Fotboll: Part 3

As soon as spring sprung, Linnea and Mattias’ fotboll training moved outdoors.

Again, the fields are incredible here! No mud, no rain puddles–just perfectly flat, well tended turf.

One of Linnea’s best buds is the only other girl on the team. They have a ton of fun together!

But proper sport attire is what this post is really about;

or rather Linnea’s version of fotboll fashion:  Yes, you most certainly can play soccer in a skirt!

The general consensus among Norwegians is that Americans do not know how to dress properly.

When they see kids walking around in the snow with no ski pants and jackets unzipped, I guess I can understand their dismay. If only my kids would speak Swedish, dagnabbit! We did take them to Legoland afterall! That English gives us away every time!

Remember, I’m from California where frostbite was never an issue if we weren’t properly protected so I think it’s a cultural thing. I have enough battles to wage so if the kids are cold, I figure they’ll dress better the next time. That could be considered negligence or natural consequences depending on your perspective.

When one of our Norwegian friends saw our Besseggen post on this blog, she was incredulous that the kids didn’t have hats, gloves, and hiking shoes! (For the record, I had packed their caps, but Niklas forgot to put them on the kids.) Hiking shoes for kids? Never even crossed my mind! Aren’t tennies good for everything?

But keep in mind, Norwegians have special attire for every conceivable weather condition and sport activity–this assorted glove display is just one small example. Niklas likes to say they have a special glove to match each ski wax requirement (but you’d only understand that if you were a cross-country skiier–there are a lot of different kinds of ski wax out there)!

Sometimes I get lucky. At this practice, Mattias was dressed for the task at hand. He might not be paying attention, but he’s appropriately attired, by golly!

I swear, some of the other Norwegian kids were doing this as well, it wasn’t just this wayward American!

Or maybe I’m just saying that.

Linnea, on the other hand, is a loose cannon. She loves to play in whatever her creative mood dictates at the time, even if it’s tights and a dress!

But wait, something is missing. This soccer cone would make the perfect hat if I could just get it to stay on my head!

Yes, that’s it, I’ll use my head band to attach it to my head and then I’ll just hop this fence real quick!

I play so much better when I have some armor!

Sometimes I don’t get so lucky when Mattias joins his sister in her transgressions. I’ve never seen a Norwegian kid in kakis at practice. Maybe Americans reading this are just as perplexed as the Norwegians and would never let their kids go to soccer practice in their school clothes. Maybe I’m just a loose cannon mother who doesn’t make their kids wear the right clothes.

In any case, when Linnea and Mattias are both dressed so “wrongly” and they are chattering away in their American English, I fear we give credence to the general consensus that, “Americans don’t know how to dress.” To my fellow Americans, “Please accept my apologies!”

But in the grand scheme of things, I enjoy the Flashdance flashbacks and am delighted in the fact that the kids couldn’t care less what anyone thinks about their attire.

PS  It’s snowing and we’re back indoors again. Our sports fashion saga continues…

Fotboll: Part 2

Linnea and Mattias also played fotboll this year. Since they joined the league in the middle of winter and were on the youngest team, they started training indoors.

The sport facilities here are incredible, but that doesn’t surprise me given the intense role sports play in the Norwegian culture.

Special soccer shoes are required for training on the indoor floors.

What a bunch of cutie kids!

Linnea and Mattias were often put on different sides when they scrimmaged, but that just made it all the more fun for them.

I just loved that they had a place to run around and get some exercise! Waiting for the bus to get home afterwards in the dark, cold, snow, not so much, but it was still worth it!

Fotboll: Part 1

Fotboll, aka soccer, has been the predominate driver of our schedule during our time in Norway. It’s also been one of the most positive aspects of our experience here.

All thanks to the generosity of one woman, Wenche (pronounced Ven-keh) who, the first time I met her, invited Joakim to join her daughter’s co-ed team.

So for the past year +, Joakim has practiced 2 times a week and played games in rain or shine,

in the snow…

and in the dark. The fields are snow plowed, heated, lit, and kept in impeccable condition to allow for year round training.

