Spring has sprung!

...and it sure doesn't mess around when it decides to show up!  The weather for the past few weeks has been absolutely gorgeous, sunny, and warm....the flowers are blooming, baby lambs are being born, and I'm actually getting a little bit of a tan from spending the past week outside during Easter vacation.  It's amazing how much better and happier Sweden becomes when springtime finally shows up.  In more good news, the daycare where I had an unpaid internship has hired me to work 20 hours per week, possibly up to 30, through summertime.  It's a huge difference not feeling like an unemployed crabby pregnant burden on M and having so much to look forward to this summer.  Here are a few photos from the past couple of weeks:

A brand-new lamb born on the farm on M's parent's island.

I've been getting crafty in anticipation of the baby Sweedie.

 M's new boat, Vixen, is all spiffed up and ready to start his new company.

Every day the buds on the trees are bursting bigger and greener.

You know spring is here when the forest is carpeted with blåsippor.

 More fuzzy buds.

View over the fields on the farm where we live.

Vitsippor everywhere!

Six months in Sweden

I can't believe it's already been half a year since I passed through customs at the Stockholm Arlanda airport with my shiny new residence permit.  After an absolutely gorgeous, sunny, and even hot summer followed by the most beautiful crisp fall imaginable I can say it's been much better than I expected so far.  Not only does the beautiful view outside my doorstep remind me on a daily basis of how lucky I am to live here, but it's been much easier to settle in and find productive things to do than I imagined.  Before I moved here I made the mistake of reading some expat discussion boards online where everyone constantly whined and complained about the impossibility of finding jobs, poor treatment of foreigners, coldness of Swedes, dark winters, rain, high cost of living, difficulty of learning Swedish, and generally how much they hated Sweden.  Reading posts from these crybabies was a really bad idea as it only made me nervous and doubtful about moving here.  I've been pleasantly surprised and relieved to find out that Sweden is wonderful and most of the expats who feel the need to go online and grumble and complain about their lives would most likely be doing the same thing regardless of where they were living.

So, six months later and I am getting more and more comfortable understanding and speaking Swedish, I have two part-time jobs that fill up my schedule give me something interesting to look forward to, I've moved up through several levels of Swedish classes to the point where I'm being challenged and enjoy my class, I've made lots of wonderful friends, and I can finally say enough words in Swedish to get a giggle out of M's super quiet, zero-English-speaking father.  Life is good and I even feel up to the challenge for the cold, dark winter ahead.

My Swedish classes have been moving along quickly and now I'm finally in the correct class for my level of Swedish.  The typical language-learning path that most newcomers to Sweden take begins with Svenska för Invandrare (Swedish for Immigrants), or SFI.  This class can be good or bad, and I was lucky enough to have enough Swedish under my belt to test out of the class after one week and move up to Svenska som andraspråk (Swedish as a second language), or SAS, which has three levels (Ground, A, and B).  It all gets a little confusing if you're not in the system yourself, but I'm in SAS A now which is basically high-school level Swedish.  I just started SAS A last week, and my new teacher is excited about teaching and challenging her students rather than just sitting around and chatting about current events.  I have class once per week for 4 hours and I'm really happy with it so far.

My two little jobs have been fun and although they're not the most economically lucrative choices in the world, I feel that right now it's more important for me to get comfortable speaking Swedish and making new friends and being happy and content here than it is to leave for another five weeks at sea in the middle of trying to settle in.  I've been babysitting for a few different families which has been by far the most fun way to learn Swedish.  The little girls I watch are quick to correct me if I say something wrong and love to teach me new words and meticulously help with my pronunciation.  I've also been hired as a native language English teacher for kids who speak English in their homes (most of the kids in my classes have one Swedish parent and one parent from an English-speaking country).  The kids range in age from 5 to 9 so it can be tough to find activities on a level that everyone can enjoy together, but I've come up with a few good ideas and right now I'm reading them one of my favorite childhood books, Charlotte's Web.

Having M home for the whole fall has been wonderful as well...he has been working on his 12-meter steel workboat that he built himself.  I've been helping him paint and pick out carpets and colors for the inside, and it's starting to look fantastic.  There will be several beds, a small kitchen, and a toilet/shower area inside so we'll be able to use it as a little floating guest house when we have visitors.  I can't wait to take it island-camping next summer!

The autumn has brought an abundance of food, so all of our meals are usually around 80% locally harvested wild game and vegetables.  There are potatoes and sweet corn grown here on the farm along with wild mushrooms in the forest and huge piles of apples on the ground.  Last week we picked 120 kilos of apples and dropped them off at the Värmdö Musteri (local cider mill)....now we have a stack of boxed cider in the cellar that should keep us from buying any type of sugary drinks for at least the next year.  M always keeps our freezer full of deer, moose, fish, duck, and whatever other creatures he manages to capture, so I am definitely getting spoiled by high quality meat and doubt I'll be able to stomach gross US factory-farmed beef and chicken again. 

