Today we got to sleep in til 10 a.m. which was great! Here’s a picture of the back of our cabin…we still can’t believe we get to wake up to this every morning for the next 8 weeks! It sure makes getting out of bed a whole lot easier!
When we walk out of our back door, the fjord is about 10 feet away. We have a dock that we can walk out onto and a porch which gives a great view. I think we will be spending a lot of time outdoors while we are here…it’s difficult to be inside when all of this is out here! We have been told that it’s tradition to jump into the fjord on the last day…I sure hope it warms up by then!
This morning Stein gave us a tour of the town. He showed us the town hall, the schools, the shops, the grocery store, and the church. The church is 760 years old and I am very excited to be able to go at 11 a.m. this Sunday. They have service every other week so I will be able to go a few times while I am here. When we were in the grocery store, Stein showed us some of the popular foods and also helped us be aware of the different prices of different brands of food. We are given a certain amount of money each week for groceries, and we are planning to be as conservative as possible when buying food! We want to try some of their different foods while we are here also. The food is very expensive compared to home, though. A dozen eggs is about $4 in American money. We had been told that everything is more expensive here which will be difficult to get used to! Later in the day we went back to the store and got our first set of groceries. We were actually surprised that we still have plenty of money left for the week so that’s good! We decided to make trout with vegetables and garlic mashed potatoes for dinner which were delicious. I’m not quite as experienced of a cook as a couple of them…but I’m going to try to learn while I’m here! We have decided that we are going to try to cook a meal together every night.
This afternoon we also went and visited my school. The school is a lot different than I am used to here. It’s a lot smaller and older, but a lot more colorful. The walls in the halls and the classrooms are covered in artwork and different quotes which I think is great. Also, there are cases around the school that display different artwork of the students. We talked with the principal of the middle school for awhile and found out what we will be teaching while we are here. They said that the most important thing we do is talk English with the students. The students here begin learning English in 1st grade. I will be working with 9th and 10th graders, so my students will be able to speak English pretty well. I will be working with the English classes, in English small groups and will also be helping with crafts. They said that I will have the opportunity to incorporate a lot of my math into the English classroom. As long as the students are speaking, writing, hearing, and reading English, that is the most important thing. So I will have the opportunity to teach them some math lessons in English where they can use the skills they are learning in their Norwegian math class and also practice their English. Using story problems and problem solving will be some ways that I can use my math in their classroom. I’m excited to come up with some interesting ways to be creative! Also, I may be able to use some math topics in the crafts room. We may be able to do things with volume and area while we are working. The students learn a lot of real world subjects in their school which is really neat. They have a wood working room and also a ceramics room that they use for crafts.
We also got to meet the superintendent today and some other people that work for their school board. It was a great day and we are very excited for tomorrow because we are going somewhere with Stein and Marit but we are not sure where yet!
Here are some more pictures of our town.
Tusen Takk = Thanks a lot (we will be using this phrase a lot while we are here because everyone is so nice and hospitable!)
