Taxes are a bitch!

Yeah, apparently I have to pay some back taxes this year. (Is that even how that is expressed in English?? My brain is mush).

I was shocked when I got my tax return (selvangivelse in Norwegian) to put it mildy. The amount listed there was enough to seem surreal! So I put it off (as we do with boring/terrifying paperwork), but seeing as how I have to submit any changes before May 1st, I rolled up my sleeves and got at it tonight. 


Turns out it wasn't that bad once I got started. Part of the problem may be that I have never documented any of my students loans or debt from the US. This can definitely help me since I've been paying interest on that stuff for years (wish I would have documented this a lot sooner!?). And sending in that information online was fairly painless. So yeah, now we wait and cross our fingers and hope that the Norwegian IRS (Skattetaten) recalculates and finds out that they actually owe me money! ;)


So stop procrastinating if you were in the same boat as me! It's the anticipation that's the worst of it. And once you get to work, you never know what you'll find. I, for example, found some old Norwegian coursework of mine from when I'd been on my Norwegian learning journey for a little over a month! I got some good laughs out of some of my answers and I have to share them for all of your Norwegian speakers out there!


Seriously, enjoy my answers to these worksheet questions. I definitely had a good time reading them out loud to Lars!


Når kom du til Norge?
Jeg kom til Norge 2 måneder siden.


Har du norske venner?
Ja, jeg har norske venner men ikke så mye.


Spiser du norsk mat?
Ja, jeg spiser fårikål.


Har du legitimasjon?
Jeg tror ikke.


Drikker du kaffe?
Ja, jeg drikker kaffe med mange sukker og melk.


Hva liker du å spise?
Jeg liker å spise mange tinger.

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Besøk

Jeg har hatt besøk! means "I have had visitor/s!"

Meet Matt, an old friend of mine from college! Here he is in my apartment in Hamar doing one of the things he likes best--making delicious food!

We had a great time when Matt stayed with us for a couple of days around Easter. Luckily he managed to randomly make friends with some German students that live here and hung out with them also while he was in Hamar; I had to work almost every day he was here. :/

But we still managed to do quite a bit and have a great time! I curse myself for not taking more pictures. I have really been slacking on that front lately. But here is Matt, Ole-Gunnar and Linda at Volume where we met one night for drinks. We got a little bit silly that night, which takes me back to college for sure. Thanks for that, Matt.

We also ate a wonderful lunch together the day Matt had to go back to Germany (he's there on a Fulbright! I know, he's legit).

I'm smiling here for a lot of reasons--I am about to eat one of the best sandwiches in the world, it was so wonderful catching up with an old friend AND because we could switch back and forth effortlessly between Norwegian and English (yeah Matt's a bad ass, we met via Spanish classes, he's fluent in German and can speak Norwegian too!). As much as I love and enjoy speaking Norwegian, it's priceless to speak English with an old friend from the Pacific Northwest.
Priceless!

Du er velkommen tilbake når som helst Matt! Takk for besøket!

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The Fault in Our Stars

Read this book, it just rocked my world!
(I cried a lot.)

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Raj

OK, here's a post for all you Big Bang Theory fans out there!

On my flight from Seattle to London, I had one of the worst seats possible and the plane was packed. Needless to say, I didn't have high hopes for journey. As my neighbors came, I thought it might be alright after all. A young woman in her early thirties came on my left and at the last minute an Indian man about the same age plopped down on my right. Plus, I had a great book I was reading and full battery on all my devices so how bad could it be right?

I made small talk with the woman on my left; she was quite chatty and initiated a lot of conversation. I had a lot more reason to talk to the man on my right while he was fumbling for his seat belt and generally getting settled and trying to avoid my personal space, ;) but he never said a word to me. I just smiled politely at him and settled in for what I thought would be a pretty chill, relaxed 9 hours over the Atlantic.

Boy was I wrong! The instant this guy got a travel size bottle of wine in his hand from the flight attendant's first round, he went Raj on me. Seriously, it was uncanny. He had just a thick of an accent, asked equally as random questions and apparently can't talk to women unless he's tipsy. I mean seriously, the first question he asked me was (please imagine this in Raj's voice):

"Have you noticed your nails are perfectly symmetrical?"

And it didn't get less hilarious from there. 

And for some reason, the flight attendant was hanging out two mini bottles of wine at a time instead of one. So we drank us some Pinot Grigio and got a little tipsy. My female neighbor joined us and we wasted a 3-4 hours of our long journey talking about our respective jobs, families, politics and travel goals. 

It was easily the most entertaining flight of my life!

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"Home"

I'm "home" in WA.
It has been fantastic.

I feel like I have rediscovered old friendships
and myself-
my old spark
drive
and playfulness.

I have been going a million miles an hour
but am relaxed
and found my patience again
(which has been MIA)
somewhere in the chaos of dirty diapers
dusty shelves
and not enough hours in the day.

Soon I'm headed "home" to Hamar
to Lars
our awesome new bed
my job
soccer
and my Norwegian connections.

Why couldn't my two homes be a little closer??

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