Matthew in Norway

Friday, August 17, 2012

Bergen til Oslo

Foldnes Summer Adventure

This was a charming summer for me on little island of Foldnes. I got to stay at my in-laws peaceful vacation-like home with my beautiful new bride (she takes my breath away) and experience so many new things. Being out on Arvid’s rowboat in the sea has been my favorite adventure, whether it was by myself or him or another companion. The dark cold nordic water is new to me, and much of what was in it too. The “brennemanet” had my interest all almost all summer! The word literally means “burn magnet”. The red cereal bowl sized jellies apparently burn for a few hours when they slide across your skin. In the beginning of July I saw one or two. I was fascinated by one when it came within a foot of the front yard dock. I had never been able to see any jellyfish so close and in such detail. My interest only grew as the number of them did. By the end of July I could see one every few meters as I was out rowing in the boat. To me, there were incredible amounts in the water, but that was only until a family member (Even) told me that one year there were ten times the amount. He said you couldn’t jump off the dock without touching fifteen of them! All summer, my curious daring heart and I so badly wanted to touch one with my arm just to see what it felt like. But I never mustered up to nerve to do so. Its just a matter of time and eventually I will accidentally be stung by one, so I’ll just let nature run its course. Maybe next summer ;)

Blåbær (blueberries)

I think maybe I am nearly an avid blueberry harvester. I have been picking the healthy little blue treats a liter at a time. It takes me about an hour to get a liter and paints all ten of my fingers purplish blue for the rest of the day. Mamsen taught me the Norwegian way of smashing them up with a load of sugar. Eating them with thin Norwegain pancakes or vanilla ice cream is popular here, but I like the bluen slurry best just straight with a spoon. One three-day period in July I ate nearly a liter a day by myself. mmm

Klippe Plenen (mowing the lawn)

The house has a nice big front yard, and thanks to Papsen’s summer hobby of maintaining it, it always looks beautiful. I was eager to help out and mow the lawn while he and Mamsen were away on vacation. Turns out that it’s also another activity that takes an hour to complete. In America it takes maybe 15 minutes to mow the fenced in square suburb lawns that I am used to. Here on the outskirts of the city, its like mowing a big meadow in the forest. The yard is so full of hills, trees and rock-lined flowerbeds that you feel like you are making funny patterns with the lawn mower. One minute you are mocking the shape of Mickey’s head and the next you’re mowing by the “beach”. In America, you mow around the boarder once then keep the same back and forth direction the entire time. Here, you could mow the same lawn your entire adult life, and never have the exact same patten.

Kjører Bilen (driving the car)

I have been driving too. I remember being away in Aussie and Indo for six months; driving was one of the things I missed most. Mamsen and Papsen have so gracefully allowed me to drive their car on account that I am legally allowed to drive as a tourist for a few months before I have to get my Norwegian license. I eventually want to do that; maybe when the visa comes through and I can start working. Norwegians drive manual transmissions. Here, you learn on a manual and you stay with manuals, very unlike Americans. From what I have seen, there seems to be fewer automatics in Norway than Manuals in America. In America it’s typically guys who think they are race car drivers who have manuals – I say that because I am one of them. I don’t know a single lady back home who has one. That is why my wife impresses me so much when she drives; a pretty little lady operating a clutch and gears. Its so foreign to me.

I like learning to drive the Norwegian roads and learn their rules. The roads are windy and narrow with few sidewalks. The surrounding rocky terrain decides the path of the roads. Its very unlike the broad streets of America that follow a strict square neighborhood pattern. Here only high trafficked roads have a center dividing line. Many times on the neighborhood roads does one car have to pullover and allow another one to pass because they both cannot fit. Rarely do you stop at a green.yellow.red intersection, and when you do, its for half the time and half the size of american intersections. The highway drive from Sotra to Bergen consists mostly of an 80 speed limit, but thats in kilometers. Converting to miles, this very typical Norwegian speed is only 49 mph, so my leadfoot has lost some of its weight.

