A quiet day at Ytre Åsen

Today it was just Anders and I on his farm. Hilde is at her farm on the island with Pete & Ginny. Anders had to leave this morning with his tractor to go move some hay bales somewhere, so he left me with a list of things that could be done around here, and said I could do however much I wanted until I was tired. I was really happy to have a list of chores though, because in my downtime lately I´ve been having minor freakouts.. just still trying to wrap my mind around where the hell I am and what I´m doing. Not to mention, everyone and everything I´ve ever known is oceans away. But that´s the beauty of it I suppose, right? Now I am forced to make new connections. And the people here are unbelievably nice.

Anyways, yes, chores. I groomed the horses for a while first thing this morning after Anders left, but the big one got too frisky and was pushing me around with his big nose (those guys are strong! eek!) so me and the barn cat went to the hay barn and carted the drying hay to the already dry pile.
I´ve named the barn cat Chloe. She´s soooo adorable. She technically belongs to the neighbors but she lives in the barn and I am worried that her owners haven´t been feeding her, cuz she is all skin and bones. I told Anders, and this afternoon he came back with a bag of catfood in his tractor! How sweet.
She´s hard to get a photo of, because she´s so lovey that she just wants to rub on the camera if you stop petting her even for a moment.

Then I put my laundry in because I only brought 2 pairs of jeans and 1 was covered in mud from the lamb rescue mission yesterday and the other was covered in mud and hay and horse hair from the chores today. So since I didn´t have any other pants except pyjama bottoms, I put on my vintage pink plaid shirt dress, but I still had more tasks to do outdoors, so I had to wear my green raincoat and green wellies. When Anders got back home, he found me in this crazy getup with a weedwhacker, cutting the grass around the front steps. He said all I needed was a scarf around my head and I´d look like some old Norwegian farmwoman. Probably true.

Later this afternoon, he had to go pick up Britta from school and asked me if I wanted a driving lesson. Him and Hilde were adament about teaching me how to drive stickshift (I only ever learned automatic, I know, I know, I´m a big baby).
So I drove all the way into Førde and back! Not that far, but I managed to stall out like 5 times right when we were about to turn and the old man in the car behind me was freaking out and Anders thought it was hilarious. I was having a minor panic attack. I´ll have to get the hang of it eventually though, right?
I like that I´m learning to drive in Norway, it´s kind of funny it took this long.
So many new things all at once! I feel like a newborn or something. Or an alien. I kind of am an alien here. Where the hell did I come from? hah

Oh and p.s. I am in love with the old sheepdog, Tassen. He may turn me into a dog lover yet! He offers me his paw every time I come near him, and nuzzles alot. Anders said today "Ah, he enjoys your company, look" cuz he was splayed out by my feet looking quite happy. How nice! My first Norwegian friend! Haha