”

She’d just given me back a writing assignment. There were lots of mistakes.

“But don’t worry,” she said. “Even Norwegians don’t always get the prepositions right.”

My grammar book has 22 pages on prepositions. You don’t get any marks taken off if you get the prepositions wrong for Norsk Prøve 3, so the teachers don’t bother too much about them.The Language Centre only takes students up to Norsk Prøve 3 level, but I’m using my free 300 hours to learn more. If I want to go to the next level, which is the Bergens test, I’ll have to study things like prepositions at home.

Today an American woman called Mary-Claire joined our class. She’s been here for seven years and is five years younger than me. She sounds just like a Norwegian when she talks. She told us she wants to take the Bergens test. I didn’t get much chance to talk to her today but I’m interested in getting to know her.

Our class has shrunk with the new trimester. (That’s what they call one of three terms here.) Now it’s just  Mariko, Mohaimen, Ebrahim, Elias, Nivin, the new American and me. A young guy from Lithuania joins us on Fridays. Because there are so few of us, there’s been talk of moving us to other classes after Christmas.

Lise asked me if I could go to evening classes. I’m not too keen because they’re only twice a week and, since I don’t have a job, my class gives me something to do during the day. But maybe I’ll get the job I’ve applied for. Then evening classes will be fine.

I know I shouldn’t get my hopes up. As my mother-in-law said “There are many dogs after the same bone.” The closing date is Wednesday and “recruitment will start shortly afterwards” said the automatic reply I received. I’m counting the days on my Julekalender. What’s the point of taking a risk if you can’t also hope?

Rude, crude and mood

Lise taught us Norwegian swear words today. She made us pronounce them properly and say them with feeling. She told us which ones were bad and which ones we could even say in front of children. It wasn’t part of the lesson plan but just sort of happened.

At one point she giggled and said in English: “Should I be telling you this?”

“Yes!” we said in unison, louder than we normally answer.

It reminded me of the time I taught the class rude South African hand signs. This was while Justyne was giving her talk about body language. She showed two finger one way for peace and then she turned them the other way.

“What does this mean?” she asked.

“Victory,” said the class.

“Not in South Africa,” I said. I told them it’s a sign people will throw at you if  you behave badly in traffic. It could lead to violence, I added.

“But the worst sign you can ever show in South Africa is this,” I said, pushing my thumb through my first two fingers. I nearly died laughing when the whole class did this, then contemplated their trapped thumbs.

I told the class that while the sign meant good luck in Portugal, it was very rude in South Africa.

“Huh, really?” said Unni, waving the sign right in front of her face.

Then she showed me the middle finger. “Worse than this?”

“Worse,” I said.

As for the swear words we learnt today, I now know that what I’ve been hearing on the bus from Norwegian school kids is bad language.

Fy faen! and Hva faen! are terribly rude, according to Lise. I think they’re probably on a par with Fuck! and What the fuck! She said Fy is a very old word people said when someone did something wrong. It’s probably related to Fie! in Shakespeare’s plays.

Lisa said faen is something like father. The expressions sounds quite harmless when you break it down like this.

Faen i helvete! is apparently also quite bad and means something like Father in hell! Lise said we could feel free to use fy søren and fy flate, which are something like damn or oh bother.

I love sound of the Norwegian language, even the swear words. I find it poetic and beautiful Actually, I think I’m having a love affair with it.

A phrase like hviskes og tiskes (whispering and buzzing) thrills me and I relish Jeg trenger penger (I need money). There’s a TV programme here called Tore på spore (pronounced toora paw spoora) in which a man called Tore helps people find long-lost relatives. I love that title.

I almost got tears in my eyes when Lise sang the advent song today. She has an amazing voice and Norwegian sounds even better when she sings it.

I almost forgave her for never having heard of J.M. Coetzee earlier in the lesson. She’d asked me who my favourite author is.

“But he’s known all over the world,” I said in disbelief. “He even got the Nobel prize for literature right here in Oslo.”

“I’m more interested in the Nobel Peace Prize,” she said. But she did ask me to write his name down for her after the class.

