Studying English

What is it about English and I?










A picture of my daughter (12) and I on London bridge summer 2010. In the back you see Big Ben.

I love English. This is my first language and i hope to go far with my knowledge of the language. This blogg is intended to post my written tasks, thoughts and my experiences during my year as a part time student at Oslo university College. I will post some pictures and stories of things or places that remind me of England and my connection to the country.





HIO English II

Wow! Back to school and a great class it seems to be. Lots of new faces and they have travelled far to do the work. Already got my group for the first assignment. Lets see if i remember their names, Berit, Richard and Geir from Tromsø, Hamar and Oslo. One of them works with my former collegue and former studentfriend. Small world.

We set a deadline for wednesday for the first draft. I got to get reading. WIll post the question here and a few thoughts on what could be a good answer.

My first task.

The first task in the course was as follows:Write about yourself, about where you work, which classes you are teaching this year, your family (if you like), interests or hobbies, etc. It would be great if you would include a paragraph about why you have chosen to study English this year, what you are hoping to get out of the course. Also, if you have already studied some of the literature on our reading list, please make a note of that as well. Please send your text as an attachment.

My paper looks like this: ( I see now that i have totally forgotten about the last part of the task)

Myself and my journey toward English Π

Writing about one-self is different from actually talking about one-self. It is hard not to be a bit personal but then again, as the writer of the text you get to choose what you want to write about. Yes, it can be difficult, but we have to start somewhere. A good place to start is probably to present myself. Tell you who I am and where I come from. My guess is if we take it from there, the rest will come by itself. Perhaps write down a few thoughts of why I have decided to take the English course and maybe then the task before me might not look so foggy.

On the fifth day of June in 1975, I came into this world. It was a lucky day and I’d like to believe it was a sunny day because June is such a beautiful time of year in Kenya. Not too hot, not too cold and lots of rain. It is what we Kenyans would call a tropical winter. Kitale is a town near the border of Kenya and Uganda. At the time my father was working as a geologist where he specialized in precious stones and minerals. He spent days out in the escarpment excavating the magic of the Kenyan rift valley and sometimes he would come home with specimens of some of the most gorgeous rocks I had ever seen, gold, diamonds, rubies, tanzanite, malachite just to mention a few.

My memories of growing up with my father are filled with great adventures on safari, long drives, and a strict but proper upbringing. My three sisters and I still reminisce the times we used to have. Even now we amuse ourselves over the caning we used to get when we were small because we were really quite naughty. It makes me laugh to think about all the mischievousness we used to get up too. May our fathers soul rest in peace, but at times I do think that we did deserve it sometimes. I probably got triple doses of a good beating being the youngest of four girls.

My father was born and raised in Kenya too. His father migrated from South Africa and was among the first white settlers that worked on the first railways that were built in East Africa during the colonial era. Our late great grandfather migrated from Britain and was one of the early settlers in South Africa. There are some great stories we have been told over Christmas dinners and other typical family gatherings over the years. Let us just say that the Thom family comes from a line of proud feisty hunters and adventurers.

My mother was never really in the picture during my younger years. I think she had it quite tough living with my father with his strong views against alcohol and reliability. So she took off with a Norwegian chap when I was about three. I was too young to miss having a mother figure, but the house girls did a good job on filling in the void. Apart from my mother sending the occasional birthday cards and Christmas parcels, Dad was generous and considerate and sent us off on holiday often to see our mother in Norway. But there was really no place like Thika. That is the name of the town we moved to later when my father started working for Del Monte Kenya. Here we lived on a big estate in the middle of an enormous pineapple plantation. Outside our estate, there was pineapple as far as the eye could see. At the time I did not think it would be possible to crave for juicy, sweet, decent sized pineapples as I do now and buying them here can make bankrupt you. Now I miss it though along with all the other great fruit and greens that grew in the garden. It makes you really think how we do take things for granted.

Sometimes my thoughts drift off to

how we used to run and play in the fields and get up to all sorts of madness. Sometimes we would pick ripe pineapples and hide them and when the guards came by on horseback we would hide and the poor locals would get told off for trying to steal pineapple. Other times we would sit in my father’s car and play on the radio calling different bases pretending to be supervisors and asking other supervisors what the situation was in the different fields. We would be caught most of the time but that never stopped us for trying again. There were also coffee plantations outside the estate. They made a great hide out for smoking cigarettes until we got caught and got such a beating for it. It didn’t stop us though for three of us still can’t quit the nasty habit.

