Sunday, November 11, 2007

Awakening Chronicles

As life unfolds so the weather seams too. Since I was a small boy back home, weather was not one of the topics I used to discuss only in my Geography and sometimes Science and Agriculture classes. However, today it seams to be the major consideration when I am to do something including dressing; is there snow, wind, rain and what is the temperature? In the last two days the temperature has been as low as 2 degrees. This is the lowest I have experienced. A friend of mine joked that back home 12 degrees in the city makes news, here 2 degrees makes small talks. However students still keep the smiles. Too much for the weather and hence small talks.

A week ago my team mate and I embarked on a 7 hours train journey to Sandefjord which is some what on the east of Norway. We were attending a staff and volunteer staff meeting for the student ministry. On reaching the first destination where we were to change trains in Drammen, we had precisely 7 minutes to do so. Well it is common back home that our vectors studies are efficient so when moving from track one on railway lines we just jump over them especially when you suddenly realize that the train is just about to leave. Well, we tried the same! If I have ever heard a shout it was that day. It was one of the railway workers shouting that we get of the tracks!

The meeting was good coupled with a good reunion with all the International Hald students in the students’ ministry. We had sharing moments of the progress in our work, bible study times, prayer meetings and team building activities. We also attended a teenagers meeting dabbed ‘Get Focused’ where more than one thousand students attended. It was fascinating to see such a big number of teenagers gathered. This weekend one of the big question I have had for long was answered. I have always asked myself what makes a true leader. That weekend I thought; just observe a true leader, and there you will know. I took time to listen to the NKSS general secretary keenly and sat next to him during the last dinner. Within 5 minutes of my close interactions with him I had got the answer I have been looking for!





Above, leaving the Get Focused meeting with friends. Opposite, a bible study and prayer sesion in the nature in Sandefjord during the meeting.
One of this days that I like working to finish a task to the end before I take another, happened last Tuesday. I took sometime finalizing work in the house while at the same time I forgot I was to catch a bus to school and learn some Norwegian. When I looked at the watch I noticed I had 2 minutes to the time the bus leaves. You can almost imagine what happened. Well, to keep you away from guessing, that day I came to know what it coasted the world 100 metres champion, Veronica in the Commonwealth Championships. I had never run that fast before.

Learning Norwegian is interesting and I have learnt three new “alphabets”, å, ø and æ. Also ‘y’ is read as ‘I’ and so both are vowels. ‘J’ sounds like the English ‘y’. Where a vowel is followed by two consonants makes a different word and pronunciation as when followed by one consonant. Hence the words ‘pen’ and ‘penn’ are very different. The easy part is the ‘er’ takes place of ‘are’, ‘is’ and ‘am’ so I will say ‘Jeg er bra’ to say ‘I am good’. Well that is a 3 hours lesson. Soon I will start reading the Norwegian news paper. Since I came I always asked myself why when you ask a Norwegian to teach you something they say ‘I will learn you’ instead of ‘I will teach you’. This week I actually discovered. This is a direct translation from their mother tongue what we used to call back home ‘DT’ (direct translation). In Norwegian you say ‘Jeg vil lære deg’ so it is automatically ‘I will learn you’! I warned you if you hear it again!

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