When my father announced to the family that we were moving to the other side of the world to a city called Seattle my sister and I were horrified. Leave our beautiful home and all of our friends and family? No! Say it isn\u2019t so! But my father\u2019s will prevailed even though my sister, my mother and I were adamantly against the move. After we settled into a rundown guesthouse in Seattle, I still kept hoping and praying and expecting us to move back home any day. My hopes were dashed. When my parents became citizens, I had to go along for the ride. That meant I lost my Norwegian citizenship. It felt like a part of me, the best part, had been cut off. Every time I visit Norway, which I can\u2019t afford to do very often, I love seeing the hills, mountains and fjords that can only be found in Norway. I love speaking Norwegian and seeing all my relatives who look like me, but I\u2019m now a foreigner with a foreign passport and not really one of them any longer. Then, in 2020, a special announcement! Norway was changing its policy regarding dual citizenship and people born in Norway who lost their Norwegian citizenship when they became citizens of another country could now apply for dual. \u201cStand back!\u201d I said to no one in particular. \u201cI\u2019m doing this!\u201d So, I got all my necessary papers together, sent in my application and waited \u2013 for one whole year. Two weeks ago, I received an email from Norway saying I need to submit all my papers in person to their embassy in San Francisco. I immediately started trying to coordinate an appointment date at the embassy with a flight to SF that wouldn\u2019t cost $600. It took awhile but I did it. In September I\u2019ll fly up to SF for my appointment and they\u2019ll send in all the papers to Norway for final approval. Then I\u2019ll have to wait again to see if Norway wants me back. If I do get my Norwegian passport, I\u2019m wondering when I\u2019ll be able to use it. Considering all the restrictions going on and the fact that I refuse to be jabbed or tested I hope all of this effort has not been in vain. But it may take awhile to save up for another trip to Norway and maybe by that time the world will be normal again and I\u2019ll be able to hike through the hills and mountains of my youth and pretend I\u2019m 12 years old again.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When my father announced to the family that we were moving to the other side of the world to a city called Seattle my sister and I were horrified. Leave our beautiful home and all of our friends and family? No! Say it isn\u2019t so! But my father\u2019s will prevailed even though my sister, my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brittlind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brittlind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brittlind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brittlind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brittlind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brittlind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15,"href":"https:\/\/brittlind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions\/15"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brittlind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brittlind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brittlind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brittlind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}