Getting settled

On June 2nd, my first official morning in Norway, I woke up to the most generous sunshine.  A great sign, I told myself.

I am terribly excited about writing a new chapter of my life in a country where I have never lived before.

The strangest things - and this never happened to me before - is to live a life in a language that I don't understand.  So as you can tell from this photograph, if you look at the left side, I have now started to learn some basic Norwegian.

The flag you will notice was waiting for me at the airport.

(Norwegians are the most enthusiastic people when as far as their flags are concerned. It's quite interesting you see their flags in some Christmas cakes, clothes and backpacks).

I sat and did my first lesson of Norwegian and I had to take a nap afterwards.

Funny they have not just the usual five vowels, a e i o u, but also æ, å, and ø! So I had fun trying to pretend that I can pronounce these last three.

I also listening to the radio during breakfast and while I understand some universally recognizable words like "stasjon" or "universitet" which must be "station" and "university", the rest was a mystery to me.

For now, the intonation feels both exotic and inimitable.