Godt Nytt År

Hei hei,

Happy New Year! Can't believe it's nearly 2009. It's five p.m. here in Oslo, we're due at another Fulbrighter's for a little get together at eight, and I've been skyping like mad this afternoon. First I talked to my parents, in their bathrobes, then to my good friends The White Sisters (Brett and Brooke, chugging coffee), and in an hour we have a skype date with Sarah, Shawn, and Max from Seattle. Yesterday I talked to one of the California Amys for an hour. We just talked with Ben's dad, too. It's really nice to be in touch with you, friends, and I hope to be even more in your loop in coming months.

We had a really nice Christmas. It was somewhat lonely in the in-between times, but the festivities were great--Christmas Eve porridge (Ben got the almond), church, dinner, and presents at Petter Andreas and Eldri's was lovely. The Norwegians wear their traditional clothes; somehow, I failed to get a staged photo of them all. But here are some shots of the crew at dinner:



And Rannveig and Kristin:



And the girls with Julenisse:



Norwegian Christmas is somewhat more formal than the Christmas we have at home, but mostly only because you're dressed up while you're trading presents. Such nice gifts given and gotten--Norwegian slippers for me, DVDs for Ben, warm Norwegian mittens, a new backpack, and a Nigella Lawson salt pig I had been coveting. In the days since, Ben and I have been lying pretty low. I've been grading some essays and doing a little writing--today I finished a revision I've been working on for a couple of weeks, hurrah!--and we've been watching movies and sleeping embarrassingly late and shopping and generally being lazy. Nice.

Yesterday we took Agnes and Rannveig (


) to the swimming pool. To say they were cute would be an understatement. It started when they got to our apartment and Thor informed us that on the bus over Rannveig had started singing "The Wheels On the Bus" at the top of her lungs. She even does all the hand motions to go with. (There is a Norwegian version of the song.) I don't know, they were just so sweet at the pool. Rannveig wears swim trunks, which is funny, and she uses water wings and a floaty and just sort of drifts around the pool looking blissed out. Agnes is much more eager to swim. After trying out a bubble for about five minutes, she told her dad she thought she was ready to go without. Priceless.

In the car on the way home, we listened to "The Wheels on the Bus" again. Old Rams, beside me in her car seat, singing at the top of her lungs, rolling her hands, "Gjennom helle by-en." Agnes got fed up after a bit, and added some of her own lyrics, ala "the wheels on the bus go basj basj basj [poop poop poop]." I know it's bad to encourage this sort of behavior, but it really was funny.

Speaking of cute kids--we got letters from my nephews and niece in our Christmas package. They were so great. Both Nick and Timmy asked me if there were Christmas trees in Norway, and Nick (he's ten, nearly eleven) asked me a million questions like "is Norway a democracy?" "What is the currency in Norway?" Katelyn, age six, stuns me with her writing skills ("Ritting by: Katie Meserve.") I'm excited to sit down for a few hours and write them back. What a treat.

But first, New Year's Eve. Then Ben's dad arrives tomorrow. We're headed up north, to the very dark and very cold, taking Samm's ashes with us so she, and we, can see the northern lights.

Susie

God Jul, Alle Sammen!

Hi everyone,

I wanted to write a pre-Christmas post. I am very much thinking of my friends and family right now. I've actually been pretty homesick but all of a sudden it's better and I'm excited for my first Norwegian Christmas. The Norwegians celebrate on the 24th, so in a sense today is Christmas Eve. We're due at Thor and Kristin's for reindeer sausage-making (sorry, Rudolf) and the watching of some Norwegian Christmas special this afternoon. Yesterday, when Ben went by to borrow pie plates (we're making American-style pies for Therese's Christmas brunch), Ben told T. and K. that I simply wasn't feeling Christmassy enough, and he got sent home with a bunch of Christmas music. We're listening to Perry Cuomo right now...oh boy. Johnny Cash's Christmas is kind of cool, by the way.

So, I'm all obsessed with Christmas traditions. (By the way, sorry for being so Christian-centric, my Jewish and pagan friends. To say that Norway is Christian-centric would be an understatement. There is no equivalent of "Happy Holidays" here--you just say "God Jul." At last count there were about 1,000 Jews in the entire country, and even the non-believers go in for Christmas in a big way.) In Norway, there are several important traditions. First, before you go to church, you eat gröt ris porridge and there's one almond in the batch. Whoever gets the almond wins a big prize. Apparently you're supposed to be all subtle, and hide the almond in your gums or something, so no one knows until the end who's got it. What pressure! I hope I don't get the almond. Maybe Ben will and he'll share his prize with me. : )

In Norway it's also bad juju to decorate your Christmas tree before tonight. So, in all these houses there are empty trees, up but plain, until tonight. Then when the kids go to bed the elves bust in and decorate everything. So when the little kids wake up on the 24th, the house just looks magic.

