Jeg heter Elizabeth

I started Norwegian lessons this morning.

Tiziana, my teacher is fantastic.

She's been talking to Husband, who she'll be teaching as well, all weekend about our different skill levels and to schedule our meetings.

I suspected that she would be a little bit energetic from the conversations she and Husband had touched on subjects including, but not limited to:
Couples taking language classes together: "Very bad. Never works out for the couple."
Americans taking language classes from her: "May I be so bold as to ask your ages? I hate to teach old Americans."
Canceling our first meeting (which happened to fall on a sunny day: "Hack Hack Hack, I am so sick."

I figured that either I would love her or would hate her immediately. There would be no in between.

So this morning, I get a call from Husband. Tiziana is running late because she needed to stop and get petrol, so a few minutes later, the dogs barked and I leaned out the window to say hello and that I would be right down. And who is standing on the walkway?



Yep, Tiziana is Janice Soprano, if Janice Soprano was a Norwegian teacher born in the Netherlands who probably does not have sociopathic tendencies.

So Tiziana comes in breathless and a bit harried. I introduce myself, take her coat, then am immediately horrified when Milo sticks his nose up her skirt. She matter of factly tells me that it's okay. Dogs do that to her all the time. She's allergic though and would like to wash her hands. Then she teeters up the stairs in her little skirt and tank top and tells me she will take some tea.

(When we trade phone numbers, I saw that her screen saver is a picture of herself all dolled up with a total come-hither look on her face. So odd, or maybe it's just Norwegian...)

She pulls out a scrunchy and pulls up half of her hair into a perky ponytail and we begin with gossip smattered with Norwegian phrases. She doesn't like to tutor Chinese because it's always tick tick tick. The company that handles this for her is a pain because they have her buy the books and then they don't pay for two months. The neighborhood where we live was once on the edge of the water, but was recently dammed for construction, so there would be more land. (When you ask? In the 50s.) I have pretty eyes. She doesn't like Norwegian haircutters because they take a razor and go chop chop chop chop. We have the same hair, but she has more waves. My husband is nice and sounds like he's from the midwest. She has a contract with NATO until summer break, so we'll have to be flexible on time until June 18th. My nice husband says I don't like to get up early.

And that was the first three to five minutes.

Then she propped her boobs on the table and we went to work on basic sentence construction, articles, question words and the like.

Hvor er du fra?
Jeg er fra USA.

Hva heter du?
Jeg heter Elizabeth

Ja, vi har 2 hunder.
Jeg har en bulldog og en husky.

Apparently I am a great parrot and after a bit, I don't even sound American.

I can't wait for the next lesson...