--- Rachel, June 2012
This map is a quick overview of the places where I have lived so far in life - there are more (I have lived several places in Northern Norway, for instance, but only one marker - and I lived two places in Sweden - only one marker - and additionally, I have moved around in most of these places more than once - in other words - I have never lived more than 4 years in the same location/house/apartment):
Born: August 14th 1974 in Tromsø, Norway
My parents were Harry Olsen and Ann Wenche Olsen - who were married only a few years and divorced when I was only 2 years old (irreconsilable differences I guess). They lived on the island of Senja in Northern Norway, on a homestead called Torsmo, where today, my father, has a campground.
After the divorce, my mother moved to the mainland, where she started working for a local company called Haug and Co. After working there for a short while, she met the man who were to become my dad, Ragnar Haug. He was the middle son of the owner of the company, and they got married shortly thereafter, on New Years Eve 1978.
We then moved to Liberia, in West Africa, where we lived for 1,5 years. My parents worked there as missionaries (methodists), and we left because of the civil war that was raging.
After that, we moved to Trysil, in Eastern Norway. In 1982, my first brother Ole Andreas, was born on June 15th. When I started 3rd grade - 1983 - we moved to Fyllingsdalen - a suburb of Bergen - then - and my mom attended Betanien Sykepleierskole there (nursing school). It was a three year program, and my dad stayed in Trysil where he worked. Myself and my brother, Ole Andreas, lived in Bergen with my mom for that first year. The second year and a half, I lived in Trysil again - but my memories of those years are dim for some reason - I was there with my dad and my mom was still in Trysil. The last semester of 5th grade, I moved back to Bergen, and we now lived in Espeland, a different suburb - and my mom was doing here residence part of her education. I now had another brother too - Marcus - who was born on December 30th 1985.
Fall 1986, we moved back to Trysil in Eastern Norway, where we lived until I was done with Junior High in June 1989. At that time, my parents moved to Rusksele, in Northern Sweden. I lived there for a year of high school - loving every moment of it!
I had always known that my second year of high school, I would do a high school year abroad - 1991/1992, and I did - I went to St. Paul, Minnesota, where I first attended Harding High School (Knights mascot - inner city school on hte East Side of St. Paul Minnesota where I was a self proclaimed soccer star, and I also was on the skiing team), and then Moundsview High School (Mustangs mascot - rich suburbian school where I did a failed attempt at track and field thanks to a very bad advice from my host family - urgh - another story in and of itself...).
I changed schools after Christmas because of my host familys problems with alcoholism, which was close to my heart given the sorrows it had played in my mothers own life, with her mom dying from the disease. My second family however, a rich family with little interest in me unfortunately, proved to be a sad experience.
The only thing that kept me up during that semester was in fact a fantastic church I attended that entire year. I attended Central Baptist Chuch, where I started after the encouragement of two girls on my soccer team who were to become my closest friends during that school year - two Vietnamese sisters called Sun and Suong Ninh - God I wish I were to find them again - they were an amazing influence on my life!
At the time - spring of 1992 - when I was supposed to move back to Rusksele and my parents, they told me that they had decided to follow their dreams and move to Florida in the USA where dad was to start up his own charter air plane service to the Bahamas.
I did go down there for the summer, to Titusville, Florida, and my best friend Jennie from Rusksele was there as well for the entire summer and we had the best time. She had become my first true best friend ever when I moved to Sweden for High School, and I had a rough time letting her go back. Therefore, after a few weeks of considering my options, my parents agreed to let me go back to Sweden to finish high school in my own apartment there - rather than staying on in Florida.
I have never regretted that decision.
Those two years were so much fun. I lived in a small apartment right by the train station and only two-three blocks from a great high school where I was loving living and going to school. High School was great. I had never been truly happy in Trysil, where I had lived for most of elementary school and all of Junior High School. I was a Northern Norwegian Christian - and academically strong - girl living in the middle of eastern Norway where all of those things were grounds for being bullied around. Fortunately, I was a strong girl - with a strong faith - and it is only as an adult I can look back and realize how cruel the other children were. I had no real strong friends and I was always on the outskirts of the popular groups and I had a great void in my life those years that no amount of religion or family love could fill - I had no friends and thus no social network or group to which I felt I belonged.
In Sweden on the other hand, I was a Norwegian girl - and that was it! I was different - and I was accepted and I was popular and I felt like I was part of a social group that accepted me and cheerished me! I was academically strong, I was slim, and I got a boyfriend fairly soon who was popular and kind and good looking and wow - a hockey player so just imagine his body. Additionally, he had a wonderful family and they accepted me 100% and enclosed me into their family life. These two years were the years I felt the most complete up to that point.
Olle and I, however, were doomed to never work out though - which was sad - and for the best. I had always known that Sweden was great, but I belonged with my family in New Orleans (where they had moved after my dads charter air plane company to the Bahamas did not work out, and they had to fall back on my moms Nursing education). Olle had obliged and applied to UNO - the University of New Orleans - as had I. He had even been accepted. That summer, however, while I was working at my biological fathers camp ground in Northern Norway, he called and ended our relationship for good.
I was devastated and heart broken - to say the least - despite the fact that I had known and planned to do the same myself. Somehow, though, being dumped before you have the chance to do the dumping is rough on the soul.
So I went to New Orleans, and told my parents I was not ready to start school yet and I wanted to go to Israel and work on a kibbutz - which had been a life long dream of mine from my Christian days. I had left religion behind, however, after we moved to Northern Sweden for high school and my awareness and intelligence convinced me that faith in something that could not be proven would only break my heart. A trip to Israel, however, was really something that might be able to heal my broken heart after Olle.
0 kommentarer:
Legg inn en kommentar