Norway Week 1

Interesting things about Norway and Norwegians:
-They are tall people.  I am average height. The people who we are renting our house from bought us little house shoes and they guessed my size right, I wear about a 10 womens (not the average
size in US)
-They all speak English very well.  Even the older people know English. The country has English everywhere except at the grocery store.  The signs, prices, names, etc are all in Norwegian, but everyone is really nice if you ask them questions.
-It is most common for businesses to have cafeterias and the employees eat there lunch there.  There is no such thing as a "lunch hour" but rather you run to the cafeteria, eat and head back to work.  But the work day is 8-4 pm.
-Currently the sun goes down around 4:00-4:30ish so it is completely dark by 5:00 pm
-They don't eat anything!  It is no wonder they are all so skinny. They eat bread with cheese or bread with jam for breakfast. Lunch is open faced sandwiches (1 or 2) and the bread slices are smaller than normal
American slices.  They have creative small sandwiches like one or two slices of lunch meat(the circle size that you don't fold over) and a slice of cheese or scrambled egg and cucumbers or fish with tomato sauce.
-Norwegians eat really fast.  The Briggs will know how fast Rachel eats but they all beat her in finishing their food.
-Norwegian has some similarities to Spanish.  I am surprised when I recognize words and I am even more surprised how much I can just understand.  We have done some work meetings all in Norwegian and I
pick up a fair amount
-Norwegian is a difficult language to speak.  They have a lot of similar sounds that are different and difficult to hear the difference.  To Americans they often all sound the same
-Norwegians are just used to the dark.  In the states if it is dark we are more inclined to stay inside and not go out.  Here the dark is just normal and life goes on.



Week 1 in Kristiansand, Norway
-Rachel ate Reindeer (very tasty meat) and current berries (super sour)
-Church was great!  We love having a church that is international.  The members warmly greeted us, and although a few of the meetings were in Norwegian, we had our English lesson manuals and they had people translate for us.The church has a lot of ethnic diversity here so they have headsets for the worship service and someone translates the service into English. It was super cool.
-A family in the ward invited us over for Sunday dinner.  It was super fun to be in a home with a family.  The little girl hadn't learned English and she would come over and ramble at us.  I just wished I could understand her.  We have fun conversing even though neither of us understood the other.
-We went cross country skiing. It was fun but a total workout.  I couldn't believe how fast all the other people on the track were.  It was cold so you wore layers but you were working so hard that you were sweating everywhere.  Our clothes were all drenched.  We saw a beautiful sunset that lasted for an hour or so.
-We had the Svenson's over for dinner today. They are the sweet couple who we are renting from. They truly are like our Norwegian grandparents. They explained the we live on the Pramsnes farm.  It is very well established and has been here for a really long time.  The name is old Norwegian and means a nest made naturally but he also said something about a boat.  He talked about how the farm is located on the calm and shallow portion of the river, so back in the day the people on Rramsnes farm would have a boat because anyone who lived on the other side of the river who wanted to cross would come to Pramsnes and holler or do what they could to get the attention so they would come over and pick them up in the boat.  For anyone who hasn't done this yet, go to google maps and type in Pramsnes Norway and it will show you our house!
-They said there is a red house down the road that is over 400 years old, and they keep it in really good shape.  That is older than our country.
-Rachel has 3 laptop computers in her possession and she doesn't know what to do with all of them.  Her personal computer, her work computer for the states, and her work computer for Norway.
-Rachel's work assignment is to help with business process management. We are creating/implementing a program/process to track customer requests.  My assignment is to create a process that when a customer
calls in the person answering the phone can ask a series of questions to deduce where that call should be directed.  Depending on which facility and which location they will obtain specific information. I  have to figure out the most efficient way to accomplish that.  Plus they found out that I created online trainings for my first rotation so now they have added that to my responsibilities.  We have quick tight deadlines but I am enjoying it.
-When we were traveling we went out to dinner and my appetizer cost almost the same as Jake's whole grocery bill.
-I had chicken soup at work.  What it meant was I picked up a bowl with 4 croutons in it and 4 pieces of chicken about the size of the croutons.  Then I dished up the broth with a few peas and carrots in it.
-Day two at work was a 2 day trip to Molde, halfway up the country.  It was beautiful with little pointy mountains everywhere.  If you climb up the peak nearest the city you can see 220 peaks if you turn full circle.  It is a beautiful fjord, which means that the sea water comes way inland.  I saw the cruise ship that goes up the whole coast of Norway and takes 2 weeks to go one direction.  It also bring supplies to all of the little port towns.
-The food is fairly familiar.  Nothing too crazy and you can usually find normal things you are used to.
-It has snowed pretty much every day since we arrived.  I guess it doesn't always do that.  Everyone tells us how it isn't normally like this.
-We went snow shoeing in the mountain behind our house. We went with our headlamps and it was super fun.  The forest is pretty thick but we found some water to follow and a road.

So there is our update of Norway after week one.  We really enjoy it here, we like the culture and the people.  They are all very helpful and friendly.  We joke about how we might come back to Norway when we are older after raising our kids.

We love you all and hope you are doing well.  We pray for you.

LUV ya,
Jake and Rachel