We Are Doing OK.

I got some good comments on my last blog entry, which leads me to believe others than my faithful mom are actually reading this thing. Which is nice to know. Is there some notice you people get when there's a new post? That last one cracked me up on the rereading, and to update everyone: a) I got into the chorus, phew; and b) I have not bought one bar of Walter's since I wrote (I did cave on a small bar of the Freia product called "Melk Sjokolade med Non-Stop," which is, to add insult to injury, chocolate with fake M&ms (Non Stops) in it, and thankfully, it was not very good. So we may be be over the worst).

Today in the Schlottsparken: a guy battling a real addiction, all doubled over on heroin, with needles all around him and blood dripping down his arm. Ben called the authorities, who never showed up; mere months ago, he saw this kind of thing daily in the Tenderloin, and would never have called the authorities because he would have known they would never show up. Funny how your perspective adjusts. I saw a homeless guy yesterday. One homeless guy! He's about the fifth I've seen since I've been in Oslo.

So, speaking of adjusting, we are doing okay. My mom has asked me several times lately, "Are you doing okay?" Partially I think she asks because, like most moms, she is actually a worry wart dressed in a mom suit, and I love her for it, but also because she has been noticing me forcing smiles on my Skype screen when we talk and occasionally sounding down in my emails. So I decided to write about it a little. Another Fulbrighter, Jen, said something about how she spends a lot of time on Skype with her friends trying to sound like her life in Norway is really exciting. I knew instantly what she meant, that we want everyone at home to think we're having such an amazing adventure! Because we are! So many new experiences! But then, we're also not having such an amazing adventure, at least not all the time, and then I thought, well, actually it's complicated, and then I thought I'd just explain myself. So here goes.

It's an adjustment, moving to a new place, and if you're like me, and have done so every three years since you graduated from college, you know that after a while the old bones feel achy just thinking about a new apartment, new job, new city, new community, new set of friends, new coffee shop, new grocery store. It's always really fun to discover new things, but sometimes, you get homesick for the old things. That's all it is, really. But somehow moving to a new country—where you add to that list "new language" and "new culture" and "new set of incredibly annoying bureaucratic procedures"—makes that homesickness more compounded, at times. The upside being, the exciting is more exciting, too, and when Norway has been at its finest, it has been some of the nicest times I've had in ages and ages. So my prediction is that it will all level out, we'll come to love this place, to find it home-like, and to not be homesick at all. But right now, it feels a little like an adjustment, and I suspect it will for a bit.

Onto happier subjects, like Norway at its finest.

We spent 24 hours at Thor and Kristin's cabin in the woods last weekend, just Ben, me, Thor, and Rams, who at one point said, "Daddy, I'm having such a nice time." The cabin is a classic Norwegian hytte but just better. It's such a cosy little place, solar-powered lights, fireplace, no running water, little sauna, loft, and lots of places to hike. The air there is very, very fresh, the landscape wet and mossy and high. We wore rubber boots the entire time we were outside. They did not save me when I plunged through the moss and into the pond in front of the cabin. I'll spare you the details.

Sunday was one of the most lovely days we've had in Oslo, an early fall kind of day. Sunny. Ben played frisbee in the Vigelands Park, so I took the opportunity to go watch him play and take some photos. Enjoy.