Akershus Castle and Fortress

This post is a little delayed because we accidentally left our camera in friends car so we could not get the pictures from our latest tourist excursion.

Last Sunday we went to Akershus Castle and Fortress. It is right on the water in the center of Oslo. It was nice but I must admit that as castles in Europe go it was not that impressive.

The clock tower of the courtyard

A banquet room had pretty painted (not wallpapered) walls.

We saw the changing of the guard. Not very exciting after seeing the one in London. The fortress had a lot of green space and is actually a public park. Katherine enjoyed playing on the lawn.

There was a long row of cannons overlooking the bay. Katherine enjoying playing in, on and around them.

Here she is loading the cannon up with a pear that fell from the tree. She kept calling it an apple.

There were nice views of the bay from the fortress. Katherine liked to look at the boats.

God's provision

This is a random photo that has nothing to do with the rest of the post. I just thought it was funny. Katherine wanted her bath hat on (keeps water from her eyes), grabbed her purse and diapers and went to the door saying, "Bye, Bye". This was with her pj top, no bottom and shoes already on. What a silly girl.

We have now been in Oslo for 3 weeks. It is hard to believe it has been that long already. I feel like we are all really well adjusted. Totally over jet lag, getting used to the different pace of life.

God has really blessed us in so many ways. I am especially thankful for the friends I have made so far. Today I realized that I have never really moved somewhere to start from scratch. When I went to college, there were a number of people I already knew from high school and church. When I moved back after college, there were a lot of people from A&M who went to my church so it was always easy.

This is really the first time I have moved somewhere and known NO ONE. I am amazed at how many people I have met in only three weeks. I am keeping busy and having fun getting together with people. In a lot of ways it is actually easier to meet people in a foreign country than if I were to move to another city in the US. Why? Because when in another country Americans gravitate to one another and will introduce themselves to a total stranger just because they are speaking English. That is how I met Jeannie yesterday. I hear her say one sentence in English to her kids. I stopped her and we had a 10 minute conversation. As it ends up, we were both planning to be at the same playgroup today. That is where I met Emily who is from Houston and Bente who is Norwegian but lived in College Station, Austin and Dallas so she has no accent and loves Texas.

Then we have been so blessed by our church here. We love that it is small so we were able to get to know people and be known quickly. They have done so much to welcome us to the church and to Oslo. It is very refreshing since we are used to a mega church where it would be a long time before we were noticed as a new face.

I am also thankful that God has blessed me with an extroverted personality so that I can easily start those conversations and make friends. Otherwise it would be a very lonely time. In some ways I am actually enjoying life here more than back home because I have no other responsibilities. Katherine and I are able to play during the day. I only have 700 square feet of apartment filled with 4 suitcases and 7 boxes so there is not much to clean. It is nice to have a more simple and less stressful life.

This post is sponsored by...

Emily, Kate and Penelope. Katherine has a very cute wardrobe here in Norway, assembled from all of her friends who let us have or borrow their outgrown winter clothes since buying winter clothes in July, in Texas is not easy. So, today she wore Kate's adorable brown velvet pants, Penelope's pink cashmere sweater and Emily's brown shoes. It was quite a nice ensemble.




Katherine helped me to do laundry today. It seems that even more than back home there is always laundry to be done. This is due to the fact that our washer is about 1/2 the size as back home and it takes twice as long. Katherine thinks it is fun to help me take the clothes out of the washer and then hand each item to me to put in the dryer. I hope that she continues to think chores are fun.

Today we went to the International Mom's and Toddler's playgroup. There were about 15-20 mom's and toddlers. Most were from the US or the UK. It was a lot of fun and meets every week so I look forward to adding it to our schedule. I met one mom, Wendy, who is from Houston. She is a Christian and really nice. She has 4 kids, three of whom are in school and the youngest is 10 months. Denise was also really nice. She has a daughter who is about to turn 2. I also met a British mom who happens to live in the building right across the street. In a city of 500,000, what are the odds that I would randomly meet someone who lives that close at a small meeting?