As she lit the white advent candle, she said it should really be purple because this colour symbolises where the blue sky and red earth meet. In other words, when Jesus will come from Heaven to Earth. I wondered why purple was such a strong Christmas colour here. Blue is also common, as a symbol of the sky.

Lise also explained that in Norway it’s usual to clean all your floors with grønnsåpe (green soap) just before Julaften (Christmas Eve), which is when Christmas is celebrated here.  She said it’s all part of creating a Julestemning (Christmas mood) in your home because grønnsåpe smells nice.

You can also buy something here called kongerøkelse (royal incense) to make your house smell like frankincense and myrrh.

We certainly don’t have to wait for Christmas to see the lovely white snow that creates the best Julestemning of all. It’s falling outside our window as I write. All I can say is Fy faen, it cold out there.

Not so frosty family

Frost is something we only ever heard about in Cape Town. Maybe once in a  year we might hear on the radio that there had been frost in the early morning. But by the time we woke up it would be gone.

Today we woke up to a town glazed white, and it has stayed that way all day and night. The piles of brown leaves on the pavements are frosted, cars are frosted, houses are frosted, even the abandoned black umbrella near our house looks sugar-coated.

It’s minus 5, the coldest since we’ve been here. Around 10 am the sun started shining, making the frost glitter. Patches of  frost and frozen puddles on the road made my daily walk difficult. I’m wondering how much longer I’ll be able to keep it up.

At school I told Lise this is the coldest I’ve been in Norway.  She said it can get to minus 20 in Sandefjord. According to my Mexican friend MariCarmen, who has been here just over a year, if you can handle minus 10, then minus 20 is no problem.

Maricarmen and I are now guest members of the charity organisation run by professionals and Unni was there to introduce us, after which we had to say a few words about ourselves in Norwegian.

Maricarmen gave a heartfelt speech about what it’s like to be an innvandrer (immigrant) in Norway, what obstacles she’s had to overcome and how she wants to be accepted by Norwegian society.

I just gave facts about myself, my job in Cape Town and my family. All things I’ve said a hundred times in class. I said I was looking forward to getting to know everyone and to speaking Norwegian with them.

The truth is, I was scared to death someone would talk to me. I was sure I wouldn’t understand. At the Language Centre the teachers speak very slowly, but in the real world it’s different. And these were professional people, not the taxi driver or shop assistant.

Luckily, there wasn’t much time for talk. Most of the evening was taken up with a presentation about energy and CO2 emissions by one of the members. I got the gist of it but it took a lot of concentration. Everything does when it comes to Norwegian. Yesterday I complained about not being våkne (awake) enough in the afternoon to focus on Norwegian. I hadn’t tried an evening.

As we were all leaving to go home, a few people made small talk with me. My brain was almost asleep and I fumbled for the simplest words. I hope I didn’t sound too stupid.

Actually, I’ve spoken a lot of Norwegian today. I had a nice chat at the bus-stop with a fellow commuter about the weather. I had to strain to hear her through the hood of my parka and my breath came out in clouds when I spoke. We agreed it was skikkelig vinter (proper winter).

Then there was a longish phone call later in the afternoon. It began with a voice message on my mobile. An elderly lady called Liv, who is one of Otto’s distant relatives, phoned to invite us to her art exhibition in Sandefjord on Saturday. She spoke very clearly and slowly. She really hoped we could come. My mother-in-law from Halden recently phoned Liv, to tell her we now live in Sandefjord.

When I phoned Liv back, she said she wanted to meet the entire family and hoped to get to know us. How nice. She told us we would easily be able to find her because she is very tall. She also has “light blonde” hair.

I told Unni about this phone call as we drove to the meeting this evening. It turns out Unni knows Liv and the rest of her family. As Unni said: Sånn er det i Sandefjord (That’s what it’s like in Sandefjord.)

We’ve now heard from my mother-in-law that another relative, with a 13-year-old son, lives in the same street as us. Ashley is now convinced that one of those boys who followed her home is her cousin.

Having relatives in the same town is a new experience for us. One of many we’ve had since we arrived. I wonder when everything stops feeling so new.

