Approved family reunification for hubby!

Hubby is officially a ‘family reunion person’ living in Norway! I’m so excited – I have to celebrate with some of the wine we bought in Sweden today.

Oh and I found this little chap in Sweden – isn’t he just adorable! Oh Lordie – I’m going all Norskie – next thing you know I’ll be eating lutefisk……

Fredrikstad and international schools

So I’ve been wondering why Fredrikstad doesn’t have a proper international school. I know there’s FRIS – offering Norwegian language classes for adults.

But why is there no real international school like in Sandefjord or Bærum?(or Stavanger, Arendal, Trondheim and Telemark). An international school that offers primary, middle and high school education in English. A private international school.

Fredrikstad – the 6th largest town in Norway. Fredrikstad – the town desperately trying to promote itself as the ‘place to live‘ (they even give you a welcome package worth Kr 2500 when you move here) but yet the international school is on the other side of the fjord. In Sandefjord of all places? Why is that?

I mean … nothing happens in Sandefjord! I must be missing something because how is it possible that they get to have an international school and we don’t (read the envy in those lines)!

It baffles the mind! All this talk about having the best movie house in the country but nobody notices the shortage of teachers and schools?

Fredrikstad is approx a 1 hour train ride from Oslo (capital city). It’s even closer to the Swedish border, not to mention that it has stacks of tertiary educational institutions both in and around the town.

There’s currently a shortage of qualified teachers in the Government schools and there’s not much to chose from in the area of private education for primary and medium schools.

If Fredrikstad had a real international school then international companies based in Oslo could consider basing their international staff in Fredrikstad.

Norwegians with international ties could have the option of English medium instruction for their children. Foreigners could have the option of paying for Norwegian lessons instead of sitting around and waiting for their ID number.

So why has nobody opened an international school with English as the medium instruction? Surely Fredrikstad has the potential to provide for a successful International school?

Maybe Sandefjord does have more happening after all!

Halloween theme birthday party

It feels like just the other day that I was lighting six birthday candles on a ‘Hulk’ cake at the Science Center in Gateway Shopping center. Back then I had no idea that this little chap would be as tall as me before he turned twelve (and I’m not short!).

Being the theme mama that I am – we decided on a Halloween birthday party this year (first time we have combined the two). Besides – I felt confident with my American friend backing me – she knows how to make a pinata!

Halloween in Norway is a ‘newish’ thing – not totally embraced by everybody yet. The response to ‘trick or treaters’ can range from delight to anger.

Son’s party was good – the kids had fun. But ‘trick and treating’ in our neighbourhood is not as fun as I would like it to be. With the exception of a few houses – nobody was prepared for the kids. They didn’t have sweets! What kinda neighbourhood doesn’t have sweets on Halloween!

So anyway – one house up the road was so chuffed with having 12 little monsters knock on the door that they took photos (since all the kids were wearing masks I reckoned it was ok). Another house told them to “go away”.

The pinata was a great success, the pizza from our local pizzeria was wolfed down and we completely ran out of time for the rest. So much for the fifty toilet rolls that I bought for the ‘wrap a mummy’ game.

And then there was the cake! Wow – is all I can say. Tressa baked the cake for big boy’s birthday coz she’s a super mum and I’m not and it was just AWESOME! Thank you my special friend – for adding the ’special effects’ to Halloween and making the coolest cake ever!

Our house on the other hand was prepared for little visitors – we just hardly got any.

A gang of four monsters came knocking on our door. The green hulk got such a fright when the sound activated skeleton (hidden behind the spider web) started moving – that he ran away. It took his mates several attempts to persuade him to return.

Our little visitors were so delighted with the ‘haunted house’ theme that they spent ten minutes outside our front door playing with the skeleton.

I think next year we’ll put up a neon light sign :”Halloween happening- this way”.

“Happy Halloween” from Fredrikstad!

There’s a scene in “Mr & Mrs Smith” where Angelina Jolie is doing a balancing act on a chair whilst dusting the curtains or something. It’s a lot harder than it looks – balancing on a chair like that, especially if you are wearing socks.

I know this because I nearly cracked my skull and broke a left toe trying it out.

The spider in the spider web looks rather cool though, I think my body weight hanging on it stretched the web enough to give it just the right look.

The pinata has receive two coats of paint and is looking pretty scary. The sweets are ready for any ‘trick or treat’ wannabes and so are the rotten eggs (you wanna ‘trick’ this house – it’s going to come right back at ya darling!).

