BF's Forever



Some of my favorite people in the world, at my favorite city in the world.

 Amanda, the Ås ETA, came in for the weekend to play with Ruth and me. A weekend with Amanda and Ruth is always a fun mix of hilarious and thought-provoking moments.  Amanda had a new year’s resolution which involves dancing at least once a day for the entire month of March, so we kicked off Thursday night by going to the weekly salsa dancing down at the United Sardines Factory. It was inspiring just to watch, but we were lucky enough to each find guys willing to teach us, and danced bravely though ineptly. Over the weekend we also had a dance party which Kyle, the Fulbrighter studying Ibsen, was kind enough to record on camera, and a blissfully Disney dance-off.   

Friday dawned gorgeous, so we headed up Fløyen with the rest of Bergen. On the way down we sorted out the issues of education pretty well: between Amanda's work as a Teach-for-American last year, Ruth's heading into next year, and my desire to apply, we had a goodly amount of benevolent commitment to swing the conversation into highly idealistic lines. That evening I had Ruth, Amanda, Kyle, and our French friend Perle over for Shabbat dinner. I explained what was happening beforehand, but still nearly blew bread out through my nose in laughter when, in the silence after making kiddush and hamotzi, Perle said ‘’what the hell was that?’’ It’s a mark of my comfort with them that I could do this—Shabbat restrictions make me weird enough without sharing the ritual and exposing even more of the crazy.

The barnehage kids aren't the only ones
who can play on Fløyen!



Talks with Amanda plus my upcoming sessions on multiculturalism with my high schoolers have had me thinking a lot about race lately. Also, a recent article in the Bergen Tidende (Bergen Times) discussed how some nurseries in Bergen are 70% immigrant, and so Norwegian parents are worried that their children aren’t learning to speak proper Norwegian and now they want to 'desegregate the nurseries'. Reminds me of segregation and bussing. The delicate issues surrounding ethnicity and what it means to truly be Norwegian or American have made me hum over identity. I keep thinking how important my own ethnicity is to me, and after reading Under the Feet of Jesus over shabbat I was able to say with confidence that it means a lot to many other groups as well. But how to define what it means when one’s own race is important, and so one also notices others’ race and attaches characteristics to it, without using the word ‘racist’? Color-blindness is just another kind of racism, but there doesn’t seem any sort of word to adequately represent race-consciousness. Ethnic awareness? Well, I’ll keep working on figuring out a good term, and let you know when I find one.

In the afternoon, the Bergen Fulbrighters came down to Fantoft so we could walk around the Stavkirk and Gamlehaugen. It was a beautiful day, and BF’s (Bergen Fulbrighters) are consummate photographers, so I’m going to give it to you in pictures instead of words.

 

Telling Oskar about the gnomes that live in the church and run out to tickle you if you knock on the door



How many people can you be this exuberant and silly with?



What animal do YOU think Kong Haakon looked like?



Knocking on the vault and listening to see if anyone knocks back




We are thiiiiiis awesome

 

This is happiness.

BF's forever!

Ridiculous what-the-heck-am-I-doing-in-Norway moment: invitation to a reindeer roast up at Evenstadt from Andrea, the veterinarian Fulbrighter. They’re eating it, not making fun of it—I asked. Sadly, I can’t make it.

 I spent today working with the cheider kids, practicing the play they’re putting on for the community’s purim carnival this Thursday. One kid broke his leg, so I had to take a part. It’s my debut in Norwegian drama. Perhaps by the end I’ll be acting Ibsen at the national theater.

Hva Er Du Redd For?

Things are back to normal again: it’s raining in Bergen, I’m swamped with work, and listening to “ka e du redd for” over and over again as I grade essays in the hopes that absentmindedly listening to Norwegian songs will acquaint my ear sufficiently to understand the next cashier who mumbles “kvittering?” in my direction.

I just bought my ticket home. Jes, this is a pretty awful moment. Heh, I wrote “jes” instead of “yes.” This year in Norway is going to come back to bite me in the butt when I’m trying to finish my English degree. But oh, it’s been wonderful, and the knowledge that it now has an absolute end date has reminded me to seize every second. That and the essays on Shakespeare quotes that my high schoolers have been writing— a huge percentage of them chose “cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant taste of death but once.” Apparently that fires up the high school imagination. It also goads me to try everything that comes my way and leap at new experiences. After all, hva er jeg redd for?

The Norwegian movie we watched this week was “Jeg Reiser Alene,” which is set not only in Bergen, but at the university here. And not just at UiB, but at the Humanities Faculty building where I work. Which, incidentally, is right next to where the movie was being shown. Never before have I walked out of a theater and into the setting of the movie I just saw. It abrogated the life-fiction line a little sharply for me. I’ve been certain I’m living in the Truman show ever since.