I was very glad to meet her and hope to ride with her in future weeks. Getting to the playgroup (and anywhere for that matter) was not that easy. It was at a church that is 6 km from the city center (about 3.5 miles). In Texas that is practically next door! In Norway, it takes 35 minutes to get there. I had to walk 5 minutes to the subway, go one stop, walk 2 minutes to the bus stop, wait 10 minutes, take a 13 minute bus ride, and walk up the hill to the church. It was a nice sunny, cool day so it was no big deal but if it is cold and/or rainy (which it will be) then it is not so fun. That is pretty much how it is to get anywhere.

You also have to plan ahead. There is a website where you type in the name of your stop and where you are going and it tells you the best connections and the times. It can change depending on when you are leaving. If you are even one minute late it can throw off your entire itinerary and set you back 15 to 30 minutes depending on how often the buses run.

Katherine waiting for the bus to arrive.

How's the weather where you are?

An interesting fact:
At this moment (10:22pm) the weather in Oslo is 48 degrees F and the temperature in Dallas (3:22 pm) is 95 degrees F. That is only one degree shy of twice as hot in Dallas as in Oslo. Hmmmm. Which would you prefer?

Update: the weather in Oslo during the day is in the 60's or 70's.

Spicing things up a bit

When we finally received our boxes from the post office, Sam heard a sound that sounded like sand in our box. What it ended up being was Tony Chachere's cajun spice. It was a new container but for some reason we did not think to put it in a zip lock. There was a small leak but everything in that box had a little bit of spice on it. The bad thing was that was where all of my scrapbook supplies were. Sam said I needed to spice up my scrapbooking.


The good news is that nothing was ruined and I was actually able to scrapbook today. I went to Karen's house. We ate lunch, the kids played and napped and we worked on our crafts outside. I completed three pages. Originally my goal was to complete Katherine's first year scrapbook by the time she turned 18 months. Well, she turned 18 months a week ago and I still have 3 months to go. My scrapbook is stuck in November. It was good to get started today and I plan to try to get off the internet at night (with the exception of keeping this blog updated) so that I can do more scrapbooking.


Here are my three pages. They are not 100% complete because they do not have titles yet.

Blue Eyes
Playtime
Friends

On another note, we had a bit if excitement tonight. Sam had just left for a business dinner. Katherine and I were playing and the fire alarm went off. I waited about 30 seconds to see if it would turn off like it was an accident but I heard doors opening, shutting and locking as my neighbors were leaving the building. I quickly grabbed my purse and our passports (not fun to have to replace) and put Katherine in the stroller. I looked down the hall and saw nothing so then I grabbed our laptops and put them in the bottom of the stroller. Then I realized we are on the 4th floor and so we have to take the stairs. So I take Katherine out of the stroller, grab our jackets and go to the courtyard (leaving the laptops but with purse still on myshoulder). We were there 10 mintues. A firetruck and 3 firemen came and went up to the 5th floor. Apparently someone set off the fire alarm while cooking their dinner. I was glad that was all it was because I sure did not want to deal with a burning building!

Vikings

We are going to be in Norway over Halloween. They don't really celebrate here but the American Women's Club has a party. I thought that it would be fun to have Katherine dress up as a viking. After looking on the internet, I am a little frustrated. It seems they only make viking costumes for adults and most of the ones for women are a little to risque for my taste. I found one child's viking costume but it was $122 - more than I want to pay. I will look here when I am out in town but if any of you run across one, let me know.

Cooking

We are trying to eat at home as much as posible. The main reasons are because it is not easy to eat out with Katherine and we are all three trying to live off of Sam's per diem budget.

Cooking has been somewhat of a challenge in Norway. The first week I did not have my shipment which included my recipes so I was just improvising things. You can see that the directions for curry chicken are not in English. Luckily I bought a Norwegian-English dictionary. It has most words in it and there are pictures.

This first meal, curry chicken, was probably not made totally according to the directions, but you can see, it turned out pretty good.