Unfortunately birthday boy has a cold (nothing that copious amounts of cold medicine can’t sort out – I hope…..).

Oh shit I forgot the floating eyeballs – have to run.

Happy Halloween and have an excellent weekend!

Fun meeting in Oslo

So last Tuesday – gorgeous Tressa and I abandoned our hubbies and kids for the bright city lights of Oslo.

We met up with RennyBA, Northern Natterings, A Canadian in Norway and The writer at ‘Tre Brødre’. It was so interesting meeting the faces behind the blogs and we had so much fun.

So much fun that we (Tressa and I) didn’t catch the 7pm train home as agreed but rather the 9pm train – guess who was in the dog box….

I returned home to find a traumatised husband with a bouncy (singing) baby in our bed (ok so maybe I shouldn’t have bought the kids doughnuts for desert).

Needless to say I didn’t get my usual morning coffee served in bed the next morning and hubby only started speaking to me much later in the evening.

He assures me that he’s not sulking because I came home late, he’s just traumatised by all the baby sitting he’s had to do whilst I’ve been out socialising with the girls.

I offered to do the baby sitting last night so that he could have a quiet beer in a pub somewhere and regain his equanimity.

It worked wonders – he returned with a smile and a bunch of roses (and I got coffee in bed this morning).

Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the amount of really wonderful people I have met through blogging (and since moving to Norway). Renny is right – it is the most amazing way of networking!

So as Tressa would say: “Ya’ll come and join us in Oslo next year” – that goes for expats, visitors and Norwegians. We’re a friendly bunch – might talk too much – but we’re friendly.

Oslo blog gathering 2010

There’s a lot happening in August 2010 – things like Football world cup in South Africa (or maybe that’s June…) and World blogger gathering in Oslo!

Part of me wants to be here…

But then there’s the Blog gathering in Oslo which I just wouldn’t miss for all the football in the world.

*sigh* – it was a difficult call to make….

So this is where you’re going to find me August 2010.

RennyBA’s Terella

Official Program Site

Where will you be August 2010?

It’s Friday!

Our kids are poorly (that’s UK English for sick) at the moment. It started with a frantic phone call from my stepson in South Africa – the boy was convinced that he was on his deathbed. He was sure that it was salmonella or swine flue. The doctor has given him a prescription for a cold and told him to stay in bed for a week.

This was also a good time to find out that the boy doesn’t have medical aid which he forgot to mention.

Hubby can now rest assured that his name will continue down a line of descendants. I say all this affectionately – my stepson is a good boy. Well sort of – in a step son kinda way…. Ah heck, let me just say it – I love the boy as long as I don’t have to live in the same house as him. He’s 19 – who wants to live in the same house as a 19 year old boy!!

Then there’s our little English rose who has been home since Wednesday with a cold and now one of her brother’s has got it. I am surrounded by coughing, sniffling, demanding, whining children. There is only one solution – it comes in a bottle with a cork!

Despite my challenges with the local bureaucracy and whining offspring I am strangely content with my life at the moment. In fact the ‘challenges’ are not as vexing as I make out because I know how to deal with them.

There’s a big difference between facing challenges on familiar territory compared to facing them on unfamiliar territory.

The difference is slight vexation vs stress. I am not stressed. I am also confident that everything will be resolved.

Oh and let me share the good news with you! I have received a letter from the Fylkesmannen in Østfold that my divorce decree is accepted and registered. The folkeregister has been instructed to remove ex husband’s name from my page! A small but powerful victory! Well worth opening a bottle of Pinotage – if not something more expensive.

Of course, they haven’t put my current husband’s name there but one step at a time.

And then there’s the preparation for Halloween and Christmas (don’t worry, I know that they have nothing to do with eachother). I like them both because they involve celebration and having fun and lots of sweeties.

Tomorrow I’m going to meet the American gang again. Did I mention that we have started a book club? We were supposed to read ‘No place like home’ by “Mary Higgins’. I ordered the book two weeks ago but it hasn’t arrived yet so I’m going uneducated.

I’m sure that I can bullshit my way through it though. Actually I won’t need to – they’re American so they are open minded. I can arrive and say “I haven’t read the book but I bring wine cake!”

Ok, so I think I’v dropped enough hints now.

It’s Friday – can you tell I’m desperate for a glass of wine?

Fredrikstad not for English speakers?

