Født med ski på beina

KE bought skis for E yesterday while I was out gallivanting in town. Let me just say that he is so stinkin' cute on skis! Illustrations follow:

Practicing his winners' circle pose while waiting for dad to come out and help him put the skis on. Which dad promptly did:


Ready to go, and with plenty of coaching from eager parents, E hits his stride:

What form! What style! What speed! It makes me inordinately happy to see E taking to skiing. I'm not much of a skier myself, but I really want him to enjoy it and the contact with nature that Norwegians are so passionate about.

Og julebordet varer helt til påsken!

Last night I attended my new department's traditional "forsinket julebord." "Julebord" is a hard concept to describe to non-Norwegian speakers ("forsinket" just means late). If I say Christmas office party it gives the wrong impression. It's much more formalized than what I have experienced at American Christmas parties.

At any rate, my department schedules its party more than a month after Christmas, so as to get a really nice venue, namely Nordre Skøyen Hovedgård. The menu didn't include Christmas food, and we avoided all vestiges of Christmas decoration, both of which I deeply appreciated.

I really don't know many people yet, but ended up really enjoying the evening. We started with champagne as a "velkomstdrink," then were regaled by the department's choir (!). I didn't know we had one. Then it was on to the meal, where we had assigned seating (is that what it's called--sounds wrong to me right now). I was really happy with where I ended up, most especially perhaps because I had a particular recently retired literature professor as my "bordkavalier"--he is someone whose work I hope to build on, as he deals with a lot of the same broad questions regarding national idenity formation that interest me. It was so lovely to explain my cabin project to him and have him totally get it in a way that no one else has. And it doesn't hurt that he's one of these totally gallant older Scandinavian men--there's a certain way of being they have that is utterly charming. It's hard to describe--they take the art of conversation very seriously but still delight in a good bawdy laugh.

There were, of course, numerous speeches, particularly since the current head of the department is stepping down. We were at the table for three hours--which is fine with me except that my ankles always swell when I sit that long, and I am vain and always want to have thin ankles when I actually take the trouble to dress up with stockings and heels! Some of the speeches were hilarious, others just downright strange. Regardless of the particular message the speakers were trying to convey, they certainly confirmed that the art of speechmaking is alive and well (and taken very serious) here in Norway.

After dinner we were corralled into predetermined groups for a language quiz over coffee (what else would you expect from a department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies...). That was kind of a hostage crisis, since I had absolutely nothing to contribute, surrounded as I was by people who knew a million times more about the intricacies of Norwegian dialects than I do. Luckily my friend Lisbet (hej Lisbet!) was leaving early, and graciously drove me to the boat.

When I got home I told KE how much fun I had, then told him what I had talked about and done, and he just rolled his eyes. I don't think he'd ever heard of such a nerdy party in his whole life.

In knitting news I've started in on a cabled cardigan in light green Rauma Finull. I started knitting size large (D'oh! We've been through this before), but thankfully realized that it was not going to fit, so I frogged the whole thing and started over in a more accurate size. Any one want to suggest what to call this particular shade of green?



And on the home front, KE bought E his first ever pair of skis. They are just so stinkin' cute leaning up against the house. Can't wait to watch him use them later today!

Gensere!

In the last two days I finished off two sweaters--yippeee! First up was the ribbed cowl neck sweater that I knit for the January installation of the NaKniSweMoDo09:

I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out, all things considered. Unfortunately, I had to re-learn the lesson that I hate knitting with superwash yarn. It is treated in some weird way that makes it possible to wash in the machine, but it loses most of the qualities I love about untreated wool. But the color is great, and the fit seems pretty good. It's DK weight, which feels really heavy to me. I can't understand how people regularly make sweaters in worsted and bulky weights. They must be lizards! At any rate, I now have a really warm sweater that is tailored enough that I can wear it to work on the coldest days. (Check out the ill-fitting stove behind me. I'm making rice porridge for Sunday dinner, if you're wondering)

Next up was the stripy "kitchen sink" sweater I started for E back in August. All it lacked was sleeves, so it went super fast:

It's way too big for him of course, but I presume he'll grow into it at some point or another. All in all a great way to use up leftovers. It has a turtleneck, which I think looks pretty sharp. That, the yoke, and the plain black sleeves tie together the randomness of the stripes nicely, if I do say so myself.

10 ting jeg liker i Norge

I thought it might be fun to make a list of 10 things I like from my every day life here in Norway. Obviously I like the big things too, like the fantastic landscape, the art, the literature, the monuments, etc., but I thought it would be a good idea to scale it down to things I actually have going on around me on a daily or weekly basis. So here they are, in no particular order:

1. snøfrisk (a creamy white goat cheese that comes in a triangular box)

2. skiskyting on tv (biathalon, my favorite winter sport)


3. rundkjøring (roundabouts instead of stop signs and lights)


4. adventsstjerner (electric stars hanging in windows during advent, Christmas, and beyond. Nice in the dark)


5. Nytt på nytt (a weekly "news" summary show, Norway's answer to The Daily Show)


6. the amazingly good (and inexpensive) bread available in every store, including 7-11!

7. Rauma finull (my favorite yarn: fingering weight wool)

8. Nesoddbåtene (my ferry commute)

9. Kvikk lunsj (like a Kit Kat, but better)

10. bjørketrær (birch trees, of which we have many in our yard)

Have a nice weekend!

