Disclaimer: This blogpost is purely a reflection on my own experiences and I by no means mean to draw conclusions about what truly makes Norwegian people tick...in fact, this blogpost is probably more about my own social awkwardness than it is about Norwegian people.
There is a general idea among people not from Norway that Norwegian people are stand-offish, hard to read, gruff, proud of their own country and fond of everything to do with nature, winter and physical hardship. Their society is hard to become a part of as an outsider. You are never truly Norwegian, unless you AND your parents were born there. This makes it hard for an outsider to feel at home.
This is what I read before moving our family to Norway. And this proved to be true and absolute rubbish in such equal proportions, that I think I would have been better off not knowing what I was getting into. So let me share my story with you about how I got to know Norwegian people as one of the kindest and most welcoming people I have met. While also experiencing social awkwardness at a level that I had been spared since my high school days. And no, that is not because Norwegian men are all insanely good-looking Viking offspring. If that were the case, life would have been even more awkward!
In approaching Norwegian social life, I had two big handicaps. First, I did not (well still don't actually) speak Norwegian. Yes, I know, a lot of people here speak excellent English, but still... There is a certain freedom in talking that is lost if you have to think about everything you are going to say. Second, I came fresh from Canada, Small-Talk Country of the world! In Canada, your day is not worth calling a day if you have not at least engaged one stranger in a conversation about a completely random topic. That's just what life is like over there! After living there for a couple of years it became harder and harder to meet that one stranger, but I feel I still made pretty much every day worth living there.
So since I did not/do not speak the language, I used google translate to find the Norwegian version of Canada's conversation starter: "Hey, how are you?". GT came back with: "Hvordan går det?". So, for the first couple of days in Norway, I would ask that question to everyone I met. In the streets, at the supermarket, when meeting the principal of the girls' school, etc. Little did I know that "Hvordan går det?" inquires how people are actually doing. It is the kind of question you ask when you know someone has experienced a life-changing event, like a big surgery, loss of someone dear or moving to another part of the country. It is a pretty deep question. Kind of lacking in the non-committal, conversation starting aspect of the Canadian: "How are you?". So, instead of starting up nice conversations with my neighbours, I got quizzical looks about how on earth I could know that they were going through a rough patch in life... Of course, it took me a while to find out why my friendly enquiries were not met with a barrage of friendly responses, but I soon stopped asking it anyway.
Soon after, I realized that there was some truth to the stand-offish prejudice about Norwegian people. Out of the house, there is really little contact to be made. When shopping, everybody goes about their business, their OWN business. There is no eye-contact, no chance to make the odd comment about how nice somebody's rainboots look, how cute their baby is or where they bought that jacket that looks utterly Norwegian-weather-resistant. Nothing. Again, the contrast with Canada could not have been bigger.
Fortunately, we met some of the parents of the friends Jura and Nori made at school. And, they were awesome people! Very outgoing and welcoming, sharing stories about living in our small town and helping us navigate our way through all things new in Norway. I still feel incredibly grateful to these people for inviting us over, because they provided a much needed contrast with the rest of our contact with Norwegian society.
As mentioned in another blog post, dealing with bureaucracy in Norway wasn't exactly easy. Furthermore, I was trying to find a job as well. As suggested by the NAV (Norwegian social security agency), I wrote open applications to all possible employers around me (read: barnehagen and dental practices). But no one, and I mean no one, wrote anything back to my enquiries. Of course I had not expected to be showered with job opportunities, but coming, again, from Canada, I at least expected some form or reply. Something along the lines of: "Thank you for your interest in blahblah. Unfortunately we have no position available for non-Norwegian speaking middle-aged career-misfits who really should have thought about their job prospects before coming to Norway... We will contact you should such a position become available". That's only decent, right?!
So, after those dreadful summer months, I decided things needed to change. And quickly, too! Me, Ms. Chatterbox-pur-sang, I was starting to feel lonely! And not just lonely, I realized that I started to dislike Norway and at the same time was developing stalker-like tendencies to the people that I had had a good time with, aka the parents of Nori and Jura's friends. I could not rely on my Canadian experience anymore, nor did I want to rely solely on the goodwill of the Norwegian families who we had gotten in contact with so far. It was time for a change in tactics!