I have “winter break” this week, and am not sure what to do with it. Sure, I have mountains of work to catch up on, and plenty of literal mountains to climb as well, but I’d like to do something out of the ordinary. With a week off, I could do a mountain a day… Friday I hit both Fløyen and Rundemanen, and of course today (Sunday) was a Løvstakken climb… Ruth and I were talking about skiing—yep, we caught the bug—but with the Bergen weather the way it is, we’re more likely to be able to wash our hair in the rain than find enough snow to slide on.

Freaking out at the desecration

Saturday I walked up to town to the Fisks, who were having a Fulbrighter tea. We got onto the topic of our Fulbright application process, and I was surprised to find that the professors had also needed three recommendation letters to apply. Of course, they just go up to a friend and say, “hey, Dave, write me a rec, will you, buddy?” And then Dave says, “sure, no problem, but I’m busy so write it yourself and I’ll sign the bottom, okay, buddy?” Which is only a bit like my life; one of my professors told me that now I’ve graduated and have a Fulbright, we’re on equal terms and I should start calling him by his first name, but it freaked me out so much I stopped emailing him. Anyhow, the tea was so much fun that we’ve planned a Fulbright ramble around the Stavkirke this weekend when Amanda comes in to visit again. Hopefully Davin will bring his kids so that we can run around with them and show them Oskar the pig.

I went to a MIFF (Med Israel For Fred, With Israel For Peace) board meeting the other day. They asked me to speak in May at the Municipal Hall about my experiences with FRIEND, the Muslim-Jewish interfaith dialogue group I started in college. We were stuffing envelopes with newsletters when suddenly Erik, whose apartment we meet at, jumped up and turned on some music. “Rachem” by Avraham Fried ripped out of the cd player. He was so gleefully proud of himself that I smiled. After all, I haven’t heard it since high school when it was used to torture us by the high school production zombies, and it made me a bit nostalgic for freaked-out-frummy-ism at its brain-deadest. Then, he told everyone to close their eyes. With mine open a slit, I saw him walk around clapping everyone on the head. When we opened, they were all wearing kippot, and looking pleased as punch with themselves. It was possibly the most surreal moment I’ve had in Norway, and I laughed and laughed until I could barely stop.

On the literary front: I’m reading things I’ve never had a chance to before this year. More modern stuff than ever before, and Norwegian novels (after reading Out Stealing Horses, which I recommend to all, I’m now tackling Ut og stjaele hester, though part of the incentive’s gone now that I know what happens). This past shabbat I read the first novel of the Foundation series. I can’t believe, with all my affection for Asimov, that I’ve never read them before. I’m going to have to pace myself and allow only one a shabbat, or my entire break will be gone and I’ll have gorged myself on the series without doing any of the serious work I’m meant to this week.

Views from Løvstakken:

Fulbright Forever!

The Bergen crew flew to Oslo Wednesday night, and made it in to the Foreign Office bright and early Thursday morning. The day was a marathon of fascination and dullness: every Fulbrighter presented their research for ten minutes. We started off with the sciences, and then meandered through peace studies over to the Humanities and rounded off with education.

how many Americans does it take to take a picture?

I have to admit, I dozed off occasionally during the morning presentations. There were a lot of graphs, and some pictures of landscapes turned into research zones, and one awesome thing about tracing bacteria on Norway’s seafloors to the moon. Then came peace: two Fulbrighters working at PRIO (the Peace Research Institute in Oslo) studying water conflicts and predictions of conflicts based on computerized collation of newspaper data. That last one garnered quite a few questions about the reliability of the press, but obviously if scanning the news can produce an 80% success rate of predictions, then either the media is much more reliable than we thought, or the news is actually causing crises. I was bothered all the rest of the day by the moral responsibility one must surely incur, knowing a genocide is likely anywhere, but the researcher shrugged off my question about action quite easily by saying they pass on the information to NGOs. Actual prevention didn’t seem to cross his mind for a second, and after all, I suppose we’re dealing with prophecy here, in a way, and so he’s much more concerned with not being charged with manslaughter for failing to predict a war than with actually preventing them.

There is something a bit condescending about Norway focusing so intently on peace research; that outward gaze could be better directed inwards, perhaps. Or maybe that mind-your-own-business approach is simply the apologetic American in me rising up to distance myself from our world-meddling.

When the first humanities people presented, talking about updating Hebrew Studies at U in Oslo, the rise of digital culture, and something that had to do with suspension (our favorite Fulbright in Bergen prof befuddled everyone with large blocks of tiny text on a slide show, each one gloriously disconnected from the last), the Q&A session was quickly shunted into a humanities-vs-sciences stream. There’s been some tension all year, since most Norwegian Fulbrighters are science researchers, and some have only thinly veiled their inability to understand the legitimacy of other work. It was nice to have it out in the open for a moment, even though nobody said anything really new (Karen, the Hebrew literature prof, gave some nice clean hard answers that made me wriggle a bit with joy).

The view from our hotel. Matt, in case you're blalking
(blog-stalking), yep, I stole it from you. Tusen takk!