I have been fighting bureaucracy for two days now. It started with police clearances (problematic because I’ve lived in two other countries during the past five years).

Then the folkeregister (people’s register) wanting an apostilled divorce decree before accepting my ‘new’ marriage certificate – thus holding up the process of hubby’s family reunion visa.

And finally being told that my children can not go to innførings klasse (Norwegian language introduction classes) because they speak english.

I am exhausted!

Norway tries to make it easier for newcomers to assimilate into Norwegian culture by offering free language classes. Adults go to Fredrikstad Internasjonale skole and children can go to a ‘innførings klasse” (introduction Norwegian class) for twelve months before they move onto their catchment area school. The innførings klasse is held at a normal primary school,

That’s unless they speak English.

It’s seems that even though the national education department assures us that all children who do not speak Norwegian are entitled to Norwegian lessons – Fredrikstad kommune (county) has decided to exclude English speaking children.

Fredrikstad kommune’s basis for the decision? That Norwegian teachers should be able to instruct in both Norwegian and English medium in their classroom. The English student should therefore be able to participate and learn in the classroom as well as the Norwegian children are.

Good theory however in real life it doesn’t work like that.

My son’s teacher is trying as hard as she can to give extra attention to my boy but there’s just so much she can do. She is deeply distressed that he is only getting two hours pr week in language lessons. She feels that because the boy doesn’t understand what is going on in class he is falling further and further behind.

She doesn’t have the time to translate everything into English for him – they are already time pressed. So basically my twelve year old is sitting in class looking pretty and not learning a thing.

He’s happy but he’s not getting an education in line with the rest of the class.

Younger boy has taken to distracting the rest of the class because he is so bored. He doesn’t know or understand what is going on in class. He is allowed to sit and read English books whilst the rest of the class continue with the curriculum.

My children must be incredibly stupid or else there is a hole in the theory that English children don’t need Norwegian lessons!

Of course, there was a time when foreign kids had to just get on with it. There were no other options. I’m just amazed that in this day and age when there are other options – English speaking children are excluded.

I wrote a complaint to Fredrikstad kommune (council) about the decision that English speaking children are excluded from receiving Norwegian language lessons.

poppycock I say!

I received a response this morning from FRIS (the council department that deals with Norwegian language education for people who don’t speak the lingo).

They agree with me that something needs to be done as things are obviously not working out. I have been reassured that something will be done to change the rule a.s.a.p so that English speaking children can be included in the Norwegian language classes and my boys can get an intensive Norwegian course.

To be continued……..

Halloween birthday party

My son’s birthday nearly coincides with Halloween. Being the wonderful creative mother that I am, I have decided that he should have a Halloween party. Don’t say a word!

I have spent the past two hours planning every detail of this fabulous party – from ordering the life size skeleton to making a pumpkin pinada. In my excitement I forgot how late it was when I ran upstairs to share the news with my boy since he has only asked me five times today what we should do for his birthday.

My adorable son was fast asleep when I came storming in the room and jumped on his bed. The conversation that followed went something like this:

Mum:”darling, I have planned your birthday Halloween party!”
Son:”Huh?”
Mum: “We’re going to carve pumpkins and then you can use toilet paper to wrap one another up and make mummies, the one who does it the fastest can win a prize!”
Son:”Huh?”
Mum: “And I’ve learned how to make orange muffins with eyeballs and I think I know how to make a pinada!. I can colour the potetmos (mashed potato) green and if I use a glove to freeze some bright coloured cool drink then you can have a ‘hand’ floating around in the punch. Isn’t that exciting!”.
Son:”Mum, go away. I love you but go away!”
Mum:”ok son, but it’s gonna be a great party – can I invite some of my friends too?”
Son:”I love you, I really love you mum but go to bed!”.
Mum:”Good night my love”
Son:”Mum….are you going to dress up as a witch again – like you did last time when you won that prize?
Mum:”I could do that, do you want me too?”
Son:”yes, dad (that’s the ex-husband) said that you make the perfect witch”.

Uhum……

So anyway – I know that twelve year olds usually like the scarier version of Halloween but it can’t be too scary because some of the kids will be a little younger. I will have to consult with my American friend – she is the Queen of theme parties.

Anybody got any good ideas for a fun Halloween party? Bring it on – I can handle it – being the witch that I am *evil laugh*.