I decided to forego the job seeking mishap and focus on "learning Norwegian through social contacts" instead. I realized quickly that beggars can't be choosers and that perhaps I had to venture a little out of my comfort zone. In a way, I kind of thrive outside my comfort zone, once I have made the step to embrace the new and awkward so to speak. I decided to grab every opportunity I got to wiggle my way into Norwegian life. Over the course of a month, our family joined a family choir, I joined a local choir and I volunteered to become a member of the FAU at Eluin's barnehage (kind of like a PAC).
And almost immediately, things clicked! Because what people don't tell you about Norwegians, is that they are incredibly social, funny, welcoming, openhearted and supportive If They Have A Reason To Be Around You. That is the key. Don't expect people to chat with you at the playground. With every family being a double income family, there is no one at the playground during the week anyway. But, if you are part of a social gathering, you are part of social Norway, too. I learned how deeply ingrained going out, building a fire and being active in nature is in Norwegian culture. And come to think of it, why shouldn't it? Our natural surroundings are absolutely stunning and you sure do appreciate that fiery glow a lot more after a day in the woods! I've come to understand that even though people don't carry their heart on their sleeve, they are by no means shallow or cold. Indeed, moving to the Trondheim area from another part of Norway can leave one quite as in need of new friends as I was and I truly appreciate the people who have reached out to me and shared their stories of moving here with me. Then again, I have met quite a few Norwegians, both male and female, who are even more talkative than I am!
Also, I am really grateful to our friends who invited us to join the family choir (and the local choir).
It has given me insight, in how big a role music and singing plays in Norwegian life. Almost all the kids I know play an instrument and are a member of the school band. Nori and Jura both really enjoy singing at school. I truly enjoy singing at the choir, although I still find it pretty scary, too. I mean, I've never heard half the song before, so I don't know the melody, I don't know how to pronounce the words and I have no idea 90% of the time what the choir conductor is saying when she explains how she wants us to sing certain parts. What could possibly go wrong, right? Right.
But something that happened at the choir struck a chord in me and stirred a memory from long, long ago. During my studies, I went on an internship to South Africa. I worked with local volunteer groups in a rural, traditional Zulu community. Every meeting we had, we started with singing. They were mostly hymns, and they were sung with a heartfelt joy and spirit that gives me goosebumps just remembering it. Every single person I met there could sing. And every voice had the practice and power to go to a different place from where we were at that moment. To truly lift the spirit. I learned many a lesson over there, but the power of music, of singing, of forging a common goal at the beginning of each meeting is something I have not encountered ever again. And I am still in awe of that.
So, now I am here in Norway, quite far away from South Africa. And one night I joined the choir to sing at an evening where a number of local choirs gathered. It was my first social outing in Norway. The choir meeting was held in a "samfunnshus", kind of like a community centre. Everybody looked their best. There was good food and drinks to be had and the performances of the choirs were incredible. After the performances, the lights dimmed a little and people engaged in conversation. Until, at one point, one of the bass singers in our choir started a song at the other end of the table. His deep voice was joined almost instantly by another bass singer and an alto. Before I knew it, the table I sat at had burst into what I can only imagine to be an old seaman's song (though it could just as easily have been a song about how good oranges taste or the difficulties of finding a suitable partner in life, I have no idea actually ;-) ). Again, I felt the power of a song lifting the spirits. Of singing just for the sake of singing, because it is something that brings people together. I felt the same kind of goosebumps and connection that I had felt so many years ago in South Africa...
...wouldn't it be beautiful if I could end this blog post on finding my way around Norway on this magical, inspiring note? I bet it would, but alas, that is not me. Because the truth is, something else made me feel even more at home, and confident that I would have a good time in Norway after all. And that was something that has less to do with the power of music...and more with my potty mouth and dirty mind. It is no secret that I have a dirty mind to rival any 15-year-old. And although I met some cosmic twin sisters in Canada that met my level of tongue-in-cheek-jokes, the truth is that Canada was not entirely supportive, shall we say, of my particular tendency for "underpants-humour" as the Dutch proudly refer to it.
