Final travels of 2024: Norway

After six weeks in Vienna, we returned home on a Sunday only to fly out again Thursday - this time not entirely for pleasure, at least not for me, but to work with Churchear supporting their big bi-annual conference by live translating / captioning.

For Mr. and the kids however, this was another one of those short trips for fun as well as educational purposes... I feel that seeing the world teaches kids a lot, and then of course these types of conferences in particular teach them to relate to people with very diverse backgrounds, nationalities and disabilities - all very valuable. And the beautiful thing is to see them forge connections, making friends equally with 80-year-old German conference attendees and a four-year-old Ukrainian girl who happened to stay at the same hostel.

D (8) communicating with a deaf-blind Polish man by
tapping on the letters on his glove

I'm not planning to write lots, just a few photos and impressions - we only had five days there. I have now stepped down from the Board, which means I don't have to travel to regular meetings like that any more; the big EU project that meant we had to meet every three months has now just about finished, anyway. I could not sustain that pace with the kids, although they might disagree! So all I've committed to doing now is to continue supporting their conference every other year.

Arriving in rainy Oslo - making our way to the hostel
with some of our Churchear friends from Strasbourg and Warsaw

But even as I was mostly working (and in between sessions, usually sleeping: this kind of work is exhausting!) the kids and Mr. did have a fun time, staying at a youth hostel meant there were some activities to be done on site but they also went out to visit friends we made last time, and to look around the city again.

They enjoyed the hostel activities...

Rainy chess at the hostel

... spent a day at the Technical Museum which had lots of hands-on activities to offer...

... got involved at Sunday Mass (holding up the microphone to the priest)...

... used a sunny day to the full for a bit of sightseeing...

... and finally, visited the fascinating fish (and their owners) we met last time.

As I stepped down from the Board, they surprised me with some lovely gifts and even caught my reaction so I couldn't not post that photo - I expect you'll see me wearing that hat a lot in British winters from now on, it's a handmade Swedish felted wool hat and I genuinely love it! What a blessing this has been for us all.

It's time to fully re-enter daily life in the UK now, no more trips for us this year and that is just fine by me. Well, except there's a camping trip coming up the weekend after next...!

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