Houston wasn't the only time that I babysat for my nephews. On another time, my baby sister and her husband had moved the family to Norway. And, shortly thereafter, I was slated to do a seminar in Norway. As a matter of fact, the city that I flew into was the city where they were living at the time. It was interesting to see the social structures, and various differences between what was done in Norway, and what would have been common in North America. Because the Norwegian school system starts students rather late, daycare is widely available, and cheap, and starts very early, for very young children. My youngest nephew, at the time, was barely crawling, and certainly not toddling, and the facility where he was for daycare was very interesting in terms of the stairs, which were very well designed, extremely wide, with a long and deep run, of each step, and a very slight rise for each step. Therefore, there was no danger of the children falling down the stairs and hurting themselves, even if they were still at the crawling stage.
My sister and her husband were supposed to go to a company party, but were wondering whether they should, given the price of babysitting. With the availability of daycare, babysitting is not seen as something that just anybody can do. And the charges are assessed accordingly. At that point, it was about $50 per hour per child. So, I volunteered to stay with my nephews, and they went to the party. They had a very good time, and were very glad that they went, and we figured out later that I saved them about $750.
Norway sticks in my memory for a few other reasons. The venue for the seminar was at a resort. It was a nice enough place, but I noted that the room had only a shower, and not a bathtub. I am old (and older and more arthritic now that I was then), but standing in front of a seminar for eight hours a day is somewhat trying on the knees and hips. I tried to work this off, most of the time, by wandering back and forth while presenting material. But this can only take you so far. So I tended to rely on a hot bath, at the end of the day, calm my sore and tired legs and hips.
They didn't have one. Not just there wasn't any room available with a bathtub: the entire resort had no room with a bathtub. They did have one hydrotherapy bathtub, generally used by the staff for different types of treatments. But that was the only tub in the entire facility.
I tried some other means. The resort had a couple of massage chairs, on one of the floors, and I tried those out, concentrating on the massage and vibration for legs. It helped a bit, but I was still missing my hot baths. Eventually, I figured that a combination of the steam room, and the sauna, and a few cool plunges in between, made a fairly acceptable substitute.
I still don't know what Norwegians have against bathtubs.
The candidates in the seminar, of course, all spoke Norwegian. They also all spoke English, which allowed me to deliver the material I needed to deliver. However, on the basis of some prior knowledge of (mostly theological) German, towards the end of the week I was getting the hang of certain common words, particularly as they related to the fields of technology. On the last day that I was doing some review, I covered a particular section of the material, and then left the class for some reason, while the students were still working on what they needed to review. I could hear them talking, in Norwegian, behind me as I left. I could tell, from the few words that I was able to figure out, the topic that they were having trouble with. And I knew the point that they had to concentrate on, in order to resolve this difficulty. So I turned around and walked back into the room, and wrote the term that they needed on the board. Then I left again. As I was leaving, the second time, I heard one of the candidates behind me say, "Okay, *now* we're in trouble!"
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