But lo and behold! At this local choir in rural Norway, people truly appreciate the power of a good joke! And the fact that I missed the clue on both the choir conductor's comparison between a choir conductor and a condom and a hilarious story involving a bass singer who's fly was open at the start of a concert has made me even more determined to learn Norwegian! Those jokes were too good to get lost in translation :-)
Thursday, November 17, 2016
Wednesday, November 2, 2016
Don't let money change yaaahhhh-deeptap-dabeedooowaahhh....
Holy mackerel, we're rich!!! I still can't really believe it myself, but we are... We finally sold our house and the savings from our mortgage thus became available to us as well. Technically speaking, it is not that big a load of cash, but for me it feels as if we have become millionaires overnight!
And so a period of our life seems to have come to an end. A way of life we not necessarily have to cling to anymore. Well, at least not for the coming months, at least ;-) The lifestyle of the let's-see-how-we-can-make-ends-meet-this-time.
Don't get me wrong, we have never been poor. But we have experienced a rather prolonged period of life in a state of not-having-enough-money. And while it may sound as if I am looking for some form of pity, I actually want to share with you some of the lessons I learned from being on a budget. Lessons I learned with the help of Menno, who, aside from being an amazing husband, also is a pretty steadfast financial conscience. True, I have called him stingy in the past, but let's face it, if it had been left up to me, we probably would be knee-deep in debt right now. So thank you! Plus, his budgeting and my creativity inspired us to do things that we normally would never have done. Or even considered a possibility!
Let's start at where our financial situation started to slope downhill. January 17th, 2011. The day we arrived at YVR airport in Vancouver. With only 2 children and no more than 7 suitcases (and 4 hand luggage trolleys, let's be fair) we were ready to start our new life at the other side of the globe. We had briefly considered shipping our furniture and belongings from The Netherlands, but even with my meagre grasp of math I was able to figure out that the added value of our belongings was less than how much it would cost us to ship it.
So, that first night, we came into our empty apartment, unrolled our thermarest mats and slept on the floor. The next few days we spent collecting the basic necessities of furniture, because we had a rental car for a week. It was during our search that we already met with the kindness of strangers. For people on a budget, the kindness of strangers is like your christmas bonus at work. Out of nowhere, people can make you so happy with what they have to share. In our case, we picked up a super cute, second hand, wooden toddler bed from a house in Coquitlam. Of course Jura and Nori, heavily jet lagged at that time, wanted to come into the house with me. While Menno lugged the bed to our car, I chatted with the lady who sold us the bed. Upon hearing that we had just moved to Canada and had only few toys for the girls, she gave us some very nice things for free! I felt bad accepting it, because, well, I had never been in the situation where somebody had felt the need to give me things for free...but seeing how happy Jura was to have another chalkboard to replace the one she had had to leave behind in the Netherlands, I decided to swallow my pride.
And that, right there, is the first lesson I learned. Having less money than you would like to have, places you in a strange position. All of a sudden, you become aware of what is considered "the norm" for spending money on. Like buying a coffee when going to the playground. Or having a car. Or bringing presents to your child's friend's birthday party. Or, heck, handing out goodie bags at your child's birthday party. It takes some courage, or at least, it took me some courage, to navigate those particular waters. To realize that it is ok not to have the things that society somehow thinks you should have in order to be successful. Now, I am not talking about the big things like buying a house or a fancy car. But even in the small things, you can feel the sting of the have's vs. the have-nots. If you are susceptible to that feeling, that is. You have to learn to take pride in living on a budget (because nobody else will applaud you for it ;-) ) while at the same time swallowing a different kind of pride and allow people to help you where they want to help you. Accept what is given, because it will make your life a lot easier!
When it comes to learning life on a budget, I am still eternally grateful that I got to go to the University of British Columbia. Living on campus taught me basically everything I needed to know, with a little extra help from my dear Dutch friend who lived 70km away from me. On campus, everybody was struggling. Life in Vancouver is insanely expensive, the cost of living is ridiculously high. You may think upon reading this that it is prosaic exaggeration, but let me tell you, this is the regular way to talk about life expenses in Vancouver. To exaggerate would be to say that nobody can afford to live there. That only being an exaggeration, because obviously people still do. Live there, I mean.
