Råmjölk and Wrinkled Farmers

We (me, erik, his brother klas) went downtown sat. morning to check out a weekly market, which now that i've been i'm ashamed to have never been before! Not that it is a super steller amazing market, but it is more than i realized uppsala had, and here i've been all along....oh where oh where do i get local food....and every week the farmers were at this market. duh! anyway, it was mostly old people (interesting comparison to the US where farmer's markets are spilling over with young farmers) selling a few things on rikity tables, but i was delighted nonetheless. beets, potatoes, carrots, carved wooden butter spreaders crafted by the potato grower's barnbarn. (grandchild.....barn=child, get it?:), eggs, dried flower boquets, lots of mushrooms.....and at the end of the market's row of tables on an almost unnoticable crooked sign which i nearly walked by i read: Råmjölk. what?! raw milk in sweden? (i had just inquired about the legal status of raw milk recently and was told i'd need to go directly to the farm for an undercover transaction) i asked the wrinkled woman behind the sign how much and eagerly handed over my money. she handed me a one liter store brand carton covered in masking tape, wrapped in an old flour sack. I walked away feeling like i was carrying a very valuable, contraband substance. I loved the simplicity of the packaging....and how she felt no need to adorn her tasty milk with a fancy glass bottle or a carton with a farm logo on it. instead she reused....a step above recyling, and something we all need to do more of. (by the way, check out www.realmilk.com if you're interested in reading more about raw milk) And to finish the story, the milk was delicious, full of healthy cream, and i enjoyed the last drop this morning with my granola.

It is getting cold in Sweden, and I'm now fully realizing just how far north i am living. It snowed last week! It didn't stick, but the puddles were frozen for a few mornings last week. Brrr....although layering is fun, and i'm loving wearing striped socks atop cotton tights under a dress which is underneath 2 sweaters and a scarf.

Erik and i have been going to Hågaby (a village of sorts with solar panaled houses and a wonderful feeling of community living) every Sunday afternoon now for lunch and free music. It is wonferful and so interesting to hear how much music with southern-roots is played and loved here in Sweden. (gillian welch covers, banjos, folksy-sounds, songs with lyrics about places i know) I feel like i'm home a bit when i am there. and the food....we pay more than we normally would for this meal on sundays because it is so amazing. all ekological, homemade, vegetarian (though i think healthy meat is good for people, still, it's important to eat tons of veggies anyway) I got so full after this meal i thought i'd pop. a delicous root vegetable soup with a dollop of goat's cheese, foccacia bread with olvies and salt, a million fun salads: cooked beets with a yogurt sauce, chick peas with red onions and herbs, shredded carrot salad with seeds of all sorts, vinagered cabbage salad with feta cheese, hummus, brown rice, etc etc!

ok, time to end this. the sun is out and i feel seriously like i'm sinning when i am inside in sunny weather! klas calls erik and i "slaves of the sun" because any time it's shining, we are pulled outside and must bask in its light. so maybe we are, but with the dark, cold winter coming, we need to absorb all we can now!

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!

an update

Well, it looks like i've become a little lazy with the blog and i really have no great excuse. My life has become a bit busier lately, and the internet hasn't been working, so i guess those count for something. As Calvin said in response to this (imagine an overdone southern accent): "Darn Swedish internet service! I just knew it couldn't be as good as the 'Mericn kind."

I can't believe I have been here for a whole month now! I feel some days quite settled here, and other days it still feels so foreign. I have been living and working with my au pair family for 2 weeks now and we already love each other so much. I can't imagine having a better family. We really fit together, and as Hanna Klum (the mamma) said the other day, "what if you were the type that wanted to go out to the casino in Stockholm in your spare time?" Instead, I work in their garden and bake them apple cakes, which suits both of us so well. Alexander is too cute for words. Even though he has no idea who I really am or why i am here, he completely embraces my presence in his life, and asks for "hannawhite" when I am not home. :)

I have been cycling a lot, and now I'm borrowing Hanna's bike with the baby seat on the back so I'm sure I'm mistaken for a young mom, especially when I'm toting Alexander around on the back. :) I'm also manuvering my way around these Swedish highways in their manual car, which I am still quite a newbie at, and it makes the confusing signs and traffic rules even more complicated. But that is nearly the extent of my stresses here, so I have nothing to complain of.

