Tag Archives: keeping it real

cross-cultural living

There’s no place like home!

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Lunch before leaving the hospital – don’t I look thrilled?

Monday night was a long night. I think I had been so in and out all day Monday that I just wasn’t very sleepy when night came. Add to that the elements of being in the hospital with a lot of activity around, and two other people in the room, and it just made for a long night.

I got up Tuesday morning and made my way down the hall to the patient cafeteria. This was quite different from my experiences in American hospitals! The nurse will gladly bring food to your room when you aren’t up to moving around, but I was encouraged to try and start walking a bit so I could be discharged. So I had a bite to eat and then went back to my room, exhausted but happy with the progress.

Zack dropped the boys off at school and then came to the hospital. We sat around a bit, and then I had a meeting and exam with the doctor, who said I could go home after lunch. I managed to get myself dressed while Zack went downstairs and fill my prescriptions, and then he accompanied to the cafeteria.

Around 13.00/1:00 PM Tuesday afternoon I was released and we made our way home. Again, exhausting is the best word that comes to mind. Everything is exhausting right now. But I slept much better last night, and I feel a bit more energetic today. I’m trying to get up and move every hour or so, and each time it gets a little better. I just keep reminding myself that this will take a while!

cross-cultural living

Surgery: let’s try this again / Operasjon: en gang til

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SURGERY RESCHEDULED…As you may have read on a previous post (here), I was supposed to have surgery in early December. But it didn’t happen. I was third on the schedule, and apparently the two before me took longer than expected.

I’ve been anxiously waiting on word from the hospital regarding my rescheduled date. We left for our time in Hungary and I still hadn’t heard anything. But as we arrived home yesterday we checked the mail, and there it was! I am on the schedule for January 19. And based on the time that I have to be there, it looks like I’m early on the schedule, too.

So here we go again! I’ll keep you all posted…

Christmas cheer

Christmas Cheer (part 19): Sometimes it’s tough

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Christmas 2012 was our first outside of Georgia. We were living in Vancouver at the time. Thankfully we had quite a few good friends around and it made things much easier.

Christmas 2013 was our first in Norway. Everything was new and it was cool to learn about the traditions. And to be honest, Zack’s horrible stomach flu made it hard to think too much about what we were missing.
But for whatever reason, our third Christmas away from the states seems to have hit us harder.
I hope this doesn’t come off as ungrateful. We are very happy here. We have good friends. We feel at home. We’ve been invited to a variety of activities and get-togethers during the holidays. We are attempting to make some of our own traditions. And we have really had a lot of fun the past few weeks. But some days are just harder than others. And the holidays can hit pretty hard.
Thankfully, we had a plan in place. We’ve learned that scheduling a trip just after Christmas works wonders. It provides a nice family gift without cluttering the house with things that are quickly forgotten. It gives us something to look forward to. And it minimizes the post-holidays blues (that seem to intensifying overseas). So we looked for the cheapest tickets and that is the main parties of our gift to each other as a family. Last year was Paris, and this year we ended up in Budapest. (Crazy as it sounds, it is almost always a good bit cheaper for us to fly to another country than to vacation somewhere in our country!)Weare currently enjoying a week of rest and relaxation, including time with some US friends we hadn’t seen in a long time. And lots of Mexican food, something we can’t get in Norway. In fact, we went out for Mexican food the last three nights!

Here are a few photos of our time here so far. I’ll share more in the coming days.