An introduction to my family and me

Hello everyone!

My name is Atle and I am 44 years old. I live with my wife Anita (41) and 2 children in a small village just outside of Stavanger on the west coast of Norway. Anita is from Budapest Hungary. We met via an online dating service in April 2009 and we got married in Budapest in September 2011.

We had some fun in a photo studio before the wedding party.

Our son Martin is 4 years old and our daughter Karoline is 7 months. Martin is bilingual and we hope Karoline will be as well. My wife speaks only Hungarian with the children. For a while, it seemed that Martin had chosen Norwegian as spoken language, but that has changed and now he is talking more and more Hungarian with his mother. He can switch back and forth effortlessly. It is amazing to witness.

Nowadays the children take most of our time and attention, but when we have a moment or two, we like to gather new knowledge. Currently it is mainly about peaceful parenting, children and education, but we also like anything about anarchy. We follow many beautiful anarchist on the web. We do not have any TV stations; we use the web for news and entertainment. It is a relief not to have any MSM in the house. 

YouTube Channel:

We have a newly started YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFoCdqxlkDN272JhSjYcBMw

Our house

Our house used to belong to my grandparents. They built it in the 60’s. The location is good if you want to experience nature, both sea and mountain is close by.

We are close to the famous Pulpit Rock – “Preikestolen” and Kjerag.

Kjerag

The trip to Kjerag can be a challenge. You need to be in a good condition to do the trip. If it is raining, it gets slippery, and then it is not recommended to go at all. The way to Kjerag starts by going steep upwards and it is almost just uphill after that, although there are some stretches where it’s flat.

Here we are at Kjerag on my birthday in 2009. We brought a cake to celebrate. When we got the cake out, we found that had of course melted. Laying in the backpack for several hours in 30°C will do that to a cake. The trip in the backpack was also not god for the integrity of the cake. The cake was warm and smashed up. Maybe just as well, because we forgot to bring something to cut it with, and we forgot plates and forks. Other than that, it was a great trip.

Oh, photos. There is the cliché picture that everyone that visit Kjerag must get. The one with a picture them standing on the rock with the fjord in the background. Here is one example:

Well we did not get that picture of us. The closest picture we got is this one.

It is Anita summoning enough courage to get on the stone. When she finally was on it, I zoomed in to get a picture of her, but forgot about the rock. The rock barley shows in the frame. She might as well have been standing on any rock and not been in any danger at all.

We have pictures of us standing on the stone taken from the other side. Those are not as spectacular and dramatic looking as the cliché picture.

Pulpit Rock (Preikestolen)

I have been a few times to the Pulpit Rock. It is a shorter and more pleasant trip than going to Kjerag, and it is not so difficult to get there. It is a nice trip to make, but it is not like going shopping or going to the beach. It is still the mountains. I once saw a woman coming down from the Pulpit Rock in flip-flops! Wow, there are all sorts, I guess. Me? I went there in sandals. The path is good walking there, and in some places, there are even wooden pathways. A few places the path is somewhat rocky and you need to a bit of climbing.

It was very scary to sit with the legs over the edge of the Pulpit Rock. It is a bit of a rush. I did not dare to look down sitting there, I was afraid that I was going to fall.  I have also heard about people in similar situations getting the urge to jump. I did not want that, so I leaned back from the edge and I did not sit there for long.

I took some pictures of the Pulpit Rock seen from the fjord when we were on a boat trip last year.

From the plateau of the Pulpit Rock down to sea level, is 604 meters.

To blog or not to blog…

I have never blogged before and I feel that it is a bit scary to write, to expose oneself for the world like this, but being in the situation that we are, I think we need to be more open. We have talked about blogging about several subjects. Maybe some nature pictures, trips, hikes etc. However, I think our focus will be about our home-/unschooling life.

Home-/Unschooling

We are very new to home-/unschooling way of life. We do not have any experience with it and there is nobody around us who is on this path. We need to de-school ourselves. We need to overcome our thoughts about what learning is and not think in the traditional school way. There is not anyone in our extended families that did homeschooling. We feel very alone in this endeavor. We will do unschooling as much as the law here permits us. Homeschooling is not widely spread in Norway. Most kids goes to regular public school. As a parent, you must provide an education to your child, but it does not have to be public school. I think that many parents believe that they must send the children to public school, that the law requires it, so they do it without question. The state does not advertise anywhere that public schools is only an option. It is so unusual not to use public schools that often the local authorities do not know how to handle it, which results in different practices around the country. We are members of the Norwegian homeschooling federation (NHUF Norsk hjemmeundervisningsforbund), and on their FaceBook page, we can sometimes read how awful people are treated by the local authorities just because they choose different schooling for their children.  

We did not go the traditional rout concerning kindergarten either. Normally parents put the children in kindergarten or some kind of daycare when the baby is about 1 year old. We get these bewildered looks and questions from people when we say that Martin does not go to kindergarten and neither will Karoline. Almost all recommend that we reconsider and they suggest that we at least put them in kindergarten the year before school so they can get accustomed to the system. When we say that we are not putting them into the system, but rather we are doing homeschooling, it completely derails them. “How are they going to socialize!?” It is somewhat funny because we know that the socialize question is one of the first if not the first question to come up. I think it is a universal reaction. It is almost like the “Who will build the roads?” question that anarchist get from statist, when talking about not having a state.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.