Norwegian Saga

Hello everyone.

The biggest news I’ve got is the hiccup in my residence permit application. When I had submitted my application I did not have a copy of my health insurance policy as was required. The girl to whom I submitted the application package didn’t seem concerned by this at all. I did however, have the policy numbers, phone numbers, and names of all the information that would be required should the “Utlendingsdirektoratet” want to look into it. Both times she assured me if they want it they’ll contact me.

Sure enough, a few days later I got a letter. In it was a request to send in my health insurance policy within two weeks. The problem then became how to get the policy from RBC to me here in Norway. That was settled when my folks received the policy in the mail and scanned and emailed it to me. I printed it and submitted it.

I also got a bank account at Post Banken. It’s a post office and a bank in one. The bank section is handled by a larger Norwegian bank but the post office is the national service. As a student I have a fee free account for 5 years despite the fact that they know I’m done my studies in June of next year. It’s a nice deal.

The people for whom I teach English at the school have given me another grade to teach, unfortunately it’s a younger age group. So now I teach 6-15 year olds in five classes. It’s makes me like Saturdays less as I don’t love teaching kids but thankfully it’s only one day a week and it means I can probably get rid of most or all of my private clients, of which I just received another to start in September.

My thesis adviser has agreed to meet with me weekly. As I understand this is a good thing. Many students don’t get that kind of attention from their advisers. I’m also gearing up to have the first draft of the thesis completed by Christmas. It won’t be an easy task. But now that I’ve got some concrete things in place thanks to my adviser things have moved out of the realm of simply ideas and into the tangible (ie. paper). It’s quite nice to have had that conceptual door opened for me. I somehow didn’t seem able to do it myself.

I guess that’s it for now. Another entry to come next week. Cheers.