Only day-long tournaments are moved to indoor facilities during the winter.

The artificial turf is high quality as are the stadiums.

Norway is such a beautiful country! What could be better than a forest and lake view during a fotboll match?!

Joakim’s fotboll schedule forced us into the Independence in a Day situation which ended up being a fantastic confidence builder for him.

It also helped that his coaches were so patient and encouraging. When he first joined the team, Joakim ran all over the field, but never, ever actually touched the ball. But during this past year, the coaches helped him develop new skills and more self confidence and now fotboll is his favorite sport!

Thank you, Wenche, and everyone at HUK Fotboll!

Never Give Up

CNN’s health page ran a story about a medical miracle here in Norway–the bottom line, Never Give Up! The tenacity of the Norwegians involved, especially in the harsh conditions, is consistent with my experiences this past year. It’s an inspiring tale. Enjoy.

Thanks, Anje, for passing along!

60 Minutes in Norway

In case you missed “60 Minutes” last night, there was a segment about birdmen–extreme sportsmen. I posted about the Norwegians doing this (video link in the post), back in February.  Of course the host focused on the good looking American in his interview, but there are some spectacular video shots of Norway as well:). Check it out: “60 Minutes in Norway”.

Congratulations Norway–Again!!

Yesterday morning, we woke up to this–Norway ranked #1 on the United Nations list of best places to live in the world. That doesn’t surprise me. This country is amazing.

I wasn’t going to post about it since this article was written in Swedish, but Anje sent me the article in English so why not?

Congratulations, Norway–Again!!

FN: Norge världens bästa land att bo i

Norska Verdens Gangs webbupplaga gratulerade i morse sina läsare med “God Morgen! Du bor i verdens beste land”. När UNDP, FN:s utvecklingsprogram, rankar världens länder efter faktorer som förväntad livslängd, läs- och skrivkunnighet och BNP per invånare hamnar Norge i topp.

– Norge gjorde väldigt, väldigt bra ifrån sig bland de europeiska länderna. De hamnar högt bland alla indikationer. Men skillnaden mellan Norge och de andra länderna i topp är marginell, de är alla väldigt nära varandra, säger Isabel Pereira, en av författarna bakom rapporten, till SvD.se.

Den svensk-norska tv-profilen Tone Bekkestad håller med om att Norge är ett bra land att leva i.

– Norge har ganska få människor, relativt låg arbetslöshet och få, som jag känner till, som lever under fattigdomsgränsen. Personligen tycker jag, efter de kriterier som fanns i rankingen, att Norge är ett bra land och att vi i stort sett har det bra. Vi är ett rikt land tack vare olja och fisk och lever på så sätt ett bra liv. Sen ska man komma ihåg att inte alla tycker att det är guld och gröna skogar, säger hon till SvD.se.

På andra plats syns Australien, tätt följt av Island, Kanada och Irland. Sverige halkar ner till sjunde plats, från förra årets plats sex.

Längst ner på listan hamnar afrikanska Niger. Också Afghanistan, där den förväntade livslängden för en nyfödd är 43,5 år, hamnar på botten i rankingen.

I rapporten mäts mänsklig utveckling utifrån inkomst, hälsa och utbildning.

- Framstegen har varit mycket ojämnt fördelade. I många länder har utvecklingen gått bakåt de senaste årtiondena, till följd av ekonomiska nedgångar, konflikter och epidemier som hiv/aids. Och då har vi ännu inte sett effekterna av den globala ekonomiska krisen, säger Jeni Klugman, huvudförfattare till rapporten, i ett uttalande.

Rankingen baseras på uppgifter från 2007, dvs före den globala finanskrisen slog till.

Fem länder klättrade tre eller flera platser sedan förra rapporten: Colombia, Frankrike, Kina, Peru och Venezuela. Det beror framför allt på att inkomsten och den förväntade livslängden ökat, men för Colombias, Kinas och Venezuelas del även på att fler barn börjar skolan, enligt UNDP. Kina har i år klättrat till plats 92.

