Thursday, September 22, 2005

A-ha

Yes...it's the A-ha pop group. It's the most well-known Norwegian band in the world. The last Saturday of August, I went to see their concert in Frognerparken, Oslo (The park's rated as no. 1 travelers recommend in Oslo according to Yahoo Travel). It was a free concert sponsored by Hydro to celebrate their 100 years in business.
I went there with Morten and Vitoria. I knew Vitoria from my Norwegian language class. She's from Brazil and speak only very little of Norwegian and no English. If you read my first story, I have mentioned her a bit there. We've been friends regardless of our languagebarrier. When we talked on the phone, most of the times, she gave the phone to her husband so he could help us to talk to each other. I speak Norwegian with him. I don't have so much problem with Norwegian language in daily conversation now (Yay!). Torbjorn, Vitoria's husband, had to work that evening, so he could not join us. So, I asked Vitoria to bring her dictionary so we could communicate easier.
There were other shows before A-ha. It started with a show for children at 12 noon. At 3.30 afternoon, a famous Norwegian singer--Sissel Kyrkjebø along with Oslo Bach Kor, Sølvguttene, Ensemble 96 and Annbjørg Lien would perform 'The Lord of the Rings Symphony'. Since we're not children anymore and we didn't have any children with us, we planned to get there at 3. We drove to Oslo and parked in a parking house, around 15 minutes walk to the park. We had a quick lunch in a Burger King first. Morten and I agreed that the food in BG here tasted different than the one in the US. When we got there, there were already a lot of people, children and adult, young and old. There were several big screens around. That was good as I didn't think I would be able to see anything otherwise.
After an hour, it started to rain a bit (despite the weather forecast said it'd be nice and sunny). I brought a rain jacket, but Morten didn't. I was glad that Vitoria brought an umbrella, even though I've warned her not to as it was forbidden. She was not alone as we saw many umbrellas started being opened up. And of course, many people were not prepared for the weather, they left their spots and we could get closer to the stage. As the symphony was getting to its climax, the rain was also getting heavier.
We sticked around through the end and realized there was more than an hour break until the next show. We decided to walk to the stores area and find a rain jacket or an umbrella. We saw some elves and hobbits among those who were leaving the park. It's Saturday and it's past 5 PM. It's Norway and it's difficult to find opened stores. Finally, we got to buy a small umbrella. We went to a chinese restaurant and had dinner. We had fun with our languages. Vitoria added some words to her Norwegian vocabulary, Morten and I got to learn some Portuguese words.
After dinner, we walked back to the park and found the show had already started. The rain had stopped, too. A warm-up band -- RAVI & DJ Løv (they're famous in the country) -- was playing before the grand show. Most of the songs they played were Norwegian rap. Seems like that's quite popular here now.
Finally, a little over 9 o'clock, A-ha came out. The crowd got crazy. It's nothing compared to American crowd, I thought. They were a bit more shy, nevertheless it's still fun to be there. We moved our body and tapped our feet on muddy ground during the show and had good time. A-ha rocked, even though there was a little problem when they were playing a song (the singer, Morten Harket, couldn't reach a high key!). Almost through the end, they eventually played Take on me, my favorite and the world's favorite. They had to come in and out of the stage for 3 times because the crowd kept demanding more and more. The show was finally ended at almost midnight. And we finally realized that we were very tired. We dragged our feet (that were covered with mud) leaving the park along with the crowd that poured on to the streets and jammed the traffic. It was a looong stand-up day and smiles did not leave our faces until we got home. The next day, we read on the news that there were around 35,000 people came for the Lord of the Rings Symphony, and over 100,000 for A-ha.