I was in the very last panel presentation, with Matt, the Oslo ETA, and Isaac, one of the Roving Scholars. Weirdly, even after teaching all year no problem, standing up in front of that group made my hands and voice tremble a bit. After a moment of it I reminded myself that I love to have attention centered on me, and settled down to enjoying my presentation. I tried to keep it entertaining and brief. I started out by dissing Norwegian Jante Law (“this country is smushing the highest and lowest performing students into a sandwich of average that competitive Americans will eat for lunch”), then spoke about sharing my America (that picture of the Ohio toddler flicking off Michigan filled my whole slide), read a bit of the poem that my student who survived Uttøya wrote, and finished up with a replay of the cheider Beit Hamikdash building and destruction. I got enough laughs and thoughtful head tilts to feel it was successful.

Afterwards, we headed over to the American ambassador’s house for a reception. The best part: open bar. I think it’s a sign of how much my life has changed over the course of the year that that was actually exciting. The standing around part was much more fun this time around. The Norway Fulbrighters this year are such incredibly cool, directed, confident people that a weekend with them has rewritten all my previous notions about the anguish of institutionalized programming (thank you NCSY and midrasha). It was weird to chill with them after six months of slowly breaking into Norwegian reserve; we connected so much more quickly, both because of our American openness and through having the same experiences of living as an American in Norway.

Baby skiers! So adorable!

Petter, the Fulbright director, came over to tell me he enjoyed my blog. Eep! After a quick scramble to remember if I’ve written anything incriminating, I smiled and nodded  without giving away which profs were involved in "The Professorial Smackdown" post (he asked). People kept chatting about it all weekend, and now I’m friends with such a large group of the Fulbrighters on FB that you can all be pretty certain you’re getting an abridged version of events. Also, apparently next year’s ETA applicants asked after me in their interviews—I’m so glad they found the blog! Since that was one of my purposes in writing it. And, dude, whoever you are out there that gets Bergen next, be prepared to have the time of your life. 

Friday morning we set off for Lillehammer (yep, that’s the home of the 1994 winter Olympics). The bus trundled past snowy mountain scenery and spent a while beside Norway’s biggest lake, Mjøsa, which was so long everyone assumed it was a fjord until Rena clued us in. It was frozen solid, and there were ice skating paths and ski tracks cut into the snow. I sat in front of Andrea, who’s a veterinarian practicing animal capture techniques for research purposes, and she identified moose tracks for us.

Our ski resort behind Lillehammer showed craggy snow-covered mountains bristling with pine in every direction, adorable red cabins with four feet of snow cupping the roofs dotting their slopes. I kept thinking how, if I had never seen Norway before, it would be just incredible, but at this point it was merely magnificent.

Friday afternoon a group of us walked around for a bit. I got in some laps in the pool before shabbat, and then settled down to a lovely evening of reading and talking in front of the fire. The Fisks, a professorial husband and wife who just arrived in Bergen in January, proved to be darling company, and her good humored delight in landing in Norway while her husband researches gave me a warm glowy feeling. In fact, that was one of the nicest parts of this weekend: seeing the families who had come to Norway together. The older couples snuggling together or skiing in tandem, the reserved Minnesotan family with a high-school aged daughter who seemed so utterly comfortable and content in each other’s company, the Rover Sarah who I think is possibly the Best. Mom. Ever. (okay, so she reminds me of mine) and her husband juggling their young kids. I’ve missed family while I’m out here, and seeing all of these in various stages of life was such a pleasant pick-me-up.

After dinner that night Amanda (Ås ETA), Karen (young Hebrew literature professor) and Ann (probably 60-something-ish year-old writer who presents as both fierce and kind simultaneously (I can say that because we’re not yet friends on FB)) sat discussing the stigma against singlehood for women. It was fascinating to see all of their perspectives. Ann humorously apologized for not solving all that for us years ago, Karen seethed against the assumption that there’s something wrong with single women, Amanda mentioned society’s inability to understand that single women can be happy, and I laughed because I know that when I come home from the most incredible year of my life in which I’m doing work that I find extremely fulfilling, at least one person will ask me about boyfriends. And I have my response all ready: “yes, I found a virile Viking and had a love child with him which I left in Norway because let’s face it, the social welfare laws are better.” Just dare to ask.

Shabbat morning Sarah Johnson (Bergensk flutist) and I went for a walk, and ended up at a small church in the area where the queen of Denmark had bestowed a painting of the ski-slope as a gift. It sits on the altar behind a huge bible, its blue painted landscape quartered by the golden cross that somehow landed on the mountain. I spent the rest of the day alternately reading and dozing and playing bananagrams with the other Fulbrighters—what fun to play with Americans again! I awkwardly made havdalah down in the sitting room because I figured I was less likely to set off the smoke alarm near other candles, but thankfully Joey (Tromsø researcher) was sweet enough to joke about singing the nay-nay-nananay tune and made me feel less weird. Camp Ramah-ers and Bnei Akiva-niks pop up in the most unexpected places.