Fascinating stuff

Afrikaans helps me so much with Norwegian, but sometimes it lets me down badly. Today I wanted to tell Mariko I prefer morning classes to afternoon ones because I’m more awake in the morning. I couldn’t think of the Norwegian for “awake”, so I used the Afrikaans wakker. Nine times out of ten, when I don’t know a Norwegian word I use the Afrikaans – and it works. Not this time. When I told Mariko I was mer vakker in the mornings, I was saying I was more beautiful. No wonder she gave me such a strange look.

Sometimes I find it embarassing when the teachers gush about how quickly I got to Norsk Prøve 3 level. When I have to tell a new teacher about myself, as I did with Lise, I always explain that I know Afrikaans, which is similar to Nederlands, which is similar to Norwegian.

This is a huge advantage over someone who speaks Japanese or Arabic, and maybe has English as a second language. I have two Germanic languages I can refer to. Afrikaans is like my secret weapon.

Swedish is even more like Afrikaans and I found it fascinating to learn that when Afrikaans was first written down, it was a Swede who helped with this task. My Norwegian teacher in Cape Town told me this. (Norwegian lessons before you actually get to Norway are also a huge advantage.)

When Lise read my introductory essay about myself, she said she’d never heard of Afrikaans. I also wrote that the city of Cape Town has a mountain called Table Mountain, which is famous all over the world. She said she’d never heard of Table Mountain.

I felt like saying I’ve never heard of a Norwegian with black hair, like she has. Lise, who is on the short side, wears a lot of black too. She also sings beautifully and has a background in the theatre.

Lise told us her English isn’t very good but she thinks that’s great because it forces us to speak Norwegian. She told us she moved to Sandefjord from Oslo because she wanted a quieter life.

We’ll be talking a lot about Jul this term, said Lise. She was surprised that most people in the class hadn’t heard of a Julekalender. This is a kind of wall-hanging with 24 pockets, each of which you’re supposed to fill with a present from the 1st to the 24th of December.

When Sharyn piped up that she thought those were only for children, Lise said: “Adults can also be children.” Then she asked us all to bring a present for the class Julekalender. She also has four advent candles in the class. She lit the first one today and sang the first verse of a song about lighting the advent candle.

Lise pointed out that this wasn’t a religious song, but was about world peace. She said Christmas was a time when Norwegians thought about people less fortunate than themselves. She believes many children in Norway are bortskjemte (spoilt) because Norwegians can afford to buy their children anything they want.

There is also a candelabra at the window of our classroom with seven branches, like the Judaic menorah. These are in windows all over Norway now. I asked Lise why and she said it was from the Judaic origin of Christianity. Since Jews don’t believe in Jesus, I’m not sure how the menorah has come to be a symbol of Christmas in Norway. Lise said I should look it up on the internet. I did but couldn’t find any information.

Yesterday Elias was back on his hobbyhorse about Norwegian girls.  He said people in Sandefjord are snooty. Lise agreed. She said there are many rich people in Sandefjord whose wealth is founded on the town’s whaling heritage. Even she, as a Norwegian, found it hard to make friends in Sandefjord, so she could only imagine what it was like for us.

Then the class started talking about an incident this summer. The Language Centre had put up a display with photos of immigrants from different countries in one of the town’s parks. Apparently someone had destroyed the display as a protest against foreigners.

Lisa said it was veldig trist (very sad) and that we should remember that this was only one person. The photos were rescued and put up on a wall at the Language Centre.

This is even more fascinating to me than the link between Swedish and Afrikaans. I’ve sure missed out on a lot by not being able to read the newspapers.

Countdown

Tomorrow is the start of week 49, as they call it here. It’s the week they’re holding interviews for the “English Advisor” job I applied for. I haven’t heard a peep, so I guess they don’t need my advice.

Maybe I’ll have more luck with another one I’m trying for: Communication Manager “with English as the main language”. The job was advertised in English, but Norwegian is also a requirement. I’m not sure exactly what level of Norwegian they want.

As I said to Unni during our chat yesterday, I still need so much more practise with speaking. I was explaining why I wanted to stay with the class I’m in now. She’d given me the option of moving to a  group with “many educated people”, where I would learn a lot of grammar, or staying with my class.