Tunneler (tunnels)

This west side of Norway has tunnels like America has McDonald’s. Just to get to the city from Sotra you have to go through four or five of them. Back home, the nearest and only tunnel I know of is almost an hour away, and its maybe 200 meters. We drove through “Lædrals tunnelen” on our way to and from Oslo. At 24.5 km it is the worlds longest road tunnel. Its so long that it has tourist attractions in it. As you drive through, on three evenly spaced occasions, you come across a spot that looks like you are inside a giant igloo. The expanded sections are domed shaped and lit up with blue and orange lights. Their purpose is to cause the drivers to feel as though they are exiting one tunnel and entering another, to prevent claustrophobia or other complications that come with driving under ground for so long. My wife rolls her eyes when she sees typical foreigners taking pictures in her country. It’s because she is so well traveled in the world, but I just had to get out and be a picture snapping tourist for the moment. I had never thought of this, but it seems obvious that sound cannot escape quickly in long tunnels. Which means the noise level is greatly intensified. Even just a little car driving by sounded like a train. Mamsen and I were posing for a picture when a semi-truck driver passing by thought it would be comical to belch his horn at us ‘tourists’. The sound was so incredibly loud and startling, like a whale blowing its blowhole directly into your ear. I think we both smacked the top of our heads on the tunnel from jumping so high.

Benedicte and I drove to Stavanger in late July, another big city in southern Norway. We both got to drive in the three underwater tunnels. A six percent grade down and seven percent up. The musty dark tunnels were the farthest I have ever been underground. In the long tunnels, every kilometer there is a sign posted to show you how far you have come and how far to the end. Of coarse because I am the foreigner I have to learn what these signs mean on my own. There is an up arrow with one number under it, then another number and a down arrow. The first time I saw one of these signs was in an underwater tunnel. The entire weekend I was trying to figure out how the heck we were seven kilometers underground! Not until the drive to Oslo through one of the really long tunnels did I figure our what the sign actually meant.

Out to eat at her favorite Tai food restaurant; JAJA's.

This is the newly built Opera House in Oslo. The slanted surface reaches from the roof all the way down to the water.

Thought this was cool, my girl and her smile with a Ferrari in the back ground. In Oslo.

Wife and Mamsen outside Oslo, City Hall building.

This is the Nobel Peace Prize building in Oslo. And that is a fact I had to have pointed out to me.

Mamsen and me relaxing in the sun.

I miss american tasting peanut butter. This tastes like the real stuff, but at 71 kroner, its $11.80 US.

This is a blacksmith house. Notice the grass growing on the roof, its very Norwegian for cabins and other small buildings.

Just had to add some of the beautiful scenery; this one was in the backyard of one of Benedicte's friends house.

Playing Chicken on the diving board; she would have not been happy had I let go.

My beautiful wife in downtown Stavanger.

This was a pretty street I was impressed by in Stavanger.

One view on our way to Stavanger.

My wife got a new iPhone app that must have been developed just for her.

My mother-in-laws favorite treat; "soft is" or soft ice cream.

Mamsen and me in view of the beautiful scenery.

This picture is one of my favorites; in the tunnel, just after the truck driver blew his horn at us tourists.

mmmm

Summer here was paradise.

Læring Norsk (learning Norwegian)

Im still slowly learning Norwegian everyday. Benedicte and I both have plans of me taking a Norwegian course eventually, but with the visa not yet complete and a possibility of the government giving us free enrollment afterwards, we haven’t done so. I have had a few Norwegians ask me what I think about the language when I hear it. I can best describe it as short, choppy words that constantly rise and fall in tone. Remember when you were a kid and your dad would put you on his back and let you ride him like a horse? And how you would exaggerate your words every time he bucked you up? That’s what it reminds me of. However, I think it’s not so foreign to me anymore because I am beginning to recognize several words when I listen people speak. That is encouraging to me, because I so badly want to be able to speak the language. I have a little pocket dictionary that I constantly look up words in. I’m finding that I learn a word best when I need it in practical moments, then look it up, then use it. But even then, it usually takes three or four times of that before the word sticks in my vocabulary.