Saturday night dinner was a formal affair instead of the usual ski-pants and t-shirted proceedings, with each plate costing 500 kroner. It was also annoyingly problematic for me. In the regular buffet, I could just pick out the bits that I can eat and concoct lavish salads for myself. But an appetizer of shrimp followed by a course of deer finished up with some gelatinous-looking quivering blob was not going to work. My table coached our poor waitress through my dietary restrictions and I think heartily enjoyed finishing up my enormous plate after their pathetic three-shrimp servings (probably the chef felt bad that I was just having lettuce and lox, so he gave me a lot of it).

Finally, on Sunday morning, I screwed my courage to the sticking point and strapped on some skis. Andrea and Kirsten (kinesiology researcher studying the effects of stress on young athletes training for the Olympics) helped Sarah Johnson and I with the basics, and we headed out with Sean Taylor and his family (the Minnesotans) onto a cross-country trail. Sean is a ski team coach back in Minnesota, and an excellently patient teacher. When we got to the first hill, he told me to keep one ski a few inches ahead of the other, bend my knees, and keep my back straight so that my body would catch the wind and slow me down a bit. I followed his directions and, to my surprise, found myself zooming down in a glorious adrenaline rush. I couldn’t help it, I let a few whoops out into the countryside. It was such a blitz of happiness. I thought it would be like the time my adrenaline-junkie friend Yoni took me mountain biking (a completely out-of-control near-death experience which still managed to be helluva lot of fun) but weirdly, I have strangely good balance on skis. As a first-class klutz I’d expected to find myself plowing up snow with my nose pretty frequently. Maybe all that time hiking on Bergen’s icy mountains has improved my balance. And lessened my fear of falling.

I think we were all depressed to leave. It’s hard to meet this many awesome people for just a blip and then say bye as they wander off into the fastnesses of the Norwegian wilds for the next few months. Hopefully some of them will drift by Bergen over the rest of our year. Guys, if you're reading this, that's a standing invitation.

The (Slightly Embarrassing) Secret to My Heart

I’ve had a lot on my plate lately. You can tell by the frequency of my blog posts; intense procrastination indicates a heavy workload. Last night I had a dream in which I’d forgotten to prepare for the Fulbright seminar and, instead of presenting my work over the past few months, read the Fulbrighters a children’s book. Which they listened to with surprising eagerness. I think it was my subconscious hinting that I ought to get moving on preparing my presentation. Still, it will be difficult. How to distill the past six months into a ten-minute-long fascinating session? I refuse to bore! Maybe I should just stick with Harold and the Purple Crayon...

I took this picture in Ohio-- the South doesn't have all the crazy

Today Randall Stephens, one of this year’s Fulbright roving scholars, came into Bergen and gave a lecture to the Katten teachers on “The Praying South.” I probably enjoyed it more than anyone. If he’d given that lecture in Maryland or Ohio, I would have felt like a Northerner. But in this group, I felt like an American. Proud of it, babe! Also, I learned a lot: apparently Arkansas does count as part of the South. Randall really rocked it—he had us all laughing and eagerly interested.

Afterwards we chilled in the teacher’s lounge with skillingsboller from Godt Brød (not only does Anita know that that’s the only bakery I can eat from, but her son also happens to work there—score!) and discussed American weirdness, Norway, American weirdness, airport security, American weirdness, the Beatles, American weirdness… I think telling Anita about the kids screaming “USA” and breaking beer bottles in Amherst this past weekend counts as cultural exchange.

Nothing like fresh Bergensk skillingsboller

Something has been niggling at me for months. It’s actually less of a secret than a fact I have in common with every single woman on the planet. We all have some weird thing we like about guys, some totally innocuous detail that melts our hearts and makes us go weak at the knees. For me, it’s always been guys who say my name with an accent. Not American twang, but Israeli purred or Canadian soft or Spanish sultry. Anyhow, the problem is that here at Fantoft, every single guy has an accent. So they inflect my name with their nationality’s habit when they meet me, and all of a sudden I’m drifting off on an effluvium of romance. It’s rather inconvenient to swoon so constantly. You’d think I’d become inured, but it’s been six months and I’m nowhere near. Nobody here has the trouble with “chet” that most Americans experience. Even when Americans get the right degree of phlegm into it, they usually choke up by hardening the “ah” syllables. This is one thing I’m going to miss: falling in love, instantly, repeatedly, multiple times a day, as Europeans ask for my attention or perform the rites of introduction or call to me on the street.

I received the Fulbright waiver I need to sign for our ski weekend, and was amused to find, among all the technical legal language about assuming full responsibility for risks, something about releasing the Fulbright Foundation from liability “caused by acts of God or by situations beyond the control of US-Norway Fulbright.” Who ever adds God into this kind of document? The second condition seems a bit redundant. Maybe it’s to cover damage to atheists. 

Lunch with the Rektor

The UiB rektor. Nah, just kiddng. There is no possible way
Faulkner could look like more of a clotpole in this picture.

