Category Archives: cross-cultural living

cross-cultural living, memorable eats

Pinterest, and a few of our favorite things

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Sometimes the blog becomes my spot for confession.You may recall that in the past I’ve shared my strong attraction to things like

  • Coffee (read that here. and here.)
  • Pizza (read about that here. and here.)
  • Chocolate (read about that here)
And now it’s time to admit one more. I’m here to share that I am addicted to really like Pinterest. A lot.
Pinterest has been our source for a lot of new meals, home remedies, restaurant copycat recipes, and homemade versions of things I can’t find in Norway. I’ve learned to improvise on things we miss from the states, and find healthy alternatives to some of our favorites. And of course, the occasional guilty pleasure is included as well!
One of my Pinterest boards is entitled Pinterest Success, where I save all the things that have received positive reviews from some pretty tough critics…
I thought I’d share a few of of our favorites, and ask if you have any Pinterest success stories to share.
Our Top Five Favorite Pinterest Finds, in no particular order
  1. Avocado Chicken Burgers: we all love avocados. And chicken. So this was a no-brainer. I didn’t have any breadcrumbs so I made some using a couple of slices of my homemade bread (see item #3 below). These were great!
  2. No-mayo Tuna Salad: Zack and I like tuna, but we don’t like mayo. Because of this, we’d never made tuna salad. But thanks to this great recipe, we make it often and really enjoy it!
  3. Peasant Bread: like I’ve talked about in a previous post (here), I make most of our bread from scratch these days. And peasant bread is my go-to recipe. I bake it in a bread pan instead of a bowl, and I change up the types of flour or throw in some seeds or herbs, depending on what’s on hand.
  4. No-yeast No-rise Cinnamon Rolls: here’s one of those guilty pleasures I mentioned. These are not at all healthy (although I do replace some of the white flour with whole wheat). But they are incredible!
  5. Sloppy Joes on Cornbread Waffles: I’m now learning there are lots of non-traditional ways to use your waffle iron. But our first adventure was a HUGE hit with the whole family. I made a healthy sloppy joe mix, with lots of diced veggies and ground chicken. Then we put that on top of waffles made with corn bread batter. Delicious!
What are some of your favorites – or maybe even disasters – from Pinterest?
Here are a just few Pinterest-inspired projects and recipes we’ve tried over the last couple of years…
Easter bunnies & Easter chicks
Coffee filter snowflakes
Paper chain Christmas trees
Peanut butter & jelly muffins
Grinch Christmas cookies
Homemade black bean burgers on
homemade wholewheat buns
Cranberry Sauce
Oven-grilled burgers on homemade buns
No-yeast No-rise cinnamon rolls
Peasant bread
cross-cultural living, Norway

Norwegian Strawberries: what do you think?

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It’s that time of year again. The stands are popping up all over the city. Just in front of the mall, in fact, you can find two set up right next to each other.
A price war in the making, perhaps?
Yes, it’s time for Norwegian strawberries again. And people here seem to be quite serious about them. Countless times, we’ve been told of the far-superior berries grown in Norway.
Don’t get me wrong: they are good. Maybe it’s just my inexperienced palette – but I can’t really taste a difference between them and the strawberries we can buy at the grocery stores.
So while many around us are snatching up local berries for 35 – 50 kroner per basket (prices are continuing to drop as supply has greatly increased the last few days), we were happy to buy the Belgian berries at our local Kiwi last week for 18 kroner for a basket.
So to our friends who live in Norway…
What do you think? Can you taste a big difference? Do you spend a little more to get the Norwegian fruit? Are we missing out?
cross-cultural living, Day-to-Day, What's it like

Living at the beach

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Fifteen minutes. I timed it. That’s how long it takes for us to drive to our favorite beach.
Sections of rock, sections of sand – lots of beauty

Zack and I have never been the kind of folks who live for the beach. We don’t look forward to endless hours laying in the sand. It’s just not our thing. A short trip to the beach and we’re happy, and ready to move on.

And yet, if you pay for a beach vacation, and take the time to drive several hours to the beach (as was always the case when we lived in Georgia), then there is a sense of obligation. You feel like you need to spend a lot of time there.

But ah, the beautiful thing about living in a beach town: it’s quite easy to spend an hour on the beach and not feel like it was a waste of effort.

We’re learning to keep a few things close to the door (beach towels, sunscreen, beach toys), a few things on hand in the kitchen (lomper, sprøstekt løk, pølse, chips, snacks, engangsgrill), and a few things in the car (fishing net, picnic blanket).

William & an engangsgrill (one-use grill)

So if the mood hits and the weather and schedule come allow, we can be ready to go at the drop of a hat.

And if we get there and decide were bored after an hour, it’s no big deal!

The one major drawback? Sand. Everywhere. But I guess I can live with it.
cross-cultural living

Home. No place like it. #expatlife

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Growing up, I remember a sign that read:

Home is where the heart is

It was just a sign then. But living the ex-pat life has really brought that phrase to life. The idea of home changes a lot when you find yourself living in five different places over the course of 6 months. (So thankful we’ve been able to call one place home for the past 15 months!) Longtime neighbors and being recognized at the local supermarket are replaced by packing, unpacking, and trying to learn your way around.Over the past year and a half, we’ve come to have this joke that one of the highest compliments we can pay someone is to tell them something feels normal. Sitting outside for dinner with our neighbors – normal. Spending time with our friends on their boat – normal. Smelling freshly mowed grass – normal. Things that are familiar from our “past life” can bring a sense of comfort.