At Petter and Eldri's there are other traditions to be wary of. There is the reading from the bible, and then the dancing around the Christmas tree singing carols. (Kristin says on her first Christmas there the dog, Treble, started humping her leg in the middle of the singing, and she nearly died.) And Jule Nissen (Santa, sort of) shows up too. The zaniest of all is the fact that each gift has to be accompanied by a poem. Ben and I wrote some of our poems while we were wrapping gifts. Thor said that was outlandish--usually they write theirs ten minutes before it's time to open gifts. Yes, in case you were wondering, we are spending the whole Christmas with the Steens. It's nice.

So, the mind wanders...to home. Here are some of the Meserve family traditions. Well, we decorate our tree several days, if not a week, before Christmas. My brother and my dad always go to get the tree, and the object is to get a fantastic but bargain tree. My dad dresses like a pauper and takes the old car. When they get home, my mom starts moaning about the "bloody redwood" in the living room, because my dad always gets a tree so big it barely fits in the room (one year we had to make stays out of rope and anchor the tree to the windowsills, AND move half the furniture out of the room). Then we decorate the tree while listening to "Amahl and the Night Visitors," an opera in English by Gian Carlo Menotti which I highly recommend. The woman who sings the mother's part has such a fantastic, heart-rending voice. And when Amahl, who's crippled, begins to walk again, the three wise kings with their fabulous baritones all sing, "He walks...he walks..." which rapidly became the song my dad sang to his teenagers when they got up on weekend mornings. Ah, traditions.

Many of the other Meserve family traditions center around eating, but not all. We devote several hours to watching "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" every year, and my dad laughs so hard you think he's going to bust a gut. It is a pretty funny movie; I highly recommend it for the low-brow portion of your holiday entertainment.

On Christmas morning, after stockings but before the rest of the gift-opening, we have a smorgasbord breakfast. It used to be we'd have Dad's Famous Scrambled Eggs (the only meal he cooks all year, and worth waiting for), English sausages, grapefruit, toast. A few years ago we decided why not add insult to injury and add bagels and cream cheese and smoked salmon and capers and tomatoes to the affair? One year we gave my mom an espresso maker, and then we had lattes, too. So we gorge ourselves for an hour (always a Meserve tradition), then go open the rest of our presents--in order from youngest to oldest, always.

Christmas dinner varies. My mom invariably outdoes herself. And in recent years we've added a port-and-stilton course after dessert. Heavenly.

On Boxing Day, which to you Americans means the day after Christmas, we go up to New Hampshire and spend the day with my brother and his kids...and eat again.

So, that's what I'll be missing at home. At Ben's mom's house, I'd be walking on the beach today and tomorrow, and tomorrow night we'd have Brode's famous seafood gumbo. Then on Christmas there would be a big organic roast beef and Yorkshire puddings. Carrie and Emma would probably make Christmas cookies, the kind you cut into people and stars and bells. The women would all get big boobs and sexy frosting bikinis. Ben's parents don't get a tree; Ann decorates a plant every year. She's so good at it--there might be a tall beautiful cactus or something, decorated with baubles and lights and goodies, and above it, a Mexican angel looking down. I don't know what Ben's dad is doing this year, but I hope he won't be too sad in whatever it is.

Ben and I have spent most of our Christmases with our families, so in a sense this might be the first year we make some traditions of our own. We do small things, like give each other stockings every year, but we don't yet have our own traditions. Personally I'm a fan of opulent breakfasts.

I'd like to wish everyone a wonderful Christmas, Solstice, and New Year filled with love and light and good will towards men and women and children. And animals, even reindeer.

Much love,

Susie

p.s. A photo of the "angel" I made for the dead twig sitting in our apartment in lieu of a Christmas tree. Enjoy!

Advent

Hi kids,

Well, we're down to pretty short days here and, for the first time, I think they're starting to get to me. I wouldn't mind if the five-ish hours of daylight were sunny, but they've been gray for weeks. The sky feels oppressive somehow.

The bright white snow helps. The snow in Oslo melted last night, but we spent the weekend at Thorbjørn's hytte, where there were four-five feet of gorgeous powder. We went for a twenty-kilometer ski on Saturday, totally awesome. I am neither a fast nor an elegant cross-country skier, and at times I'm downright bad, but I have to report the small triumph of being better at going downhill without freaking out. I used, when I'd get any momentum at all, to make myself fall over and crash...before I got out of control and crashed. Stupid, I know. The last two times I've gone, though, I've managed to tuck my knees and get low and use the force and have not fallen on a big hill once! Small victories.

Skiing with Norwegians is intimidating but fun. They're so bad-ass. Thor can pull Rannveig in a sled behind him as Agnes holds onto his pole on a steep hill and everyone makes it down without falling over. Poor Agnes--when we were leaving the hytte (we skied in and out) there was a big hill to get down and she stopped at the top and said, "uh oh..." but I, thinking to myself, "what's the big deal? She's Norwegian--" said to her, "come on, Agnes! You can do it yourself!" and encouraged her to just go. Well of course she made it to the bottom, where she totally face planted, whereupon Ben pulled her out and said encouraging things to her. She wouldn't speak to me for a while, though...and then I wondered if maybe the hill was a little big for a four-year-old after all.

