Love Makes the World Go 'Round: Meeting on the 'Net

[ Contents | Next | Previous | Up ]


Re: For Paul

From: Paul
Date: 10/5/02
Time: 3:51:12 PM
Remote Name: 193.217.177.43

Comments

Hi, Judy.

I have to admit that during the period when I was courting Liv by E-mail, I had a bit of reluctance to the idea of moving to Norway. Less than a month after beginning my E-mail communication with Liv, we were already discussing the prospect of marriage. I mentioned to Liv at that time that a move to Norway seemed rather impractical for me, as I certainly had enough problems with speaking as it was! My feeling then was that it was enough of a challenge to just deal with my stuttering in my native language in my native country. I asked Liv how in the world I'd be able to manage oral communication in a country where I'd be struggling with both speech and language simultaneously.

Liv assured me, though, that nearly everyone in Norway between the ages of 10 and 60 can speak English more-or-less (something which I now know to be true from my two years of living here), and therefore I could do my stuttering in English if I wished. [English is taught in Norwegian schools beginning in the first grade.] She also assured me that it wouldn't be long before I would develop a fine Norwegian stutter (and indeed I have developed one, as she most perceptively predicted). Indeed being able to communicate with most people in English has helped immensely in adjusting during these first few years to this new land and culture.

I've been attending Norwegian language classes now for about a year and a half (the state offers free instruction for immigrants), and am currently in an advanced language class at the University of Bergen. It certainly took a while for me to form a small circle of friends within Norway, but this became easier to accomplish once I started taking Norwegian classes with other recent immigrants - as many of my immigrant classmates were in a similar boat and also in need of making new friends.

Liv and I became involved almost immediately with the stuttering self-help movement in Norway, attending our first stuttering group meeting in Bergen less than a month after I first arrived. (Liv is as active with this group as I am, if not more so - due first of all to her very strong interest in the disorder, with roots going back long before she met me, and secondly to help me understand all the Norwegian that is spoken at these meetings.) As a consequence, many of the first Norwegians whom I met were people who stutter, and this helped me a great deal with developing my comfort zone during my early months in the country.

The finding of employment in Norway is probably the area in which I've experienced the most difficulty so far. I have however been working for over a year as a "helgeforelder", or weekend parent, in caring for a mildly-to-moderately retarded girl (now 9 years old) on selected weekends. Although I've done some piano performance, with some of my music compositions performed publicly in Norway, I haven't yet found paying work in the music field here. And I don't think my Norwegian is yet advanced enough to attempt to return to the speech-language pathology field (known as "logopedics" in Europe).

All in all, though, Norway is feeling more and more like home to me. And now that I have some (limited) facility with the language, there is less of a feeling of being "left out" when Norwegian is spoken around me.

I thank you for this opportunity to expand on my story.


Last changed: September 12, 2005