Mushroom-O-Rama!

Unfortunately my little garden didn't fare so well this year (I think our yard is too shady since it's right next to a rock cliff), but I did get lots of dill, lettuce, parsley, carrots, a few green beans, and some basil out of it.  M's parents gave me some pumpkins from their neighbor and I introduced M to his first roasted pumpkin seeds and pumpkin pie from scratch.  I was nervous about making pumpkin pie for the first time for a group of Swedish friends who had never tasted it, but luckily it was a hit.  Everyone said the pie tasted like gingerbread cookies (which are a huge Christmas favorite here) so I was glad that I managed to represent and give everyone a little taste of authentic American culture.

So, that's my six month Swedish update...so far so good!  I would say "bring on the winter," but I'd rather keep this bright sunny autumn weather for as long as possible.

No running today.

I'm supposed to be running the Stockholm Half-Marathon in one hour.  I was all registered and trained and ready to go, and then what happened last Sunday?  I came down with an evil case of babysittee-kid-acquired flu that hit me like a ton of bricks....fever, sore throat, dizzy, achy...which settled nicely into my respiratory system over the past few days and turned into a hacking cough and runny nose.   I missed the training that I was supposed to finish last weekend so now I think it would be really stupid to attempt running the longest distance of my life.  With the beginning of school it seems like everyone on Värmdö has been coming down with some form of sickness, but I'm still going to try running the half-marathon distance on my own once I'm feeling up to it.

In better news, over the past couple of weeks I began svenska för invändare (Swedish for immigrants, or SFI) classes.  Luckily I tested out after the first week and was moved ahead to svenska som andra språk (Swedish as a second language) which is closer to the junior-high level.  I was glad to skip over SFI as I had heard some horror stories of how painfully slow it could be.  During the week that I was in class we spent a good amount of time being told to sit in the library and quietly "study," with no real structure or lesson plans aside from a few websites with grammar and vocabulary quizzes.  In order to practice speaking Swedish we were told to talk to each other...which felt pretty limited and frustrating, sitting there speaking broken Swedish with other students whose Swedish was even worse than mine.  I can imagine it'd be difficult to teach a group of people from different education levels and backgrounds, and some of the students were really trying hard, but my last straw was the day we were in the computer lab and it took AN HOUR for everyone to correctly login to the computers (after we had just been given our computer logins and passwords earlier in the day).  The teacher even had to say at one point, "Don't click the X at the top of your screen or everything will disappear." Bye bye, SFI!

So, the new classes I'm in are a little faster and the students seem to be more motivated to actually learn.  I'm also taking a high-school level general science course online, which is fun for the science dork in me and great for learning new vocabulary.

Finally, in addition to my part-time babysitting job, I was hired as a modersmål lärare (native language teacher) to teach weekly after-school classes in English.  The Swedish school system provides supplemental education for any kids who speak a language other than Swedish in their homes.  I'll have a group of nine kids aged 6-12 every Wednesday afternoon so it'll be interesting to come up with age-appropriate lessons and activities for them.  Most of the kids were born in Sweden and have one English-speaking parent, so their Swedish is better than their English...hmmm, maybe they should be the ones teaching me?

 

Homestead-y

Aside from last-minute Spanish adventures or cheering on drag queens in Stockholm, I've spent the past few weeks getting used to being in Sweden on my own while M is away at sea.  Everything is getting easier and easier now that I can understand a lot more Swedish (I'm still around the level of a 2-year-old as far as speaking, though).  I've picked up some extra work as a nanny for a few days a week, which should work out nicely with my Swedish classes once they start later this month.  Being around kids is by far the fastest and most fun way to learn Swedish...kids here don't start learning English until age 9, so it's not an option for me to wuss out and speak English with them.  They talk nonstop, usually seem fascinated by a silly grownup who can't speak correctly, and they love teaching me new words and correcting my pronunciation.

In the meantime, I've been crocheting (virkning) a blanket for M's cousin who is having a baby boy next month:

Hmmm....I don't think she reads this blog, so hopefully it will be a surprise!  I've also been on a potato-harvesting spree since M volunteered us to tend two 80-meter rows of potatoes on our landlord's farm.  I had never harvested potatoes before, but it's pretty fun...you turn over the whole potato hill with a pitchfork, then sort through the soil with your fingers and pick out all the buried treasure.

Lots and lots of potatis.

