My Norwegian Classmates

The year I attended Norwegian language school, we had 28 students from 18 different countries. Most of them were women married to Norwegians. It made for some interesting coffee breaks as we tried to communicate with one another. I found many of my classmates’ stories quite interesting.

Several women in class were from the Ukraine.  Many Ukrainian and Thai women meet Norwegians via the Internet and marry them without ever spending much time together first. One woman knew no Norwegian and very little English, so I often wondered how she communicated with her husband and then I saw them together during lunch one day. Even though they’d been married a year, they still acted like lovebirds - there was a clue. He was a balding, forty-ish, not so great looking guy and she was in her early twenties and quite the Ukrainian hottie. Norwegians aren’t dumb, that’s for sure.

The woman that sat behind me was from Germany. She is a pediatric doctor, her husband, a dentist. The Norwegian government solicited them both because there aren’t enough medical professionals in the country. German dentists are the norm in Norway.

The woman that sat next to me became my partner when we practiced our pronunciation. Her name is Vestina and she is from Lithuania. She was 22 and she moved to Norway with her boyfriend to work also, but on the opposite end of the spectrum from the doctors and dentists. Fish factories hire people from Eastern Europe to do the grunt work that no respectable Norwegian citizen wants to do. Not a single Norwegian was on the payroll at their factory, including their boss, who was from Canada.

We had a lot of turnover in our class, but My Pal Vestina and I stayed on the whole year and ended up lifelong friends.  In many ways, she reminded me of myself when I was her age. We were very competitive with each other in comparing our test scores and we could crack each other up with just one look.

I found something to like about most everyone in our class, but Vestina was much more selective.  Any woman from the Slavic countries that didn’t dress to the hilt with high heels and stylish clothes insulted her greatly, and she vehemently hated them.  I asked her why we were friends since it was obvious I didn’t dress like that.  She said I was fine because I’m “older than her mother and no one cares what old people wear,” but it’s an insult to her generation if women neglect their looks. 

Up until then, I’d considered us equals, but she set me straight.