I had a great session with my students today on Faulkner. There were, of course, moments where I checked on simple plot points to get “uhhhh…”s from everyone, but since Faulkner buries his key action deep in parenthesized side points, that was the very reason I was checking. Towards the end I allowed some of my vitriolic hatred of him to seep out. The truth is, it’s as much directed towards the professor who first taught me this book as to its author. I have plenty of “static, impotent rage” towards the guy who was such a man’s-club kind of jerk, he used to invite a select couple of the guys (the ones who said maybe Eudora Welty’s heroine wanted to be raped) back to his office for drinks. And who actually said “she’s a mature feminist” of Toni Morrison. Afterwards I could have kicked myself for not sneering, “I’ve never yet met a mature misogynist, why must we needs be mature feminists?” I’ve sneered it a thousand times in my dreams (yes, my best dreams are of repartee unrealized). Anyhow, I offered the students Beloved as a panacea to all Faulkner’s offensive yet intricate assholery (the man who wrote that woman lead lives "not only divorced from, but irrevocably excommunicated from, all reality" can be nothing but a jerk) and was proud of setting aside my rage for most of the discussion so we could play with all his brilliance instead of dissecting his woman-hating.

One of my high schoolers wrote a facetious comparison of the US and UK and, at the end, apologized “for being troll.” I’m not sure if that’s a Norwegian expression, or if he meant “droll.” Either way, it earns a =) -plus.

Today the rektor (equivalent of president) of the University in Bergen had all us Bergen Fulbright folk over for lunch. I was exhausted, having skyped late the night before and then planned my lessons, which started at 8am this morning. At midnight, reading an entire chapter on the concept of “the uncanny” just doesn’t mean a whole lot, and even now I’m still inclined to exclaim at the surprising amount of nothing the author fit into a whole lot of words.

Me in a week. 

Anyhow, all eight of us Bergen Fulbrighters met up for the first time since orientation. Embarrassingly, there was a setting with a bright yellow card with “obs” printed on it for me, to clue in anybody who hadn’t noticed my strange eating habits. At first our American instincts commandeered the conversation, as we all cheerfully chatted and caught up on the past few months. Then the rektor took control and steered the conversation back into an introduction routine where we explained where from, what doing, what the university could fix for us…  I meant to give a simple review of my activities (ETA in Bergen, love it, thanks so much, Mr. Rektor, sir) but somehow got us all sidetracked into a discussion of the pros and cons of equality in education (Norwegian egalitarianism versus American competition). It was actually kind of fascinating to sit in a room full of academics and listen to their perspectives. Also, normally with that many smart people in one place, someone gets peacocky and struts their stuff. But we all have Fulbrights, so everyone pretty much pleasantly assumed we’re all tops and just enjoyed themselves. It was a nice preview of the Fulbright seminar next week—I’m starting to look forward to it. They’re taking us to Lillehammer to ski. Winter Olympics, anyone?

Weekend of Peace

This weekend I went to Oslo as a chaperone for a Bnei Akiva shabbaton, a gathering of Jewish youth from across Scandinavia (Bnei Akiva is a worldwide Zionist youth organization that I grew up in, and the way that kids across Europe learn about and connect to their roots). Friday morning, I was out the door at 6 am, and after one step promptly landed on my tush. Bergen is slippery this time of year.

I met Ziv, the fifteen year-old who was my excuse for a free ticket, at the airport. We made it to the Oslo shul at the same time as the Dansk contingent, made up of ten or so kids from Copenhagen, who’d come over on the boat with the Danish shlichim (shlichim literally means messengers, and in this case was informal ambassadors from Israel made up of dad, mom, and gurgly baby Aviah who was surprisingly verbal for a 15 month-old and knew who I was after about two tries of “zot Hannah” by her ima). The Danish kids spoke Danish, and Ziv had some trouble understanding them. It seems the lingua franca of this weekend is to be English, and myself the only American in the room.

Friday night was your average shabbaton. Lots of singing, coercive good cheer, power-hungry teenagers windmilling everyone into participation. God, I used to hate these things. I saw my favorite Oslo kid, a curly-headed big-eyed lanky little guy whose every movement is either understated chillness or exaggerated humor (think Clint Eastwood meets a Marx brother). I taught him the Ohio sign, just for the heck of it, and he spent the whole weekend “O-H!”ing me.

Friday night, after activities were over, I went back to the shlichot’s apartment with Racheli and Inbar (the Oslo shlichot), the Copenhagen shlichim, and Yonatan, the guy in charge of Bnei Akiva shlichim in Scandanavia (he’s based in Stockholm). There they hashed out the situation of world Bnei Akiva today, how to deal with the communities they’re working in, why the rabbis of these tiny European communities stay and don’t go back to Israel (as Yonatan said, here they can be certain that they’re doing something important, and almost nothing tops that), and how to handle the culture clashes they face. How to both influence and respect the traditions of the communities they’re plopped into. Honestly, listening to them speak, I kept thinking that Americans would make much better shlichim than Israelis, because they can understand secular Jews better. Obviously, the whole point is bridging that culture gap, so my idea is ridiculous, and yet an Israeli who has lived their whole life in a Jewish bubble can understand so little of what’s happening in these Norwegian kids’ lives, that in some ways I think it makes sense.

