Thursday, September 13, 2012

Language/culture: tunika

Little things. Like last year, I forgot my thick winter knit wool hat at the GP´s office. All I knew is that I had lost it, somewhere, no idea where. I just knew I didn´t have it and didn´t know where it was. Six months later, the next time I had a visit to that GP´s office, as I was walking into the main building´s main corrider, someone had carefully placed my winter hat atop one of the coat and hat racks. WOW. I was really glad to have my hat back--it´s so warm in even the worst winters, and I´d had it since my first visit to Norway in Oslo. But I was even more impressed and thankful that someone had tried to make sure whoever lost it would find it! And it was still there, for me to find, even after all that time!:)

During that same winter, one of our daughters had the wind blow her hat off as we were running to catch the bus. A week later, when I got a chance to finally look for it (as I had not noticed it missing til once we were on the bus and it had driven off), again someone had lovingly and carefully placed the hat on one of the nearby benches for whomever had lost it to see!


Many of the playgrounds here often have toys left by the kids who live around the playgrounds. The toys are left both for other kids to play with, and so the kids who leave them don´t have to carry them back and forth! No one takes the toys. Usually it´s sand buckets and shovels, soccer balls, jump ropes, etc. Things like that. Sometimes a scooter, bike or trike.

That last time I forgot something was recently at a cafe I go to to study or meet friends. I´d been studying with friends when, after having taken off the my sweater, leaving it along the edge of the seat, while we studied and talked for hours, I simply forgot it when I got up to leave without looking again at the chair I was sitting in.  It wasn´t til many hours later, in the middle of paying for groceries, back on my island, that I suddenly realized I didn´t have my sweater in my backpack! I got a bus back  to the mainland, walked back to the cafe, and the moment I walked through the door, the staff smiled at me, told me they´d put my sweater in their back office, then went to fetch it for me:). I was so grateful and appreciative they went to that trouble! I was a bit frazzled with the hour of waiting for the bus, riding the bus to get back asap to the cafe sure my sweater was gone! Was so surprised sweater was not gone! Had a cafe au lait, and a slice of homemade apple cake (fika---coffee and cake break!) to try to relax, enjoy the break, and finding my sweater. I ended up studying a few hours, backpack full of heavy groceries (nothing perishable), before going home a bit later to make supper finally! Whew! The kindness of strangers:)

But I do notice how different I am here, in regards to things I´d never do, even in Oslo! I often leave my purse for instance out on a table, when going to the loo (toilet/bathroom) in cafes, library, etc here as I feel like it´s safe to leave, that no one will take it or touch. Not everywhere here, but some places. Or maybe it´s just me being lazy, not wanting to pack up everything (books, notebooks, purse, backpack, sweater etc) just to go use the bathroom!,) A little of both maybe. Overall though it´s nice knowing that so many here are so considerate:).

Riding my usual bus into the city the other week, as a guy randomly started to get off at some stop, the female letting him out stopped him to say he´d forgotten his cellphone. He said it wasn´t his phone, but took it anyway...walking the phone up to the bus driver to put in the lost and found! And during that same bus ride, as an elderly man with cane started to try to get off the bus, which had about 5 steep stairs, I and about 5 other people immediately around him stood up to help him down the stairs! :) It´s so nice, in this crazy world with so much negative/bad things happening every day sometimes, that good things, even the little things like this, also happen still. I see people on the bus alot tha maybe I don´t know exactly, but we see each other a lot from riding the bus, so we chat or say hi. We say good morning to the drivers, and vice versa, and say bye to the drivers when walking off the bus. It´s just little things...but it kinda isn´t also.

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