I used to think people who are bilingual have a little imaginary switch in their mind that they flip to speak the other language, but I’m starting to decide otherwise. Even though I am just barely speaking a few basic sentences in Norwegian, all my words seem to blend together. I chuckle at myself sometimes when I try to say something in Norwegian and something from my very concise Spanish vocabulary pops out. The three languages that I know any of are all jumbled together in my mind.

I’m very attentive when Norwegians speak English because it gives me some insight on how to structure sentences in Norwegian. Sometimes these sentences are grammatically incorrect, but the point comes across just fine. I listen and practice this everyday, but what I am noticing is that I now sometimes use these sentences even when I speak English. I think because I’m not around many native English speakers, I begin to not hear the incorrectness so much. For example, just yesterday I caught myself saying “I not need milk”. Directly translated from Norwegian that is correct, but in English I know better.

That is my experience thus far with speaking Norwegian. To all of my American friends and family who periodically use online translators to say something to me in Norwegian, thank you, its making me feel loved and missed! A few people, both American and Norwegian, have told me that they like the blog. I hope that it gives you a small taste of the adventure and experience that I am having. I appreciate you reading it :)

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Hardangerfjorden!

My wife and me at Hardangarfjorden.

Norway is known for its spectacular fjords. Maybe you are like I was, before I had love for Benedicte or any interest in Norway at all, and don’t know what a fjord is. They are river like inlets from the sea, often surrounded by cascading green mountains or little towns built into the hills. They are usually a mix of saltwater from the northern Pacific Ocean and freshwater from melting snow in the mountains. In some areas they are deep enough for cruise ships to tread in, but in others they are shallow enough to see the fish you try to catch. The entire west coast of Noway is weaved with them due to the rocky mountainous terrain. I would recommend going to Google Images and typing in “norway fjord”. More than half of the pictures that will come up will be of the beautiful country, and it may help you get a better idea of what a fjord is.

I first learned of the fjords during my first visit here last December. During my second visit here in March, my Mother-in-law bought me a very nice sweatshirt. On the inside of the designer bag it came in was a beautiful picture of a fjord in Hardanger–a region in Norway know for its scenic beauty. Thats when my fascination with Norway’s beauty began. I took the bag home to California and posted it on my wall to remind me of the colorful country I so longed to be in with my girl. I had only experienced the fjords in pictures and stories, so when my father-in-law told me that he was going to take my Bother-in-law and me on a three day hiking trip beginning in Hardangerfjorden, I didn’t know how to tell him thank you enough or how blessed I felt.

We drove for two hours, crossed the fjord by a ferry, saw the construction of the 1,300+ meter long suspension bridge connecting the two sides of the fjord, and started our 7 hour hike to our cabin. The scenery we saw on our hike was unlike any other I have ever seen. We hiked 1,000 meters up through green forest, over rocks and boulders and along side of a raging cold river. We saw massive waterfalls hundreds of feet tall, constantly roaring with power and constantly filling the air with a damp mist. We got cramps. We hiked up a very steep mountain side of solid rock so smoothed out by years of glacial pressure it was literally dangerous to come down when raining. We would get to the top of one mountain and in exhaustion hope that the cabin would be just over the ridge, to only see more and more scenery and no cabin in sight. Sometimes I felt like Frodo and Sam in Lord of the Rings on an exciting but seriously long extravaganza. I experienced drinking true crisp mountain water from freshly melted snow, and no, Arrowhead Bottled Water doesn’t taste like what it says: “Bottled at the source”. The water was so cold, that when I plunged my hand in it to fill up my drinking bottle, it began to ache before the bottle was full.

We finally got to the cabin and, oh, I slept so rock hard that night. We fished all day the next day, but because the water was so cold, the fish refused to bite. The cabin was located in the valley between two large mountains which the snowmelt river ran through. It was so interesting to me to see such large mountains up close. I looked at the mountains and down the valley between them, and thought that it was a push-over ten minute hike to the other side, but after an hour of hiking to the fishing hole, I realized how much more ground it was to cover.

