2009 news

Hi everyone,

We finally got our internet connection fixed, so now I can update my blog and check email like a normal technology-addicted person again.

A side note, blog in English is blog, blog in Norwegian is blogg. Same pronunciation.

News: I have been working 80% in Torpo barnehage and that has been going very well. I know the kids fairly well now. But alas, I am going to get a new job! That is both good and yet bittersweet. I am excited about the new job but it will be sad to stop working at the Barnehage. It is a great place with great staff, kids and parents.

My new job will be teaching Norwegian at Gol Vaksenopplæring, which is Adult Learning in Gol.
I will talk to my new boss tomorrow so I will find out more details about it after our meeting. At any rate, I am offered a full-time (100%) position, which is great! I am excited about being able to help other newcomers to Norway learn Norwegian, which can be a tricky language to learn what with all the dialects and two written languages.

Ola Magne and I have been looking at various houses to buy lately. We are tired of renting and are interested in buying a småbruk, a small farm with possibility for some "hobby animals." We checked out one house in Oppheim, but it was very small, not such a great location, and needed a lot of fixing-up, so we weren't enthralled with it. Then we checked out a house in Gol in an area called Åsgardane. It's a beautiful place, so we put in a bid on it on Saturday! Very exciting. It is our first bid, so we will have to wait and see what happens. It is a tvangssalg, which means foreclosure or basically when the bank is forced to sell a house that someone couldn't pay for, due to bankruptcy for example. Therefore this type of sale can take a while because the bank and government have to decide together whether they will accept the bid.

The house and buildings on the property will take some fixing-up, not to mention the overgrowth of grass and other plant life in the surrounding area. However, we think it will become a labour of love if we get to buy it. Here's hoping!

This doesn't rule out a potential move to USA, but we are, for the time being, very satisfied with living in Hallingdal together, and since we are both going to work in Gol starting in the fall, it would be very practical for us to move to Gol.

Other than that, we are doing well in Storedal. We got a new rabbit, a big French Lop, who we thought was NOT pregnant, but in fact WAS pregnant. One day in the barn we suddenly discovered eight small fuzzy rabbit beings who we estimate were about three weeks old! This meant too many mouths to feed, so our former two rabbits have now become food. That's what happens when the head of the house is a butcher.

However, the upside is that we have 8 small fuzzy cute bunnies running around! Yay! We will try to give some away so they don't all end up as food. We have to figure out what gender the rabbits are soon so they don't end up coupling with their brothers and sisters (gross). The two rabbits we had before were offspring of a sibling pair, so we didn't want to help that lineage go any further. Therefore it was better to turn them into food than risk having them couple up later in life.

The reality of living on a farm includes slaughter, and although Ola Magne is very good at that and does it in a humane way, I don't want to be a part of it. I visited my friend instead on that day so I wasn't around. But I want to try rabbit ragu sometime. Well, "want" may be a strong word. I guess "willing to try" is more accurate.

News!

Hi!
Sorry that I haven't updated in a long time. Life just gets busier and busier.

The biggest news: Ola Magne and I got married on August 22nd here in Hallingdal! We had a civil wedding at the Hallingdal Tingrett (courthouse), which took all of five minutes. The only other people in attendance were the judge and our two witnesses , or the equivalent of a best man and maid of honor (forlovere). Afterward, we walked outside and discovered balloons tied to my car, and the entire barnehage standing there waiting for us! All the staff and children from the preschool were there, even the people who had the day off! It was so cool that they came considering it's 45 minutes away from the preschool itself and they had to rent a large taxi-bus to transport all the kids. Apparently they had practiced singing and throwing confetti before they left, but when we walked out they just stood there speechless and stared at us! Eventually they got into the swing of things but I think they were somehow confused that they actually had permission to throw things at us when we were dressed so nicely.

We both wore bunader for the wedding. Ola Magne had borrowed his grandfather's bunad, which amazingly enough fit him, and I wore mine that I bought in May, with a shirt borrowed from my "forlover"/maid of honor's mother. Her mother died recently and it was amazingly that she loaned me her mother's beautiful hand-embroidered shirt. It is a very special shirt and it was nice to have the memory of her mother with me on my wedding day, because she was very nice to me when I first came to Hallingdal. I lived with them for two weeks and she was really helpful. She was also going to help me make a new shirt and fix some small things on my bunad when we got back from the States. She was a wonderful person, very smart and particularly good at handicrafts. She died very tragically in a tractor accident at home on their farm, which happened while we were away in the States in July. We heard about it when Ola Magne's father called us. It was all over Norwegian news.