Add to that, that as a family from another country, you are dealing with the common money-slurping shenanigans of immigration bureaucracy. You do not move oversees because it makes your life easier, or less expensive, that's for sure. By leaving the Netherlands, we said goodbye to the child support we received there and were not eligible for child support in Canada until we had lived there for 18 months. Those kinds of rules and regulations held for every international family that lived in the UBC student-family or faculty-and-staff-housing. Those from Canada were also far away from family and support networks, so there was a general atmosphere of helping each other out.
My dear friend M. and I have spent many happy days collecting second hand furniture, or even dumpster furniture, to build ourselves a house worthy of Martha Stewart (just kidding, M ;-) ). She would call me whenever she had seen something nice, and later when I met my friend S who lived off campus, she would do the same! The first year I decorated, and re-decorated, our apartment with furniture found at the side of the street. More often than not, Menno would come back home from work and would see something was different, but would not be able right away to put his finger on what it was... Which was always kind of funny, because it gave me the feeling of what it would be like to have gone to the hairdresser and Menno not noticing. Of course, we had no money for me to actually go to the hairdresser, so this was a good second ;-)
Life on a budget also meant we did not have a car. Luckily, the public transportation system is excellent in Vancouver. One of my fondest memories of our first year in Vancouver, though, is our first christmas eve. Our dear friend M had lent us our car, because they were visiting family in Toronto for christmas. On christmas eve, after dinner, we put Jura and Nori in the car with a sippy cup filled with hot chocolate. With Cookie (Eluin's working title while I was pregnant with her) doing summersaults in my tummy, we drove around the neighbourhoods surrounding the UBC campus. The girls were completely mesmerized by the insanely beautiful christmas decorations. In fact, that drive around town became one of our christmas traditions in Vancouver.
Still, I felt we had to invest in some form of transportation. So first we bough a bike for me with a double bike trailer. Later on, while pregnant with Cookie, we bought a Phil and Teds stroller. Second hand of course, from someone in Surrey. The girls thought the trip on the skytrain to Surrey was the best trip they had ever had (all credits go to the bag of snacks that I had brought with me on that trip ;-) ) and I arrived home with 2 kids sound asleep in the new double stroller.
That double stroller was such a life-saver, that it inspired me to the most ambitious holiday I have ever organized. Going camping. By public transport. Yup, you read that right. Our family (Menno, Roos, Jura (5), Nori (3) and Eluin (4 months)) decided to go camping on Vancouver Island and to travel there by bus and ferry. We made so many good memories!
In preparation for this trip, I went to the Canadian Tire to stock up on some camping gear. Of course, I brought the Phil and Teds stroller, because that was basically going to be our tent trailer. I spent quite some time in the aisles fitting all the necessary items (double air mattress, new tent, sleeping bags, etc.) in the stroller. Feeling like the queen of Tetris, I finally found all the things to fit into the stroller, with room to spare for a child to sit in the stroller. Happy as a clam, I took my loot to the check out. The lady behind the register asked me if I needed help getting it to the car. This is the conversation that followed:
C(heckout lady): "Are you sure? We really don't mind and it looks like you have your hands full..."
R(oos): "Thank you, but it's ok...I came here by bus."
C (surprised): "You came here by bus? But how are you going to take it back?"
R (feeling proud): "Well, I just spent some time trying how everything would fit in my stroller"
C (impressed): "Wow, smart thinking if you have to take it home by bus."
R: "Well...actually...we don't own a car. So I bought this camping gear for a camping trip to Nanaimo and we will travel there by public transport"
C (incredulous): "What? Are you taking 3 kids camping by bus? Wow...that is kind of, well, ambitious... Can I call my manager? He definitely needs to see this!!!"
:-)
So now, fast forward about 3 years. In the meantime we had moved from our place on campus to a place off campus. Menno had been awarded a prestigious research grant that gave us a lot more financial leeway. We were actually able to save some money!
