NORWAY WITH WEAVER >>

Monday, March 12, 2007

It is a cloudy Sunday morning here is Haugesund, my last day of a three day rest before our trip next weekend to La Manga, Spain. A lot has happened since I last wrote, both on and off the soccer field.

As for soccer, we have been continuing to train very hard in order to build up fitness for league play which begins April 9th. I have had a few slight strains and bruises but no serious injuries to report thankfully. Matches have gone well lately. Starting with two weeks back, we went on a trip to Kristiansand on the south coast of Norway.

We had two matches scheduled, but only ended up with one due to blizzard conditions outside. The whole town was blanketed with around 3 feet of snow, so they ended up closing the indoor arena we were playing at. I only played around 15 minutes of the match, but scored a good goal near the end to secure the win at 2-0. I was nursing a calf strain so I was being saved for the second match, but unluckily for me it never came.

Still, having scored, I came back from the weekend feeling good. Last weekend we had a match at home, an important one before our Spain trip. It was a good day for me, as I scored a hat trick in our 3-2 win. My Scottish teammate Kevin Nicol had told me to score a hat trick before the game, and I just nodded and said sure. The papers enjoyed that story the next day, calling Kevin to ask him to predict how many goals I would score in the league and what-not.

Now for off the field news, first off we have all but secured my work permit, and are just waiting for the registration to go through so I can get my Norwegian ID number. Estrella is in the process of finding some work, so she can get her work permit process started. The work permit news is exciting, as we have started to really settle in more, now knowing that we will be here for good. Since we are living in a furnished apartment, the décor was not really to our liking, so we have done a few things like taking down the floral curtains and paintings, and adding some plants.

We have also been exploring our cooking skills, as we have quickly realized that going out to a restaurant is hardly worth it because of the price. It’s not that the food isn’t good, but just knowing that I am paying at least double for what I would back in the states makes it tough to swallow. My Mom told me that she read somewhere that Oslo is the most expensive city in the world to live in, and I figure the rest of Norway is not far behind. Just to give one example, think about paying the price of a venti Starbucks latte for a 8 oz. cup of 7-Eleven coffee.

Since we had this past weekend off, Estrella and I made a trip north to Bergen, the third largest city in Norway, and a historic Scandinavian capital in the past. A three hour bus ride gave us plenty of time to enjoy the scenery.

This being Estrella’s first trip outside Haugesund since she arrived. We had a fun two days there, visiting a museum, the fish market, floibanen (a tram that travels up to a lookout over the city), the old wharf of Bryggen (A medieval neighborhood in the city center along the water which consists of leaning wooden buildings and narrow alleyways), and everything else we could see as we walked around.

By blind luck, we managed to miss rain in one of the rainiest cities in the world. People in Seattle will remember our almost record breaking streak of rain last winter, but Bergen’s last stretch of rainy days was 94.

Its been a great couple of weeks, but I must say I’m looking forward to some Mediterranean weather next week.

-Cam