Camping & School Starts

So this is our second year in Norway and everything feels a little normal. Maxwell and Zara start school tomorrow. I start class at UiB on Monday. I'm in the second norsk class again because I missed more than 25% of the last one so I couldn't complete it. Höffentlich I'll be able to knock it out this time. We're all rusty after our American summer.

This past weekend we went backpacking and camping at Håøya, a strategic island for the defense of Bergen. It's mentioned as such as early as 1183 in the sagas and more recently the Nazis thought it was a pretty important post because they had Russian POWs build a road to the gun emplacements at the top. Cara planned the whole trip, which was pretty awesome. The campground was by the beach, and the only people to join us there came by boat. They were actually oceanographers and had a wooden ship dating from the 30's. We spent the evening drinking wine and swapping stories of science, the arctic and the antarctic. Part of me thinks it's awesome for Maxwell and Zara to have such experiences, and part of me wonders if they won't just feel overwhelming pressure to be so successful.