Even after receiving my recipes there has still been frustration in cooking. It seems that every recipe has at least one item that is a challenge to find. Even at the large grocery store with more American items there were things I coudl not find. Some of the more difficult items have been poppy seeds, cream of chicken soup, and dry onion soup mix. I finally found poppy seeds but had to make substitutions for the others. I have found cream of mushroom soup and cream of celery soup.

Here are some of the exciting items that I found in the larger grocery store. It feels like home.

We wanted to have blueberry pancakes for breakfast because we had some blueberries that were going to go bad. The pancake mix had a picture of crepes so we bought the waffle mix instead. This was before we realized how popular really thin waffles were here.

I was ablet to decipher the entire set of directions but when we had the bowl of liquid and the bowl of dry we knew that it was going to be way too runny to make pancakes. Sam mixed until he thought it was the right consistency.

They turned out like pancakes but they were pretty dense and a lot sweeter than regular pancakes.

Another challenge in cooking I have had was an ill equiped kitchen. We are renting a furnished apartment but the kitchen is lacking. There was no casserole dish, muffin tins, loaf or cake pans or good utensils. There was also nothing in the way of spices so I am starting from scratch. The oven also seems to be a little off. Of course the temperature settings are in Celsius but I can figure out the conversions thanks to google. When I cooked salmon though it took over an hour for it to be fully cooked. I am thinking that the oven is not working properly. We are hoping to get an oven thermometer soon so we know the true temperature of the oven.

It is a challenge, but we are eating well and I am thankful that we have the option to cook. I could not imagine living in a hotel room without a kitchen, especially with Katherine.

Friday night on the town

Friday night we decided to go out to eat on the main street in town, Karl Johan Gate. It is a large pedestrian street that connects the main train station to the Royal Palace. All along the way there are shops, restaurants and a few street performers.

We ate dinner at a restaurant that was kind of attached to the cathedral. It was kind of middle eastern food and pretty good. I thought this was a great picture of Sam and Katherine. It was a challenge to keep her happy for the entire meal.

Here we are with the Royal Palace in the far distance.

Katherine meets her first Norwegian Troll!

Katherine and I watched these street performers for quite some time. I even put a little change in their bowl. They had a bunch of beer bottles filled with water for different pitches. They played classics like Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring, Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee and others. They were surprisingly good.

The oldest building in Oslo.

After dinner we took a long walk suggested in Rick Steeves' guidebook to explore a different part of town. Not everyone does a photo shoot of their toddler in a graveyard.

This was an interesting building. It is a former grain silo that has been converted into student housing. I thought it was pretty innovative and am curious to see what they look like. It had to take a lot of work to remodel the grain silo.

Saturday's Adventure

We tooked the T-bane to the end stop, up in themountains. Well, it is technically a mountain but only about 1500 above sea level. But when the city is at 0 elevation, it gives a great view. This first picture is right off the train overlooking Oslo and the harbor. It is rare on our tirp to get a good picture of all three of us since one of us is usually behind the camera but we met a nice family on the train. I even got Erica's phone number to get together with the kids.

We hiked a short .5 k down to a restaurant where we ate lunch on the patio. We had an elk sandwich which was quite good, a roast beef sandwich, a really yummy fish soup and the famous apple cake. The view was great and the weather perfect.

We continued our hike an additional 2.5k to the Holmenkollen Ski Jump. Katherine was not excited about being inher stroler but wanted to hike. She probably hiked half of the walk on her own. Every time we would ask if she wanted to get in the stroller she would look at us and say, "nooooooo".

Looking at the photos of the ski jump does not fully convey the steepness that you see in real life. Looking at it you would think anyone who would go down it is suicidal. I don't think I could successfully ski down the steep slope not to mention the landing! Right now there is water at the bottowm of the jump. It is hard to visualize what the area would be like in winter. I assume the water freezes solid and then there is snow over it. While we were there someone went off the small practice jump into the water.

Play Date

Nikolas, Katherine and Amelie

Today we had another play date with Hilde and Nikolas and some of Hilde's friends. We met at a playground near her house.

Katherine's cute pigtails

The artform of babywearing

Playing on the slide

The tire swing