Trenchwork

believe it or not. Things have been incredibly busy for the past week, and next week promises to be equally difficult. Last week consisted of oral exams for the English proficiency course, and I’ve been reminded of how tricky it is to learn a foreign language. Norwegian students are interesting in that by the time they arrive at university, they’ve been around English long enough that they’ve begun to develop an ear for it. A huge percentage of the television programs are in English, English music plays on the airwaves, and they learn English in high school. The difficulty is that while verbal skills tend to be halfway decent—depending on any number of other factors—their writing skills normally lag much further behind. Norway lacks a tradition for emphasizing writing in any language and the blunt reality is that Norwegian students simply don’t write a fraction as much as they should in order to develop their skills in this area—much less to develop their skills to the level of craft.

Of the 80 students I was supposed to test last week (not all of whom showed up), there were a small handful I was very uncertain about. In reality, they probably should have failed, but their ability to carry on a coherent conversation about a text—even if they had not fully understood the text—saved them. Had I failed them, they’d have retaken and passed the exam in four weeks. My feeling is that if they don’t do what I’ve told them is necessary, they’ll pretty effectively sabotage themselves, and then they won’t pass the course. Having said that, I’m seriously concerned that their writing ability follows the trend and falls at a much lower level than their verbal skills, and if that happens, then the odds are good that they won’t pass the course, regardless of whether they passed or failed the oral exam. Without seeing a sample of their writing, this isn’t something I can can evaluate. Yet. They turn in an obligatory essay in a few weeks, and then we’ll see what happens.

In the meantime, the stateside students just turned in term paper proposals and midterms, so in addition to oral exams next week, four days of small groups for both Academic Writing and English Proficiency, I have proposals that need responses, midterms that need grades, and reading responses which need, well, responses. And lest I forget, I have the Norwegian reading group tomorrow evening.
Personally, I’m just shooting for surviving this coming week. Then I intend to sleep in over the weekend and spend one day doing absolutely nothing.

On other fronts, there’s been little to no knitting. I’ve cast on and knit the first cuff of the first mitten for the mittens swap, but have gotten no further in anything. I simply haven’t had time. To add insult to injury, the rest of the stitch markers for knitting lace came in from Karen of Beadmarkers, and there’s nothing I’d like more at the moment than to put the things to work. They look perfect, feel great, and I’m itching to get started on them.

And now, a funny story

Ok, it’s mostly funny for me and friends and family, but I’m not above sharing an embarrassing moment. You see, DH and I were supposed to go to one of his aunts yesterday afternoon for a little gathering in connection with her birthday. We expected a small group of just a couple cousins, gathered informally around the coffee table in her apartment. Since she’s been ill, I’d asked if I could bring anything to make things easier for her, and she cheerfully took me up on that. Having made the offer, I had to figure out how to actually follow through, but I managed to throw together a three-layer carrot cake yesterday morning. The problem was that it didn’t quite have time enough to cool, and you know what warm cake does to cream-cheese frosting, yes? If you don’t know, let me tell you: It thins out, squishes out the sides, and sends layers sliding about like skaters on ice.

To make matters worse, because the middle layer was a bit too warm when I flipped it out of the pan, it broke right down the middle. I finished it all about fifteen minutes before we walked out the door, and tucked it into the refrigerator for those few minutes hoping there would be some sort of miracle chill which would solidify the frosting and help hold things together. It didn’t, but I said a small prayer and anchored everything down with plastic wrap, hoping I could sort of “shrink wrap” it in place for the drive.

DH drove as carefully as he could, but of course the way there has a dozen different turns, speed bumps, potholes, and tram tracks. Lovely. I rode with the cake on my lap, holding the edges and trying to keep the middle layer from squishing out the sides like a pea from its shell. I wasn’t entirely successful, but I wasn’t unduly worried. It would only be a small gathering of family who frankly wouldn’t really care what the cake looked like. After all, one of Murphy’s Law states that if you have to bake something to take to someone else, something about it will go wrong—most particularly if it’s something you’ve done so often you can do it in your sleep, and it’s a no-brainer recipe. If you’re baking after someone has said, “you’re such a good baker,” then you may as well forget it—you’ve just had the kiss of baking death. Do yourself a favor and make something that intentionally looks messy, such as a trifle, or stop at your favorite bakery.

We arrived at the building to find that not only was the gathering not in the apartment, but it was also not little. It was a suit-and-tie party with family and former co-workers, and a sit-down coffee with dressy sandwiches and cakes. DH was in jeans, clean white tennis shoes, and a nice shirt, and I was in a pair of comfy black pants with a plain cotton sleeveless tank and a thin cardigan. We were dressed for Wednesday night service at a small country church, and the rest of the guests were geared for Sunday morning at a large First Baptist.

Sigh.

It gets better. The cake? My humble, misshapen carrot cake? It was going to be placed on the table with a host of very dressy marsipan and finely decorated cakes. I was mortified. People I’d never met, dressed in dark suits and glittery jewelry, were about to be introduced to a very typical and genuinely American dessert that looked like it had been made by the local kindergarten class. I scrambled to the kitchen, grabbed a spatula, and tried to smooth out the frosting, using the squished-out excess to camouflage some of the faults with the layers. I couldn’t hide that slipping middle layer, and I was terrified that it would come out altogether, so I stabbed the spatula down into the middle of the cake, leaving only the handle in the air, hoping that at least it would hold the other two layers in place. It looked remarkably like it was part of a murder-scene “Kill the Cake” photo shoot. Then we tucked it in the fridge until it was time to set out the cakes.

Trond and I laughed when the dessert table was arranged. American cakes are typically much taller than Norwegian cakes, so there sat my 13″-in-diameter monster of three layers, one clearly slipping out the side with a patchy off-white frosting, towering over all its dignified colleagues like a bombed building which threatened to fall over at the next tremble.

And this was the introduction to American baking a host of Norwegians who’d never experienced the real thing had.

Double sigh.

On the other hand, they ate half of the thing, and given that it was a good 12″ tall cake, and that there were at least half a dozen others on the table, I take that as a good sign. It may have looked like a disaster, but it seems as if they liked the way it tasted.

But you know, I’d soooo much have preferred to have been properly dressed and to have brought something which was more interesting than a garden-variety carrot cake. Ok, this carrot cake was interesting, but you do know what I mean.