Most of my classmates have been here for at least two years, so they’re quite confident speakers. Grammar I can learn from a book, but I need people I can talk to. Unni agreed I would be better off staying where I am. Then she gave me some fantastic news.

Sometimes a student from the Language Centre can attend the meetings of a large charity organisation run by professionals here in Sandefjord. It’s a way to practise the language, get to know Norwegians and generally feel part of the community. Unni has put my name forward for this wonderful opportunity. They meet every Wednesday night at a local hotel. She will take me next week to introduce me.

She asked me what I thought and I said it was fantastisk. Then I said: Jeg er veldig takknemlig for alt som du har gjort for meg (I’m very grateful for everything you’ve done for me.) She said that was veldig bra norsk (very good Norwegian).

From tomorrow I will go to class in the afternoon, from 12 until 3, instead of in the morning. I’m planning to get my Christmas shopping out of the way next week, so I won’t be sleeping in. It’s full speed ahead (or full fart as they say here) to Jul now. From next week the local mall will be open on  Sundays, from 2 until 6, up to Christmas.

Today is the first day of Advent. Advent is a big deal here. You’re supposed to light one candle each Sunday from now until Christmas. I bought a beautiful cast iron holder for my four red candles. It’s on the coffee table in the lounge. The girls see these candles as their countdown to Cape Town.

I lit the first candle this evening at 5 pm after the girls and I came back from a trip to a coffee shop in town. We’d been cooped up in the house all day. It was 0º C outside. They weren’t keen to leave the sofa but I said a walk would do us good. Otto was on his way back from yet another trip to Cape Town.

As we walked down the hill to town, people passed us wearing those green reflective vests that car guards* wear in South Africa. It’s taken us a while to stop thinking we’re surrounded by car guards when we walk in the dark, which we do a lot now. It’s pitch black when the girls walk home from school.

In Kafka, which isn’t normally open on a Sunday, the girls said how nice the cakes were.

“They have very nice cakes in Norway,” I said.

“They have nice cakes in Cape Town,” Ashley said morosely.

After Kafka we went for a walk around the town square which now boasts a magnificent real Christmas tree, the tallest I’ve seen in a public place. There are stalls all around the square selling everything from rømmegrøt (porridge made with sour cream) to marinated herrings to knitted Christmas decorations.

The whole town looks magical with lights and trees everywhere. Red hearts are a symbol of Christmas and they are all over the place.

“Let’s go,” said Ashley as we walked past children singing carols. “It’s freezing and these Norwegians are stupid.”

“What do you mean? I asked.

“Well, they have a real donkey over there,” she said pointing to the nativity scene in the square. “And look at that stupid wise man talking on his cellphone.”

Yesterday Ashley told me she is more excited about going back to Cape Town than she’s ever been in her life. “Even when I was little and it was Christmas,” she said. I worry about how she’ll feel about coming back.

Lisa told me she is excited but “also not excited because I know we have to leave again.”

I wonder if we’re doing the right thing by going back so soon. Every time I ask the girls, they tell me they prefer school here to school in South Africa, but I know it’s been hard for them to leave everything they know behind.

*People who guard cars parked at shopping centres and other public places. Most people pay car guards a small fee for guarding their cars.

Sex and sad news

(written November 26)

Sometimes we have boring extracts to read in class. But Trond always manages to liven things up. Today it was an e-mail from one university student to another. This was in the chapter “Higher Education” in our textbook. Part of the mail went:  “Is there something besides studying taking up your time?”

Trond asked us what this could mean and someone answered  “girls.”

“Riktig!” (Right)  said Trond. Then he did this dance move that involved hip-wiggling and arm fluttering. “Let’s talk about sex, Baby,” he said in English (and in a low gravelly voice).

Only yesterday he had thought it his duty to tell us about Norway’s latest sex scandal. He’d just given us one of his talks about how we must watch the Norwegian news and “be in Norway”. Up went a newspaper article on the smartboard. It was about how the coach of the Norwegian national skating team has been fired because he asked a top female skater if she wanted to … his … Trond hovered the mouse pointer over the words so we got it. The headline was something about oral sex.