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

New Semester in Norwegian Class & Election

A new semester of my Norwegian language class started in the last week of August. I was put in a level 2 class for 2 weeks. The teacher came to me and suggested me to move to another class, level 3, after she saw that I knew the materials before she taught them. That was cool. It takes, normally, one semester to finish one level, but mostly, it depends on each individual student. One day in the first weeks I got to this country, I borrowed a book from a library with title 'Norwegian in 3 months'. I finished the book in a month and remember most of it until now.
The first day I was in the new class, I felt so lost. It's a much higher level class, and they've started 2 weeks before. I learned that the students in my class have been living in the country for years. Some are more than 5 years! I got a lot of 'wow' when people learned that I've been here for such a short time. I sometimes feel proud of myself, but at the same time, it does not matter as my language is still a bottleneck for me to get a job.:(
The class, for a couple of weeks, has been learning about election and the politics in this country as the election to choose which party or party coalition to be the government for the next 4 years was coming soon, on September 12. For only 3 days, I had to catch up and be ready to present in front of the class about the Right party (one of the biggest parties). I asked myself whether I should go back to my previous class as I was feeling the high pressure. Suddenly, I had to read a lot about politics, and opened a dictionary very often while I was reading. But my presentation went well, we had a good Q&A session, and I learned a lot about Norwegian politics.
As part of the education on Norwegian politics, we had a day when level 3 and 4 students answering questions from other students in their native tongue. On the same day, 7 representatives from local political parties were invited to present their parties programs to the students and answering questions. On the election day, September 12, we also had election in our school, mimicking the real election. The result of our school election was not far from the result of the real election. The labor party got most of the votes.
After the election was over, sometimes I feel like I do not learn enough from my Norwegian class. Hehe... I try to learn the language at home by myself, in addition. I really want to get a job as soon as I can. It's been 4 months I am unemployed. I also realized that learning a new language is not easy, especially Norwegian is a difficult language (more grammar than English). I have much faster progress comparing to most of the other immigrant here, but still 4-months is not enough for me to be fluent in both speaking and writing. I am expecting myself to be unemployed for the next several months. It's not easy, but I have to have positive spirit and enjoy my life.

My First Camping Trip


Morten loves camping, being alone in the wood. He said it was so peaceful. Me, on the other hand, I had never camped before. The idea of not having proper toilet did not really lure me into camping before. He tried to convince me that camping was really fun, a good activity to relax. An ex-colleague of mine from Maine has told me about it, too. I guessed I had to try it, then. Unfortunately, we did not get a chance to do it when we were in the US. Well, we did sleep in a tent for a couple of nights in our garden when we were painting our house as we did not want to sleep with the paint smell.:)
So, one weekend here in Norway, we planned for a one-night camping trip. Just to give me an introduction of how it was to sleep out in a wood. We had some warming up first, sleeping in one of our friends garden for a night, then we headed up to Lillehammer area. Lillehammer was the city in where Winter Olympic was held in 1994. If you want to know more about the city, the internet link is http://www.lillehammerturist.no/english/. We have a friend who lives there who we were going to visit.
After we checked on a map and had an idea where we were going to camp, we drove to find the place. Unlike in the US, there are more places we can camp here freely. We can pretty much camp in anywhere we want, even though the place is privately owned, as long as it is not in somebody's yard or in a middle of a farm. It is rarely you'll find No Trespassing sign in this country. We aimed for a place that had no houses around and had water, lake or small creek. It would not be difficult to find such a place as Norway has a lot of lakes.
So, there we were, driving and trying to find the place. But ops, unfortunately, the road was closed. It was not surprising if the land was privately owned. Some people close the road to their lands if they don't want other people to trespass, for example. Unfortunately, it is not always shown on maps if a road is closed. We just had to drive there and check it out. And oh it started raining. It already passed 7 in the evening, but there was still light. We checked out around 5 places, until we found a perfect spot. There was a lake and no other people around. And oh...there were so many blueberries! And the rain had stopped, too! We had some companies, though, a small flock of sheep were curious watching us putting up our tent and unloading the car. They left us after a little while.
As we have not yet all unpacked from our moving from the US, we did not bring our camping cooking equipment. We just brought some bread and things to put on bread, and some drink. Morten preferred hot meal for dinner so he drove to nearby town to find some gatekjoekken. (Literally translated as street kitchen. Anyway, it's a small local restaurant, that typically sell fried chickens, hamburgers, and kebab.) I was left alone to contemplate that it was really nice to be out alone in the wood. He came back with a fried chicken and a hamburger that we ate while sitting on a rock next to the lake. We read a little bit inside our tent before we fell to a very nice sleep.
In the morning we had breakfast and clean our faces. I was thinking to swim in the lake but it was too cold for me. Then we drove to find our friend and we went to a forest up on a mountain to pick cloudberries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudberry). We did not succeed in picking cloudberries as much as we did with blueberries. It is not easy to find cloudberries. They grow in bogs, marshes and wet meadows and requires sunny exposures in acidic ground, and do not clump together in one place. It is a delicate berry in this country. If somebody found some cloudberries on a mountain, normally it would be reported that they saw a bear there (so other people would not go there). Anyway, the three of us together could only find less than 20 berries and most of them were stored directly safely in my stomach. Nevertheless, it was a really nice weekend with some new experiences for me.

