I started my journey at Dulles International Airport just outside Washington DC for a 7 hour flight. After a two hour layover in London, I had just another 3 hour flight from London. Then long lines at the passport check followed by waiting and waiting for my luggage...and finally......
Svein Arild picked me up at the airport yesterday in Oslo. It was soooo good to see him! We hadn't gone this long without seeing in each other (six months) since we met. It was toooo long! We piled my two suitcases, carry-on and purse into the car and began the drive back to Stryn. I was a bit loopy at that point from lack of sleep, my sciatica flaring up because of sitting too long and lack of nourishment (not thrilled with British Airways in-flight menu). I tried so hard to keep my eyes open because I knew that we had a long 7 hour drive ahead of us...but I failed...miserably.
I slept off and on and, according to Svein Arild, mumbled incoherently a lot. After a nap, though, I awoke, plugged in my iPod, cranked up the Christmas playlist and sang Christmas songs...for hours....in the car. It's clearly a testament to Svein Arild's chivalry/patience/nerves/ignoring skills! We made only necessary stops for gas, restroom and food but we did stop and pick up some julenek which is a bail of oats you put out for the birds around Christmastime.
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| The handsome Svein Arild modeling a lovely alpaca sweater and some julenek. |
WE SAW A MOOSE CROSS THE ROAD IN FRONT OF US!! It just slowly walked in front of the car and up the embankment on my side of the car. I tried taking pictures with my tiny little camera but all you can see is two glowing eyes.
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| Spooky glowing moose eyes! |
So we took some pictures with Svein Arild's camera and then I proceeded to yell at him to start driving because I was afraid we were spooking it with all the flashes. But it really could have cared less about us. Svein Arild just laughed at me being a silly American. :)
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| Moose! It's clearly sighing, "Oh, silly foreigner, just take your pictures and move on." |
We got home late Tuesday night at around 11:30pm...and I slept until 10:30am! I got so much sleep!! But I still felt very groggy from the jetlag. Eventually, I showered, unpacked some stuff and we headed to the store to get some food. It was nice to see Stryn again and we ran into some neighbors of Svein Arild's parents.
Most of the time I can understand Norwegian and know what people are saying but the small mall we were in offered too much background noise for me to pick out what they were saying so I just smiled and nodded. Svein Arild later told me they were congratulating us on Paper Day :)
We had a relatively slow afternoon. I made Eggs Degas for lunch as well as soft boiled eggs and ost og skinke. (If you've watched our "Svanndi's Guide to Norway: Food" episode, you know what that is!)
Alv and Agnete, Svein Arild's parents invited us over for a chat this evening so we obliged. Like I said, I can understand Norwegian most of the time I just have a hard time (see: slower time) constructing sentences. So most of the time there I listened to them and then Svein Arild translated my responses. Alv speaks English very well (though he will tell you otherwise). We came home with some homemade bread and then....
This evening we had crafty-fun-time!! We sat in the living room in front of a beautiful glowing wood burning stove (it heats the house) making gifts for his family. Now, I can't show you pictures of what we made because that would spoil the surprise on Christmas but I will tell you that glitter was involved...and now the house is very sparkly! It looks like a unicorn sneezed in here! We had so much fun being crafty together and we will definitely do more projects in the future!
Tomorrow we don't have any plans other than go to Stryn and Svein Arild has a little bit of work to do before shutting down business for the holidays. So I'm anticipating a lazy day of movie watching and napping. And it's vacation so I am working on forcing myself to be lazy...Svein Arild will tell you I'm making little progress in that category but I promise I will try very hard tomorrow. Is that an oxymoron? To try very hard to be lazy? Hmmm, well we'll see how that works out!
Hadet bra!
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