Finally, Skiing!

 All I have heard from these kids since we got off the plane is "I want to ski."  The entire first week we were here, the sun didn't come out at all.  The highest temperature we've seen in weeks is about 39 degrees Fahrenheit.  And there is no staying inside and hiding from the cold, we are out in it every day, walking to / from the shops and the school bus stop.  So I wasn't particularly keen on spending several hours out in the elements on the weekend by choice.  But, the children were not to be deterred, and morale is fragile all around, so it's necessary to work some fun things in when we can.  And while the cold feels everlasting to these Texans, it isn't, and ski season will be over before we know it. 

Oslo is one of the only cities in the entire world where you can find ski slopes right next to a big city.  In about 45 minutes, you can go from downtown to a ski lift.  So. Cool.  Things like that make me think I could live here forever.  

I wasn't in the mood to deal with the hassle of skiing and more cold weather, but I'm so glad we did.  It was the mood booster we all needed.  The first hour was predictably rocky, as we rode the train thirty minutes (sooo faaaarrr) and then spent the next full hour sorting out memberships, rentals, lessons, lockers, and changing ski boot sizes 6-8 times per child, all while reminding the eager and anxious children to please be patient... please.  J.R. and Penny have skied twice on previous ski vacations.  Clara was too young both times, so she was brand new to snow sports, and opted to start with snowboarding over skiing.  Snowboarding class was full, leaving us with a private lesson as the only option.  I tagged along and watcher her eat snow for an hour, while Kerry took the other two to the bunny slopes to warm up before they jumped right into an intermediate group lesson.

The ski area near us is not very big, but that's ok!  There are two restaurants on site and menus are very limited.  Well, food in Norway is a bit limited all around, but that's a subject for another post.  But they do have hot chocolate and coffee on tap at all times so everyone is happy.    

The snow and ice are nature's best playground and have been irresistible for the kids.  They just cannot stay off of it if it's around.  This is a very helpful distraction while waiting at bus stops or even just walking from point A to point B.  

This bus stop was particularly interesting - the scenery and rocks are so perfect they don't even look real!

Water break after a couple of hours on the slopes...

And now using their water cups to play in the snow

When you spill your hot chocolate but it still loves you anyway <3

We went both Saturday and Sunday, because the lessons we had the big kids in was a two day course.  By Sunday evening, we were all wiped out.  For day 2, Clara convinced me to try snowboarding with her, and the sun came out - yay!!  And then by Monday morning, I felt like I had been hit by a bus.  Snowboarding 101 isn't easy y'all.    

A weekend of fun in the snow was exactly what this crew needed!

      

Apartment #1

    Our company has a process for handling international moves.  It's standard.  Residency paperwork is done in advance, and everything else gets figured out when you get there.  It is normal to reside in a temporary apartment for 4-8 weeks while searching for a long term home and getting a feel for the city and different neighborhoods.  There are two reasons for this.  One is the idea that after a few weeks, you might have a better idea of what part of town you want to live in, and therefore you end up in the best house for you and your family, instead of on the wrong side of town.  It's a nice idea I guess, if it worked.  The reality of the situation is that there are no houses.  There are barely even short term apartments available.  And that's how we ended up here, in a 4 bedroom, 80 sq ft apartment, with the tiniest kitchen I've ever seen and ONE bathroom for the five of us.  Thank goodness we left the dogs at home for now.  The location is good though, we are only about a four minute walk to one of the main shopping streets, and about 9 minutes to the school bus stop.  The other, more practical reason, is that it takes 4-6 weeks on average for the shipment of goods to arrive, so even if we had a house, we'd have nothing to put in it.       

Alright, a brief tour:

** Warning, may be frightening for readers who have only lived in Texas-sized homes **

Living room, children for scale.  We can't really comfortably all watch a movie in here.  

Breakfast / work / games / homework / clutter catcher / dinner table: 

Again, we struggle to all have dinner at the same time.  The plates and chairs barely fit.

The ONE bathroom.  Ugh, no one warned me about this.  One bathroom for five people is really not ideal.  It's especially problematic in the morning when everyone needs in there for various reasons and we have a school bus to catch.  It is common in Europe to have the washer and dryer in the bathroom.  I'm not really sure why.  I moved one of the chairs in here to we'd have a place to put our clean clothes while showering, otherwise they would just go on the floor I guess?  There are also zero plugs for blow drying hair, so we have to do stuff like that blind. 

The dude den.  Good thing all he does is sleep in here, because there isn't space for anything else.

Same set up for the girls room.  Slightly more junkified, in the way that girls tend to do that.  

There are two other bedrooms, one of which we have been using for storage / closet space, the other one for the adults.

And, the kitchen.  It is my greatest success of 2025 that I have been successfully feeding my kids out of this space for the last three weeks.  See what happens if you open the dishwasher and the freezer at the same time... you can't.

