swedenusa

The songs have been terrorizing us for weeks. The decorations and ornaments have been out and the grass has been green this year. It has been an eventful Christmas full of stories and experiences. Where does one begin?

Lets start with the surprise of the decade! We were all gathered. Me, two of my three brothers, my sister, mom and all the little children… oh and of course the little white dog too. As we were preparing the traditional Christmas Eve dinner we were talking, we have not been all siblings together since the Christmas of 93. That is 13 years! Too bad the youngest brother living in the US couldn´t be with us and his wife. We were all talking about it. Wondering what they were doing. Setting our table and decorating it.

My nephew was sitting in the computer room with the window facing the entrance. He sees the car pull in. He sees them stepping out of the car. He gets up from the chair… pass the door and walks to his dad…. are they supposed to come? Everyone replying no… Then the knock on the door. Screams, laughter, hugs and lots of tears as we welcome them in to join the Christmas celebration and dinner!

They pulled it off! The surprise of the decade! Nobody knew!

Today was the darkest day in Sweden. Starting tomorrow the days will get longer. The sun will be up more. It is really needed. Everyone and I mean EVERYONE is tired. Sure it is a lot with Christmas prep, shopping, work, schoolwork and all that but people get really tired from the dark days.

Jönköping

08:48am Sun up
3:19pm Sun down

Stockholm

08:44am Sun up
2:49pm Sun down

In Kiruna in north of Sweden they don´t even write a note about sun up and down since it never comes up. The sun won´t come up there until 2nd of January. And then… it is only up for half an hour before it sets again.

Anyway… it is starting to turn now! The sun will be with us more! I look forward to the energy boost.

Can´t believe I finished another class. I just turned in my take-home exam that I have been working on this week. It feels good. I am taking a few credits here and there so I can be a psychologist over here. The good thing is that

I only needed about 18 Swedish credits… 20 counts as full-time one semester. But… it is really really hard to find the classes I need. It is not really that easy to get into the classes either. Since education is free there are not very many spots open and there are many people applying. So far I have completed 15 since I came to Sweden. I only have 3 left. Oh… they come in 5 chunks and most are 10 pointers. So… I am number 40-something on the waiting list for next semester. It is not too bad though. I think I need a bit of a break from the extra work.

On a nicer note… I really love this picture of Sam feeding Jaeger and Hanna is just adoring the baby. She wanted to feed him so bad! Who can deny her that? And she took her job very seriously.

Ok, So I am not the most frequent blogger. I get it. Just a quick look at the stats will tell you that: (Mirjam has 103 posts and I have 44 posts) So I can see why everyone assumed that Mirjam was responsible for that last post….So, what better way to clear up the confusion than with another exciting installment of…My (Sam’s) camera phone…enjoy post #45.

Not sure why they need those earpluggs, they have no firearms…

 This didn’t end well.

Hold the olives please!

This is us having a late lunch with some friends from Peru. The food was Amazing! 

This made me laugh because it was in a bus in Stockholm. I love how they wrote it in English. But, seriously, they love Americans here and you are welcome to visit anytime   

OK…So I have been slacking off a little lately. It has been several days without a new entry and Em is getting tired of looking at that sandwich cake. Fair enough, I thought today I might share some pictures from my camera phone. There are so many times that I forget to take the camera along when I go out, so, I use my camera phone instead. What follows is pictures from the last 6 months that haven’t quite made the highlight real…enjoy!

I snapped this one on the way home last June. The people in the truck are Swedes that have just graduated high school. Not sure why this is a tradition, but they sounded like they had a lot of fun!  

This is my nephew on his birthday.

A seriously disturbing Mc Donalds experience. I took the picture for evidence.

Ah, the sound of 8 ACCORDIANS! Apparently 7 wasn’t enough.

And finally, Jönköping at night. They put lights everywhere! Very cool!

Yeah… you all heard smorgasbord before… and some have heard julbord… but have you heard of smorgascake? Of course in the native writing it would be smörgås. We often serve this at parties. It is sort of fancy. They come in different flavors. Easy to serve since everyone cuts their own piece and nothing needs to be kept warm. Works great at weddings… funerals… or when you have a lot of people over for dinner.

That is what happened this time. My brother and his family ordered a smorgascake…. could be translated as sandwichcake too. It is really a sandwich. A fancy looking one. Bread pieces as big as cake in layers like a tort I suppose. Filling in-between the layers. This is tuna with shrimp. Very good. I think ham is the second most popular kind. Then you decorate it with lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber etc… like a sandwich!

Every Sunday night in Sweden we have BINGOLOTTO on public television. Over the weekend you see people selling BINGOLOTTO tickets around town. They cost 40 kroners (5 bucks) and you get to play along while watching the show on television. This weekend, we bought tickets to try it out…There are multiple games that you play over the course of the program, and as I am writing this blog, Mirjam and I are both winless…but I have a feeling our luck will change…

If you ask a Swede, they will probably tell you that no one plays BINGOLOTTO except old people in retirement homes. It has that reputation, but I am having a blast….(Mirjam, not so much)…I’ll bet there are many “closet players.” Anyone?

The “Swedish Idol” final is on tonight. It has pretty much the same platform as “American Idol”. Lots of singers competing every week and the one with the fewest votes, gets kicked off the show. Most people here use cell phones to text message thier votes (That would be the Swedish twist.) The judges are a little more sedated here. No one is really very mean or very nice.

So, that brings us tonight… between Markus and Erik. As I write this, it is still undecided…I thought about attaching some clips of them…But instead, I have decided to post a clip of someone who didn’t make the cut…because those are more fun! There is a litttle Swedish and Japanese at the end…but keep watching anyway… (click on the pic below)