read time: approximately 9 minutes

This week

• On Mon, Aug 31 & Tu, Sept 01, I was in Oslo for classroom observations (Munch VGS & Blindern VGS, respectively)
• On Wed, Sept 03, I conducted first workshop at the college!;
• On Th, Sept 04 I attended my first Norwegian language class at the college!;
• I’ve been abroad for six weeks!

In graduate school, I learned to ask myself two questions: What do you need? How can you fulfill that need? Each day offers opportunities to practice responding. And it’s hard for me to be honest with myself about what I really need because I am so used to ignoring my own needs so that I can attend to others. But being in Norway, I only have my own needs to fulfill. This is the first time since 2005 that I have lived by myself and only have myself to take care of. Every other year of my life, I have lived with others: with family, college roommates, graduate school roommates, my partner, our pets. And I adore living with others. I appreciate the company, I like putting together a household, I enjoy cooking and sharing meals with others. I like the bustle. So sometimes Norway is lonely. But it’s given me opportunities to really respond to those two questions. Two examples of how I’ve been responding. 

The first example starts as a story about butter. In the first couple weeks of returning from approximately four orientations in Oslo and getting myself situated in my apartment, I went grocery shopping for kitchen staples. I am lucky to live in an apartment that has been passed from Rover (what I’m called) to Rover to Rover for the last five years, so it’s furnished and has some basic kitchen things. But I needed my own—fish sauce, olive oil, vinegars and such—so I set off for a grocery shopping adventure. I was planning on going to at least two grocery stores, one that I knew had cheap prices on some of those pantry staples and some weekly groceries, and one where I could purchase most of my groceries for the week. And some snacks. I would also have to swing by another store, Europris, that’s like a Meijer, for some washcloths. I made sure I had my phone, a shopping bag, my little rolly grocery cart, and off I went. 

Back in the States, I love grocery shopping. I love cooking. I love eating. To do all this is relatively easy for me. Before I left for Norway, I told Jeremy that I was nervous about cooking abroad just because I wouldn’t have my tools and I didn’t even yet know which ingredients would be available to me—with our interconnected economies I can get practically anything in Norway, but it’s a matter of cost. Same as back in the States. My Fulbright pay only covers my living expenses and my home institution is only paying me for half a year—of money they owe me anyway because I teach a class that is more than the standard number of credit hours so I’m using those bonus credits as my pay for the first semester—so I need to be relatively price conscious. I’m buying locally, seasonally, like I do in Colorado, and looking for sales. Fish is cheaper than beef! So grocery shopping can be stressful. Added to this stress is that everything is written in Norwegian and guess what? Your girl isn’t yet fluent in Norwegian. Luckily there are pictures on all packaging, but I need to know the fine print. 

I know that one day, grocery shopping will be easy, but in the early days it’s not. First, I need to purchase a whole mess of things on a budget. And without being able to just put all my groceries in a car—I have the little grocery buggy, remember? Then, I need to explore the grocery store: what items are available to me? How is the grocery store organized? How do I pay for things? When I interact with others, they think I understand Norwegian, and it’s a little embarrassing that I don’t know the language. Norwegians learn English starting in Kindergarten, but their default language is still, just guess, Norwegian. And then I need to google translate every item that looks interesting. I’m learning a lot of food words! But ultimately it’s pretty taxing, more taxing at least than just hopping into my King Soopers or Costco in Colorado. 

So a couple weeks back when I was looking for staples and groceries, I had successfully completed my many grocery and errand stops (yay!) and I had just one more item to cross off my list: butter. I turned to the butter (smør) section and was faced with a wall of butter. So much butter. How does this amount of butter exist? And this is an American saying this. Norway takes deep pride in its agrarian roots, producing all kinds of delicious butter and cheeses (ost). Did you know that Norwegians are the originators of Jarlsberg cheese? I started looking at the butter, using google translate, and noticed that butter and margarine (margarin) are shelved together—not like one section of smør and one section of margarin, but intermixed. Madness! I also noticed that the packaging that’s visible from outside the doors of the refrigerated section where the smør is shelved doesn’t specify smør or margarin so I have to look at the top of the packages to ascertain what it’s made of. 

I can’t look at every single one of them, so I move to looking at prices. Someone told me once that when I’m looking for wine on a restaurant menu to go for one that costs in the midrange: not the most expensive and not the cheapest. I figured that strategy could work for butter. I find a couple contenders and pull the first one from the shelf and hold my phone up to it. This smør has rose hips in it. Huh? Why does one want rose hips in their smør? I pull the next one in the midrange price. Also floral-scented. What? I am going to have to ask a Norwegian about that. Or maybe the translation is off? I’m not risking it. After pulling out a few more and realizing they are margarin, I’m ready to just convince myself that I don’t need butter. 

Instead, I take a deep breath and ask myself what I need right now and how that need can be fulfilled. I tell myself that I need butter. And that I want grocery shopping to be easy. I take another deep breath and remind myself that grocery shopping isn’t always going to be hard. And even if it is right now, I can do hard things. I put this in perspective: if I just spend a few more minutes looking for butter, I’ll have nice butter and future me will be very happy. And I’ll have found a butter I like. I look at a few more and then finally land on one: smør with olive oil (olivenolje). Yum. And luckily that’s a cognate. I drop it in my cart and head to the cashier. Turns out the butter is delicious and even contains hints of salt—which are not specified on the packaging, I might add. Future me is very happy.

A second, quicker example. After cooking in my kitchen for a couple of weeks I have learned that I need some additional kitchen items: a bigger pot, a bigger pan, a slotted spoon, a silicon spatula, and tongs. If you have ever been to my house and I have cooked for you, you likely know that this is one of my favorite and most versatile kitchen tools. I am neither joking nor exaggerating. I love kitchen tongs and have a drawer full of them so that if they’re in the dishwasher I have a ready pair. My apartment came with two sets of garbage tongs (see picture). The red ones don’t open far enough. What does one even do with the other pair unless you’re a restaurant chef adding microgreens to a plate of delicious food? Also don’t open far enough. And also also, they’re plastic? So I have been looking for tongs. Everywhere I look, stores only have the tweezer tongs. I must be missing something—maybe like with the floral-scented butter? Maybe I should learn how to use tweezer tongs and/or tongs that don’t open wide enough and just get over it? I was hoping that on my errands today I would find some I liked, but nothing. 

I finally ended up in a speciality kitchen store (Kitch’n) and found suitable tongs! The salesperson did direct me to tweezer tongs as a first option. I didn’t even look at the price before she rang me up. Because you know what? This last week was a difficult cooking week because I’m frustrated by the tools I have. So I asked, what do I need? How can I fulfill this need? The answer: I need to feel comfortable in my kitchen so that I will cook for myself and not just get takeout from the fast casual spot with delicious french fries mere steps from the front door of my apartment. Literally they know my name. Also because my mother introduced me to them when I moved in. Some of the staff speak Thai! Anyway, I need to cook and to do that, I need to have the right tools. So I bought the tongs. For $67. You read that right. See picture! For comparison, I bought a 4.2 L pot for $35. I balked at the price, but only for a second. There were a set of tongs that were $10, but they weren’t silicon tipped and I was afraid I would scratch my pans. I’ve washed and dried them and used them to pull out steamed broccoli to go with my rotisserie chicken tonight and you know what? They’re a dream and have this wild opening and closing mechanism that relies on which side is pointed up and down. But the biggest victory? I’m not frustrated by garbage tongs. And cooking, for today, has become a delight again. I’ll be taking these tongs back to the States with me, by the way. Oh, and toilet paper was on sale. I’d call that a win-win.