#weektwentytwo

Week Twenty Two/Five and a half months

On the language front:

During the past week I lied to a bus driver. I took the wrong bus which turned out to be an express route so despite ringing the bell the driver didn't let me off at my stop. I did remember how to say, “Vent litt!” [Wait!/Hold on!] but the driver did not in fact wait. She just kept yelling at me. She was saying “Du må blah-blah-blah...!'' [''You must blah-blah-blah!''] I never figured out exactly what I must do but, two stops later when she finally let me get off she was still yelling. I responded that, ''I didn't know!'' Because I have only lived here for two months. There's the lie. I wanted her to feel bad for treating a newcomer to the city harshly and I wanted her to be impressed by how much I understood in such a short time.

We went to networking event and I understood 50-60% of the presentations from the stage. It's weird that I understand more of what is being said from a public platform or eavesdropping on other people's conversation than when people are actually trying to speak directly to me one-to-one.

The fiancé taught me the words/phrases: dings, dingseboms, greie, duppeditt, dubbeditt, ditt og datt, ting og tang. They basically translate to: thingy, thingamabob, thingamajig, bits and bobs, etc. At the weekend I tried using one of these words to ask for something that I didn't know the name for and it totally didn't work because the company present couldn't remember what the 'thingy' was really called.

Speaking of 'things' when talking about my Tinghuset experience last week. The fiancé talked me through a word I already knew. 'Stortinget'=The Parliment. Stor=Big, Ting=Thing, Et=One or the (sometimes, it depends on the gender of the noun). Stortinget is also the name of a tube station. I had learned the name of the street 'Stortingsgate' ['Parliament Street'] on an mp3 of Norwegian lessons before I even moved here. There was a lesson on asking directions and in it I was instructed to ask: “Hvor er Stortingsgate?” ["Where is Parliament Street?”]

This week I was in the grocery store and I forgot the PIN number for my debit card. I managed to form the phrases: “Jeg glemta PIN-koden min.'' [''I forgot my PIN code.''] and ''Jeg husker ikke.'' ["I don't remember.''] I also understood enough of what the young lady on the till/cash register was saying to realise that she wanted me to put all of my un-purchased purchases back myself. So embarassing!

This week was the last week of the third Norwegian teacher on my course. I liked her a lot. One of the best things she did was insisting that we explain/define things in Norwegian. It really helped to increase my vocabulary. In the last class session we played a game in which we had cards with words from the most recent chapter on them. We were supposed to tell our group members the definition of the word and they were to guess the word. At the end of class I collected the cards from the rest of the groups so the fiance' and I could play at home. It went very well. The fiancé suggested that I make cards for all future chapters. I just may do that.

Weather:

Good news: I snowed again and it's so pretty.

Bad news: I fell... twice.

Culture:

Last week at the networking event I met a woman and got into a interesting discussion about heritage. Even though we are from completely different parts of the world we came to the conclusion that we were similar in that we both had multiple boxes to check/tick. My favourite questions from her was, “What do you wear on special occasions?” I laughed before explaining that this past summer I had worn an Indian sari to the wedding of my British-Caribbean uncle to his Polish bride. I like mixing things up like that.

So while I cooked chilli and cornbread last week...

...this week I made bangers and mash. The uninitiated need not be afraid of the name, it's just mashed potatoes and sausages. I needed comfort food and I decided to get my British on. As you may recall I don't eat pork so I went with vegetarian sausages.

Then randomly, tonight I made a pseudo-Mexican dish. (Chicken, black, beans, corn and lots of chilli pepper with a side of rice.) I guess growing up in North America explains my affinity for Mexican food, but trying to cook it is just about as random as me wearing a sari (almost).

The following is a list of images I would’ve Instagrammed if I had a new phone:

A chart from my book which indicated average temperatures and yearly rainfall in different towns in Norway. The graph proves that Oslo is the right city for me.

The fiancé and I rocking our disposable shoe covers. We went to the doctor and there was a basket of disposable shoe covers. I thought it was such a great idea. (Just that morning my snowy boots had dripped dirty water all over the floor under my desk at work.) The fiancé was surprised that I had never seen anything like that before, I explained that I had mostly lived in places that completely shut down at the first sign of a snowflake.