First day at work, and I already got chewed out. Turns out that people expect a lot more from my job than they actually get. I sent an email to my boss to tell her about the gap between expectations and reality, and my biggest fear is that she will come back saying that I am wrong and their expectations are actually true. Won’t that be a nice shot at my credibility?
We spent the day in meetings, and by the end I had a splitting headache. We did get to take a plant tour (see the picture – the coat says “Visitor” in Norwegian). I wish I could say it was fun, but I was so disappointed about the turn of events in the morning that I was just internally tantruming. I was tired, hungry, and extremely whiny. I wanted to just quit all this nonsense and skip right to shopping and sightseeing!
We were supposed to have an outdoorsy team building event tomorrow, but a storm is fast approaching and now we have no idea what they’re gonna have us do. Maybe stay in and play Monopoly 😉 I’d be happy enough to stay in my room watching Frasier episodes 🙂
Oh yeah, and remember how I said that my hotel is still under construction? See the picture of it below. I really wasn’t kidding!
For dinner, we ended up at a restaurant called Provianten in the town of Mandal, about 30min away from Lindesnes. It was a great place by the lake. Mmm I keep calling it a lake, but really it’s a massive canal that ends in the North Sea. Anyways, Norway is a great place for fish, even if Norwegians joke that pizza is their national dish 😉 Apparently they are serious about pizza around here.
I had the mussels appetizer and the spare ribs special. It was delicious, and I had a great time trading marriage stories with a few of my coworkers.
I did have a culture shock moment, though. I felt like an idiot, but I’ll leave the judgment up to you. While we were picking out items from the menu, I asked my coworkers whether they would join me in sharing the mussels appetizer. The Americans passed, they don’t like mussels, but the British and Norwegian ones were tentative. I thought it was the usual reaction of “I’ll wait to see if someone else would like to jump in, and if nobody does, I’ll speak up” – but my interpretation was completely off.
They asked me if I didn’t feel like I could handle a whole dish by myself. I said it wasn’t a matter of being able to handle it, I am just not used to having an appetizer all on my own. They said that, in the UK and Norway, for the most part, appetizers are individual dishes; unless it was Chinese food. And even then, they are absolutely disgusted by the possibility of double dipping.
Even after they told me that, I still asked if anyone would share with me. I was SO uncomfortable not sharing appetizers! In the end, I let it go on the account that my British counterpart, who had originally caved under my insistence, actually wanted to get an app of her own.
The mussels plate was definitely individual sized. Not at all like the portions you would get at Atlantic Fish & Co in Boston, which are meant for sharing.
Anyways, I felt like a total moron!
ina