Coldest Day Yet

 Sunday (11/28/10) was the coldest day yet!  The high was 10 degrees F but had a horrible wind and was probably close to 0 or even negative degrees.  Scott & Katie were still in town so we braved it for the day.  We went to Vigeland park, Holmenkollbakken (the gigantic ski jump), Christmas market, and saw the lighting of a tree at Oslo University.  To see more pictures click here.

Christmas Market

Holmenkollbakken

Christmas Tree Lighting

Icebar

On Saturday (11/27/10) we had Katie Thompson and Scott Zeglin, friends from our church in Houston, come visit.  We decided to go to Icebar with our other friends Christine and Tyler Russell.  It was a lot of fun and not too expensive.  They had some "artwork" and sculptures inside so it wasn't just a block of ice.  When we were done with our drinks, we got to try and smash our ice glasses in a bucket.  To see more pictures click here.

$300 Turkey

On Thanksgiving Day, Jean and our new friend, Christine, checked out a grocery store, Centra, that we heard had American food.  We found some items but we're shocked when we found a turkey.  It was roughly $300 for a 20lb turkey!  Below are pictures of Jean being shocked and the price tag.

Thanksgiving

Yesterday was Thanksgiving which was a little weird because it's just like another day here in Oslo.  On Wednesday, we went to church.  The US ambassador spoke and afterward there was pie which was delicious!  Thursday we didn't celebrate but went out with some friends for pizza.

We are thankful for our friends and family and for skype that let's us keep in contact with them. 

Movie Theater

We saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 today.  The theater was huge and the tickets were a relative bargain at only $17 each. It was shown in English with Norwegian subtitles. Jean raged about the random name changes in the subtitles.  For example George became Frank in the subtitles.  We saw the movie with a couple that we meet, Christine and Tyler.  After the movie we ate a Gyro Pizza which was delicious and stopped inside a Christmas tepee that had lots of different Norwegian items.

Final Crate

Some of you may know that after our stuff was delivered we noticed that we were missing the box that contained all our Wii games, our Wii / TV / DVD remotes, and a few other electronics.  At first we were very concerned that it was stolen but after over a month of working with the shippers it was found and shipped to us in this huge crate.

This crate was serious business, when UPS delivered it Jean asked the delivery man how to open it.  He looked at it at said he didn't have a clue and suggested we find a crow bar.  We were so close but still so far away from getting to our stuff.  Finally Lucas spent 30 min pounding at it with a hammer and prying at it with a screw driver until there was a large enough gap to fit the hammer claw under the top board and slowly pry up the many, many nails holding it shut. It had everything we were missing and nothing was broken.

Since then we've heard horror stories from other ExxonMobil expats in Norway about the shipping process.  The moral of the story is take a careful and extensive inventory.  We must admit that we didn't and so we just hope that all of our goods in storage back in Houston are safe and secure.