Shabbat morning I met Amanda (the Ås ETA, went to Dublin together) outside the shul. She’d been curious and wanted to see services. We went in together, and I had that weird mind twist one gets when seeing one’s own world through another’s eyes. I noticed the beauty of the congregation singing together, and the adorable children trooping up to the bimah to sing adon olam, and the intensity of the story of Dina’s rape, as though I was seeing it all for the first time.

At kiddush, people kept assuming Amanda was Jewish, which was fine except when the husband of the American attache here in Oslo said something about so many of the Fulbrighters being Jewish and how we’re always being brilliant disproportionate to our numbers. Awkward dose of Jewish exceptionalism—I half expected him to pull out that list that shows how many Nobel Prizes we’ve got and match it to our .03% of world population, but he blessedly didn’t.

The kids in the shabbaton had a discussion with the chazzan of the community, an Israeli who’s lived in Oslo for a year. They asked great questions, about free will and God’s omniscience, Christians not keeping the rules of the Old Testament, and the reasons for kashrut. I cringed and cringed again as he explained things from his religious Israeli perspective, as he placed ultra-orthodoxy top on a scale of righteousness, gave an answer about the new testament that began with his never having read it, and explained that he keeps kosher because it’s his blueprint for life. It was when he was making a hash of free will that I jumped in and gave the kid the obvious philosophical answer about God being outside time in the simplest English I could drum up. They kept looking at me after that, expecting me to give a real answer after the frum Israeli equivocation, but I kept quiet, just thinking that it’s no wonder Scandinavians don’t want to be frum, their only model for it is the obnoxious Israeli presumption of having all the answers. Americans would definitely make better shlichim.

Shabbat lunch was a hilarious round of all the camp lore I know and love. We stood up on our chairs singing “I’m gonna be a pizza man,” did rounds of “ivdu et Hashem,” and the gang of little siblings at the end of the table led us in “Yibaneh Hamikdash.” Bnei Akiva lives!

Karl Johan in December

Shabbat ends so early here that we had a half hour break, and then it was time for seudah shlishit. The singing was all on a very high key, but then we had havdalah. That was, truly, beautiful. Incredibly sonorous and sway-y and just gorgeous ritual.

Walking down to Domkirken with Amanda, we talked over the day and religion in general. She’s got a thoughtful perspective on everything. She’s never read Anne of Green Gables, but is a kindred spirit nonetheless. At the Domkirk, we met up with other Fulbrighters—Sean and his wife and daughter from down in Kristiansand, Andrea, Ted from Trondheim, Sarah Anderson (the roving scholar who’s come to Bergen twice and possibly changed my life as much as anything else this year through conversations about education), and her daughter Kaila, who is the most thoroughly with-it ten-year-old I’ve ever met. Some of them I remembered from orientation, some of them I really thought I had never seen before, but all of them were interesting and, in that indefinable way, “good people” people.

In Youngstorget we amassed behind banners that read, “More Women, More Peace.” People up on the balcony were speechifying, but we didn’t listen much until one woman shouted into the microphone: “Black! Gifted! Not weak! Not afraid!” It was both incredibly awesome and kind of as though she was thumbing her nose at the western crowd who had deigned to bestow a peace prize on such talent. While we’re on the topic, how wonderful that this was the year that women’s rights activists were recognized? Though cramming them all in together like that, as though we want to get all the women out of the way before we can get back to men, kind of ticked me off.

 

The people on the podium stopped speaking, cuing the end of our chatting. Slowly, the crowd began to move forward. As we crossed the road back towards Karl Johan, people in vests at either side of the avenue held torches up, and the crowd slowly lit their candles at the torches and then passed on beneath the ribbons of Christmas lights and the night’s stars. It was an incredible, glowing flow of be-mittened humanity. I bet Ted five kroner that someone’s hair would catch fire by the end of the night—all that enthusiastic flame in the crowd.

We neared the Stortinget and gazed expectantly up to the balcony of the Grand Hotel. The doors opened to give the crowd the impression of action, and after a few false starts, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee, and Tawakkol Karman came out to the sound of roars from the crowd. We shouted, and they waved. Then the noise died down, and they waved again, and once again we screamed our approval at them, at the world, our endorsement of peace. I snuffled up tears as we watched them bow to the crowd. Mostly, when you get this many people clapping, it’s at a basketball game or when a Republican says something really stupid. But this was cheering for peace. A massive celebration for peace. You can see the video here.

Gbowee, Karman, and Sirleaf, from left to right

Check out the dynamic between Sirleaf and Karman; always fun to watch the dignified fight with the crowd-pleaser.