Hjemmelengsel

I think E is homesick for Eugene, or at least our old house there. No surprise really, since it's more than twice as big as the unit we're living in right now, but still a bit sad. He's also complaining about one of the boys in preschool being mean, which makes me really sad. But of course with boys that age there's no way to know if E is being mean right back (or even starting it) without observing them. The Norwegian attitude toward preschool appears to be to let the kids play on their own (as wildly as they want) as much as possible. I know intellectually that is a a good thing, but I hate the idea of someone picking on E, or even worse him picking on someone else with no intervention.

Last night I took a few more snapshots of our living arrangements here. It was so outrageously messy that I couldn't resist documenting it. Part of the problem was that we bought a big lot of used furniture, much of which we didn't really need. So we're still trying to sort out what to do with everything. In the meantime, KE and I took the day off to shop for things like a vacuum cleaner, a refrigerator, rain gear for E, and other practical stuff. We work really well as a team for that kind of thing.

Here are some of the least ridiculously messy snapshots:

E's room--really it's not a closet, even though it looks like one. We're all still sleeping on foam mattresses. Fans of Scandinavian design will recognize the ubiquitous "Tripp trapp" chair produced by Stokke.

Our bedroom. This is where we're storing all th extra furniture...


The bathroom. E trusts Norwegian toilets so much more than US toilets. I think it's because there's less water in the bowl, so it's not as scary. I do really wish we had a shower enclosure or (better yet) a tub. Thankfully there is a great big tub in the other unit.

Living room. Not much to say here, other than that we also bought some more Brio train tracks yesterday, so E and I built this to celebrate:

Now I happen to think that's an incredibly cool train track! I discovered Brio when I babysat as a teenager, and swore that if I ever had a kid we would have tons of it. We're on our way!

Norsk på norsk

Friday I had my first day of teaching the seminar on early modern literature. There was a mountain of technical and logistical stuff to work out in addition to frantic cramming of the material itself. Then suddenly the class started and there I was, teaching Norwegian literature to Norwegian students in Norway, as if it was the most normal thing in the world to do. It was a little surreal, but I finished the first class meeting with the overall impression that I have exactly the same strengths and weaknesses as a teacher in Norwegian that I do in English. That's good news in one way (i.e. that I'm not exponentially worse), but a bit demoralizing in another way.

I'm really anxious for a term off from teaching, just so I can regroup and restrategize my teaching (apologies for the military references!). I was really pleased with my space/place seminar last term, and would like to rebuild my teaching along those lines. For this class, I have more or less just thrown myself into it without the reflection and preparation that I would have liked, so I'll just have to grit my teeth and get through it the best I can.

I have neglected to mention in other posts that I joined my first knitting "challenge" on Ravelry: the National Knit a Sweater a Month Dodecathon for 2009. It seems insane when one writes it out like that, but it's not as bad as it seems, since one can include UFOs (Ravelry lingo for "unfinished objects"). I have three unfinished sweaters that will count. The organizers of the challenge also include vests and even "shrugs" (lame!) in the competition, but not children's sweaters. That rule seems ridiculous to me, since a size 6 boy's sweater in fingering weight yarn entails far more knitting than a woman's shrug in bulky yarn, so I may allow myself to include the unfinished sweater for E that also languishes.

The bluish-greenish-gray raglan sweater I'm working on has been a little slow, but I basically knit all day yesterday (ouch, my hands and wrists ache a bit this morning), and am now well past the point where the arms are joined to the body. Since the sweater is knitted in a ribbed pattern it looks ridiculously tiny (the ribbing pulls it together), and I'm a bit worried that blocking it won't stretch it out enough to fit my rather generous figure. I can also tell that I didn't buy enough yarn, and will have to pick up at least one more ball--argh. Thankfully the yarn wasn't too expensive, so I won't feel bad if it's not something I wear all the time. It's just that I really need wearable sweaters right now, and am loathe to buy them, so I want to be done quickly and have it fit nicely...

Kranglefanter

Today KE and I had a bit of a dustup. It is certainly to be expected. We don't fight very often, but we both have a pretty "lav terskel" or "kort lunte" (whatever that is in English--"low tolerance" I guess), so it doesn't take much to escalate into a pretty bitter argument.

As is typical for us, it had to do with the way we communicate rather than an actual disagreement. We've been together almost six years now, but we don't ever seem to get past the same issues, which is a little disheartening. But it actually resulted in a really good discussion after we both had sulked for a while, so it was probably really necessary.

Otherwise, I spend most of the day reading and thinking about a little project I have promised to complete for a friend of mine. He is putting together an anthology of articles on Nordic crime fiction, and the publishers wanted something more on Norwegian material than he had originally proposed, so I offered to write something about Anne Holt. For a long time I've been regretting it, but just in the past few days my ideas have started to come together, and I may be able to pull something off by the end of this month after all. I still have one more of her novels to read, but the one I finished today gave me a lot to think about, and sort of focused my approach. I was originally going to write just about the fact that Anne Holt's books both feature a lesbian protagonist and are one of Norway's best selling series of all time. Something tells me that would never happen in the U.S. But the more of the books I read the more I am struck by Holt's decision to make the protagonist a huge fan of the U.S. That seems paradoxical to me in some way that I can't quite put my finger on. So in the article I'm going to try to combine these two themes with Holt's (or at least her protagonist's) similarly strong pro-immigration stance.

There's a long history of reading crime fiction as social criticism, so I guess this project will fall under that rubric.

In terms of knitting, I've slowed down a bit, what with having to work and all (perish the thought). I knit E a pair of wool socks over the weekend, and am close to finishing the first sleeve on the raglan sweater I'm working on. The body is done (in the round) up to the underarm. It's a little sad to end a blog post on the word "underarm," so I'll just add that we did major grocery shopping today, after squeaking by on a minimally stocked kitchen. Feels good to have good and healthy food on hand.