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Picking Blueberries


A couple of weekends ago, again, we planned to go picking blueberries. This time, we did not want to take any chance for not knowing where to find some, so we went a bit further from where we live. Morten learned from his father that there were some places that have lots of blueberries in Kongsberg. His father lives there, it's about 45 minutes drive from our place.
We left home before noon. This time, Morten let me driving, driving a manual gear car! Uh..it's a bit scary. I drove automatic cars when I was in the US. I've been practicing driving a manual gear car several times here...in a parking lot of a shopping center after their closing time. But it's still scary. I am not used to the idea of shifting between gears. I still killed the engine the last time I drove, that was the last weekend. Anyway, driving to Kongsberg was not very difficult for me because driving on highways is easy, no need to stop, less chance of killing the engine. We drove into a small road and park there.
We found a place where there was lots of blueberries. Morten taught me how to use the picker. As I felt it was easier just pick directly with my fingers and we could not find our other picker, so I did it with a cup on my other hand and let Morten used to picker. Just looking at the sight of that mass of blueberries was already so exciting to me. I have never seen such sight before. They were much smaller and the color was stronger than those in the US. We gotta be careful or else it would be very difficult to get the stain off. I have been warned before, so I put on my least favorite clothes on. My socks were full of stain that I don't know how to wash it off.
After a little while, we moved deeper into the forest (it was not really a forest, though), and we found much much more blueberries. It was so exciting. I kept saying, "I am having fun...I'm having fun..."
Then, I tried to use the picker, oh, I got the hang of it...it was much easier and faster. Of course, that's why they designed the picker. Silly me...
I was too excited and too busy picking blueberries, and did not realize that we were not alone. There were only 4 or more people there, though. Some of them were picking mushrooms. Hmmm I would like to try to pick mushrooms, but Morten does not know which are edible and which are poisonous. So, we would need to go with somebody who understands this thing next time, maybe, I hope...
We've been picking for around 3 hours and our bucket was almost full. It's a 10 liters bucket! We got so much blueberries. We called it a day as we were already tired and hungry. But I was having so much fun!
Now, the boring thing came, cleaning them. It took me 3 days to clean them! Well, not all day, cause it would be too boring. We did not have a tool for cleaning them, so I needed to do it manually, one by one, 10 liters blueberries! Can you imagine it? I spent around 3-4 hours each day doing it. I made 1 liter of some kind of jam out of it. And the rest, Morten's sister's lent us some space in her freezer to keep them. Some kind of jam and borrowing some space in somebody's freezer, forgot to tell you that we haven't really settled in yet. We do not have a kitchen yet as we needed to remodel the kitchen after we bought this apartment. And we haven't bought most of the appliances we need yet. Gotta get the kitchen done first.
Anyway, we got another kind of berries, too. Another 10 liters. It's red currant berries. We picked them at Morten's sister's backyard. She does not like to pick berries, so rather than they got wasted, she offered us. It's much easier picking red currant berries, no tool needed, just use our fingers. And of course, much easier to clean also. We did not even need to clean them before freezing them. We could just use a fork to clean when they are frozen, we were told.
Hmm...which more berries can I pick next?