And then we got to move overseas again...
Really, there is no thing that makes you lose your money as quickly as a trans-continental move. Maybe we are playing this particular game the wrong way, but as much as we tried to prevent history from repeating itself, we found ourselves in Norway in a uncomfortably similar situation as how we had started in Canada.
First off, this time we did decide to ship our stuff. Because, frankly, we had more that we wanted to keep from our time in Canada than we did moving out of the Netherlands. In part because we left most of our life locked away in our families' various attics before moving to Canada. With our stuff on the way, Menno made his way to Norway and me and the girls travelled to Holland to sell our house. I left Holland after three months with a signed preliminary buying agreement in my pocket...only to see that fall through at the last moment, because the buyers were unable to secure a mortgage. Bummer.
Not only did this mean we had to find some way to sell our house while already overseas (thank you, parents-in-law!), it also meant double rents and financial insecurity. Our savings from Canada were mostly usurped by the deposit for our rental home here (a whopping 5.000 euros) and an exorbitantly high storage fee for our goods at the port in Oslo.
So there we were again... Trying to build our house on no money. Lending money from our parents. With more stuff, that's true, because we have a much bigger house here in Norway than we ever had in Canada. And the comfort of having our "own" material rubble around us (toys, books, plates and cutlery) from the start, rather than having to forage for an inventory, does make a lot of difference. But starting up a new life is expensive, it always is. And I have felt so bad about not being able to be as generous as I want to be for all these years and then starting anew with the stingy scurmudgeon lifestyle, that I have to admit that I have felt lost sometimes during our first months here...
But all that is a thing from the past now! We are out of the deep and murky waters. And I am so grateful for that. Because having learned my lessons in appreciating health, family, friends, love, laughter, traditions, food, kindness, volunteer work, crazy plans and shoestring holidays above material wealth, the money we have now feels like something that gives us opportunities, rather than something we need to make us happy in life.
And on that note: I realize that although we may not have been wealthy in the traditional sense of the word for the past years, I truly recognize my wealth in how lucky we are to be alive. I can't believe how little misfortune we have had over the years. Even my grandmother, who I anticipated to pass away during our time in Canada is still alive!!!
So please, if anyone anywhere is in charge of making us pay our dues for outstanding debts in the bad things of life, whether it be karma, God, Allah or the Flying Spaghetti Monster... I know we have been lucky these past few years, but could you please hold off your payments for a couple of months? So we can relish in this new found financial peace? Much appreciated! :-)
And so a period of our life seems to have come to an end. A way of life we not necessarily have to cling to anymore. Well, at least not for the coming months, at least ;-) The lifestyle of the let's-see-how-we-can-make-ends-meet-this-time.
Don't get me wrong, we have never been poor. But we have experienced a rather prolonged period of life in a state of not-having-enough-money. And while it may sound as if I am looking for some form of pity, I actually want to share with you some of the lessons I learned from being on a budget. Lessons I learned with the help of Menno, who, aside from being an amazing husband, also is a pretty steadfast financial conscience. True, I have called him stingy in the past, but let's face it, if it had been left up to me, we probably would be knee-deep in debt right now. So thank you! Plus, his budgeting and my creativity inspired us to do things that we normally would never have done. Or even considered a possibility!
Let's start at where our financial situation started to slope downhill. January 17th, 2011. The day we arrived at YVR airport in Vancouver. With only 2 children and no more than 7 suitcases (and 4 hand luggage trolleys, let's be fair) we were ready to start our new life at the other side of the globe. We had briefly considered shipping our furniture and belongings from The Netherlands, but even with my meagre grasp of math I was able to figure out that the added value of our belongings was less than how much it would cost us to ship it.
