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It’s 7:42 a.m. and I’m already standing here wondering if I’ve gotten too old for this. Or if it’s just the carpenter’s apprentice who’s making me feel this way.

The kid – let’s call him Erik, because there’s always an Erik. He arrived today with a toolbelt that weighed more than he did and a look that said, “Today I’m going to show these old folks.” He spent twenty minutes looking for the right pencil. When he finally found it, it was a 9H that he sharpened with a utility knife while telling me about a TikTok video on “perfect miters.”

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I, the proud expat-with-papers-and-all, just nodded and tried to look like I hadn’t spent the last five years pretending I understand what people mean when they say “a little on the diagonal.”

At 9:15 a.m., Erik managed to saw off a plank on the wrong side of the line. Twice. In a row. The second time, he mumbled, “That was meant as a test.” I don’t know if he was testing the plank, me, or the universe’s patience.
Still, there’s something touching about him. He has that genuine, slightly desperate eagerness that only people under 20 have. He really wants to. He just doesn’t quite know what he wants! Right now, he apparently wants to “build something cool,” preferably with invisible screws and ideally before lunch.

I gave him the task of setting up some studs. The result looks like a drunk moose tried to build an IKEA piece of furniture without instructions. But he smiled so broadly when he was done that I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. Just nodded and said, “Interesting approach to tolerance measurements.”

Sometimes I think I’m not here to work. I’m here to witness Erik building a house one day. And so that I can say, “I knew him back when he still thought 9H was a good pencil for carpentry.”

Cheers to the apprentices. May they never lose faith, and may we old expats always have a place to hide and laugh.

– A tired but entertained foreigner with safety goggles and an existential crisis

RECORDED BY: Dave // BERGEN , 2026