Tagged in: english

Sirdal

That’s “hesjing” to all you ozzies

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Today I had a very pleasent short visit. Every summer holiday for the last 29 years I’ve been busy cutting grass, raking it togheter and either drying it flat on the ground, or ,if the weather’s of the wet kind, putting it up on a hesje.

Every years there are numerous cars/motorhomes that stop beside the road to take the manadatory photos of this traditional way of making hay. What was different with the one that stopped today was that after shooting the pictures, he crossed the road and came over to ask some questions.

This has really just happened once before…a couple of years ago an American professor came up to me. He was visiting Agder University, and a colleague had braught him with to have a look around. The professor was amazed by the labour intensive work.

Todays visitor was driving a german registered motorhome. As he was aproaching, I was silently repeating what I had learned during my 4,5 years of german in school. “An, auf, hinter, im, neben, über, unter, vor, zwischen.” Man was I glad to hear the words “do you speak english?”

As it turned out the man was on a 8 week trip in Norway with his german wife. He was curious about the whole process of the “hesjing”. How long did it take from we cut the grass untill we put it up on the strings, how much hay did we get out of it?…

I noticed the good english the man was speaking, and had to ask if he by any chance was british. “I’m Australian” the man said. I am truly sorry! Mistaking an Australian accent for a British one. My only appology is that I am a bit rusty.

But that is what I love about the Ozzy’s. It seemes to be part of their nature…wherever you meet them, they seem to have known you their whole life! Bottom line…I need to go back to Australia!

IKT, Moro

Online behaviour vs. behaviour in “real life”

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Today The Australian presents an article about the internet habits of the average australian. The conclusion is that one fourth of the time spent on internet is used on social networking sites, these days synonymous with Facebook and Twitter.

Australians visited social networking sites more frequently than they visited their bank or credit union’s internet site to access essential financial services

Hmm…it is a weird thing that internet. Making people act funny! In real life, I always make sure to talk to my bank representative just as much as I talk to my friends. Don’t you?

Moro

Norway and the Eurovision song contest

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I can’t say I like it, but here’s my contribution to the Eurovision song contest debate ’09. First som history that I kind of assume has grown to be common knowledge these days;

  • 1984 – Bobbysocks wins with “La det swinge“
  • 1996 – Secret Garden wins with “Nocturne“
  • 2009 – Alexander Rybak wins with “Fairytale“

The above show the years, artist and song that Norway has taken home first price in this weird, European song contest that oddly enough is called “grand prix” in Norwegian. That in itself leaves room for some rather funny misunderstandings when talking about this contest to non-europeans.

Anyway. The thing I want to put the spotlight on is as follows. Bobbysocks is a duo. It consisted of Hanne Krogh and Elisabeth Andreasson. The latter is originally Swedish.

Furthermore…Secret Garden is a duo as well. It consists of Rolv Løvland, who is probably most famous for composing the hit “You raise me up“, and the Irish violinist Fionnuala Sherry. Is it clearing up?

Alexander RybackThird…Eurovision song contest 2009. Alexander Rybak crushes all previous records, and ends up in a solid first place with a record score of 387 points. To be fair…he is backed up up by the amazing Norwegian folk dance company “Frikar“. Nevertheless the question remains;

Is it possible for Norway to win the European song contest without the solid help of “foreigners”?

Just to be clear…I am not criticising any of the winners…it’s just a though. Alexander Rybak will for the year to come find himself under siege by the united international music press. Let’s just hope the 23 year old copes with all the fuss! And to finish up; congratulations with an astonishing performance Alexander.

Edit:
It seemes that I was hitting the nail right on the head. The discussion on “RedaksjonEN” tonight was, amongst other things, about mixing “norwegian and foreign culture”. (T. Giske, 25:45)

Arbeid, IKT

Going international

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Today Mrs_Banjer requested english posts on my blog after I started following her on Twitter. It is on many levels a fair request. As a teacher I am naturally interested in interacting with other teachers around the world, not only native Norwegian, or at the best scandinavian teachers. Even though Norwegian might be a more than adequate language to communicate in, it is certainly a point that it is a small language on a global scale.

That is why I will add an “english” tag to all of my posts that are written in…well…english. This way I hope that I might be able to get in contact with a whole lot of teachers in the primary/elemantary levels around the world.