the other side of things...

I am feeling a bit dishonest lately....a bit guilty of showing only the rosy side of my life. Which is in fact, like everyone's life, often unrosy. Of course. For one example, the above picture shows a sweet little boy with his bear getting ready to go on an environmentally-friendly trip to his daycare. In reality, he was probably whining about having to leave the cozy, warm house and head out in the too-cold-for-early-september-morning for a windy bike ride. And though I love to cycle more than I can say, at the same time I'm sure come winter I won't feel so romantic about heading out to face head on whatever weather the day has brought.

Shall we dive straight into other topics which need some balancing words? Learning Swedish is a constantly entertaining experience, one where I can nearly feel my brain enlarging as new words enter my vocabulary through my eyes and ears and when they exit out of my mouth in confidence, the feeling is uniquely satistfying. At the same time, I wish i could read the paper without a dictionary in hand, the trouble of it causing me to give up halfway through the first paragraph of an article. I hate having to say "talar du engelska?" so often, espcially when it's something so simple like the comment of a friendly fellow dog-walker. And once they explain in nearly perfect-english (like every swede can speak) I think, "i KNEW that!" It's easy to feel left out and like even in march I still won't be able to understand the rapid, slang-infused vocabulary of people my age.

Sweden is beautiful, but in some ways not as charming as the rest of Europe. It has its industrial parts, its cars and big roads, its modern buildings and ugly space-looking houses built by modern swedish designer architects in the 70s. Sweden has a beautiful past of farms and self-sufficient living, of raising sheep, spinning wool, and masterful carpentry-work made from the bountiful forests of birches and asps. Yet in some ways it feels like Swedes today have forgotten this not so far away past and embraced head-on an identity of a modern, fashionable, industrial country. And sometimes I think I'd fit in better with the past. :) One more note on the scenery....young Swedes have a strange desire to paint graffiti on everything from the sides of buildings in cities to the otherwise cute playgrounds scattered everywhere here.

Either it is the cold weather, the consise nature of the Swedish language, or the fact that I'm comparing things to the sugary sweet hospitality of the American South, but people can initially seem a bit unfriendly here, a little standoffish. It's uncommon to get a "hej!" from a stranger sharing the same walking path as you, and I miss that daily human-interaction from even people you don't know personally.

And finally, living in another family and being a second mom is not always easy, and I often quote to myself my self-created mantra of "an au-pair's work is never done." It's hard to expect neat blocks of "on work" and "off work" time when you are living with a family who lives a typically busy, slightly crazy at times, life. And even if I wish they ate all organic food, whole grain bread, and composted more, it's not my family and one day I'll be able to make all those choices.

All in all, I love Sweden, I love my au pair family, and I want to have an open-mind about both the good and bad parts of a new land. I just felt obliged to balance my other blog posts for all you readers out there who were starting to think things were too perfect. they're not. so there.

fall has arrived

I'm afraid I have fallen short of the aspirations I had for blogging so faithfully and reflecting so thoughtfully on my life here. But partly I feel that I really live in Sweden now, and therefore, perhaps in a good way, I no longer feel that my news is terribly exciting or worth reporting. However, I shall write a few words now and try harder to be consistent for those of you who are waiting to read something from me.

The picture shown above is not there because i have been knitting so much, but more as a representation of the strong desire I have to be knitting and hopefully as an inspiration to myself. :) There is an amazing knitting store in town called Yll och Tyll...check it out at http://www.yllotyll.com/ if you are knitter.....you'll appreciate their amazing collection of wool and tasteful hand-knitted sweaters for sale.

I am really settling into my life here, and I truly enjoy it. The days are cool now and the leaves are turning, and I'm eating apples all the time because i can't resist them when I go for walks and notice them so perfect and red lying on the ground underneath these old trees....still faithfully producing such unimprovable fruit. I started my Swedish course on Tuesday, and I'll have it twice a week in the evenings for 6 weeks. I like my class....it is a really diverse group of people from all over the world who are just as unsure of this new language on their tongue as I am, so it's a lovely unintimidating environment to learn in. Actually, my teacher asked me yesterday, "hannah, är den här kurs för let till dig?" which means "is this course too easy for you?" and i was glowing and smiling so big inside that i'm sure she must've detected how proud i felt. :) I'm staying in the class though, because it's important to learn the right things from the beginning, but I am feeling thankful for the wonderful teacher I have had the past few weeks named Alexander Klum, age 2.5. Seriously, he has taught me a lot and I am at a fun place with this language, where I notice real improvements every day and I can get away with not having to say "talar du engelska?" in every conversation with a Swede. Just a couple interesting notes on Swedish....it is a easy language for English speakers to learn because it is also Germanic and the syntax is very similar to English. Plus, the Swedes like to be concise, so phrases are short. The words for grandmother and grandfather are wonderful because there is a differentation made for your mother's mother and father's mother, for example. Mor means mother, so mormor means your mom's mom, and farmor is your dad's mom. Same with farfar and morfar. Their is also sondotter and dotterdotter to explain your grandchildren as your son's or daughter's daughter, in this case.

I've been reading a bit from the small English book sectoin of the town library, and I finally finished book 4 in the series The Emigrants by Vilhelm Moberg. If you love anything Swedish, read these books!! They tell the story of a family who emigrated from Sweden to Minnesota in the 1850s and after following this family for 4 books I feel like I practically know them and of course I shed a couple tears when......well, i won't spoil it. I just started reading How Green is my Valley about a Welsch family in the 1930s, and I still feel so lucky to be able to read fun fiction after 4 years of being an English major where you have so much to read that there's never time for your own choices.

More to come later....I hope you are enjoying this time of the changing of seasons....i think fall feels: slow, crisp, cozy.

The End of Suburbia

It struck me the other day how living outside of the US really gives one a unique perspective on it. I have another place now to compare to the American way of life, and this helps fight the tendency we all have to consider our own habits and lifestyles as the "norm" that we should always be entitled to have. This is especially important for those of us who live in developed countries and whose lifestyles are dependent on consuming as if there are no limits. Recently I started a course here in Sweden called "Global Challenges and Sustainable Futures." It has been amazing so far. The class consists of 50 students from probably 20 different countries, down to earth people who all want to learn about important issues facing us today.

We saw a film on Wednesday called The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream, and I highly recommend it if you can find a copy at the library. A trailer for it can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHr8OzaloLM. I won't say more about it, just that you should watch it!!

This issue of stewardship, of how we treat this lovingly created world, has been on my mind a lot lately. Since the industrial revolution, we have seen nothing but growth in the direction of bigger, faster, globalized economic growth in Western countries, but I cannot believe that this lifestyle will last forever. For more reasons than the obvious one of limited sources of non-renewable energy, we need to start living on a more local level: in regards to food production, shortening our commutes to work and school, and reviving local industry which has been lost in many places when Walmart moved in. Wendell Berry writes in his essay "An Argument for Diversity:"
In a varied and versatile countryside, fragile in its composition and extremely susceptible to abuse, requiring close human care and elaborate human skills, able to produce and needing to produce a great variety of poducts from its soils, what is needed, obviously, is a highly diversified local economy.

Anyway....more on this later. let me know your thoughts!