So, that first night, we came into our empty apartment, unrolled our thermarest mats and slept on the floor. The next few days we spent collecting the basic necessities of furniture, because we had a rental car for a week. It was during our search that we already met with the kindness of strangers. For people on a budget, the kindness of strangers is like your christmas bonus at work. Out of nowhere, people can make you so happy with what they have to share. In our case, we picked up a super cute, second hand, wooden toddler bed from a house in Coquitlam. Of course Jura and Nori, heavily jet lagged at that time, wanted to come into the house with me. While Menno lugged the bed to our car, I chatted with the lady who sold us the bed. Upon hearing that we had just moved to Canada and had only few toys for the girls, she gave us some very nice things for free! I felt bad accepting it, because, well, I had never been in the situation where somebody had felt the need to give me things for free...but seeing how happy Jura was to have another chalkboard to replace the one she had had to leave behind in the Netherlands, I decided to swallow my pride.
And that, right there, is the first lesson I learned. Having less money than you would like to have, places you in a strange position. All of a sudden, you become aware of what is considered "the norm" for spending money on. Like buying a coffee when going to the playground. Or having a car. Or bringing presents to your child's friend's birthday party. Or, heck, handing out goodie bags at your child's birthday party. It takes some courage, or at least, it took me some courage, to navigate those particular waters. To realize that it is ok not to have the things that society somehow thinks you should have in order to be successful. Now, I am not talking about the big things like buying a house or a fancy car. But even in the small things, you can feel the sting of the have's vs. the have-nots. If you are susceptible to that feeling, that is. You have to learn to take pride in living on a budget (because nobody else will applaud you for it ;-) ) while at the same time swallowing a different kind of pride and allow people to help you where they want to help you. Accept what is given, because it will make your life a lot easier!
When it comes to learning life on a budget, I am still eternally grateful that I got to go to the University of British Columbia. Living on campus taught me basically everything I needed to know, with a little extra help from my dear Dutch friend who lived 70km away from me. On campus, everybody was struggling. Life in Vancouver is insanely expensive, the cost of living is ridiculously high. You may think upon reading this that it is prosaic exaggeration, but let me tell you, this is the regular way to talk about life expenses in Vancouver. To exaggerate would be to say that nobody can afford to live there. That only being an exaggeration, because obviously people still do. Live there, I mean.
Add to that, that as a family from another country, you are dealing with the common money-slurping shenanigans of immigration bureaucracy. You do not move oversees because it makes your life easier, or less expensive, that's for sure. By leaving the Netherlands, we said goodbye to the child support we received there and were not eligible for child support in Canada until we had lived there for 18 months. Those kinds of rules and regulations held for every international family that lived in the UBC student-family or faculty-and-staff-housing. Those from Canada were also far away from family and support networks, so there was a general atmosphere of helping each other out.
My dear friend M. and I have spent many happy days collecting second hand furniture, or even dumpster furniture, to build ourselves a house worthy of Martha Stewart (just kidding, M ;-) ). She would call me whenever she had seen something nice, and later when I met my friend S who lived off campus, she would do the same! The first year I decorated, and re-decorated, our apartment with furniture found at the side of the street. More often than not, Menno would come back home from work and would see something was different, but would not be able right away to put his finger on what it was... Which was always kind of funny, because it gave me the feeling of what it would be like to have gone to the hairdresser and Menno not noticing. Of course, we had no money for me to actually go to the hairdresser, so this was a good second ;-)
Life on a budget also meant we did not have a car. Luckily, the public transportation system is excellent in Vancouver. One of my fondest memories of our first year in Vancouver, though, is our first christmas eve. Our dear friend M had lent us our car, because they were visiting family in Toronto for christmas. On christmas eve, after dinner, we put Jura and Nori in the car with a sippy cup filled with hot chocolate. With Cookie (Eluin's working title while I was pregnant with her) doing summersaults in my tummy, we drove around the neighbourhoods surrounding the UBC campus. The girls were completely mesmerized by the insanely beautiful christmas decorations. In fact, that drive around town became one of our christmas traditions in Vancouver.
Still, I felt we had to invest in some form of transportation. So first we bough a bike for me with a double bike trailer. Later on, while pregnant with Cookie, we bought a Phil and Teds stroller. Second hand of course, from someone in Surrey. The girls thought the trip on the skytrain to Surrey was the best trip they had ever had (all credits go to the bag of snacks that I had brought with me on that trip ;-) ) and I arrived home with 2 kids sound asleep in the new double stroller.