Skillnaden i mänsklig utveckling är enorm när länderna högst upp jämförs med de längst ner. Den förväntade livslängden skiljer ofta runt 30 år och när det gäller inkomst är glappet ännu större. Enligt UNDP ligger det till så att för varje dollar en person i Niger arbetar in, tjänar en svensk 58 dollar.

Niger, Afghanistan och Sierra Leone hamnar i botten.

– De står inför enorma utmaningar. De placerar sig dåligt på alla indikatorer, dessa länder släpar långt efter. Det är här vi ska fokusera våra krafter, säger Isabel Pareira.

Akerselva

Akerselva is this wonderful river that crosses through much of Oslo.

The best part is that there’s a path along the entire length of it which makes for a great walk, run, ride, or stroll. Although just 5 miles long, the river’s altitude changes by 589 feet!

There is one day each fall where the number of light hours is exactly the same as the number of dark hours. To celebrate the occasion, the city of Oslo holds a special candlelight river walk. All the overhead lights along the path of the river are turned off while thousands of candles are lit. The river is awesome to begin with, but it takes on a special feeling when it’s illuminated by candlelight.

On this night, there are performances all along the river: choirs, acrobatics, drama productions, and dancing.

The bridges are lit…

as are the tunnels…

Normally, the kids are asleep at this time, especially on a school night, but when you’re in a place such a short while, there’s no option to “wait until their older” or “it’s more convenient”. You have to drag yourself out there and experience things while you can. I’m glad we did.

*PS Apologies for the blurry photos. One of these days we’ll figure out how to take clear night photos without a flash.

Besseggen

One of the things Niklas definitely wanted to do during our time here was climb Norway’s famous Besseggen–eggen in Norwegian literally means “the edge”.

What’s interesting about Besseggen is that you hike up to the 5720′ summit while traversing a harrowing cliff between two lakes–one green and one blue. Gjende on the right gets it’s green color from glacier run off while Bessvatnet is a traditional blue lake.

Planning this adventure was more complicated than for most hikes. First, the ferry that takes you to the starting point, as seen in the middle of this picture, only runs from late spring to early fall. Our time was running out.

Then you have to take into consideration the weather. We intended to do the hike several weekends in a row, but the weather just wouldn’t cooperate. It’s a perilous climb in good weather (people have fallen off the edge and tumbled to their deaths) and is obviously that much more dangerous when it’s wet and slippery.

Also, the views are too spectacular to miss due to fog or dense clouds.

The green lake is a full 1312 feet lower than the blue lake.

Joakim heads up for the final climb.

It’s difficult to capture the height of the peak in a picture, but if you look closely, you’ll notice little specs climbing near the summit. It’s a long last push after already hiking 4 hours. At many points, you have to literally rock climb with your hands and feet. After Høyt og Lavt, I decided to let this be a boys weekend and was spared this ordeal.

Tradition calls for passersby to place a rock on top of the red “T” trail markers.

Mattias made it! At 6 years 2.5 months, he could possibly be the youngest child ever to summit, even just attempt to summit, Besseggen. At least 30 people came up to him and Niklas to express their astonishment and to offer encouragement and congratulations! At some of the most dangerous parts, Niklas questioned whether it was even responsible for him to have brought Mattias along since he was having a rough go of it himself.  The Moe kids are 1/8th Norwegian, though, and Mattias proved his Viking pedigree on this trek!

Brother bonding at the highest peak. They did it! Only 3 more hours to go. A member of a female hiking club was so impressed with them, she placed a huge, gold, chocolate-covered medal around each of their necks. How cool is that?!

Back down in the lowlands. They hiked for a total of 8 hours up and down the mountain.

Finally, in the car and on the way home again. More pictures at Niklas’ Besseggen slide show.

While the boys were off on their climbing adventure, Linnea and I had a girls weekend. First, we walked down town for Culture Night. Every year, Oslo has a Culture Night where all the museums, galleries, theatres, etc. are open, gratis, and with ongoing performances.

We went to see some young hip hop dancers and a youth rock band.

Then off to pancakes provided by Norway’s Salvation Army.

