Quote:
Originally Posted by woob
Hey text - Thought I'd bump this thread and see how the move was and how Norway is so far!
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So this is something that I have been meaning to get to for several weeks now, but it is difficult to find the time.
I will maintain this thread to provide more updates as they occur, just because Norway is awesome, and my family and I are having a blast and we all feel like rubbing it in.
We have now been here for precisely six months to the day. The kids are currently on their winter break, but have settled into the local international school, and while the higher level curriculum presents a significant challenge, they are coming along. We live about 7 kms from the kids' school, which is also within walking distance of the
University of Agder where I work, so we all take the city bus to and from school and work daily. My wife just two weeks ago started her Norsk classes, and I expect to begin some time in the Spring, so hopefully we will be speaking the language within the next several months. That has probably been the most difficult part—it is a strange feeling to be surrounded by conversations which I cannot understand.
Work has been a tremendous success so far. I have written a level 2 (top ranked) peer-reviewed article that should appear before the end of the year, and my forthcoming book based on my PhD dissertation is presently with the copy editors.
One of the reasons we were so keen to come here was for the opportunity to travel, and for the kids to experience various elements of European culture. We expect to make a trip to Denmark and Germany this summer (I also have a busy conference schedule starting next month and running through to the first week of August), and we also took the opportunity to spend a week in Egypt last month while the temperatures here in Kristiansand hovered around five-to-eight degrees below freezing.
Winter is DARK. Just before Christmas, I noticed that there were several weeks in a row in which I never saw a sunrise or sunset from my house between the weekends. Around the winter solstice, the sun would not rise until close to ten, and consistently had set by 3:30. That was weird. We're looking forward to Spring, but in the meantime, are also enjoying the ice on the fjord just below my house. How cool is it to play hockey with my kids on the frozen North Sea? SO...COOL...
That picture was snapped the first day we cleared the snow off, and it was pretty rough. Since then we had a brief warm spell, a little rain, followed by another cold snap, and the ice is PERFECT.
So, that's the inlet attached to my backyard; here is a picture from my living room window of an early fall sunset.
So, that's Kristiansand in a nutshell so far. Really, I just wanted to gloat about our daily afternoon hockey games on the ocean...As the occasion to brag presents itself, I will continue to update this thread.
Cheers.