I finished my Masters degree in June successfully! Hurrah! My written thesis and presentation went well, despite my trials and tribulations with my laptop. I presented verbally in Norwegian and also played hardingfele in my presentation, showing the differences in the Hallingdal and Valdres styles of "springar" (a dance type). I am proud of my project and very glad to be finished. I however am not excited about being finished with being a student. I would very much like to go on learning and learning, which I plan to do whether or not I am actually enrolled in a "school". I think everyone can learn something everyday.

I have been learning a lot at the preschool actually. I have now increased my position to 80%, i.e. 4 days a week, which is much more exhausting as I have longer days plus one more day than I had during the past year. However, I learn something new everyday, or notice something about the children that helps me and gives me greater experience for the days to come, whether those will be spent working in a preschool, school, or eventually taking care of my own children someday. However, working with 36 preschoolers is a very good method of prevention and I don't think children outside of the working arena are in my near future.

I have also started co-teaching a children's cultural group for ages 4-8 in Ål, called Basken. Eilif Gundersen is the other teacher. He has led the group for many years now, and it is great that he has so much experience. He is great with the children and has many fun activities planned for the year. So far we have taught them some Hallingdal songs and sangdanser and sangleiker, i..e songs with dances. I also came up with a "Basken bok" (book) that they can draw or glue things in every week at the end of our time together. We meet once a week for 45 minutes. It can be kind of hectic after a full day in the preschool, but that's how it goes. It is fun though and goes by very quickly, which is a good sign. We have 12-13 kids enrolled this year.

Other than work in the preschool and Basken, I am playing hardingfele a little bit here and there. I taught beginning hardingfele at HFAA in July in Wisconsin, which was really enjoyable. I had mostly adult students, which was quite a change from working in a preschool, but I applied some of the same techniques and it worked beautifully. :-) I got good feedback from my students as well, which bodes well. I gave a mini-concert in Rauland in August, and also picked up a kitten from my friends at Moslid farm! He is black and white, and his name is Jackson. I didn't name him, but I liked the name enough so it stuck. He is a bit more rambunctious than I thought he'd be, so he's been a handful to take care of. We've had to teach him to not jump on the sofa, tables, window sills, not to eat the plants, etc. Other than that he's a good cat, doesn't bit or scratch unless severely provoked, and is very clean. He's outdoors for the most part while we're at work. And we just got him neutered, so too bad for him but yay for not contributing to the world of stray cats. He mostly sticks around the farm here and doesn't venture too far, except for twice when I was going to walk to work and he followed me. After much spraying with water and shouting, I think he has gotten the point, but I'm still not sure whether I've been lucky that he's been distracted or not seen me when I've left the house the past few times, or that he really understands he can't follow me. We'll see how it goes next week.

So, life in a nutshell:
Got married, finished masters degree in hardingfele, working more in the preschool in Torpo, leading a children's cultural group called Basken, got a cat!
I hope all is well with my readers!

Hard at work

Hallo!
I have been hard at work on my Masters Thesis recently. Don't expect very many blog updates until after June, when I will be (*crosses fingers*) entirely finished. My written Thesis is due May 16, 4 pm. Eek! One month left! I still have to do the musical analysis part, which is a major part of the thesis. I am analyzing 5 tunes, with two variations of each tune, so essentially that is 10 tunes. I have to do (at the very least) form analysis, bowstroke, doublestop, and ornamentation analysis. That means four things for each of the 10 tunes, i.e. analyzing 40 different ways. Wish me luck! Then it will be off to write up my findings in some sort of understandable manner so it's not jibberish. I hope it makes some sense by the very end!

