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.