And yet, normal also changes as you move from culture to culture.

Home is where the heart is. It is the place where we are all together, the place where we can unpack a suitcase and use our own pillows, where we can relax and breathe easy.

After almost two years of this new life, these are things we’ve learned. But I also know that when we visit the states in the future, we will have some adjustments to make and some reverse culture shock to deal with.

I just read THIS ARTICLE, and it has some really helpful and practical info for returning to your home country.

Thought I’d post it on the blog…

  1. So I can reference it when we visit America for a couple of months next year
  2. For those who might be returning to their home culture soon
  3. For those of you who have friends or family returning the states after an extended period overseas
cross-cultural living

Cultural Adaptation

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Sometimes it means learning language. Maybe it’s remembering to take your shoes off at the door, learning where to return your plastic bottles for a refund, understanding the right things to say in a social setting.
And sometimes it means eating [really good] frozen pizza.
Just one of the sacrifices we make as we live the ex-pat life 🙂
cross-cultural living

American Hospitality

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Not only have our friends here in Norway helped us in these first fourteen months. Friends and family from back in the states have also done things to love on and encourage us. From cards to emails, phone calls to care packages, we’ve gotten so much enjoyment from every gesture of kindness.Here is just a sampling of the outpouring of love… thanks to everyone who has sent us bits of encouragement right when we needed them 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

cross-cultural living, friends

Norwegian Hospitality

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Over the past fourteen months, we’ve been blessed by so many incredible people. They’ve invited us into their homes, as well as on outings around Norway. We are so thankful for the way they’ve included us and taught us so much through their kindness.Here are a few pictures of just some of the events we’ve been included in and/or hospitality that has been extended to us since arriving here…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

cross-cultural living

Guilty Pleasures

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m.
Yum.

It’s really dangerous when you live in a place filled with so many good types of candy. And specifically chocolate.

Seriously. I find myself exercising more or walking a little extra, to justify a little treat at night.

Take for example my newest guilty pleasure:

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You may think they look like brown peanut M&M’s. Okay, they do. But they are amazing. One of my friends from language school came over last night for dinner, and brought some to the boys. And I am having a tough time staying out of them!

What is your favorite ‘guilty pleasure’? Is there something you save to snack on until after the kids are in bed?

 

These are Freia Easter eggs –
similar to the Cadbury eggs we get in the states.
Freia makes so many great candy bars.
These are two of our favorites – especially Daim!
The orange bag is from our city’s chocolate company.
The red bag is some of our favorite gummy candies.
This was actually in Sweden –
but fun to see a humongous chocolate bar!
cross-cultural living

Ticket to Drive

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I’ve posted about what it’s like to drive here in Norway (see post here). What I didn’t address was a driver’s license.The idea of having to take a driving test scared me. Sure, I’ve been driving since I was 15, but being tested on rules in a European country? Whoa. And in another language? Even more frightening! And trying to learn road rules and take a theory test in a second language? No thanks.

There are different requirements based on the license you already hold. Lucky for us, the requirements for someone with a US driver’s license weren’t so bad. As long as we began the licnse exchange process within the first year of arriving, we could exchange our license by completing a one-hour lesson and passing the road test. No theory/written test required. But only if we passed the first time (had we not passed, the requirements were significant.)

Zack began his process last fall, and it went smoothly. After his ‘lesson’ and test, he was the proud owner of a Norwegian drivers license. He was also happy to report that both the school instructor and the driving test examiner did everything in English.

The one-hour lesson does two things 1) it allows you use of the driving school’s car to take the test (we were not allowed to use our own car). And 2) it involves driving with the instructor from Sandefjord to Larvik (where the testing facility is). You get instruction along the way, tips on things to improve, and reminders about rules that are a bit different from what we know from America.

So in late January (about four days shy of one year here – yes, I’m a procrastinator) I began all the paperwork to exchange my license. A few weeks ago, just after Zack returned from the states, I took my test. Same instructor and same examiner. And same result: success!

While we probably could have managed fine taking the test in Norwegian, it was nice to have one less stress factor involved.It feels good to have one more thing in place to make life a little easier here in our new home!

 

cross-cultural living, Norway

Architectural Digest: follow up (where we live)

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I probably should have included it in the original architecture post (HERE). But for those who might be curious about what our house looks like, here’s a picture of it taken last year.As I mentioned before, we have been told that it was built around 1897.

The house is divided into two separate homes/apartment, and we live in the second floor apartment.
Just today I ran across a website with a few photos of our city (here). The fourth picture down was taken on our street, just a little south of our house.
And for those of you who are history buffs, we’ve also discovered something on YouTube. It is a chronological slideshow of Sandefjord, dating from 1870 – 2012. It is about 15 minutes long, so if you aren’t familiar with our city, it might be a little boring. But I found it quite interesting to see the city grow and change over the years!