Jeg snakker bare litt norsk!

Wayne left yesterday morning to head up to the university to get his check (yay! paying rent!). I went with him so i could get a run in on the way back. even with my really poor sense of direction, i only got a little lost. :) Back at the apartment, some workers were in the midst of painting - aha!! so the lack of steps IS only a temporary thing! i said hello on the way in - the quickest way to let people know you don't speak norwegian, but apparently the message didn't go through, because they started telling me something that sounded like the muppet's swedish chef. i probably looked something like a deer in headlights and said something completely intelligent like, "duh... is the door wet?" To which the construction guy said, "oh. oh, yeah. we just painted. be careful, the door's still drying." It's really amazing how prevalent english is here.. even folks checking us out in the grocery stores have known english.
Later in the afternoon we went back to the grocery store - this seems to be a daily occurrence - to try to get some flour. wow. only one type of peanut butter anywhere but about 15 different types of flour. After about 15 minutes and consulting the norwegian -english dictionary, we figured out "hvelte mel" was wheat flour.. unfortunately every pack of hvelte mel had some other decription on it too, like "fin" or "sammalt" or "grov"... and none of those words were in our dictionary. a half hour later we left with no flour because we couldn't figure out which brand was plain white flour. :)
Appliances have been fun, too. we made some ham sandwiches for lunch and i decided to melt some cheese on mine in the convection oven. Now, the knobs were actually in English, but this didnt end up helping me much! i turned it to the "grill" knob and turned it on for 30 seconds.. when i opened the door, the whole oven was smoking from the top.. bad sign! maybe it imparts the food with a "naturally smoky flavor"? not sure, but i think i'll be using the regular oven from now on...
We've been losing track of time - really easy to do when the sun doesn't go down. Yesterday we ate "lunch" at 5:30 pm and "dinner" near 10:30.
Today's plans were to get to a bank to get our "D" number so we could start a bank account and then tackle the laundry. This morning was cold and rainy and we both were pretty much soaked by the time we made it to the bank. After an interesting conversation with the receptionist at the bank - the first person we've met that didn't speak english, and the conversation took pretty much what norwegian we do know (we speak very little norwegian. do you speak english? -no. you dont speak norwegian? - no. -not any norwegian? -no. -i dont speak english. - yes, we gathered that.) we applied for our "d-numbers" which should take 3 weeks to get. Until then, we are bank accountless, which is slightly cumbersome. plus, we had to pay 75 kroner just to get our check cashed (about 15 bucks).
Back at the apartment, we tackled the washing machine, with its secret compartment for soap and norwegian buttons.. i sat in the bathroom with a dictionary translating while wayne searched the web for user instructions. thanks karen and maciej for the advice on the washer.. we would never have figured it out if you hadn't warned us pre-trip! When something that you normally think is simple takes a long time to figure out (pretty much everything we've done here) you feel really oddly proud of yourself when get it done, even though it's stupid.... case in point, flour and wash. :)