Kvitsøy Idrettslag Party

I survived the party. I received good luck SMS messages from what few friends I have. Their fears were unfounded. I had a great time.

We, and everyone else, walked to the party. People take the drinking and driving laws very seriously around here. It was a bring your own alcohol party, and many people carried backpacks. Suits and dresses were the normal attire. I wore my new brown suit. I wanted to keep the black suit fresh for more job interviews. How optimistic is that? I hoped to avoid any manure on the road with my new shoes. Everyone that I knew from Kvitsøy was there tonight, including three of Lise's cousins, an uncle, two aunts, of course her parents, and I guess everyone else was probably some sort of distant relative. It is an island after all.

We were served lobster unlike any lobster I have eaten. Truthfully, I have never eaten lobster before, but this was not like I had imagined. They were served at room temperature. They had been boiled, then somehow cleanly split down the middle, as if bisected by a laser. We were served two halves of an entire lobster. It was easy enough to clean the meat out of the tail and the pre-cracked claws. The rest was a muddle of ambiguity. Should I eat the eggs? What about the mysterious greyish matter where the organs would be? Does it even have a brain? I did not know the answers to these important questions. Making matters worse was the fact that I was seated next to the lobster fisherman and his family, who seemed to delight in eating every scrap of the invertebrates, save for the shells. I opted for my wife's more conservative approach. I will say this- lobsters should be eaten in large quantities daily.

Following the lobster and salad was a bit of a program. I couldn't follow much of the founders' speeches. Keep in mind that this was the club's 60th anniversary, so the founders were a bit long in tooth. I don't think they had been let loose in public for some time. Lise's father was also honored- especially for his work at organizing a youth football tournament for a decade.

Next we had a desert of pannacotta, which apparently was received as a very foreign, exotic dish. It was a bit on the sweet side, but otherwise well executed. We also saw a hilarious silent film about the founding of Kvitsøy 2000 years ago. It was a homemade film, probably done in 8mm back in the 70s. It had been transferred to video. It was very well done. Most of the guests decided that the hall was suddenly a smoking area. So much for my fresh suit.

Next the band played. The story behind the band was that Norway's most famous boxer (your guess is as good as mine as to his name) apparently went bankrupt. He ended up in a band with his brother and father. I knew enough Norwegian to determine the father was a dirty old man as he went on about the beautiful girls on Kvitsøy. The minimum age for attending the party was 15. They had a rough start. The band had no drummer, but rather a sequencer and drum machine. They started playing some Mexican standard, sung in Norwegian- which was very strange. Lise and I danced a few times. I was later dragged out to dance by a friend of Lise's parents to a strange rendition of Marley's Woman, Don't Cry sung with a Norwegian patois, if there is such a thing.

I had a very nice time overall. I sometimes am concerned that I cannot fully participate in this culture due to the language issue, but I seem to be learning more and more each day. I at least know what people are talking about. I am almost to the point where I am bothered when people refer to me in the third-person in my presence, as if I have no idea they are talking about me. But it will take time. The other reality is that most of us probably do not rely on communicating with other people as much as we think. Anyone going to a store can read the amount owed on the register and hand the employee a credit card or cash. There is relatively little small talk or niceties in city culture anyway. Of course on Kvitsøy, it is a small community where everyone knows everything about everyone, but we don't live here. My wife has lived in the US long enough that she is vaguely considered an outsider at this point, even though her ancestors go back about 1000 years here. Regardless, I will always be an outsider- both to Kvitsøy and to Norway. But this has a very different meaning than in the US. This is Europe. There was a man from the Netherlands seated at our table. There are people from Denmark or Spain or any other country living here. While people are quick to point out where someone originally is from, there are no social consequences to being an outsider. It isn't like the US where the lines between legal and illegal immigration have become blurred. Oddly, despite the lack of diversity here (relative to the US), Norway might actually be even more of a melting pot. The other issue is simply that most Norwegians have at least one relative who emigrated to the US. If I were from Poland, it would be a different story altogether!