You are so lucky on your first day

So here it is... the first post. My life as a so-called blogger begins. I feel bad spoiling this pristine webpage but I shall have to throw these feelings aside and dive straight in.

So, today was my first day at school. I managed to get there at vaguely the right time, after a bus journey which threatened at any moment to collapse around me and leave me stranded in an icy industrial estate where Oslo meets Akershus. But after conquering two buses and a slight diversion on foot, I made it to my destination. And what a first impression! Path leading up to the school, snow-covered pine forest - thumbs up. Dodgy seventies monstrosity of school building (carbon copy of Thurston "Community" College, minus the pine cladding) - thumbs down. But I shouldn't have judged this (proverbial?) sovietesque bestseller by its concrete cover. I gave one student his first English test by asking him where to find the reception, then a few minutes later I was greeted as Hanna Garseid, the new English English assistant. Hurrah!

It was during my tour of the school that I began to notice the Norwegianness seeping out of every pore... looking down at my guide's feet: hiking sandals with socks... tall blonde creatures slinking through the corridors... a gaggle of staff worshipping at the coffee machine... but I am just confirming whatever vague stereotypical notions I have of this nation. I could've been anywhere in Northern Europe, well... except Britain.

In Britain, there would be haggered teachers patrolling the corridors, making sure students were working at all times (in my sixth form they even banned chess - that infamous brain-rotter). All the teachers would have been sacked long ago for wearing inappropriately casual clothing. More importantly for me, I would have never have been made to feel so welcome. Nothing was too much trouble - within minutes of arriving I was given a key to the staff room and to all the classrooms (Grimsby Institute has much to learn!) and I had a sore face from so much smiling and hand shaking. It's true to say that the most friendly face was not a Norwegian one, but that of the Czech German teacher, who I chatted with in German for a long while. I was glad by this point to be doing some of the linguistic legwork, though switching from English to French to German and back into English while hearing a background rumble of Norwegian has to be hardest my brain has worked in several months.

So, aside from a slight feeling of otherness and isolation from my personality, all is well here in Hanaborg.

Favourite Norwegian word of the day:

fagdag [pronounced fawg dawg] = a day where each class concentrates on just one subject for the whole day i.e. what is happening on Wednesday.