A recent crisis occurred when my laptop would no longer turn on. I had to send it in to be repaired, which will take about two weeks. In the meantime, I am using our "upstairs" computer, which Ola Magne got from his great-aunt and uncle over a year ago. But the computer itself is ancient, but fortunately is in working order. They also gave him a printer, and I finally got that up and working just last night. It was really frustrating, because it had been put in a box on its side, with ink cartridges in it, which led to leaking all over. Cleaning it up was a very messy process. Luckily it works!! We had to buy a new mouse because the old one did not work well, so after a couple investments, the computer is working well.

It's so frustrating to have computers set you back when I finally have the motivation (read: time pressure) to get really working on my project!

I was in Rauland last Weds. and Thurs. to meet with my advisors. They think I've done good work so far, but just need to get the musical analysis finished and then put it all together in a logical format.

I am hoping to go to Valdres possibly next week to do some more research and music-gathering in the archives at the Valdres Folkemuseum with Elizabeth Kværne, as well as interview some local spelemenn (fiddlers).

In some exciting news, Ola Magne and I have decided to have our wedding next summer!!

Christmas Celebrations in Norway

Merry Christmas to all!!

It's high time I updated this blog to let you all know what's been going on! In October I went to Riga with the staff of the kindergarten for a business trip. It was very educational and interesting. We took a tour of a kindergarten (barnehage) in Riga (picture to left), which was possibly the complete opposite of our barnehage in Torpo, both tangibly and dogmatically. The building itself was huge, although they only had 20 students at the time we visited. They had special teachers for art, dance, music, and other teachers for each class, and nannies to watch while the kids took a 3 hour nap in the middle of the day. They had a cafeteria with cooks to make full meals. Their class schedule was divided into rigid 10 or 20 minute segments. It was very impressive!

Our barnehage in Torpo is very small (they plan to build on as soon as the community budget has money for it), our barenhage has no classes, all the staff does pretty much all the same things (although we have our own small specialities and foci), and there is no time schedule whatsoever. Ours is a rather "free" type of barnehage, based on play as a learning tool, and the child can more or less decide what they want to do during the day. Interesting concept, although I'm not sure whether I agree entirely. However, the kids seem to have a good time, and I try to teach them on a more individual basis whenever the opportunity arises; since there are no scheduled periods of learning, every minute counts as a new opportunity!

In November, my hardanger fiddle teacher, Øyvind Brabandt, invited me to play a solo concert at Hagaled Gjestegård in Nesbyen. I played fiddle and talked about my progression on hardanger fiddle since I began playing at 14 years old until now. The audience was small, but very interested and received me warmly. That same day my friend Kari arrived, a friend who was a fellow Norwegian major at St. Olaf College. Here she is at the Gol Stav Church (stavkyrkje). She stayed at our house for 4 days and it was very koselig!

After Kari left us, Ola Magne and I went to Oslo for the Oslo Kappleik on Sat. Nov. 17. I played a hallingspringar and a laus, competing in the category Hardingfele klasse B, and I got 3rd place! I can't find results online for this year, but here are some pictures from last year's kappleik: http://www.folkedans.com/stemne_meir/oslokappleiken2006.htm

On Sunday, we met up with my friend Rachel in Oslo, another friend from St. Olaf who played viola in the Orchestra together with me. She came back with us to Hallingdal and spent 3 days. Unfortunately I got very sick and lost my voice! I couldn't tell her as much as I wanted to about Hallingdal, but she had a good time here anyway.

Since the first of December, the barnehage has been preparing for Christmas, with a Christmas workshop where the children made presents for their parents, wrapping the packages, Christmas gatherings every day, going to visit the Julenisse (like Santa Clause, but more of a farm elf version) who incidentally wasn't at home unfortunately, eating nissegrøt (rice porridge), making pepperkaker (gingerbread cookies), eating pepperkaker, and reading beloved childrens' Christmas books.

On Friday, Ola Magne went into the forest and chopped down our Christmas tree! (picture at top) He saw three moose while he was there. Usually Norwegians get their tree and decorate on Dec. 23rd, no sooner, but I explained that anytime after Dec. 1st is fair game in USA for putting up the tree, so we compromised, even though he thought it was entirely too early to decorate the tree.

