Part 9 “… AND FROM THIS MOMENT PLEASE, IN MORE DETAIL.” So. I sorted out the dog. I had to sort myself out. After all, I arrived at a respectable age, with my own habits. The first-priority task was to learn Norwegian.
I did not find any particular difficulties in studying; at home I continued to speak English, and for some time it turned out that I treated Norwegian as a subject of study, but not of practice. I will explain why I reason that way. I think that because of my age I could not fit two foreign languages in my head. Of course that is a funny thought, when you are abroad and feel that English is becoming “native,” while Norwegian, which you have to use in a Norwegian environment, just will not “switch on.”
And as of today, on the contrary, I find it hard to “switch on” English. 😻 And yet there is such an opinion in the home country that a foreign language is easier to learn when you fall into the environment.
And what did the environment I fell into mean — forest, fresh air, the sea, a taciturn husband (Vikings are like that!) and Norwegian courses at the municipality for foreigners. Ah! And also the bus. I have kept tender feelings for the bus; I called it personal transport. Very comfortable, always on schedule, but the intervals in the timetable were long.
Only in the morning, starting from 6.30, 7.30, 8.00, 9.00, could you get from our village of Homborsund to the nearest town, Grimstad, where the administration, the library, the medical posts were (that is what I called medical institutions in Norway, because there was no single polyclinic building). And the hospital was and is in the town of Arendal. That is 30 km from Grimstad.
To get to the courses I got on the bus at 7.30. At that time the bus filled along the way with sleepy, uncombed, unfed school-age teenagers, sneakers or trainers on bare feet all year round, but in headphones, with rucksacks and with travel thermos mugs in their hands. On the bus they tried to wake up, but they were silent. That was my deep immersion in the Norwegian environment.