Nothing gets a Norwegian fired up quite like Christmas season; it’s dark, it’s snowy, the streets are icy, and there’s nothing for it but a beer, a fire, and some Christmas spirit. Without the holiday buffer of Thanksgiving, Norwegians start decorating early, and while American often complain about Christmas creeping earlier and earlier, no one […]

I have a secret: I love throwing things in the trash. I love going to the landfill. I consider it a luxury that we have a full-sized trashcan in our Annapolis bathroom. One of the best parts of getting ready for this trip was a major purge in preparation for our renters to move in. […]

We’ve been here four months now and life has taken on a nice routine. During the week, Gavin and I work and Annalise goes to barnehage. On the weekends, we take Annalise to a gymnastics class (thanks, Trondhjems Turnforening!) or go on any one of the adventures we discovered pre-daycare. Hopefully we’ll do more trips […]

I am grateful to my employer for letting me work from Norway this year — it’s a good job, and I really like my colleagues. One big adjustment has been the time difference. Their day starts at 3pm my time and goes until 11. I am not full time under this arrangement, so I work […]

Loyal readers will remember that when we arrived, Annalise only knew the Norwegian for one word: underwear. She’s been in Norway for two months and barnehage for one, and the progress she’s made is incredible. Language acquisition wasn’t a top priority during the first month, but we did want to fill in a couple important […]

We’ve been in immigration purgatory for the past two months due to an error by the immigration office; due to this error we’ve been “granted a residence permit” but are not residents of Norway (this is somehow different?) until a second set of paperwork is processed. This will certainly get corrected, if for no other […]

One of the many things we love about Annalise’s barnehage is that it provides breakfast, lunch, and an afternoon snack. This is logistically simpler than her American daycare, which had snacks but required us to pack meals. If we forgot to prep it, we spent the morning filling the lunch box while also dressing Annalise, […]

One of the things we were most excited about for this trip was the opportunity to embed Annalise in the Norwegian child care system, which is very impressive. We don’t love the US system. A safe child/teacher ratio means you need a lot of workers, and it’s impossible to pay them all what they need […]