IKEA and Lasagna

We have been keeping pretty busy these past few days. We *think* that we have all of our necessary paperwork turned in at this point in time, at least everything that we can do right now. We have reported to the police station and have appointments to go back to get our official ID cards. We have also reported to the tax office to apply for our Norwegian tax numbers (like a social security numbers) and our tax cards. These last two are extremely important since we can not get bank accounts or get paid without them. So now we just wait for those...

Yesterday, we went to one of my new colleague's houses for dinner. Karma and her husband were wonderful hosts. We were able to meet several of the other middle school teachers from Birralee and had a great taco dinner. It was nice to be able to ask a few questions and hear about other peoples' experiences moving to Trondheim.

The past few day have been typical Trondheim summer weather (aka intermittent rain and sunshine) so we took the opportunity to explore the bus system. We had a little bit of a learning curve to deal with in the beginning. Tickets can be purchased on the bus however they are cheaper if they are purchased beforehand from a machine or shop. Our local bus stop does not have a ticket machine so we started walking to find one. We made it all the way downtown (thankfully it wasn't raining at the time) before we found a machine.  Who would have thought that the bus ticket machines are the same as the parking ticket machines! We probably passed 20 of these machines on our way downtown! I guess that we know that now. We purchased 24 hour passes in order to head up to Karma's house as well as head to IKEA.

We have been talking about going to IKEA for a few days now. We knew it would require a bus ride though, since hauling whatever we purchased home several miles might prove difficult. Since we had bus passes this morning, we decided to take advantage of the situation. IKEA in Norway is as huge an overwhelming as it is in the US. The main difference is that everything is in a foreign language and currency! We wandered through the top level looking at all the large items and getting ideas for if/when we need to furnish an apartment here. After that we headed downstairs to pick up some necessities. Hooray for having our own towels, pillowcases and blankets! We also purchased some kitchen supplies and other basic goods. Overall it was a good trip, though I am sure we will be making another trip in the near-ish future.

What better day to wander around IKEA than a grey drizzly day!?

Daniel with all of our goods. Towels and bedspreads and alarm clocks, Oh My!

Once we got home we decided that we should break in our new baking dish by making veggie lasanga for dinner. A trip to both the Rema 1000 and the Meny later, we had all the ingredients needed to make dinner. It felt nice to be cooking again, though it is difficult to cook in such a small kitchen! Dinner turned out wonderfully if I do say so myself!

Caprese Salad for an appetizer with green salad and veggie lasagne for dinner! Yumm!

The sun breaking thought the clouds. This was taken at about 8:30 pm. Sunset was more than an hour later.