So far I've picked over 40 kilos (90 pounds) of new potatoes!  The new ones are small with thin skins, and you have to eat them right away or else boil and freeze them.  While I like potatoes as much as the next guy, I'm nowhere near as crazy about them as your typical Swede.  So, the majority of the potato harvest went straight into the freezer or was given away to friends and family...I'm sure it would've been a different story if I had been picking raspberries.  But, between the potatoes, deer, moose, fish, and wild mushrooms, there's something intrinsically satisfying about watching our big chest freezer fill up with fresh food from just outside the door.

Squirrels on a boat

Living and working on a boat for five weeks straight sounds like a grand adventure full of danger and excitement....to the people who have never done it before.  Okay, so flying in a helicopter to get to your job is pretty cool.  Beyond that, the main challenges of living and working on a boat and staring at the water every day don't go too far beyond the mental battle between french fries or salad for dinner.  Rough seas?  Meh, a minor inconvenience when you're trying to take a shower or eat a bowl of soup.  Pirates?  Thankfully not a problem (to my knowledge) in the Gulf of Mexico.  Capsizing?  The boat I'm on at the moment is 81 meters long by 18 meters wide, so it'd take a leeeeeeetle more than your typical winter weather to tip this bucket over.  Fires?  Food shortages?  Scurvy?  Nope, nope, and nope.  There is safety equipment everywhere you turn and more than enough food to go around.  The crews on seismic vessels typically sleep in cozy, carpeted cabins in a temperature-controlled environment amid wireless internet, satellite TV, movie theaters, gyms, saunas, and sometimes even swimming pools.  No my friends, the most dangerous, terrifying phenomena I have experienced in my 1.5 years working offshore are (cue scary music):

SQUIRRELS.

Yes, you heard me right, I said squirrels.  

Let me explain.  A few years ago, my friend's brother said, "A woman's brain is like a squirrel trapped in a cage with its tail caught on fire."  I couldn't agree more.  I find this analogy oddly comforting...when I catch myself getting overly worried or upset about something silly, I just blame it on the squirrel.  It's a good way to explain the touch of psycho over-analyzing that all of us women do, whether we're willing to admit it or not.  So, if you're reading this and getting worked up and offended, guess what...IT'S ONLY YOUR SQUIRREL.  See, doesn't that feel better?

Unfortunately, once you're stuck in the middle of the sea with nothing around for miles but water and more water, recognizing and effectively controlling a rogue squirrel attack is next to impossible.  If there's something nagging in the back of your mind while you're on land, it will get ten times worse when your only plan for the day is to stare at the horizon while your squirrel chatters and rattles the bars of its cage, overthinking, overanalyzing, and occasionally freaking out completely.  Perfectly normal emails from loved ones seem confusingly sinister.  Sarcastic comments from coworkers get twisted into personal attacks that make you want to crawl back into bed for the rest of the day.  Once the evil squirrel has gotten his pointy little claws into your brain, no thought is safe.

Don't get me wrong, I am typically a calm, happy-go-lucky person, and I can't remotely pretend that living on a well-equipped boat full of interesting people is anywhere near the mental toll of something like solo sailing around the world.  Some of the people I know have spent entire YEARS at sea.  But, the occasional squirrel attack on board, when you really start to question if the thoughts in your head are even your own to begin with, is by far the hardest thing I've had to deal with out here.

Luckily I've gotten better at recognizing a fired-up squirrel and keeping it somewhat tamed with cheesy heartwarming movies (Love Actually is a good one).  But, until next time....

 

Yarrrrr.

I'm headed back to work tomorrow morning to live for five weeks on a seismic research vessel in the Gulf of Mexico. I work as a marine mammal observer, surveying for whales, dolphins, and sea turtles and ensuring the vessel is working in compliance with protected species regulations. What this boils down to is that I watch the ocean for hours on end, every day, for five weeks straight.  Some days can be exciting while others can be very tedious...just when you think there can't possibly be any animals for miles and you feel like your eyeballs will never recover from staring at the blue sky and horizon, something interesting makes an appearance, be it a sperm whale, sea turtle, dolphin, rainbow, flying fish, or disheartening piles of garbage floating by. 

                                           My early morning coffee with a couple of warblers.

                                                     Bottlenose Dolphin.  Photo by Jen Leo

 

         This is a sperm whale's dorsal hump (back), preparing to dive below the surface.     

    Photo by Melissa Hayes

  

Green Sea Turtle.  Photo by Melissa Hayes

                                                                                                                                        

 

Getting paid to watch each sunrise and sunset.

 

                            Seismic vessel BOS Atlantic, in port off the south coast of Australia.

                                                       This is always good advice!