Friday, August 05, 2005

My First Summer in Norway


It's been a while I didn't write in this blog, and a couple of friends have asked about it. Thank you all for reading my stories and please do not hesitate to comment. It was not because I did not have interesting experience anymore, but it was due to my ability to access the internet. We have moved to our own place and we do not have a telephone connection yet, you see. There is a nice library in the town center of Asker (the place where we live now) that has many computers with internet connection. I have been coming here to check my emails and surfing the internet a bit for the past several days. The town center is only 15 minutes walk from our apartment. Quite a good exercise for me.;)
Summer is almost over now, it's getting a bit colder in the air. This summer I was told was kind of unusual, more rain than usual. In fact, I came here wearing a rain jacket, a pair of Wellington boot (these are my second pair, my first was when I was 5 years old!), and an umbrella. It's been raining since yesterday (I started writing this since last Monday, but did not get to finish it). The weather easily changes, unpredictable. The weather forecast here, as I observed so far, was almost fifty percent wrong. It was forecasted to be nice and sunny last weekend, as a matter of fact, it's been raining almost non-stop until Monday.
Day light is longer in summer. In where we live, the sun starts rising around 3 in the morning, and goes down around 11 in the evening. We had some nice weather, though not much. Several weeks ago, it reached almost 30C, quite warm for Norwegians. They are not prepared for such a weather as most of the houses are not equipped with air conditioner. We went to visit a very nice family in Eidsvol, around 1 hour drive from Oslo. Einar Andreas is one of Morten's best friend since high school. We spent a night at his house. He and Astrid, his wife, have 3 kids: Anna Klara, 7 years old, Ole Anders, 4 years old, and Ãse Ragnhil (I hope I get the name right), 1 year. They have Norwegian names which are difficult for me to remember. I struggled a lot with the youngest's name. They are all very nice and happy kids. Of course, they all spoke to me in Norwegian. I understood more than half of what Anna Klara said, but not Ole Anders as he still struggled with some pronunciationn, and definitely not Åse Ragnhil as most of the words that came out from her mouth was 'pa..pa..pa...'. Some kind of code words, I guess.;)
Anna Klara liked to talk to me. She showed me that she could count in English, from one to ten. I managed to teach her to count to eleven. Twelve is too difficult for her. She told me that after dinner she was going to get some 'love on a stick'. I thought I misunderstood her. Later I learned that that was what Norwegian called lollipop. Every Saturday after dinner, the kids get to watch a kid's movie and eating some sweet.
In the morning, Morten and I borrowed their tandem bicycle and went to bicycle a bit. I have never used tandem before. It was a nice ride. Many kinds of wild flowers were blooming, so beautiful. I learned some of their Norwegian names. We stopped on a side street to see some wild strawberry bushes. I have never seen wild strawberry bushes before. And the strawberries were only as big as a newborn baby's finger! Apparently, there are many berry bushes in this country. Well, I was told that strawberry is not a berry. Hmmm...I saw many raspberry bushes along the street near by our apartment. I liked to pick and eat them. We tried to go pick blueberries last weekend but we did not get any as we are not familiar with this area yet.
Anyway, at Einar Andreas and Astrid's we were served moose meat for dinner. Another new experience for me. They got the meat from Astrid's brother in law who part of his job is to take care of the moose that were killed on the road. Einar Andreas cooked it in their back yard, with camping cooking way. He and his father are very active in boy scout. I was afraid that I would not like the meat. I tried reindeer meat, I did not like it because of the smell, wild animal smell. I was surprised to find myself enjoying the meal. It was very delicious.
The people here have 5 weeks paid vacation in a year! Most of them take a long vacation during the summer, average 3 weeks. Almost no people working during summer. Some stores are closed for 1-2 weeks, or they have shorter opening hours. Well, stores here have much shorter opening hours than in the US. Most of them close at 5 PM. They open a bit longer on Thursdays, until 7 PM. Saturdays only a half day, and no stores open on Sundays. They really enjoy their lives here. I hope I can enjoy my life here, too. After all, that's why I moved here.

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Ha det, pusi...