I am taking Swedish for beginners through the folkuniversitet (literally's the people's univ.) which will begin in September, and I am looking forward to studying Swedish in a more formal way. For now, I am just picking it up as I go and jotting down some words on a list we've started specially to help me understand Alexander's vocabulary. I also found a course entitled "Global Challenges and Sustainable Futures" offered at Uppsala University for free which will meet every Monday night this fall and I hope will give me some intellectual stimulation. I hope it will also connect me with some like-minded students here to have friendships with.

A couple interesting notes beyond my everyday life.....it seems that Sweden is all about learning. There are countless ways to keep learning once one is out of college. Beyond the folkuniversities, which offer music, art, language, and other courses, unique to Sweden is something called a "study circle." This is a very informal, inexpensive gathering of 10 or so people who are interested in learning the same thing. I suppose one of the people in the course is more knowledgable than the rest, but as far as I know it is very much a group-learning experience. So if you want to learn to say, speak Italien or knit, you can join one of these circles! It seems like a nice idea to me, and a way to keep aquiring knowledge and skills of all kinds as you grow older.

Another note...in Uppsala people heat their homes and run the city busses on "biogas", a product produced when everyone's trash is burned. So they solve both the problems of waste/landfills, and the overuse of fossil fuels with this system. Nice.

The days have been lovely here.....the temp. is around 75, the blåbär (blueberrys), ligonberries, and mushrooms are in the forests available for the taking, and the apples are delicious and in abundance. Tomorrow Erik and I will go to a worship service being held in the forest. Once a year Uppsala has a kind of "skogen dag" (forest day) and in addition to this service there are some family activities going on. The forests here are amazing....the above picture is typical of here (white birches), but there are also forests with lots of pines, firs, and moss-covered stones. Today I took my hammock into the woods for a nap and when walking around afterwards in a sleeply state, I felt almost as if the forest itself eminated a sort of tranquil, fairy-land like potion on it's inhabitants. I can easily imagine now where all the great children's writers from Sweden got their inspiration for their books filled with scences from nature.
More later....Hej då for now!

a preview into my au pair life

I have met my family. My new family, that is, the Klums, who I will be living and working for this year in Sweden. I have become so used to living in Erik's house and enjoying a vacation-lifestyle with his family that I've almost forgotten one of my major purposes in coming here. The days of soaking in the sun and doing whatever we what whenever we want are over, yet I am full of excited anticipation over this new phase in my life here.

Erik and I rode our bikes over to my future home last Sunday afternoon to have cake, coffee, and conversation with Hanna, Mats, Jonatan (13), and Alexander (2.5). Fredrika (16) is away with a cousin for the week. It was a delightful 2 hours together, and Erik and I rode away on our bikes grinning from ear to ear and exclaiming about all the things we'd been thinking but had contained in the presence of the Klums. Let me explain. This family has to be one of the kindest and most wonderful in Sweden, and are only warm, loving, and welcoming to me. Here I am, coming to work for them, taking care of their most dearest possesions (their children) and yet they seem only concerned with making my time here a comfortable and enjoyable one. They gave us a tour of their new home, which is actually an old home from the 1930s which they are renovating enough to make it livable but still keeping its character. The floors, wooden ceilings, old iron door fixtures, and secret-looking hallways and windows are gorgeous. My room is in a little house attached to the big house, but with its own entrance and own small kitchen. Hanna asked, "here, why don't you pick out the paint color since it's your place?" Outside my door is a small white wooden table with two chairs "for your morning coffee," and "you need a bike? oh, we can fix up one of ours for you." I went to sleep smiling that night just thinking how God often gives us beyond what we need.

