read time: approximately 11 minutes

This week

• We flew from Amsterdam to Oslo and then drove from Oslo to my new town, Halden;
• From Wed, Aug 06- Fri, Aug 08 I attended pre-semester faculty meetings at Østfold University College, my host institution;
• I set up my Halden apartment with the assistance of my parents and brother (who got to take a trip to IKEA in Sweden!)

This week, the reality has really hit me that I’m not just in Europe on vacation, but that I’m going to live here. There were some things I’ve been noticing in Amsterdam and Oslo that I had made internal comments about that wouldn’t just be temporary and that I would have to navigate for the year, like showers without lips to hold in the water, resulting in a flooded bathroom (it doesn’t happen everywhere, but enough that it’s wicked annoying). But then there were all the cool things about living in Europe that I was getting excited about: food that’s not poison, a walking and public transportation culture, buildings older than the United States has been a country! Despite all the newness and excitement, it was also really good to connect with little reminders of home when I’m missing it. 

We ended up renting a car to drive from Oslo to Halden, my new town (the train is just as fast and you don’t have to drive yourself), because we had 12 pieces of luggage, 7 of which were mine. The car we rented was small, so the plan was to put me and my dad in the car with all the luggage and my brother and mom would take the train. When I picked up the car from the airport, though, my brother, who is an engineer, and I were like, we are putting every piece of luggage in this car so that we can all ride down together. And we did it! See pictures! A little tight, but we’re tight! 

When we entered Halden, I saw the mountains and realized how much I had missed them. Growing up in the San Fernando Valley in Southern California, the mountains are all around you. When I went away to college in Boston, I realized that I had taken for granted and missed those mountain ranges. I wouldn’t get mountains again until we moved to Colorado. Now, I get to see the Front Range everyday from my neighborhood and on my way to and from work. On a clear day I can just see the tops of the Rockies. I miss this view. Driving into Halden, though, I realized that there were also peaks and valleys, and I’m looking forward to exploring them.

Hearing Jeremy’s voice and seeing his beautiful scruffy punim have also been reminders of home. We might be 1 million miles away from each other—or whatever Google maps says—but with a phone call I can hear his voice and sometimes even hear the pets, really just Phoebe, who can be a chatterbox. Like her mom. Back in Colorado, there is the distraction of what needs to be done around the house, what’s for dinner that night, who’s picking up the pets’ meds. Jeremy and I both have offices at the house, which is convenient, but that means we work a lot. So we don’t always get to talk talk. Being away has allowed us to talk talk, and that’s been really nice. In day-to-day interactions, I also sometimes forget that he has a Michigan accent. But when I can only hear his voice it comes right through and it reminds me of home. 

Something kind of unexpected was hearing Coach Bennett’s voice on my Nike Running Club app. When I switched phones a few months ago because I shattered my screen I lost all the data from my previous running app because I had never signed in (rookie mistake). There was no longer a free version of that app, so I turned to google and reddit to read what the community thought. And lots of people pointed to Nike. I had my skepticisms, but it was free, so I thought why not. (To be fair, Jeremy was like, it might be monetarily free, but they’re taking your data. Nike’s not doing anything for free. Blah blah blah. It was a running app people liked!) So I started running with the app (and Phoebe) and for three days a week, it was me and Coach Bennett (and Phoebe). He’s really motivational! And corny funny. When I moved to Europe the app asked me about my location so I turned on Europe and on my first run, it wasn’t Coach Bennett’s voice. I legit almost cried in sheer worry. And then I figured out how to get him back. In the program I’m currently doing the coaches switch off, but hearing Coach Bennett has been a real comfort. It’s like, no matter where I go, some things will be the same.

So here’s something that was familiar yet unexpected and disturbing. When we arrived in Halden it was so quiet. Like, this is a tiny little harbor town where people from the surrounding bigger towns come in for the weekend to walk around, look at the shops, and have ice cream. Kind of reminds me of a New England tourist town? My brother and I had a hard time finding parking for the car and in our frustrations, started asking why this was so hard? Why have so many parking restrictions on such a small town? When I was asking a co-worker about it and inquiring about good (free) parking spots, she mentioned that on Wednesday night the town was about to get really loud because of Norwegians who would gather in Halden for their weekly American car show. Huh? 