Sandra Fredbjørg Wærnes. That was her name. She was at least 13 years old. A pretty old age for a cat. One year old of a cat is equal to 7 years old of a human, I was told. She had been with Britt-Hege Wæarnes, our friend whose house we're staying in, for around 10 years. She was older than Britt-Hege's daughther, Karoline, who's almost 10 years old.
It happened when we were cat-sitting her for 2 weeks when everyone's in the house was a way for the wedding/honeymoon. Last Saturday evening, a neighbor next door came to knock on the back yard door. She said something about 'katten', the cat, that's all I got. So, I asked Morten to come to talk to her. Sandra had been hit by a car!
Morten and I went to look for her. She was hiding under a neighbor's terrace. It was a cat's instinct to hide when they were hurt. We tried to call for her and persuade her to come out, but she didn't want to. We filled up her plate with some food hoping that she would come to eat. After a couple of hours, she came out and went to her favorite spot under a tree in the garden. Morten brought her into the house. We could see that she was hurt. There was some blood on her mouth and one of her front feet. But we're not sure exactly when she was hurt and we didn't dare to touch her. We called Britt-Hege and she told us what to do. We tried to make her comfortable in the kitchen (that I just cleaned an hour ago), put her blanket and her toilet there, and made some fishy food that hopefully she'd like.
Morten called a vet, and she advised on what to do. It costed kr 2,000 (You can check the currency exchange rate on http://finance.yahoo.com/currency?u) just to walk in to the door as they're close. We consulted with Britt-Hege. We agreed to keep Sandra home at the moment, and take her to a vet on Monday when she came home.
Britt-Hege, Henrik, Karoline, and Sebastian came home very early on Monday morning, while we were still in the bed. Morten heard them. We didn't see them when we went out around 8.30. They must have been very tired and still sleeping.
When I was in my language class, I got a SMS from Morten telling that they had to put the cat to sleep as her jaw was in a very bad condition. The funeral was going to be in the afternoon in the garden today.
I came home around 2PM and didn't find anybody at home yet. After a while they came home with the cat in her box. Karoline wanted to bring her home and buried her in the garden. Henrik digged a hole at the cat's favorite spot in the garden. Karoline painted a box that was used for the cat's coffin. She drew some clouds and a cat standing on one of them. And a sentence that was translated as "We will miss you." She made a cross from some wood. She did the sawing all by herself.
Karoline went to change to a black sweater and a black skirt. We all felt like we gotta change to black outfits, too. So, we all did. Karoline's grandmother also came for the funeral and later would take her to stay with her for a week.
The funeral went well. I felt a bit sad even though I am not fond of cats, well...pets in general. I don't mind pet-sitting, but I don't feel like having one myself. I'd been taking care of Sandra for 2 weeks, made sure that she had food and water everyday. So, there was a little connection between us. Karoline was a tough little girl. She cried but did not make any sound when the hole was closed. Every body was sad. Perhaps, the 4 years old Sebastian, too. Ha det, pusi...Good bye, pussy...

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Norwegian/Swedish Wedding


Last weekend, Morten and I went to Trondheim for a wedding. It was the wedding of the nice couple who we're currently staying with. The bride is Norwegian, and the groom is Swedish. Trondheim is the third biggest city in Norway (after Oslo and Bergen), located on north of Oslo. It takes around 8 hours from Oslo to Trondheim by car or train. Trondheim is also Morten's hometown and where his mother lives. We got married almost 2 years ago in Trondheim.
The wedding of our friends was actually in a city called Hell. Yes, Hell. The city became famous because of the name. Hell is only less than 30 minutes from Trondheim. So, we decided to stay in Trondheim so we could spend a little bit time with Morten's mom.
We took sovevogn, a night train with a room for sleeping on Friday night. It was a nice experience for me as I have never taken that kind of train before.
The wedding was actually for 3 days, 3 days party. The Friday evening party was a Swedish summer party. Lots of food, singing, and dancing, and of course fun, a party to celebrate summer, I was told. Too bad I had to miss it as I did not want to miss my Norwegian language class. Then the actual wedding at a church on Saturday afternoon which then followed by a reception, a formal party. And Sunday morning at 11, a casual-get-together to have brunch with leftover food from the previous evening party.
Some guests wore bunad, the Norwegian traditional outfits, including Morten. I learned that Norwegian wear their traditional outfits quite often for celebration events, which made me want to get an Indonesian traditional outfit for myself when I visit Indonesia next time. I have never thought of doing it before.
The wedding service at the church was of course in Norwegian, which I did not understand most of it. But I enjoyed looking at the bride and the groom happy faces. They looked so beautiful and handsome. Their 2 children also looked cute.
After the service was over, Morten talked to a lady that was sitting in front of us. She appeared to be Morten's former colleague. I was introduced to her and her boyfriend whose name sounded like 'Tumeric' to my ears. I was very certain that I had misheard it. Hmmm....confused. Later in the party, I got to talk to him more, and I found out that his name was actually 'Tom Erik', which pronounced exactly like tumeric. So, I had to tell him about it and explained to him how the spice looked like. Hehe...
He's a nice guy, by the way, a sport teacher at a school.
At the party, there were some speeches -- from the groom to the bride, from the father of the groom, from the brother of the bride (the bride has no father since she was little), the best man, and the maid of honor. I believed they were all great and touchy speeches. I saw many people wiping their tear. I didn't do that since I did not understand. I tried to laugh when people were laughing, though, hehe...
We also watched a short movie, from the bachelor party of the groom. It's a PG13, eventhough no striptease party. Hehe...
There was another fun Swedish wedding party tradition. When the bride leaves the room, all ladies are allowed to kiss the groom. Likewise, when the groom does so, all men are allowed to kiss the bride. So, when the bride left the room for the first time, some Swedish guests ran around the room, and encouraged the ladies to approach the groom. I saw that the Norwegian guests were confused. So, I explained the tradition to the Norwegian ladies who were sitting besides me. I learned about the tradition in my wedding from the groom who was our guest at that time. After we kissed the groom, we were talking among us that we were supposed to put lots of lipstick before kissing the groom. Hehe...
I met many nice people there. I tried to speak Norwegian with them. It was fun as I understood most of what my new acquitance said. One of the guests, she's a sister-in-law of the bride was Chinese. So, it was nice to speak some Mandarin, too. By 1AM, I told people..."That's enough, from now on, I'm going to speak English." I was overloaded. I didn't realize that it took so much of my energy to converse in Norwegian. I didn't want to talk in Norwegian the day after, either. It wasn't all true, though. I did speak some Norwegian again. And what funny was I did that to the Chinese girl. Hehe... Morten was teasing me about it.
I was very happy to be invited to the wedding. You're a very special person to either the bride or the groom if you're invited to a wedding. Unlike the weddings in Indonesia or some weddings that I have been to in the States, the weddings here are very personal to the bride and the groom. I am very happy that I already have good friends here in Norway.

