And until I got here, I believed them.
When I was applying for summer jobs, I wanted to see a new country, get some relevant work experience, earn some extra cash for traveling, and challenge myself by trying something new. Well, working in Norway is certainly all of the above, with heavy emphasis on the “challenge” part!
My summer job is relatively straightforward and a lot of fun now that I’m starting to get the hang of it. I am working at a senior care home as well as visiting seniors in their own homes to help out in whatever way they may require. This includes any range of activities, such as giving medication and injecting insulin, getting dressed, bathing, and making sandwiches. I’m working with a lot of really friendly and helpful people, which makes for a very nice working environment.
The biggest challenge for me right now is understanding Norwegian. Before I came here, alll my Swedish friends assured me that I would be fine. They said that Norwegian is so similar to Swedish that it won’t be a problem to communicate. Lies! All lies! Norwegian is very different from Swedish! When I first arrived at work, my friendly colleagues can smiled and chatted away for several sentences, and at the end of their verbal paragraph sometimes I didn’t even understood a single word!
On my first day I was lucky, though, because my training was with a Swedish girl and I understood her just fine (I learned a few new Swedish medical words which I otherwise knew in English). On the second day a very nice Norwegian woman trained me and… let’s just say I smiled and nodded a lot. If it at one point it seemed like she was saying something particularly relevant to the task at hand, I asked her to repeat herself approximately four times. I must have looked like a blundering idiot with my eyebrows scrunched into a slight frown and my eyes mildly widened with confusion.
Reading is somewhat easier– if I read out loud and don’t listen too closely to what I’m saying, I understand the gist. After my four days of training, I feel like I’ve picked up the workplace vocabulary so I can understand my list of tasks in Norwegian.
There are three other Swedish students also working there for the summer. They’ve been there longer than I have and they are already replacing some key Swedish words with the Norwegian equivalents, which simplifies communication a lot. So far I’ve started saying “trenger” instead of “behöver,” and calling out “Hade!” when I leave. I can’t figure out if “hade” translates to goodbye, or if it is short for “ha det bra” which basically means “take care.” Either way, the Norwegians call out “Hade” back to me and we are all happy that I said something in Norwegian so it doesn’t really matter what it means.
I knew the language would be a challenge if I took a summer job in Norway. I’m working through the challenge and stretching my brain and ears to their maximum capacity, forcing myself to listen to every word even if it sounds like gibberish. I think it’s the only way I’m going to get used to the differences in pronunciation and vocabulary. After four days of listening to these familiar yet meaningless (to me) sounds, I found myself having a short conversation where I understood what was going on!
And of course, it’s not all as dramatic as I make it sound. I understood perhaps 15% of what was spoken to me in Norwegian on Day 1, and today on Day 4 I am already up to about 50%. It will get better, but it’s going to be a very steep learning curve with a good dose of determination! I’ve always liked languages anyways, and what’s life without a challenge?
Overall, so far I love being in Norway. The area I’m working in, Lofoten, has absolutely breathtaking landscapes. I’m looking forward to a summer filled with hiking and exploring!
The Life of All Sorts 