First taste of Norway

I was picked up from the bus station by the daughter of Erin's first host family she lived with here in Norway. They packed me off to their house (lovely family) and here I ran into the first of my family I have seen in almost seven months now!

Following the tradition all families seem to have when a new person arrives at a house, we first settled down for something to eat accompanied by my first Norweigan beer. Meat, bread and cheese were laid out first and had me thinking, "Here comes Germany all over again", when all of a sudden, my senses were affronted by something green being placed under my nose.

Crispy and succulent, with some weird red balls in its centre, some green and white spheres mixed in with and some yellow concave pieces of what could ony be described as resembling plastic off cuts, I was left wondering why this stuff looked so strangely familiar? Slowly, it dawned on me that this stuff was edible. In fact it was rather nice in small doses. Vegemite? No that wasn't it. Timetables? No, that wasn't quite right either. Oh, of course! Vege-tables! That's the one.

So eating was had and then some chatter and then some sleeping for one tired little kiwi who had had a hard day doing nothing but sitting on moving machinary - I now have much more respect and understanding for the road works people back home in NZ who always seem to be doing nothing when you pass them. It's tiring doing nothing else for ages!