Monday, June 27, 2005

My Norwegian Class

I started my Norwegian class last Wednesday. The school was called Folketuniversitetet--The People University, somewhat like a community college in the US. There were around 20 students. The first lesson was about introduction, greeting each other. So, I learned that the students came from many different countries--England, Poland, Malaysia, Afghanistan, USA, etc. Then we learned about clock, what time is it, etc. It seemed too easy for me as I have studied the language myself since I was in the US. I talked to the teacher when we had a break. He suggested to go to the administration with him, talk to the headmaster. The following day I was moved to a higher level class, the class that I am still in until now, and the next 4 weeks.
On the first day in the new class, I saw that every student, but me, had a paper for the teacher to sign. I asked the student that was sitting next to me. She explained to me in a very limited English that she was a refugee. Then I learned that everybody there was a refugee, except me. They were from Burma, Pakistan, Somalia, Rwanda, and Kongo. I talked to some Burmese when waiting for a buss to go home. He was a political activist in Burma, lived in Thailand for 5 years before moving to Norway. His wife was also in the class. They had 2 kids that were in kindergarden. Their names were 'King Salomon' (what a name!) and Christopher.
He told me that the Norwegian government would stop the support after 2 years, so he had to strive hard.
Since I did not feel comfortable to talk to my new classmates yet (I was afraid that I would ask 'difficult' questions to them. It's very likely that most of them were still having trauma about their lives back home.), I went to talk with my classmates from the previous class.
Actually, after my first day class was over, I went to have coffee with 2 of my classmates. Krishna who was from Malaysia and Victoria from Brazil. Krishna has been travelling so much because one she liked to travel, and two her husband's job required them to do so. They were living in China for several months before they came to Norway. She went to a Chinese language class there. I was wondering how many numbers of languages she spoke. Victoria did not speak English much. But she understood Spanish which was similar to her native language Portugese. And Krishna spoke some Spanish. I only knew a few Spanish words, amor, grande, casa. So, the conversation we were having was very interesting.
There were 3 new students in the class today. One of them was also called Victoria and she was from Hungary. Her husband has been working here for 2 and a half years. Finally, I had a classmate who was not a refugee and I could converse in English with. All in all the class was fun and interesting so far. My teacher was not perfect but he could make the class fun and interactive. Sometimes it was too interactive and I was a bit annoyed. One day, one of the students complained that since the class ended on 12.30 noon, she had to wait for 45 minutes for the bus to get home. And she suggested to cut the class short. Good thing that it did not happen. I want to be able to speak the language as soon as possible. I feel like the class is going too slow. So, I went to a library and borrowed a 'Norwegian in 3 months' book with tapes. I came home after my Norwegian class everyday and continued with my language study by using the book.
But I think, I have to be patient. Again, P A T I E N T. That's the word I have to always remember.