I continue to work hard on getting to grips with the Norsk language. I do spend time each day either on Duolingo or on my online course (and indeed most days I try and do both) and my friends and colleagues here are very patient with me as I try out new words/phrases etc. The more I reflect on it though, I fear the biggest problem with me getting to grips with the language is my own personality. It's all fine and well sitting in my apartment being able to quote Shakespeare, Marie Antionette etc but that's not awfully helpful in day to day life.
I learn these words and can read not too badly but I feel inside that I'm not making spectacularly great progress conversationally. And of course to do that I need to get out and about to meet people and talk to them and if there's one thing I'm not good at (and yes I know there's more than one thing I'm not great at), it's being sociable. One of the reasons I was confident that I'd cope in Norway was the fact I'm more than happy in my own company. Give me a good book, some music and a cup of coffee and I'm a happy man. As another aside, I do find the Norwegian computer keyboard v annoying - the apostrophe is one key further to the right than Iæm used to...
Apart from the all new vocabulary, sometimes I'm not sure whether something that has been said is a name or a new word. At one of my zoom lessons, my teacher asked me what Helga had been up to. I thought it was a very strange question but hey, it's a conversation. I'd seen on Facebook what Helga had been up to so started wittering on about that. Couple of minutes later it dawned on me that I'd been asked what I had done at the weekend (helgen) as opposed to Helga.
A couple of weeks ago I was sent up to Tromsø for a course for foreign and/or new organists in the Church of Norway. The travelling itself was quite exciting - way up North into the Arctic Circle and Tromsø is a lovely city. Look no further than the Arctic Cathedral. I have to say I found it a tough few days and even after I came back I still felt emotional when I talked about it.
To be clear, it all comes to what I mentioned at the start, my own personality. I'm under no illusion that I could have/ should have done better but....
I was the last one to arrive, just at the end of lunch time and a couple of my co-attendees v kindly rushed up to say hello and introduce themselves. I didn't really have time to speak and certainly had no time to sit down - I just had time to grab some food and then we were off to the various seminars.
The entire course was in Norwegian (which was fair enough, we're in Norway after all): occasionally I managed to pick up phrases and of course there was the joy of PowerPoint where I could at least point my phone and use google translate.
We went out for a meal on the first night and I did attempt at one point to make conversation with another participant but despite repeated attempts she didn't seem to understand me and as I was asking a fairly basic my confidence took bit of a knock which I'm not sure I ever really recovered from. I got more and more anti social as the course went on.
The course itself seemed very interesting and I appreciate the importance that the church puts on the music that and one particular seminar was about repertoire which was quite fun and of course language wasn't so much of an issue.
At one point we were split into 2 groups: I thought it was based on "do you have a church choir" but in retrospect I think it may have been "have you conducted before". I ended up in a group where we were shown how to conduct in basic time signatures etc. On top of the language issues I was already having, this just hammered home all the insecurities that I have/ had about any abilities I may or may not have and made me feel even worse. I used to joke about developing an aura that "said" please don't talk to me but by the end of course I was avoiding eye contact with anyone in the hope that nobody would talk to me.
Even after I got back to my pad here in Bjørn I was still not in a great place. The following weekend was the children's festival up in Solfjellsjøen. If I've picked it up correctly it's an annual festival shared between local kommunes and this year it was Solfjellsjøen's turn to host. It was run by the churches and there was a fabulous variety of stalls on. Wall climbing, T-shirt making, bouncy castle, first aid, Lego, swimming, scouts etc etc. There was also the cafeteria with coffee and cake and I'd been told that they'd even got milk for my coffee but I was still in not a great place so didn't once visit. Course on the plus side, that won't have done my weight any harm! Every so often everybody came together for the church bits and it was my place to hang out the tunes on the keyboard which was very much my level of participation.
It was good to finally get back to playing here on Dønna and Herøy after a couple of Sundays off - helped me restore confidence. I couldn't get passed the thought that the people up in Tromsø shouldn't have to "pander" to me by speaking English - I had made the choice to move here so the onus should be on me. At least back here on the islands I can at least feel I'm making a contribution to like by playing reasonably well at all the various church services etc.
As always for a musician, this time of year is starting to get busy again. As well as the regular services (and there will be a lot around Christmas!) there are a number of concerts. I'm meant to be playing at a concert next weekend up in Dønnes and the following weekend there's the Dønnahorn concert. The main work is to be Planet Earth soundtrack but we're also doing some music from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story so bit of a result there.
Last weekend I was honoured to be asked to take the weekend rehearsals for Helgeland Kammerkor. As I think I mentioned in another post, we're to sing Messiah with some other choirs in Mosjøen in December and as we're without a conductor at the mo I was asked to step in. It felt v strange rehearsing something for someone else but the scores were very well marked out by the conductor which made it easier. I sat with google translate the night before to work out some key phrases that I could drop in. Duolingo doesn't really prepare you for this (alas no opportunity to used "the bird is in the cage" arose) but we'll persevere.
I'm continuing to go along to badminton and after the traumas of Tromsø I made a bit more effort this week. I partnered a couple of people and both times I actually made an effort to converse and even tried at out new words - "do you have a pet?" They did - it was a dog though I can't remember its name.
We've started doing a monthly "open church" in Herøy where people can come and sit in the church, meditate and I play some quiet music. Much to my surprise people seem to be coming along and, if I picked it up correctly, one of my playing partners at badminton a Ukrainian refugee, had indeed just been listening and had enjoyed it. To counter the compliments, we stream a number of the services on Facebook and one of my colleagues said it worked really well until "the terrible noise as the organ started"....
That was nothing compared to the shock I received at a recent staff meeting. I was just sitting quietly in a fair amount of ignorant bliss when it was gently dropped into the conversation "oh yes, Graeme, you'll need to dress as an angel". ???? Pretty sure that wasn't in the job description that I read. Nonetheless I will take it on the chin as payback for forcing people like Ross and David to dress up for St Mary Nativity plays many moons ago. In particular I remember Ross having to wear my dressing gown which wasn't quite dry after its wash while he was being Joseph to something like a 9 year old Mary.
Just to finish, a big thanks to a Jen for sending out an emergency batch of tea bags. The food shops out here stock a huge variety of tea but alas not the bog standard tea that I like to drink in the evening. And I had grown particularly fond of Clipper Tea and their plastic free tea bags. A tiny wee gesture on my part for the environment.
