Welcome to our Blog and Happy 2010

Hallo everyone, and Happy New Year

We hope you all had a wonderful christmas and a good start into the new year.It has been a long time coming but we are finally launching this blog and hope you will find it interesting to read. It is a great way to keep in contact without having to write many e-mails with the same information over and over again. Hopefully the photos will give you some insight into what it is like over here. It has taken me some time to work out how to create a blog and I have learnt a lot since the first entry. There are still a few  more things I would like to learn about creating a more interesting layout for the blog, so the learning will continue. Thank you dear Catherine Campbell  (Delivery Suite, WWH ) who has given me many tips on how to work the blog. I often think of you and you will be one of the first people to read it. Here are some helpful  hints for those of you who have never been on a blog site before.

When you first arrive on this site I would recommend to save it under " Favourites " so it will be easy to find it again. The site always opens on our last entry and you will have to scroll down to get to the beginning of the entry. When you have read the page and you want to read an earlier entry go back to the bottom of the page where it says "older post ".You will be able to go back to our earliest entry by hitting the "older post" button every time you have read a page. Another way to get to a particular entry is to click on a specific title at the " Archive " collum on the right hand site. If you want to have a closer look at any of the photos just click on it and it will enlarge to a bigger size. Click on the "back" button and it will go back to the original size. The blog begins with my first entry in October 2009 which shows the photo of the wood pidgeon in Belmont. Please register yourself as a follower if you wish and send us your comments. We are looking forward to your feedback. I am planning to write a new entry every  one or two weeks and have a few more tales to tell.

Happy reading from Meta and Phil

The northern Lights event

The next few weeks were consumed by setting up daily life in Tromsdalen , meeting more new neighbours and getting to know local customs . Phil got an invitation to meet with the the members of the Tromso " Kiwiclub" which is a group of New Zealand men who are married to norwegian women.

The group meets reguarly to uphold  the kiwi custom of having a  good old yak and a yarn over a pint of beer in the pub. Phil enjoyed meeting the group and learned lots more about norway and in particular life in Tromso. When he came home late in the evening, there was another special event unfolding in front of our eyes. We were about to go to bed when Phil took a look outside the window and there they were:

                                     

THE NORTHERN LIGHTS

I jumped out of bed in my pj's and a coat and into the cold. We could not believe our eyes as the sky was alive with lights which were constantly changing in shape colour and intensity. There were shades of green in big lines over the whole sky. Sometimes the colours were pulsating  or changing into an oval which looked a bit like an UFO. The lights were big and bright and at times it seemed as if they were coming at us. I recently read about the Sami people who believed  that the northern lights were a god and that one shouldn't dare to point at them otherwise it would come and get you. Having seen the lights I can certainly relate to that idea. They are definetly one of the most amazing things I have ever seen in my life and if you want to get an idea  what the lights looked  like just check out  the following link: http://www.virtualtromso.no/no/tourist-information.html

Finn and Luca at school

Here are Luca  and Finn in their classrooms. Annie is Lucas' teacher and Luca likes her very much. There is also a picture of the first song Luca has learned to sing in norwegian.

Finn has found some new friends in his new class and spends a lots of time playing soccer during breaks.

1st of November 2009 First day at school and work

 Finn and Luca with Matthis waiting for the door to open on their first day at Borktun skole.
This is Phil on the way to work at NOFIMA.
The photo was taken at about 8.00 am with a beautiful sunrise over the mainland in the background.
Before Phil went to his work we all took Finn and Luca to Borktun skole for their first day of school.
Luca and Finn had a great first day and Phil was made very welcome at his new work.

Our new home in Tromsdalen

This is the view from our house. What you see is the city centre on the island of Tromso. We live on the mainland and either get into town via a tunnel under the sea or over the big beautiful bridge you see in the distance. It takes a very short bus ride into town or an easy 25 to 30 min. walk over the bridge. The view from the bridge is beautiful and you can see towards the fijords in the distance in both directions. There are also some big fishing boats and one can look straight into the boat  from above the bridge. Matthis loves to look into the boats and his imagination produces some wonderful stories.
Please notice the daylight on the photos.When we first arrived we still had proper day time and night time. I will show you some photos of the twilight, we are experiencing now, later on.

First week in Tromso - continued

The next few days were consumed by organisational matters such as going to the police to register our arrival and applying for our national numbers which is the most important thing when living in norway. " All applications will be processed in the next couple of month", we were told and considered ourselves lucky. If we would have applied for permits from outside the country the processing time would have been 6 months!

We realised that things were not going to be happening fast but Phil at least got his temporary work permit which enabled him to start working the next week.

New beginnings are always hard and all in all we managed to get a few balls rolling during that first week and  felt relatively good about it. The week passed very fast and on Sunday we moved to our final destination at  number 15, Norselveien in Tromsdalen. We took a Taxi to our new home and I think the whole neighbourhood saw us arriving. Soon there were a number of children mingeling in front of our house, hoping to get a glimpse of us and those new children from New Zealand.

We met Knut and Hilde, our neighbours and they came over for a cup of coffee the same afternoon. Finn, Luca and Matthis went outside and met the children from the neighbourhood. We were amazed how well they all spoke english, even the relatively young children. The kids played football all afternoon and we received some first hand information about living in Tromso from our neighbours.

First week in Tromso

We were unable to move into our rented house in Tromsdalen for the first week and stayed in an appartment type hotel right in the middle of the city until we were able to move.
We enjoyed the european breakfast and the freshly baked bread in the morning before heading off into town to do things such as getting registered and dealing with all sorts of  other beaucratic issues.