My brother,



just left this morning. We had a really fun visit. Last week we went to Copenhagen for two days. I loved Copenhagen. Sigh. I really found it to be an excellent city. It's more beautiful and more cosmopolitan than Oslo, and cheaper, too. We had real Asian food there, Thai and Vietnamese, and did a lot of shopping. That may sound funny, but there's some great shopping in Copenhagen. So after we did some museuming and checked out Christiania, the "free state," we shopped 'til we dropped. My brother has much better stamina for shopping than my husband, no offense Ben.

It was nice to get away for a few days. Unfortunately I didn't take a single photo; J. did, but he didn't store them on my computer so I have none to show you.

Not much else to report, I'm afraid. It's the end of the semester here, which means lots of grading to do. The Professor gave me fifty exams to grade, more if I want them--I get paid per exam. I also have final short stories to read. My persistence with the resume send-out has been rewarded, too--two interviews for teaching jobs coming up. Maybe we'll stay afloat after all.

Oh--it's Advent, the period leading up to Christmas. Norwegians are gaga for Christmas and, by extension, Advent. They light candles and sing every Sunday before Christmas, and they all have Advent calendars filled with goodies. There's also a great deal of tradition leading up to the Christmas meal; it's bad luck to eat before Christmas what you plan to eat ON Christmas, but otherwise it's a free-for-all. We have now consumed:

Pinnekjøtt
Lutefisk
Rakfisk

I'm sure I'm missing something.



Adjø,

Susie

Falling off

My friend Simone, who is living in San Miguel, Mexico, just sent me a slideshow of photos from her trip to Zacateca. Can I just admit that sometimes I wonder what the hell I'm doing in NORWAY when I could be in MEXICO?? Colorful buildings, hot and dry weather, cheap and delicious food, lovely faces...I felt a physical pang of jealousy when I saw those photos. Oslo is dark until 9:00 in the morning and then we get a few hours of gray before the sun sets again at 3:00. Today it's snowing, sort of, but melting as soon as it hits the ground (isn't that the worst?). I haven't left my apartment yet but soon, soon, I will--have to bust out another chapter revision, then start work on a freelance proofreading job I picked up. Maybe I will be able to lose myself in my book, which is, after all, about Latin America. A girl can dream...

Still no news on the job front. I have blanketed the city in my resume and CV. The greatest phenomenon of the Norwegian job hunt has been the almost absolute refusal of anyone to actually return an email from me. Even people I know through friends, colleagues, my Dad. Someone told me it just isn't very Norwegian to return an email. Uh, great.

Ben said on Monday that he has this very Zen sense that things are just going to fall into place for us so I should just feel positive. Hope he's right. I mean, things already have--don't get me wrong. We have this wonderful grant, an opportunity to live abroad, etc. I'm just being grumpy, and a little worried about my end of the money stick for the spring. My life has been like this for years--always scrambling to find work, semester after semester, all so I can lead the writer's life and not work too hard. I shouldn't complain. But it gets old.

My brother is here. Actually he went to Bergen for a few days, but he's in Norway. We're trying to just circle him with love and kindness for a few weeks. He's still himself, just a sort of bruised and crushed version of himself. But he's going to be fine, he really is.

We had Thanksgiving...s. One last Wednesday, one on Thursday, one on Friday. The Thursday one entailed us cooking for Thor and Kristin and Petter, with little Agnes allowed to stay up with the grownups for the first time in her life. She sat very quietly at the table until she went and fell asleep on the couch listening to us talk. Her dad carried her to bed around 8:45. It was very sweet.

Here are a few pics.

Agnes and Rannveig helping us make pies:





Our beautiful table, thanks to Kristin and her excellent design sense:



And the first course, a roasted beet, arugula, and smoked mackerel salad that was, if I do say so myself, delicious:



On Friday Jodge and I explored Oslo a little, which was fun. Jodge is pretty excited about the pølse med lompe, the hot dog in tortilla, essentially, so we stopped for one of those on our way to the Resistance museum and the Akershus Schlott og Festning, which remains one of my favorite places in Oslo. The Resistance museum is really cool, if a bit more chaotic than I remembered. It details how the Norwegians stood up to Hitler and would feel like a very grave and serious place if you didn't find yourself cracking up about the seventies-style dioramas that display dramatic events in the lives of resisting Norwegians...rendered with the use of plastic army men, styrofoam, and cotton balls (for clouds, and, when colored with gray paint, explosions). We both totally cracked up when we got to the diorama where the army men were plagued not only by Nazis but by a giant life-sized spider:



Look out behind you!

We had a busy and social weekend, and a nice hike up in the Normarka on Sunday. It was nice to be the snow.



Love,

Susie