#weekfortyfive

“I am a writer.”

Not only am I once again combining two weeks into one again, this post is also five days late. My apologies. I’ve been busy.

I believed that some how 52 weeks and 12 moths would even out over time. I think my mistake was counting four weeks as one month. I can’t math! However I am tickled that because I am in the UK most of July when I head back to Norway it will be almost August. I first moved in August so almost a year later I am making a very similar journey. From my year anniversary on I will count the weeks and calculate months by counting from when I arrived instead of trying to calculate how many weeks amount to the month that I’m in.

You might be able to tell from my Instagram posts that I’m in the UK.

On the language front:

As I mentioned in my last post we will be spending most of the summer (and by summer I mean the month of July) in the UK. Almost immediately after my last weekly blog the fiance’ and I made a plan to help me to remember how to speak Norwegian when we came back.

I will be listening to my Pimsleur MP3s on my phone every day. (The more popular Rosetta Stone program does not provide lessons in Norwegian. Pimsluer has a lot more selection.)

I also plan to take my Norwegian translation of Hvite tenner [White Teeth] by Zadie Smith with me. I have been trying to read it for months. My first plan of reading the original and the translation alongside each other didn’t work out because I was really getting into the story and put down the Norwegian version so I could concentrate on the English and just find out what was going to happen next.

We also committed to only speaking in Norwegian when we speak to each other. The fiance’ challenged me to start as we were coming up with this plan. I shocked myself by being able to hold up my end of the conversation. I will admit that I probably should’ve pushed myself to try harder after I came back from the states.

So far…

I haven’t listened to my MP3’s at all.

I haven’t read my book either. I need to get my life together!

We have been fairly consistent about speaking Norwegian.

Weather:

The week before we left Oslo there were a lot of thunderstorms.

Svigersøstrene mine [my sisters-in-law] got married last week and there was torrential rain on the way to the ceremony. I know that people think that rain on your wedding day is supposed to be bad luck or whatever, but I like storms and was kind of cozy once we got inside. Plus I got to wear my leopard print wellies. Pretty wellies make any rain day better. (I’m thinking about getting matching ones for me and my sister for my wedding. It will be spring in the UK, after all.)

The day we travelled to the UK it was really warm.

Since we’ve been here it has been mostly sunny so far and at times a bit cloudy but it hasn’t rained properly yet.

Culture:

My focus has mostly been on wedding stuff. First, celebraing with the fiance’s sister and her fiancee’, now wife [nå kona hennes]. And also, planning our own wedding. Now that we are in the UK we have more detailed planning to do as the wedding will be here. Even though it is not until next year I think we need to be ahead of schedule because we are inviting guests from: France, Germany, Norway, Spain, the UK, and the USA. Because people are planning to travel it makes sense that everything is booked well in advance.

I like that the Norwegian verb to marry [å gifte seg] looks like the English word ‘gift’ even though it is pronounced differently.

This week we have meetings to do with the venue, cakes, music, and I have a meeting about my wedding dress.