On Saturday, we visited Sebastien. Other than that, Linnea did her artwork and I caught up on chores around the house. It was a very quiet and relaxing time for us. After a couple of previously failed attempts at mother-daughter bonding activities, I’ve learned that Linnea needs a healthy chunk of solitude (hmmm…when that I think about it, I’m like that, too!)  She doesn’t want me in her space and now that I’ve figured that out and respect her needs, our time together is so much more harmonious. So a fun weekend for all of us.

Fright or Fun?

A couple of weekends ago, we rented a car and drove out to an “activity park” about an hour outside Oslo.

The kids went through the children’s route on their own. (There’s one level lower for chillins 4 years and under–typical Norwegian to get them started from birth!)

Niklas and I stood on the paths and cheered them along offering encouragement. It looked like so much fun and I couldn’t wait to get onto a course myself!

It wasn’t easy for the kids, though. You can see the consternation on Mattias’ face after he’d just completed a major zip cord run. He seems to be wondering, “what the heck was that?” and “how am I going to get myself out of this?” He now has to figure out how to get himself over and onto the ramp for the next “activity”.

I cheered him on having no idea, at this point, just how ridiculous that must have sounded.

The nature throughout the park was beautiful.

I am on a platform taking this picture so the net is actually much higher off the ground than it appears.

The kids had to be completely responsible for their own safety–unhooking and hooking their harnesses as they moved along the route. As awkward and tricky as it was for them, it was more stressful for us to watch as they had to make these maneuvers so high up in the air.

Since my lessons from Shakira, I’ve been encouraging the kids to do more for themselves. This just reinforced how incredibly capable even very young children can be when we let them (or are forced to let them as in this case).  I have to admit, though, it was nerve wracking.

But that was nothing compared to the terror of having to do the course myself. We went to the next level, the family “friendly” one.

It took me an eternity to gather the courage to take this first step. All the encouragment in the world couldn’t move me forward. The “come on, mom” and “you can do it”  calls felt like pressure and just irritated me. I regretted having been such a cheerleader for the kids earlier. I wished I’d been more empathetic, patient. “Go at your own pace” and “take your time” would have been much more supportive than my, “You can do it!” and “You’re doing great! Woohoo!”

I cannot begin to describe the terror of this task. It’s hard to see how high up we were from the photos, but it was so high that I had to choke back the tears welling up in my eyes.

The fear is irrational because in my mind, I know that I have two safety harnesses attached to the emergency cable so I’m not going to die if I fall, but it didn’t matter, I was petrified!

Mattias had started to follow me, but it just made the cables more wobbly and so I screamed in my loudest, angriest, meanest voice, “NO ONE TOUCH THIS CABLE UNTIL I AM OFF!” –in English. Tremendously embarrassing, but I couldn’t help it; I was desperate.

The next stage was even worse than the the one before. “Why am I doing this?!?!” I demanded of myself.” I don’t have to do this. I can climb down. This is not the fun I’d envisioned.”

But, explicative! I couldn’t give up in front of the kids. So I persued.

You had to grab the rope and swing from one round, suspended platform to the next. They were spread far enough apart, that you literally had to take a “leap of faith” and trust you could make it over. Linnea and Mattias barely made the height requirement for this course which meant that the rope wouldn’t get them to the next step no matter how hard they tried. They had to jump as far as they could, then land on and walk along the cables the rest of the way. Honestly, I don’t know how they did it.

When we finally completed the family course, we were all sweating and exhausted. Niklas suggested Joakim and I do the long zip cord (L&M were too short). He thought I needed to have some fun after the stress of trying to complete the family friendly course.

I thought this sign was cute. It says, Look out for Flying People. That cheered me up and I was ready to have the fun that I’d planned for the day.

This series of pictures comes from Joakim’s second trip. The first time we went, and my one and only time, was too traumatic to have documented. I made Joakim go again and take his dad so Niklas could experience first hand, the wolves to which he fed us.