“But, surely, if he says ’sorry’ it’ll be okay,” said Elias, the Christian from Iraq.

Trond shook his head. Sexual harassment isn’t tolerated in Norway, he said. He added that is wasn’t as bad as America, though. There you almost can’t even tell a girl she looks nice without being sued, he said.

We moved on to an article written by an 18-year-old Norwegian mother. The gist of the text was that she felt condemned by society because she is a teenage mother. Trond wanted to know what we, coming from other cultures, thought.

The floodgates opened. Elias gave a long discourse about how mean Norwegian women are, then Olga held forth on what cold mothers they are. She asked me if I agreed and I said Jeg er ikke enig med deg. (I don’t agree with you.)

I wanted to tell her she was making a gross generalisation. I know because I do it all the time. It’s a lazy way of trying to understand this new culture. I wanted to tell her not to be hard on her new country (and it’s women). But before I could do this, Unni walked into the class saying she had something important to tell us.

Trond left us alone with our teacher. It was sad news. From Monday, the start of the new term, Unni won’t be our teacher anymore. She found out last night when the rector phoned to tell her she’ll be taking a new beginners’ class. A teacher called Lise will take over from Unni and some of us will move to other groups.

Unni said we would have coffee and cake tomorrow to say goodbye. She would have a private discussion with each of us to see which group we would go to.

She could see how disappointed we were. She kept telling us what a marvelous teacher Lise is. She said it was the unknown that was making us sad and that we would forget her “within one week.”

I think it’ll take me longer than a week to forget Unni. I think I may also be moving to a new group, so I might be saying goodbye to the whole class tomorrow. I don’t suppose I’ll have Trond anymore either, because he stands in when Unni takes another class. I won’t ever forget him.

There’s a South African saying that Motho ke motho ka batho (a person is a person through people). This is especially true when you move to a new country. It’s knowing how much these people have taught me that makes me sad to say goodbye.

Rumpe, lumpe

Today I had the most bizarre conversation. It happened in the class whose students are preparing to take Norsk Prøve 2. The teachers decided that today our class would chat to this class to help them prepare for their orals. Mariko was put in charge, then the teachers went off to act as examiners for another oral exam.

There were seven of us and fourteen of them, so it was one of us to two of them. Mariko’s first priority was to make sure that people who spoke the same languages were not in a group together. I ended up with a Kurdish and a Chinese woman, neither of whom could speak English.

There were various topics we had to cover, like “Tell me about yourself”; “Talk about where you live”; “Speak about your homeland”.

When the Kurdish woman told me she only spoke Kurdish and Persian, I said: “Oh, so you’re from Iraq.” I quickly realised this was almost as bad as someone asking me why I’m white.

“I’m from Iran,” she said haughtily. “It’s a totally different country.” I could tell she was tired of explaining this.

“Oh-kay,” I said. “Let’s talk about where we live, shall we?”

The Chinese woman told me she lived in a very old house.

“Har du et ly hus?” she asked me.

I knew she was asking me something about my house, but I had no idea what ly meant. It was embarrasing because I was supposed to be better at Norwegian than she was. That’s why I was there.

“Unnskyld?” I said. “Hva betyr ly?” (Sorry, what does ly mean?)

“Ly,” she said.

I shook my head. “Unnskyld?”

“Ly, ly, ly,” she said, fluttering her plump little hands around her face.

I was about to shrug my shoulders and give up when the Kurdish woman sighed. “She’s saying ny,” (new) she said. “She wants to know if you live in a new house.”

“Yes, ly,” the Chinese woman giggled. “I get mixed up with l, r and n.”

“Flied lice,” I said and laughed. They just looked puzzled.

“I understand her Norwegian,” said the Kurdish woman. “We always talk together in class.”

Well, I’m glad somebody does.

After class I went to the hairdresser, where I had a bilingual conversation. The hairdresser was Bosnian. She wanted to practise her English, I wanted to practise my Norwegian. We decided I would speak Norwegian and she would answer in English.

I asked her how much it would cost to have my hair coloured. She said 400 kroner (R536).

“Does that include the cut?” I asked.

“No, for a cut and a colour it’s 800 kroner (R1 072).”