That double stroller was such a life-saver, that it inspired me to the most ambitious holiday I have ever organized. Going camping. By public transport. Yup, you read that right. Our family (Menno, Roos, Jura (5), Nori (3) and Eluin (4 months)) decided to go camping on Vancouver Island and to travel there by bus and ferry. We made so many good memories!
In preparation for this trip, I went to the Canadian Tire to stock up on some camping gear. Of course, I brought the Phil and Teds stroller, because that was basically going to be our tent trailer. I spent quite some time in the aisles fitting all the necessary items (double air mattress, new tent, sleeping bags, etc.) in the stroller. Feeling like the queen of Tetris, I finally found all the things to fit into the stroller, with room to spare for a child to sit in the stroller. Happy as a clam, I took my loot to the check out. The lady behind the register asked me if I needed help getting it to the car. This is the conversation that followed:
C(heckout lady): "Are you sure? We really don't mind and it looks like you have your hands full..."
R(oos): "Thank you, but it's ok...I came here by bus."
C (surprised): "You came here by bus? But how are you going to take it back?"
R (feeling proud): "Well, I just spent some time trying how everything would fit in my stroller"
C (impressed): "Wow, smart thinking if you have to take it home by bus."
R: "Well...actually...we don't own a car. So I bought this camping gear for a camping trip to Nanaimo and we will travel there by public transport"
C (incredulous): "What? Are you taking 3 kids camping by bus? Wow...that is kind of, well, ambitious... Can I call my manager? He definitely needs to see this!!!"
:-)
So now, fast forward about 3 years. In the meantime we had moved from our place on campus to a place off campus. Menno had been awarded a prestigious research grant that gave us a lot more financial leeway. We were actually able to save some money!
And then we got to move overseas again...
Really, there is no thing that makes you lose your money as quickly as a trans-continental move. Maybe we are playing this particular game the wrong way, but as much as we tried to prevent history from repeating itself, we found ourselves in Norway in a uncomfortably similar situation as how we had started in Canada.
First off, this time we did decide to ship our stuff. Because, frankly, we had more that we wanted to keep from our time in Canada than we did moving out of the Netherlands. In part because we left most of our life locked away in our families' various attics before moving to Canada. With our stuff on the way, Menno made his way to Norway and me and the girls travelled to Holland to sell our house. I left Holland after three months with a signed preliminary buying agreement in my pocket...only to see that fall through at the last moment, because the buyers were unable to secure a mortgage. Bummer.
Not only did this mean we had to find some way to sell our house while already overseas (thank you, parents-in-law!), it also meant double rents and financial insecurity. Our savings from Canada were mostly usurped by the deposit for our rental home here (a whopping 5.000 euros) and an exorbitantly high storage fee for our goods at the port in Oslo.
So there we were again... Trying to build our house on no money. Lending money from our parents. With more stuff, that's true, because we have a much bigger house here in Norway than we ever had in Canada. And the comfort of having our "own" material rubble around us (toys, books, plates and cutlery) from the start, rather than having to forage for an inventory, does make a lot of difference. But starting up a new life is expensive, it always is. And I have felt so bad about not being able to be as generous as I want to be for all these years and then starting anew with the stingy scurmudgeon lifestyle, that I have to admit that I have felt lost sometimes during our first months here...
But all that is a thing from the past now! We are out of the deep and murky waters. And I am so grateful for that. Because having learned my lessons in appreciating health, family, friends, love, laughter, traditions, food, kindness, volunteer work, crazy plans and shoestring holidays above material wealth, the money we have now feels like something that gives us opportunities, rather than something we need to make us happy in life.
And on that note: I realize that although we may not have been wealthy in the traditional sense of the word for the past years, I truly recognize my wealth in how lucky we are to be alive. I can't believe how little misfortune we have had over the years. Even my grandmother, who I anticipated to pass away during our time in Canada is still alive!!!
So please, if anyone anywhere is in charge of making us pay our dues for outstanding debts in the bad things of life, whether it be karma, God, Allah or the Flying Spaghetti Monster... I know we have been lucky these past few years, but could you please hold off your payments for a couple of months? So we can relish in this new found financial peace? Much appreciated! :-)
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