For the record, it wasn’t just a zip cord run. It was a full on course–even harder and scarier than the family one. Niklas conveniently did not mention this part (he claims he didn’t know). Since I wasn’t about to go over to the other side again, I’ll just describe what I can with some photos I took from the saftey of the ground.

First, you climb up this platform. Since we were going on the “biggie”, we climbed to the top level. That Joakim let his arms go tells you he has Viking lineage (no offense to my family).

What you can’t know from a picture, is that the friction between your safety harness and the cable makes a sound like a jet engine screaming in your ear. Joakim put his hands back on for security when the land below him droped away revealing a deep gorge with a raging river underneath. The sensation is that of a free fall making your stomach lurch.

If you look carefully, you can see Niklas on the platform on the other side and just to the right and down a bit, another platform. After you make it to the other side, you then have to get yourself to that lower platform. Then launch another zip cord ride back over the river.

Then when you get there, you have to make your way up to yet another platform. It doesn’t look that difficult in this picture of Joakim doing just that…

But I assure you, it was the absolute scariest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life! If Joakim hadn’t been behind me, there’s no way I would have done it. They have a ladder on the tree for this one and many people take it down and stop the course at this point.

Joakim waves to let me know he made it to the upper platform. Now he just has to secure his harnesses and jump!

Which he does. It sure looks like fun from the ground.

Joakim and Niklas ended up doing two even more difficult runs after this. Niklas could not believe Joakim did them as he was even terrified himself.

While they were off in their Vikinghood, Linnea and Mattias and I redid the family “friendly” course. I wouldn’t have believed it, but the second go around was actually fun! Woohoo!

Valget–The Vote

Do you notice anything unusual about this street?

Neither do I.

This is one of the main thoroughfares in Oslo and there is nothing different about it today than any other day. This surprised me given that the national election would happen the day after I took this photo.

If this were a street in any city in America the day before a local election, much less a national one, the streets would have been littered with hundreds of campaign signs for various candidates and initiatives. Not so here. Not allowed. Billboards aren’t allowed to disfigure the freeways either. Innterrehsting…

We don’t watch Norwegian television, but even that wouldn’t have helped. Political commercials are not allowed either. They don’t want the parties to be able to influence the electorate with marketing savvy propaganda. By not allowing commercials, advertisements, or placards, the only way a party can get their message out is through debates–of which there are many–and by meeting the people out in the street.

And this is exactly how we found out about the election.  Linnea, Joakim and I walked across the street to go to the grocery store and we saw this stand on the corner. It’s being run by Arbeiderpartiet, the labor party, and they were handing out roses and brochures. They gave the kids a deck of cards and a traveling toothbrush in there special “Red” color. I’m not sure what cards or toothbrushes have to do with the party, but the kids were sure excited to receive their goodies–maybe that’s just the point, to get people excited about their party.

Down the street was this group, but they weren’t giving anything away so they didn’t have much of a crowd. The campaign begins about 2 months before the election and is traditionally issue based. In other words, no mudslinging or negative ads–well there are no ads at all, but you get my point. It’s about the issues and that’s it.

Linnea and Joakim stashed their competing party’s red roses and goodies in my grocery bag and headed for the Hoyre (conservative) party for balloons. They’re bipartisan I guess.

This was a Saturday. I actually had no idea when the actual election was to take place until Monday when I went back to the grocery store and saw that the beer section was closed off due to the “red” day. Red days are holidays here, but usually that means that everything is closed, not just the beer section.

Completely confused, I went home and called a Norwegian friend to get the scoop. She informed me that the election takes place over two days, Sunday and Monday and the Monday is a semi-red day in that public buildings and such are closed, but everyone else goes to work.

Apparently, they don’t want you drinking beer on this day. Again, not sure the correlation between beer drinking and voting, but there you have it…the run down on the Norwegian election 2009.

PS The Arbeidarpartiet won–guess those red roses, playing cards and toothbrushes did the trick:)!

PPS When Niklas was proofreading this for me he said that there actually is a purpose to the toothbrushes if you read what it says on them (clearly I didn’t). It says, “all holes need to be filled” as in everyone needs to be cared for. Still no idea on the playing cards.