The one thing that bothered me a bit was that, after all, this was in Norway. And Norwegians just don’t whoop and holler  all that well. These women have accomplished incredible things, the least we can do is yell for them a bit. I grabbed Kaila and together we war-whooped and aiaiaiaiaied and cat whistled into the candle-lit night, giving the women the ovation they deserved. The truth is, Norway is… too peaceful. The last war they had was when the Germans invaded them a little bit seventy years ago. So perhaps they can be excused from lacking enthusiasm—without seeing war, how can you appreciate peace?

Afterwards, we met more Fulbrighters back at Sarah’s for a party. Her husband had cooked up a storm of traditional Norwegian Christmas food, including lefsa, apple cake, and something that looked like butter soup called rommegrøt. He’s playing househusband for the year and definitely exhibiting some Friedan-like symptoms: perhaps it’s not the feminine mystique so much as the staying-at-home-without-a-career mystique.

I got back to Bergen with no voice, and a cheider class to teach in an hour. So I cleverly jotted down some of the main points of chanukkah, stuck some knickknacks in a bag, and told the kids that they had to find a way to perform the story of chanukkah using all the stuff in the bag. That kept them busy the whole time, and then we all enjoyed a chanukkah play, traditional-style. Two of the dads were there, too, and I found it touching how one told me that both his sons say Kiddush every Friday night, no matter what. He really wanted me to know they had some connection to their roots.

Gløgg

I taught my last class of the year this morning. Anita brought in Christmas treats: pepperkaker (christmas cookies), clementines, and gløgg (A Norwegian holiday drink much like mulled wine with raisins, nuts, and spices) to start off the class, and explained that we were having Christmas early because this was my last class before I left. Anna raised her hand in quick panic—“wait, are you… are you coming back in January?”

“Yep, I’ll be here until the summer. You guys are stuck with me until June.” Then, they surprised me. They started to clap. There was a fierce burst of applause for about five seconds. I was startled, and rather emotional. I’m not sure how it feels to be a nobel peace laureate with all of Oslo applauding you, but standing at the front of that classroom with my students clapping to hear I’d be back gave me a warm yummy feeling that had nothing to do with the smell of gløgg.

Happy holidays and happy New Year, everyone. 

Oriented in Oslo

Yesterday I flew to Oslo. The USA-Norway Fulbright Foundation brought everyone in for an orientation. I met the four other people who will be living in Bergen. There are two other young women: Sarah is studying flute, and Ruth is researching climate change. Davin, a professor of digital culture, brought his young family of three boys plus a pregnant wife to Bergen. I also met Nat Wallace, the professor I will be working with on American lit seminars. He could not be more professorial. I think we’ll get along quite well –the absent-minded professor is a type with which I click.

There are 32 people in this year’s Fulbright program in Norway. Only 26 came to the orientation, since the rest are arriving mid-year. As we went around the room introducing ourselves, it became hilariously clear that about two-thirds come from Minnesota in one way or another. Many have Norwegian ancestry. Never before have I felt quite so short, or quite so un-blond.

Fulbrighters fooling around behind the Domkirk

The orientation on the first day was mostly about adjusting socially to Norway. The day ended with a reception at the US ambassador’s residence. Nice place. I might ditch academia and decide to become an ambassador instead. I met the guy for a moment, just enough time for me to mention Ohio and him to cheer for Michigan, at which point I promptly decked him. Just kidding. They gave all us Fulbrighters a glass of cider, directions to the free bar, and instructions to mingle with the very important people in the crowd (I met the Norwegian Director of Education) since Norwegians are shy. It wasn’t the best advice; most of us were not only jet-lagged but also hadn’t eaten for several hours, so the beer mixed poorly with the socializing. Still, nobody did anything too offensive (as far as I can remember).

The ambassador’s house. Nah, just kidding—this is where King Harald V lives

We gathered, glasses in hand, for several speeches. Paeter Ness, the director of Fulbright Norway, surprised me by pointing me out as the first ever ETA in Bergen—apparently if it goes well, they’re going to try to expand to Trondheim and Tromse too. I proudly looked down at my shaking hand and tried not to fall over from exhaustion. Then they herded us into a picture and let us sit down.

That green man in the picture is Ibsen

The second day was the really useful day, with finances and travel grants and health insurance covered. We went over how the bit about not freaking out at prices, and not converting everything to dollars. Kevin, the financials guy, explained that if we must, we should convert using purchasing power as our metric, instead of the 5 to 1 that the kroner meets the dollar at. This means that there’s roughly 10 kroner to every dollar: two hundred NOK buys the same amount of stuff as 20 bucks. Much better than thinking of a liter of milk as costing two dollars and fifty cents.

After the orientation, Kara (a woman who will be up in Svalbard doing research, and who has to take a shotgun with her every time she leaves the settlement in case of polar bears) and I went to the National Gallery to see what we could see. It was small, but select. The Norwegian pictures were especially intriguing. We amused ourselves by choosing art that the other had to pose like:

 

   

Um, yeah, we kind of live here. !!!

