So then about practice in Norway. Many, newly arrived, get it in kindergartens. If the director of the kindergarten agrees to take you on practice, then NAV pays for it. You work a full working day of 7.5 hours and receive 300 kroner for these 7.5 hours. (30 euros). Of course joyful! Not bad language practice, communicating with the kiddies. And the main thing with a prospect of permanent work. And it is very important that the kindergarten is municipal, so in the future there is social security and I can even earn a Norwegian pension in 10 years! (that is what I thought). Much later I learned that to get a Norwegian pension one needs to have worked 40 years in Norway.
Summer passed, and on the first of August I went out on practice. After the holidays the kindergarten opened on the first of August and there were only 13 children. A new building of original construction, a light premises, a possibility for the educators to drink coffee at a large table in a special staff room. The first day a mass of positive emotions. They met me, we talked, I got acquainted. They asked with which age group I prefer to work. I chose the middle group. At that moment children of 3.5–5 years were gathered in the group.
Since I spoke Norwegian very badly, I gladly took on the work that does not require “much” Norwegian. In the kindergarten there was no post of cook, and I agreed to set the tables by 12 o’clock, for the so-called lunch. There is no official breakfast, as there is in our kindergartens here. Parents bring the children not hungry, and if a child has not breakfasted, they give him food with him, warn the educator, and she can sit him down at any time and feed him or see that the child has eaten.
And at 12 noon the whole group is placed at a large table on long benches. Each child was given a plastic plate and a plastic knife and fork. And now about the everyday menu: on shared plates I sliced cucumbers, bananas, laid out crispbread, put out litre packets of milk, filled jugs with water from the tap, opened tins of mackerel in tomato and laid it out in a shared bowl, sliced hard cheese, and there is in Norway such a specific product resembling Doctor’s sausage, but white in colour with a fish smell (I have not tried it). This I also sliced onto shared plates, and in the microwave we slightly warmed the butter so that it would be easier for the children to spread. All these products were put in the middle of the table and the children themselves chose what they would like to eat or drink. The educators poured for them as they wished either milk or water, and sometimes “both.” And, I remembered, I also peeled carrots and cut them into rounds.
If a child did not manage to eat together with everyone, he could sit at the table as long as he wanted. Nobody touched him. And at that time I collected the dishes, quickly rinsed them under the tap and put them in a special steam machine for disinfection. In the daytime a cleaner with her husband from the kommune would come. They did wet cleaning of the whole premises. At that time the children walked outside.
At 15.30 the children were seated outside at a wooden table and I brought from the refrigerator the so-called Matpakke — boxes with food which parents had prepared for them in the morning at home — yoghurt, fruit, sandwiches. And by 16.30 parents were already arriving in cars and on bicycles and collecting their offspring. In the daytime the children did not sleep — beds in kindergartens are not provided. There are small sports mats on which one can lie if someone is tired.
A continuation of this theme I do not promise…. if there is a mood… possibly…