That was a pleasant, calm time together, spent in grown-up conversation, getting to know each other and talking about my future work for them. On Tuesday I got a real idea of what my work will include: me and the 2 boys spent the day at this huge indoor/outdoor pool in Uppsala with hundreds of crazy swedish children and potential hazards (drowning, slipping on the hard floor, etc). I realized then just how important it will be for me to learn Swedish quickly, because little Alexander has no idea I do not speak his language, and only gives me blank stares if I try a few English words on him. Just trying to get his bathing suit on him was difficult, because there I was in the changing room, searching my brain for the word "bathing suit" and the words needed to convince him that we were at this really cool pool and if he'd only put his suit on we could go swim! In just a few hours I learned countless new words as he was bubbling over with comments about all he was seeing. (he LOVES to take baths apparently, so this was the ultimate water experience)

I will move for now into the Klum's old home, just a few houses down from Erik's, while we await more renovations. This will make the transition from Erik's basement to a whole 5 minutes bikeride away a bit easier, I suppose. :)

coffee in the rain

To all who read my humble blog, I hope you're enjoying the news from Sweden. I could write forever about all I am seeing and thinking, but I'll try to keep this succinct. My days here so far have been nothing but lovely. The weather has been in the 60s and 70s, with an open, sunny sky and huge, soft clouds. I adore the Swedish countryside and don't think i'll ever grow weary of drinking it in.

Erik lives in an ideal location. In one direction you can walk to the small grocery store in 5 minutes. (which we do almost every day to buy the ingredients for dinner:) In another you can hop on your bike and be in the beautiful city of Uppsala, and in another you can walk straight into fields of wheat and dark forests with endless paths. A car is only needed in rare circumstances. Everyone, from the elderly to children to the punkiest 20-something, rides a bike, complete with a large basket for your groceries and other items, and a little bell to ring when you want to pass another cycler.

We have been spending the days having slow breakfasts on the porch, taking walks in the beautiful forests (they really have a magical feel about them....i'm sure i'll spend a whole blog on them later), riding bikes to town, and we have even been swimming! yes, for about 30 seconds today I endured the cold northern waters, and I thought longingly of the lakes at home which have such a perfectly mild temperature. Erik, Siri, his Mamma, and I took the car to a little "beach" today, spread our blankets on the grass, and had a lovely time lying in the not-too-hot sun, reading and drinking the dark coffee we brought along. (because we were eager to get to our desination this morning, the coffee and mugs were tugged along with us:) I couldn't quit smiling at the beach today, just watching all the Swedish children, blond and half-naked, engrossed in their child's play; climbing trees, finding oysters, freezing in the water. Sweden is really a family-country. There are always places provided for children to be; little tables at the cafe, a spot in stores for playing, and plentiful playgrounds.

Yesterday Erik and I picked all the red currants from his mother's bushes, and after eating a delicious pie made with a few of the berries, we froze the rest for the winter. We have now picked and eaten wild strawberries, rasperries, blueberries, and currants. The blueberries here grow nearly on the ground, not at all like at home on large bushes, and they are smaller and more tart. Other food news: The Swedes do love their coffee, and I've enjoyed the daily after-dinner cup, though I'm not yet able to drink it black. The yogurt here is very delectable, and somewhat of a cross between a plain yogurt and a sweet one. With a little jam in it in the mornings it is perfect.

My Swedish is coming along, and I'm being patient for the day when it subconsciously flows out of my mouth. Every day I understand a little more of the conversations around me and I am saying what I can in Swedish. Soon I will move in with my au pair family and I would like to speak mostly Swedish with the children, so that will improve it a lot. It is a humbling thing to not understand every word spoken around you, and I think it can be healthy to be able to relate to how isolated so many people in America must feel (illegal immigrant or not) when they don't speak English.

One more bit of news...the other day Erik and I biked to the organic food/home store and I purchased lettuce, spinach, and radish seeds and am hoping to get a small harvest before the winter sets in. I planted them in pots and it feels good to again watch things grow. I miss our garden at home and the huge harvests we were getting just as I left.

More news later....hej då for now!

p.s. the picture is from Stockholm where we spent the day on sunday