Now we are going to eat risengrynsgraut/nissegrøt (rice porridge) and find out who gets the mandel (almond)! Whoever finds it gets a marsipan gris (marzipan pig) afterward. I don't really like marzipan so it's okay if Ola Magne gets the almond. :-) Tonight Ola Magne and I are going to his parents' house for dinner to celebrate Christmas with his 3 siblings. They will have pinnekjøtt for dinner, which is salted and smoked lamb meat, steamed using birch twigs in a big kettle. His great-grandparents (father's side) will come afterward for kaffi og kaku (coffee and cookies/cake). Afterward we will open the presents, which I'm really looking forward to!! I have gotten several big packages mailed from the States, and I can't wait to find out what's in them!

I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year!

In Norwegian, God Jul og Godt Nytt År!

Trip to the States, 2007, Report #1

First, to announce happy news, my boyfriend and I got engaged on August 5th, 2007!

We traveled to the States this summer for three weeks in July, with an ambitious travel plan ranging from Washington, DC, Minneapolis/St. Paul, San Diego, Dodgeville and Mt. Horeb, WI. We first visited my father and my aunt Sheila, where they showed us around like proper tourists in Wash. DC. We saw the Air and Space museum (right), the Native American museum, American History Museum, and the Holocaust Museum. We tried to go to the FBI Building but it was closed.

We also went to the outdoor Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the Mall, which was exceedingly hot (it was at least 100 degrees Fahrenheit, plus the insane East Coast humidity that Norwegians cannot fathom), but at least it was interesting. I saw the crest of my "relatives" from Northern Ireland on a stone, and played a bad fiddle that some guy from Northern Virginia had for an exhibit of Northern Virginian folk music, and had a good view of the Capitol building as well.

We visited some nearby areas, including Olney, Maryland, where we stayed with one of my aunts and her daughter. Another one of my aunts visited us while we were in Olney, which was very nice of her to come so we could meet again. We also ate dinner at a community dinner at Liberty Village in Union Bridge, a community housing area in Maryland.

After our three days in Washington, DC, we traveled to Minneapolis and St. Paul, where we stayed with my second cousin, Wayne.

Sadly, at this point Ola Magne came down with mononucleosis! Somehow he must have contracted the sickness while in Norway, because the incubation period is 4-6 weeks, and then manifested the incredibly painful symptoms while in the humid city of Washington, DC. In addition to dealing with jet lag, foreign mannerisms and language, a lethal virus overtook Ola Magne's throat and immune system and attempted to bring him down. Our worst point of the trip came early on, when we traveled then to Minnesota and realized on our flight as Ola's throat swelled up more and more that it wasn't just a normal cold. When we arrived in Minneapolis, we were even more devastated to find our lack of baggage. We rented a car and drove to my cousin's house, who was a saint and drove us directly to a clinic where Ola paid an arm and a leg to be seen without American health insurance, and then got prescriptions for three hefty medications, which he bought in exchange for the other arm and leg.

More to come later!

(See, our trip was so long that it must be divided up into many blog entries. Anyway, no one in this day and age has much of an attention span anymore either.)

Oh yeah, and in May I moved into a great house with my boyfriend. I don't live at Vesledal anymore. I live at Storedal. This house is great, absolutely perfect. Yes, you'll get pictures sometime.

Homeward Bound!

List of things that aren't really that important to do before leaving the country but you're going to do anyway:
Update your blog.


I'm heading back to the homeland! I leave tomorrow with my boyfriend/sambuar for Washington, DC, Minneapolis, MN, San Diego, CA, San Francisco, CA, Dodgeville and Mt. Horeb, WI, and DC again before returning to Oslo and home sweet Torpo. I'm exhausted already just thinking about it. Wish us luck! (Lykke til!) Looking forward to seeing all you good friends and family!


Note: By the way, I competed in Landskappleik for the first time on June 27th and got 21st place out of 27 in Hardingfele Class B. Not last place! Hurrah!

pictures from Vesledal

Here are a few pictures from Vesledal, my residence since October.

This picture, Tonje with her horse, was obviously taken during winter (note the snow). The horse doesn't exactly have a name. Actually, I think he does have a proper name, but she just calls him Rampegutten and other such names (approx. trans.: crazy boy). There is also another horse who lives at Vesledal (the farm) and is rented by a couple neighbor girls who are learning to ride.