A Lutefisk tale

Lutefisk is quite a polarised topic for Norwegians. It’s the kind of thing you either love or hate – personally I hate it. Often I get told that I don’t have enough bacon and gravy with my lutefisk – “that’s why you don’t like it“.

What’s the point of eating something if you have to drown it in the taste of something else – hellooooo, am I the only one who finds this a little strange?

Hubby bought some ‘Plumbo’ draincleaner the other day. You can imagine his horror when he discovered that there was a recipe for lutefisk on the bottle. It’s been three days now and he’s still showing every person who walks into the house that drain cleaner is in fact used to make lutefisk. I’m not sure he will ever recover!

Last week he went to Oslo to meet a couple of South African friends. One of the South Africans was on his third visit to Norway (he’s some sort of Java genius who gets asked to do presentations on Java once a year in Oslo).

Java friend lives in Cyprus with his lovely wife and three children (the same ages as our children). We have been invited to stay with them when the Norwegian winter weather gets too much for us. I am already checking out the flight prices.

Hubby and Java friend discussed Norwegian cuisine. I’m not sure exactly what went down but hubby’s friend had read about Lutefisk in an email he received many years ago. For each visit to Norway he has been building up the courage to eat lutefisk – this was to be the great occasion! Hubby chickened out and stuck to traditional cow. Apparently lutefisk isn’t too bad if consumed with copious amounts of aquavit which we don’t drink for it’s taste either.

I share with you the ancient email which started this quest for lutefisk :

“It is my wont when travelling to forgo the touristic in favor of the real, to pesuade my kind hosts, whoever they may be, that an evening in the local, imbibing pints of whatever the natives use as intoxicants, would be more interesting than another espresso in another place called Cafe Opera. Chiefest among my interests is the Favorite Dish: the plate, cup, or bowl of whatever stuff my hosts consider most representative of the regions virtues. As I just finished a week’s work in Oslo, this dish was of course lutefisk.
(snd f/x: organ music in minor key – cresc. and out.)

The Norwegians are remarkably single-minded in their attachment to the stuff. Every one of them would launch themselves into a hydrophobic frenzy of praise on the mere mention of the word. Though these panegyrics were as varied as they were fulsome, they shared one element in common. Every testimonial to the recondite deliciousness of cod soaked in lye ended with the phrase “…but I only eat it once a year.”

When I pressed my hosts as to _why_ they would voluntarily forswear what was by all accounts the tastiest fish dish since pussy 364 days a year, each of them said “Oh, you can’t eat lutefisk more than once a year.” (Their unanmity on this particular point carried with it the same finality as the answers you get when casually asking a Scientologist about L. Ron’s untimely demise.)

Despite my misgivings from these interlocutions however, there was nothing for it but to actually try the stuff, as it was clearly the local delicacy. A plan was hatched whereby my hosts and I would distill ourselves to a nearby brasserie, and I would order something tame like reindeer steak, and they would order lutefisk. The portions at this particular establishment were large, they assured me, and when I discovered for myself how scrumptious jellied fish tasted, I could have an adequate amount from each of their plates to satiate my taste for this new-found treat.

Ah, but the best laid plans… My hostess, clearly feeling in a holiday mood (and perhaps further cheered by my immanent departure as their house guest) proceeded to order lutefisks all round.

“But I was going to order reinde…”

“Nonononono,” she said, “you must have your own lutefisk. It would be rude to bring you to Norway and not give you your own lutefisk.”

My mumbled suggestion that I had never been one to stand on formality went unnoticed, and moments later, somewhere in the kitchen, there was a lutefisk with my name on it.

The waitress, having conveyed this order to the chef, returned with a bottle and three shot glasses and spent some time interogating my host. He laughed as she left, and I asked what she said.

“Oh she said ‘Is the American _really_ going to eat lutefisk?’ and when I told her you were, she said that it takes some time to get used to it.”

“How long?” I asked.

“Well, she said a couple of years.” replied my host.

In the meantime, my hostess was busily decanting a clear liquid into the shot glass and passing it my way. When I learned that it was aquavit, I demurred, as I intended to get some writing done on the train.

“Oh no,” said my hostess, donning the smile polite people use when giving an order, “you _must_ have aquavit with lutefisk.”

To understand the relationship between aquavit and lutefisk, here’s an experiment you can do at home. In addition to aquavit, you will need a slice of lemon, a cracker, a dishtowel, ketchup, a piece of lettuce, some caviar, and a Kit-Kat candy bar.