I completed my O-levels in the same school I started kindergarten. Sixteen years in the same private school owned by Del Monte. Here I attended school with children from many different nationalities around the world. Our school was very proud to excel in most of its extracurricular activities. We won most of the tournaments played against other private schools across the country. We were known to be very good in a variety of things such as hockey, rugby, swimming, debating, poetry and creative writing. I feel very privileged to have been to this tiny school in the middle of nowhere as we so candidly put it. I still keep in touch with most of my friends from Imani school, and last year when I went to York as part of the first English course, I managed to arrange a reunion in London after twenty years. It was great to see some good friends again who flew out all the way from Kenya, America and different parts of Britain to make the event. Now that’s what I call killing two birds with one stone - an English course in York, and a reunion in London over one weekend.

At the tender age of 16, I moved to Norway to spend some time with my mother. It was that time where big decisions about my future had to be made. Dad was nearing retirement age and I needed to find my journey. I did not speak the language and there was nobody to guide me when it came to getting my school papers approved, so the journey was a tough one. My first step was to master Norwegian. Learning foreign languages was never my strongest asset, and this I can prove because I have had French and German for four years and all I can do is ask for a cheese sandwich and an orange juice, or where do I find the street where I can buy these items from. The only way I could get myself speaking like a Scandinavian and thinking like one too was to take a year in folkehøgskole.

The time at Hurdal verk was a fantastic year. I met some of the most amazing people in my life there. It took me about three months to progress to the stage where I actually could participate in a decent conversation other than my name is Katherine and I can speak a little Norwegian. But it took a lot of persistence and determination. Here I am, 18 years later and now a Norwegian teacher teaching Norwegian children, Norwegian. It is quite ironic but it has now become a good story to tell over the Christmas gatherings and holiday seasons with family and friends. I learned so much during that year and travelled all sorts of places like a true Norwegian. Up high mountains, over glaciers, nights in snow-caves, skiing long distances, fishing through holes in the ice and sailing to the top of the country and down again. A magnificent country that easily makes second place to home. Not quite hot, dusty and wild like Kenya, but close in a different arctic way.

Having completed the year in Hurdal I was ready to enroll to college, but my papers were still not approved. The process took such a long time that I decided to go back to high school whiles I waited. I started a compacted year of ninth and tenth grade. Then I took college and qualified as a medical secretary. I remember working in a doctor’s clinic when my papers finally came through, along with an enclosed letter of apology of why it took so long. I only needed to take three subjects in order to qualify for university. I was bitter and frustrated but I figured out quite fast that there was no time to cry over spilt milk. By this time I had already gotten married and been blessed with two children and needed to figure out how I was going to make a decent living for the four of us.

With no time to waste I took engineering for two years. Land surveying, variable multiple equations and calculating the density of concrete on high- rise buildings just did not seem to give me any satisfaction. I embarked on a new journey that was thanks to a teacher I had earlier in school who inspired me. He told me that I had a gift and that I should seriously consider teaching. He added emphasis on how my background was such an asset to the Norwegian society and that we needed more teachers like myself to reflect the picture we see happening in modern day society of this country.

I had different roles more or less at the same time, a mother, a wife, a student, a secretary, a cleaner, a receptionist and even a taxi driver. There just did not seem to be enough hours in a day to get round it all and four years went by very fast. I worked part time as a substitute teacher too, the other part time a tutor for young teenagers who found mathematics and English challenging. I then got this urge to learn more about globalization so I combined my final year of my teacher training with development studies. That landed me in Bangladesh on some field study on women and empowerment.

Now I am a qualified teacher and in seven years I have managed to teach all years of primary school, from the first year to the seventh. Last year I sent off my former class to senior school. Today, I am working in the fourth year. My place of work love and appreciatet my English skills, and quite frankly I enjoy it. It gives me a very good excuse to avoid lots of Norwegian writing classes to my great relief. It occurred to me that after all these years I never really formalized my English skills. Maybe after having completed English 2, I might even get paid the little extra for raising the level of English studies in our school.

My story is a long story, and I could write a lot more, but now is a good time to stop. I have set out on a new journey where English will be my working tool. I would like to work on my English skills. I want to be a better writer. My goal is to achieve a master in the English language. Maybe this time round i may get the right help and guidance to take on this journey without too many hinders and I look forward to learning more about this wonderful language during this course; English 2.

Travelling to York.

I will be off to York in January. We will be at the Norwegian study center at the University of York (http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/nsc/) and im looking forward to seeing the great staff there. Especially Tim Vicary... he was nice :)

links to places i will go

http://www.yorktheatreroyal.co.uk/cgi/events/events.cgi?t=template&a=170

http://www.timvicary.com/

Beetles fan in the family

My daughter (12) is a serious Beatles fan. This is actually pretty unique having such taste in music. I am really proud of her and will continue to be one of her fans too.

Beatles drawings by Juliana