Here is another picture of the horse when we were out riding in the wagon one day in the last month. Much nicer weather now, although it's harder on the horses to walk on asphalt than on snow. At least now they don't get snow stuck in their hooves...

Tonje, a girl who is very fond of animals, also has a dog and a cat. The dog's name is Røya. Røya is extremely overeager and will lick you all day long if you let her. She is also especially fond of licking the cat. The cat is not quite as fond of this event, but she usually tolerates it.

The cat is adorable and likes to cuddle. She is quite a cool cat. We usually call the cat something like Pus, Pusekatt, Kattepus, Gærning, Rampekatt, osv. I particularly like to call her Crazy. Tonje bought both the cat and dog around the same time, about four years ago, so they have pretty much "grown up together" and are like mother and daughter in some ways. Especially when the dog cleans the cat.

Back in Rauland!

Whenever real life gets busy, I tend to stop blogging. This usually means that lots of exciting stuff has been going on, but until my life slows down again, you lovely readers don't get to hear about the exciting parts. Granted, my life is always busy (I like it that way), but for the time being, it's a teensy bit more relaxed. Hence--a new blog post!

Right now I'm in Rauland for a MA student samling (gathering/seminar). There have been lectures, discussions, and lots of helpful tips for the first-year MA students who are turning in their 2nd version of their project prospecti. However, it turns out there wasn't so much for the 2nd year MA students, apart from a few lectures. It's good to be here in Rauland again anyway, just to get some feeling that there really is a student milieu to which I belong, and to get some inspiration for my project. It is always nice to see friends that I met last year, and to see their latest "products," such as this adorable little being...

There are usually some concerts and social events at these MA student gatherings. The night before last night, there was a concert by a student named Christian, who took traditional "stev" (short tunes usually with four verses or fewer) and arranged them to be sung together with guitar arrangements. He played and sang and was quite good, as well as funny! There was a particularly humorous song where he put together three different stev, one about ein gammel gubbe (an old man), ei kjerring (an old woman), and ein unge (a child) that supposedly characterized a Norwegian family.

It is actually quite amusing that I post here about Christian: I met him at Vinterkappleik in January and discovered that he has been a fervant reader of my blog since last year. When he considered applying to go to school in Rauland last year, he came across my blog while on a quest for information about Rauland and the school. Fortunately he found it very useful! I'm not sure whether or not my experiences are representative of the average student at Rauland, considering I had many language challenges and my perspective as an American could be rather different from a Norwegian's. At any rate, I hope that my blog has been, and can be, helpful to others in the future.

Last night there was a concert by Svein on guitar and Sindre on fiddle (previously featured in earlier blog entries). Svein comes from the Lofoten Islands and usually plays electric guitar in a heavy metal style. He decided to hold a concert with Sindre on hardingfele as part of their folkemusikk studies. Unfortunately, yesterday afternoon, he broke an essential part of his guitar and couldn't play any of their planned repertoire. They chose to go through with the concert anyway, although Svein had to use an acoustic 12 string guitar. He was still extremely talented (dyktig). Sindre played a couple tunes from his region of Sunnmøre, springar #33 and laus #9 of 6 different hallings, mysteriously numbered from 9-11a and 11b. He also played a telespringar from Bø in Telemark, and a couple Setesdalgangar as well.

Yesterday I met with my two advisors, Per Åsmund Omholt, and Leiv Solberg. I got a lot of good feedback and criticism from them about my project. I originally intended to finish my MA degree project by June 2007, but I decided in the last couple weeks, and finally yesterday, that it will be better for me and the project itself to use another year on my project and finish in June 2008. This will also help me get permission to live here another year, since it's easier to renew existing permits than to get new ones, like a residence permit based on work.

Before this entry gets too long, I'll just state the obvious: I am having a great time in Norway (particularly in Hallingdal, after having met my adorable boyfriend and his wonderful family) and intend to stay here next year...if not for the rest of my life. ;-) However, my boyfriend is as enchanted with America as I am with Norway, so we'll see whether he ends up staying there after our trip to the States this July! I think I prefer scenes such as these.>>> (Bergsjøfjellet)

I hope everyone is doing well! I will try to update my blog more often in the future and tell you about my Easter vacation with Ola Magne and his family, and also about my summer job! <:-)