1. Take a shot aquavit.
2. Take two. (They’re small.)
3. Put a bit of caviar on a bit of lettuce.
4. Put the lettuce on a cracker.
5. Squeeze some lemon juice on the caviar.
6. Pour some ketchup on the Kit-Kat bar.
7. Tie the dishtowel around your eyes.
If you can taste the difference between caviar on a cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat while blindfolded, you have not had enough aquavit to be ready for lutefisk. Return to step one.
The first real sign of trouble was when a plate arrived and was set in front of my host, sitting to my left. It contained a collection of dark and aromatic food stuffs of a variety of textures. Having steeled myself for an encounter with a pale jelly, I was puzzled at its appearance, and I leaned over to get a better look.

“Oh,” said my host, “that’s not lutefisk. I changed my mind and ordered the juletid plate. Its is pork and sausages.”

“But you’re leaving for New York tomorrow, so tonight is your last chance to have lutefisk this year” I pointed out.

“Oh well,” he said, tucking into what looked like a very tasty pork chop.

Shortly thereafter the two remaining plates arrived, each containing the lutefisk itself, boiled potatoes, and a mash of peas from which all the color had been expertly tortured. There was also a garnish of a slice of cucumber, a wedge of lemon, and a sliver of red pepper.

“This is bullshit!” said my hostess, snatching the garnish off her plate.

“What’s wrong,” I asked, “not enough lemon?”

“No, a plate of lutefisk should be totally gray!”

Indeed, with the removal of the garnish, it was totally gray, and waiting for me to dig in. There being no time like the present, I tore a forkful away from the cod carcass and lifted it to my mouth.

“Wait,” said my host, “you can’t eat it like that!”

“OK,” I said, “how should I eat it?”

“Mash up your potatoes, and then mix a bit of lutefisk in, and then add some bacon.” he said, handing me a tureen filled to the brim with bacon bits floating in fat.

I began to strain some of the bits out of the tureen. “No, not like that, like this” he said, snatching up the tureen and pouring three fingers of pure bacon grease directly over the beige mush I had made from the potatoes and lutefisk already on my plate.

“Now can I eat it?”

“No, not yet, you have to mix in the mustard.”

“And the pepper” added my hostess, “you have to have lutefisk with lots and lots of pepper. And then you have to eat it right away, because if it gets cold its horrible.”

They proceeded to add pepper and mustard in amounts I felt were more apporpriate to ingredients rather than flavors, but no matter. At this point what I had was an undercooked hash brown with mustard on it, flavored with a little bit of lutefisk. “How bad could it be?” I thought to myself as I lifted my fork to my mouth.

The moment every traveller lives for is the native dinner where, throwing caution to the wind and plunging into a local delicacy which ought by rights to be disgusting, one discovers that it is not only delicious but that it also contradicts a previously held prejudice about food, that it expands ones culinary horizons to include surprising new smells, tastes, and textures.

Lutefisk is not such a dish.

Lutefisk is instead pretty much what you’d expect of jellied cod; it is a foul and odiferous goo, whose gelatinous texture and rancid oily taste are locked in spirited competition to see which can be the more responsible for rendering the whole completely inedble.

How to describe that first bite? Its a bit like describing passing a kidneystone to the uninitiated. If you are talking to someone else who has lived through the experience, a nod will suffice to acknowledge your shared pain, but to explain it to the person who has not been there, mere words seem inadequate to the task. So it is with lutefisk. One could bandy about the time honored phrases like “nauseating sordid gunk”, “unimaginably horrific”, “lasting psychological damage”, but these seem hollow when applied to the task at hand. I will have to resort to a recipe for a kind of metaphorical lutefisk, to describe the experience. Take marshmallows made without sugar, blend them together with overcooked Japanese noodles, and then bathe the whole liberally in acetone. Let it marinate in cod liver oil for several days at room temprature. When it has achieved the appropriate consistency (though the word “appropriate” is somewhat problematic here), heat it to just above lukewarm, sprinkle in thousands of tiny, sharp, invisible fish bones, and serve.

The waitress, returning to clear our plates, surveyed the half-eaten goo I had left.

She nodded conspiritorially at me, said something to my host, and left.

“What’d she say?, I asked.

“Oh, she said ‘I never eat lutefisk either. It tastes like python.’”

Clay “I think my mistake was in using the dishtowel: you need to drink enough aquavit so you can’t tell the difference between caviar on a cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat with your eyes open” Shirky”