Turns out that on Wednesdays during the summer, a group of Norwegians who have fixed up old American cars from the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s will gather at a town in Southern Norway to hang out/tailgate and check out each other’s cars. And Halden is the unofficial capital of this business. So we braced ourselves. And it was kind of like you’d expect: people walking around looking at cars. There was a live band playing old American rock tunes. The party store chain had set up a booth where they were selling cowboy hats. 

Then I started noticing people dressed up in poodle skirts and styling their hair in DAs. People were also totally outfitted in American brands. One guy we saw struttin’ into a restaurant had on a Wrangler red buffalo check plaid shirt, tucked into Levi jorts, white calf-length Vans socks (because they said so) and white high-top Converse. Hair also styled in a DA. Ray-Bans. My brother and I started noticing what we thought was a strange fetishization of a slice of American culture. In a country (Norway) where almost 30% of the cars are electric (for comparison, the stat for the US is 1.4%), these drivers were showing off their combustion engines, revving to make their presence known, and with modified mufflers to make their cars sound louder. They were blasting American music from the same time period. But it wasn’t just the cars and the outfits. Something felt off. I finally said it. This is giving MAGA vibes. My brother agreed. And then we started seeing the Confederate flags. My brother and I realized that it was time to get out of the middle of town and to get back to my apartment as quickly as possible. 

What I thought was only going to be on Wednesday turned into also being on Friday and Saturday (it was raining on Thursday and I’m thinking it would have been a whole four-day affair had they not been rained out). When I went on my run on Friday morning a car drove past me with two guys sitting in the trunk with a Confederate flag draped over their laps, like a blanket. The RVs were flying Confederate flags. Some people had modified American flags to include a Confederate flag. Which is illegal in the US—adjusting an American flag in any way is an act of defacement. I wondered what these folx thought of the Confederate flag and why they were flying it. An American colleague brushed it off as, they don’t really know what they’re doing and what it means. Don’t they? And even if they don’t, when I see that flag it gives me chills—in a bad way. It makes my stomach flip. I wondered what their obsession with America was really about. Jeremy reminded me that our French cousin had told us years ago that Scandinavia is a bed of white supremacy. 

I was scared and frustrated, and glad we were leaving on Saturday to go on vacation to Stockholm and Oslo. This wasn’t just about seeing a flag that represents debasement and dehumanization. I see Confederate flags back in Colorado. My neighbors fly Trump flags from their flagpoles and porches. Some tuck them away in their garages. My state representative is Lauren Boebert, for goodness sake! I have seen Confederate flags in many places where I have lived: Florida, Georgia, Maine, Michigan. But to see it here—and not be warned by my university host—was shocking. I’m still shook. 

We’re not going to end this post there. The reason I have been in Halden this week is because my university host invited me to campus during their back-to-school faculty meetings and I gladly obliged. It would give me a chance to meet everyone, she said, before the school year started. She also asked me to do a little presentation to invite collaborations with other faculty and conduct workshops in their classes, so I was able to do that as well. Turns out that my home base faculty and office are in the National Center for English and Foreign Languages in Education. Norway has about a dozen national centers across the country, all housed at universities, that study and disseminate information on education. For example, there’s a National Center for Reading. It’s a big deal that Høgskolen i Østfold, where we’re at, has a Center, because it’s considered a regional university, rather than a big fancy one. The Center teaches about teaching languages and develops programming for the entire country. It’s kind of a big deal! There is a group that studies and teaches about the teaching of English—this is the group I’m in. And there’s a group that studies and teaches about the teaching of other languages, including: French, German, Spanish, Russian, and Mandarin. 

This is the first time in my life that I have been surrounded by other faculty who are multilingual and multicultural. I am not the outlier in that I speak multiple languages and was raised in a multicultural household! When I asked a colleague what she considers her home language, she said there were too many to name. These new colleagues all understand the value of many languages and the politics behind having to make choices about which languages are prioritized in school. We had a lunch conversation about which languages we use in which situations—which is the language of our homes, which is the language of our research and teaching, which language/s do we think in. Norwegian itself was derived from Danish and has multiple dialects. The state has established a rule that print news must be published in the major dialects, bokmål and nynorsk. If you send an email or letter to a government office or official, you have the right to have a response in the language you wrote it in, including the Indigenous language, Sámi. Norway has had an influx of immigrants and refugees, and the students speak a variety of languages. It’s inspiring to be situated in a department where the faculty understand the connections to home language/s and developing that alongside Norwegian and English.