Benedicte and I have been doing quite a lot of hiking lately. Just ten minutes drive from the house is a few mountains that are very popular to hike. You can hike to the top where a big “golfball” is just like in Orcutt Hills, California, or you can hike around the local drinking water reservoir. We go alone, or with her friends, or with her family. Her mom took us on a hike around the water reservoir and kicked our butts. Shouldn’t it be the other way around, the young newly weds waiting up for the mom? Impressive Mamsen!

Learning Norwegian is coming along well. Its exciting for me to be able learn a little bit more every day. Its definitely work though, especially not being able to take an academic Norwegian class yet and having to learn it with my own initiative. I never seriously thought about learning a language until. Its not just memorizing words for vocabulary. There is grammar, pronunciation and word choice. In English we say “I put on my pants”, but in Norwegian they say “I take on my pants.” Even if you say all the right words and even if you get the difficult pronunciation correct, the other person may not understand you just because you didn’t say something the way their culture says it. Imagine if someone said that they want ice cream by saying “I will have ice cream.” You eventually would figure out what they meant, but it would take a little processing. When I actually try to communicate something serious with a Norwegian, in Norwegian, I feel like I am a little kid learning how to speak. It makes me think, when about I was young learning English. I don’t remember being this frustrated with all the specific sounds and having to get them correct. In fact, I don’t even remember learning English.

I appreciate now that I know how to say anything in English and can communicate clearly and precisely to any one what I want to say. I realize that human beings have an amazing ability of having a complex idea then babbling off dozens and dozens of different sounds in a specific order in a very short amount of time to communicate. The listener then hears the sounds, tones and lengths and can process the same or similar idea. Its not until we hear a foreign language with unknown sounds, some that we didn’t even know we could make, do we realize how amazing the ability is. That is my deep thought about learning a new language.

I’m enjoying being here in Norway. I miss my friends and family back home too. I’m greatly enjoying being in love and married to my best friend. We are learning so much together–about ourselves and about each other. Many people have told me over the years that marriage is work, that it takes effort to bring two individuals with independent lives together to make one life. I’m finally living that, and its exciting. I so thank you God for giving Benedicte and myself such clear communication skills with each other.

There is a line of text in our Norwegian marriage license that stuck out to me when the priest read it before us. It has been on my mind ever since. I don’t know all about the “ins and outs” of marriage yet, but I do know that I am so happy to be learning with my best friend, the person who I love more than I knew I could love.

“There is no contradiction between love and unity on the one hand, and freedom and autonomy on the other.”

A colorful neighborhood in Hardanger.

A nice view on a hike.

An ice cold lake in the mountains.

I pretty town in the mountains.

My attempt at photography by the fairy.

Hardanger

Hardanger suspension bridge. Im interested in bridges. This one will be 100m longer than the Golden Gate.

One of the several waterfalls on our 7 hour hike.

For some perspective of how big the waterfall is, look at the average size tree to the right of the mist.

On our hike. The higher we climber, the more beautiful the scenery became.

This was on the smooth mountain side. Probably the most cramp creating portion of the hike.

Jan Øyvind, me, and Papsen coming home from the cabin.

We saw this jellyfish in the sea in front of the house. Literally in our front yard.

Photography by: Cecilie Foldnes

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Marriage, Vows, & Peaches

I am now married to Benedicte Foldnes, making me the happiest and luckiest man alive.

Yes married. We both know that it is not the traditional way to begin a life together — date across the world for 9 months, get engaged for less than a month, have a courthouse wedding and a year later have an official ceremonial wedding — but let’s face it, we do not have a traditional relationship either. She is from beautiful Norway, and I’m from cool California. We met in “The Land Down Under” in Australia two and a half years ago during my missions trip. After talking only a few minutes, we learned that a year before we lived only twenty minutes away from each other and shared a same favorite burger joint in Pismo Beach when she did the same type of missions trip. We have a peculiarly exciting relationship. We realized a while back that we would have to break our cultural norms for this relationship to work out. We both have to make sacrifices to be together, but I’m sure some of you know what I mean when I say that ‘when you find the one your heart loves, nothing will keep you apart for long’. For us, not even a little puddle called the Atlantic Ocean kept us apart for long. I will be honest, we do not know exactly how having three weddings is going to feel at the end, but we do know that we are up for the adventure. We are both adventurous people, both have traveled the world, she has been to more countries than she can remember of the top of her head. So now we are officially living this adventurous life together, as man and wife.