It was such an outrageous price to my ears that I burst out laughing.

“That’s so expensive, I can’t believe it,” I said. “In South Africa I pay about 200 kroner for a cut and colour.”

I told her I would  just have a cut. I’d get the colour done in South Africa. She said a cut and colour would be even cheaper in Bosnia than it is in South Africa. I asked how long she’d been in Norway and she said 17 years. She came here when she was 6.

“So then you’re basically Norwegian,” I said.

“No,” she said. “I feel more Bosnian. When I go back there I know I’m Bosnian. Norway is my homeland but I’m really Bosnian.”

I know what she means. Even if I live here for another 20 years, I’ll never be Norwegian. I only have to look at the picture on the front page of today’s local newspaper to know this. It shows seven naked women running into the sea.

They are in their late forties to mid-fifties. One of them is 62. They run into the sea once a week. The sea temperature is 7º C at the moment.

When they come out, they get dressed then have coffee, buns and aquavit, which is a very strong alcoholic drink. They’ve been doing this for 10 years.

They are not exhibitionists, they say. It’s just warmer if they go naked. This is because they run and cycle first, so they are nice and warm. If they spend time putting on costumes, they will get cold.

The women believe the naked swim is good for them because it gets the circulation going. On Christmas Eve they swim in their costumes because their husbands come with them. But only one of the husbands swims. The others keep a check on the bonfire.

The women say they are not so shy when they swim naked.

“Alle har jo en rumpe!” (Everyone has a backside, after all) they explain.

It’s a good thing they don’t have the Chinese woman with them. She’d say everyone has a lumpe, which is actually a potato pancake.

Sunny skies

It was sunny almost the whole day yesterday. After three weeks of grey, this was a bit of a novelty. We were almost tempted to go out coatless and bootless, but soon changed our minds after five minutes in the cold.

Today the town is bathed in grey mist again. I walk to school in this mist every morning. When I see the lights from the Color Line ferry glittering in the sea at the bottom of the hill, I think how different my mornings are now.

In Cape Town I’d be on my way to another waterfront: the Victoria and Alfred waterfront near the city centre. I wouldn’t be walking, though. I’d be driving along the highway. Instead of the Colour Line ferry, I’d see the 2010 stadium. I watched it being built from scratch, across the road from the publishing company where I worked. It was almost finished by the time we left.

We talked about 2010 yesterday because we had a South African family visiting us from across the fjord. So the sun was a stroke of luck. I was proud of our lovely little town in the sunlight. The family came for lunch. So did an American couple we’ve met here.

Of course, we talked about the weather. In South Africa we have two seasons, the South African husband said: summer and almost summer. Here we have winter and almost winter. Well, most of the time.

The conversation then veered between what we love about Norway and what we miss about South Africa, the difficulties of being a foreigner and, for some of us, our struggles with the new language.

Top of  the South African list of what we missed was affordable eating out, socialising in the sun, our big houses and domestic help. What we didn’t miss was living in a constant state of hyper-vigilance and driving our kids everywhere.

What we love about Norway is the food, the freedom, the people, the technology and the efficiency. We agreed that all countries have their good and bad points but, on balance, we’re happy here. Of course, I’m still dying to get back to Cape Town and the sun.

I’m not the only one in need of sun. Last week Mary told us she is heading off to Hawaii for five weeks and that someone called Charlotta will be taking the ball class. Mary said she feels guilty about going to Hawaii, because she won’t be with her family for Christmas, but they live somewhere “freezing cold”. I wonder if Charlotta will be as enthusiastic as Mary.

Last week it was also Mary’s birthday. Two women from the gym interrupted our class to run around with Norwegian flags and wish her happy birthday. The Norwegian flag was also outside the coffee shop next to the Language Centre last week. I asked why when I went to get coffee during break. It’s someone’s birthday, said the owner. I should have known.

I can’t see us putting up a Norwegian flag when it’s one of our birthdays. That would feel as fake as Mariko trying to gush all over the children at the kindergarten. A South African flag would be even more fake. I’ve never put up or held a South African flag in my life, apart from at that little ceremony at the Language Centre last month.