Then I hightailed it over to the kosher store in Oslo. After an extended discussion with the guard, during which I gradually slipped out of English until I was surprised to find myself speaking entirely in Hebrew to prove myself a true-blue Jew, I was allowed in. I bought peanut butter, matzah ball mix, and brunøst, or goat cheese. One for each of the places I have lived (you match ‘em up). A woman I met there had done research on Jewry in Bergen, and I think everyone will be surprised to know that there are 150 Jews in Bergen! Mostly Israeli, she said. I am in the process of linking up, and will let you know when I’ve established contact.

I finally got to try the goat cheese everyone else had snacked on at our presentation of Norwegian foods at the Foreign Diplomacy office. The resemblance to peanut butter is entirely coincidental: it tastes like caramel.

Finally, home sweet home. Which looks like this:

 

And the view from my window looks like this:

That's the ugly view, because the real mountains are behind me.

I live in a nice place.

Heading to Norway

I am writing this blog for four reasons, and three of them are people.

My first reason is that when I picked up the call telling me I had received a Fulbright scholarship to teach English in Norway, I googled “Norway Fulbright ETA,” and then “ETA Fulbright Norway,” and then “Fulbright ETA Norway,” and found nothing. Not a single blog, not an interview, not even a Twit. Just the official stuff about bringing extra-warm pajamas and not approaching native Norwegians on buses (they glare coldly if cornered). Of course, that’s partially because Norway only started its ETA program a few years ago, but I decided I’d fill in the gap, so that whoever comes after me can read to their heart’s content about what it’s like to teach English as a Fulbright grantee in Bergen, Norway.

The second and third reasons are both teachers. One of my professors, who wrote a recommendation for me, asked if I was going to blog when I told her I’d been accepted. Ever obedient to awesome teachers, I though, yeah, why not? Then there's the other teacher: like all students, I once had an idiosyncratic but inspiring high school English teacher who gave me the habit of compulsive journaling, and I don’t mind that this blog be its newest manifestation.

The fourth reason is last year’s Norway Fulbright ETA, who told me she really wished she’d kept a blog because it would have helped her synthesize her thoughts. No problem there, I’ll do it all and BETTER than she did! (But thanks for all your advice, Courtney, you were really helpful and are going to be an awesome Teach-for-American). 

Okay, with four reasons to write a blog (which is six more than most bloggers have), I’m off.

My father says my going to Norway is something like Thoreau retreating to Walden. Though audacious, I like the comparison. I’m sure he’s right, and that after eleven months of the legendary prices of Bergen, I’ll be calculating the costs of petty objects in infuriating detail just like Henry David did. But I also hope to live deliberately. To teach. To write. To hike. So why not aspire?

The details: As a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant, I will split my time between teaching English at the University of Bergen, and teaching English at Bergen Katedralskole (Cathedral School), an upper secondary school. I’m going to be running a writing workshop at the University and co-teaching the American literature/American culture seminars, and teaching ESL to different groups of students (regular high school, adult, and adult minority) at Bergen Katedralskole. I’ll also learn Norwegian at the University. Plus joining in the exciting life of Bergen.

Bergen is the second-largest city in Norway. It is a city that, as I have repeated to countless people countless times since March, nestles between a fjord and seven mountains. My sister thinks I should leave out the word “nestles” in favor of “squats”, “swells”, or “is plunked,” but if she was going, it would probably “divinely dwell,” so I figure I’m okay with nestling. 

My knowledge of Norwegian was nil until I found out I’d be living there for a year and began to seriously cram my mind full of Norwegian words and phrases. Now I’ve repeated “Je kan bare litt Norsk”—“I speak a little Norwegian” almost as many times as I’ve told people about nestling between a fjord and the mountains.

The attacks in Oslo a week ago mean that the Norway I arrive in will be radically different from the Norway that existed before. And yet, I hope that going to a traumatized country will express my solidarity and support for its people. Norwegians will spend the next months mourning for the people who were so brutally attacked, and for its own lost innocence. Having lived in countries where terror changed the attitude of the people towards daily living, I hope to see Norway grow stronger and more courageous as it rethinks its identity.

People keep telling me I’m brave, for going to a foreign country where I know nobody. But Norway looks like this:

And this:

And this:

I’m not brave. I’m just a glutton for breathtaking scenery.

I’ll post pictures as I hit each spot. And I’ll post the stories that come with them, all of the hilarious inevitable embarrassments that envelop a foreign traveler, and the cultural epiphanies, and the development of my teaching skills, and the magical mythical Norwegian lore as I see it thread through contemporary Norwegian political-social realities. 

I board the plane for Norway in a week. 

-- The Official Disclaimer suggested, humorously enough, by the US government:

I in no way represent the US government or its views, though they are being kind enough to put me on the dole for a year. Also, according to my contract, they allow me full artistic and academic freedom. Watch out, blogosphere.