Our small wedding day last Thursday was nice. We went to the courthouse in Bergen with her family and friends. We wrote vows together and said them there before our whitenesses — at the end of the blog I will write out our vows. The Norwegian judge was so kind to recite the ceremony in English for me, even with her Norwegian accent. She took her time and made it special. After that we took a cable car to the top of Ulriken and had an elegant mountain top restaurant. The view was beautiful and spectacular. Every little intricate detail of the city and surrounding islands is on display to see up there. The family spent time taking pictures of us newly weds and of the view — as you will see in the pictures at the end. On the way home, we stopped at my mother-in-laws parents house to tell them the exciting news. Then came home to relax with her nearby family for the rest of the warm sunny day. Benedicte’s cousin, Cecilie Foldnes, is an exceptional photographer, who happily took some wedding pictures for us that evening.

We also have a date set for our wedding party in Norway next year; July 27th, 2013. We will have it in her nearby church that her family is a part of. After that we will head back to California for our final wedding party where all the loved ones on my side will be able to join. We are thinking maybe on the beach back in California and a traditional Norwegian church wedding here in Bergen. We do not know what the date is for the California party, but sometime within the first two weeks of August 2013.

Speaking of weddings, we went one of her friend’s last weekend. It was my first time experiencing a Norwegian wedding. They are not completely different from American weddings, but I did find many of their traditions interesting. Songs are a popular tradition, not only in weddings, but for parties in general. Lyrics to the many songs are found in the wedding program. At various times throughout the usual 8 hour reception and once or twice during the church ceremony, the guests and wedding party will sing along in unison. Some of the songs are traditional, well-known Norwegian songs, while others are original songs that friends or family members have written to the bride or groom. Which brings me to another fun tradition. The brides parents typically write a song to her and sing it to her while the grooms parents typically do the same for him. These songs are quite comical, because of funny embarrassing lyrics and because they take a tune of a well-known song, like "Marry Had a Little Lamb".

Norwegian weddings involve many many speeches. The wedding we went to started at 1:00 pm in the church for an hour, then to a 2 hour break and picked back up for the reception at 4:00 pm. This eight and a half hour reception consisted of a speech, dinner, speeches, coffee, speeches, skits, speeches, dessert, speeches, videos, speeches, picture videos, speeches and speeches. And no, there was not a single dessert containing peaches :) The wedding party is a bit different also. Bride’s maids and Groom’s men do not really exist over here, just the Maid of Honor and the Best Man. In the wedding we went to there were two Maid of Honors and only one Best Man. Benedicte wants to mix American and Norwegian traditions by having two Maid of Honors, two Best Men, three Bride’s Maids and three Groom’s Men.

If you are reading this, that means you care about me and my new bride. I want to share our wedding vows we wrote together. We found some traditional vows, mixed them, removed some, rearranged and reworded a lot and added a touch of our own original words. Here is what we said to each other.

I, Matthew, take you, Benedicte, to be my lawfully wedded wife,

to have and to hold,

from this day forward,

for better, for worse,

for richer, for poorer,

in sickness and in health,

to love, to honor, to respect and to cherish.

I take you, with all of your faults and strengths, as I offer myself with all of my faults and strengths.

I will help you when you need help, and will turn to you when I need help.

I will comfort you when you need comfort, and will look to you when I need comfort.

I willingly take the responsibility and privilege of being your companion, lover and best friend in this life.

I promise to always lay my life down for you, to always put you before myself, and to never forget the reasons why I chose you.