And now that I've showed you all that, we're moving!  The housing situation is dismal.  They have showed us two houses so far.  One of them is very expensive and well out of our price range.  And old and not well insulated and the fireplace is dangerous and sometimes the lights go out if you plug in kitchen appliances?  No thanks.  The other one, well, let's just say it makes this apartment we are in look kind of nice.  It clearly hasn't been updated since about 1975.  In the last two weeks, not one single new house has become available for rent in the entire city of Oslo!  So this weekend, we are moving to a different apartment, about twice the size of the one we are in, and hopefully a little bit nicer.  Probably still just one bathroom though.  It was not available when we first arrived or we would have been put their originally instead.  We had hoped to find a house asap, but since that isn't happening, we are relocating to a bigger apartment, and preparing to bring the dogs over, even though dogs in an apartment is no no no fun.  But it's temporary.  This means a new route to school, and a new bus stop for the kids.  So far they have all been holding up really well, but I am nervous to keep pushing the limits on how much change they can handle without falling apart. 

Walking to and from the school bus stop, and a little bit of the surrounding area.

 

Oslo : Week 1

  Hey there, can you see me ok? Hear me? It might take me a minute to get all the dust off this old thing.  It's been many, many years since I even opened this page.  Most of you probably don't know this, but I kept up a decent blog about our experience and travel while living in France.  Well here we are, just over a decade later, and we're at it again.  Never in a million years did I think I would be raising expat kids, but when life calls, the only answer option is to answer it. 

First things the first - the journey.  The days and weeks leading up to departure day were nothing short of exhausting.  So in the final 24-28 hours, when I felt worn out and tired, I didn't think anything of it.  We had been running on fumes for weeks already.  I also knew how fortunate we were that our family had not dealt with illness at all in about 10 months.  Seems we really did pay our dues when the kids were toddlers, because they  don't seem to get sick too often anymore.  Alas, as you have probably guessed, our luck ran out.  About half way over the Atlantic to be exact.  The long flights are uncomfortable as it is, but roughly four hours into the long flight, it became clear that it was not just fatigue I was dealing with, but something more sinister.  By the time we landed in Amsterdam, I was pretty sure I had the flu.  Unfortunately, we still had a layover and another flight, and then about a 45 minute van ride through a snow storm to get through.  Traveling with the flu is 0/10 for me - do not recommend at all!  And so, the first several days here in Oslo were not quite what we expected. 

Despite regular doses of Ibuprofen and Dayquil (miraculously packed in a suitcase and NOT available here!), I was still barely functional.  Now factor in that we don't know where anything is, don't know how to get around, and everything is in a different language that looks mostly like a strange mix of consonants, and we can say that the first week was not so great.  Oh also, the average temperature is about 25 degrees Fahrenheit, ya'll it's COLD.  AND had jetlag to cope with!  Basic survival was a chore, forget trying to do anything fun.  But we kept marching ahead, got the girls in school on day 5, then JR the following week.  His start was delayed because his entire year was away on a week long "winter education trip" - skiing.  In Texas if you opt out of a field trip, the school finds another place for you.  Here, just go home, see you next week.  But fast forward a week, and they are all settling in nicely at school.  We've started riding the school bus, and it seems no matter which approach we take, the commute to and from school is about an hour from our current apartment.  Phew, that is a big change.  We sure do miss a ten minute bike ride with friends.  

So here we are now, two weeks in, and we are finally starting to get our feet on the ground (when we aren't slipping on the ice) and venturing out a little bit more.  Saturday we celebrated our first Norwegian birthday - Gratulerer med dagen Penny!  We were totally unprepared, but threw some plans together last minute and it turned out pretty great.  She requested crepes for breakfast, then we met some families from the school for ice skating and hot chocolate, then a little roblox time, followed by a fun dinner out, a visit to the candy store, and more roblox time.    

We have some work to do on the ice skating... 

For Penny's birthday dinner we went to a place called SALT.  It's kind of like a restaurant, sauna, art, and entertainment venue / club all in one.  We only did the restaurant, which offers a very limited menu of foods to be cooked over an open fire.  This was a lot of fun!  The only offerings were chicken sausage for the kids, and reindeer sausage (seriously) for adults, corn on the cob, and of course, marshmallows!  I'm still not even sure if reindeer are real creatures, but I'm starting to think they are and that they eat them over here.  Weird.  Sausages in general seem to be a very popular food in Norway.  Anyhow, the kids (and I) started off nervous sitting around a fire, but quickly got the hang of it and enjoyed the experience.  SALT is located right on the fjord, we had a water view the entire time.  At one point, of the girls looked out and said "Mom, I think someone is getting in the water!".  I assured them that no one was getting in the icy fjord, absolutely not, no way anyone would voluntarily... oh wait look at that.  These people were going from the hot saunas to the fjords for an ice plunge.  We had on three layers and were still cold, and there were people (not very many) in swimsuits going for a dip in the icy water - you could actually see ice on the water!  NO!      

All in all, Penny said it was a really good birthday.  These kids have actually done incredibly well so far.  They haven't complained much about anything, even though there have been a lot of changes and adjustments, and they've done a great job of being open to new experiences and ways of life.  I think it has still sort of just felt like a vacation for them, and they haven't had too much time yet to miss home.  Although home is here now, so I guess I should say their old home.

More info coming soon on our temporary living set up and general life around here, but for now, I hope you find something this week that makes you as happy as this marshmallow made Clara...