Solsken

Tuesday, as I was walking home from school it felt positively spring-like. It was warm enough that I didn’t need my mittens. My city forms a sort of amphitheater around a lake.  With a clear blue sky above me and Lake Åsunden glittering below me, I realized that today was perhaps a metaphor for my feelings thus far. I have adjusted to living with my second host family, school is no longer a tedious and boring place (it still is half the time, but I have found ways to compensate), and I have a great many things to look forward like going to Copenhagen on Wednesday to go to the opera to see a version of My Fair Lady,  going up to Kiruna, a city 150 kilometers north of the line of latitude designating the Arctic Circle, going to France with my choir, and at the end of my exchange spending three weeks touring Europe. Within that time I also want to fit in a trip to Stockholm. Time is moving too quickly.

I am now past the halfway mark of my exchange. This is mind blowing. On one level I feel like I have only been here a month, but when I stop to think about the activities I have enjoyed, friendships I have made, progress with the Swedish language, and the ways in which I have learned, I begin to realize that I really have been here nearly six and a half months. 

It is invigorating to find that I can understand Swedish and I can speak without feeling like my brain is going to explode because it is too much to process, like I did initially. I still have difficulties expressing myself in Swedish so at times I break into Swinglish before asking how to say a word or phrase correctly. That works out well, because my host family enjoys learning new English words but they know I want to only speak Swedish. Last year at this time, the course materials for my correspondence course had just arrived in the mail from the University of Minnesota. I remember listening to the first lesson while my mom was knitting, not comprehending a word. I was filled with anticipation and excitement and more than likely procrastinating on my homework. My mom and I smiled as we heard the poetic and almost lilting quality of words.  It is special to think that last year I couldn’t speak a word of Swedish, and now I can understand and speak, albeit not fluently and rather imperfectly, but I feel proud.

Living with host families has been one of the most meaningful parts of my exchange. It is interesting to compare my family life with the lives of three other families. It is rare to be let into a house for an extended period and be treated and cared for as a family member. I am constantly grateful. My current host family is fully supportive of my baking habits. I bake more than average but I have a fourteen-year-old host brother and eleven year old host sister, so food disappears quickly. Yesterday I made Swedish limpa bread.

Last weekend, twenty-six exchange students came to my city for the weekend. We have a ski slope here. I had never been skiing before, and I definitely need ski lessons before I try again, but spending time with exchange friends was excellent. The Australian youth exchange students start their exchanges in January, so we met about eight new students. Meeting these students who had been here for two weeks, made me realize how much I have learned about Sweden, the language, and how comfortable I feel here. My favorite event of the weekend was going to the bathhouse in my city. We went into a steamy sauna until we began to feel overheated and then ran outside and plunged into the lake. The water temperature was 0.06 degrees Celsius. The sensation of the drastic change in temperatures felt refreshing and I ended jumping in the water twice.

With only three more weeks until our musikal, practices have started to consume more time at school. After our sport break next week, we will have rehearsal every day from morning until ten in the evening. It is coming along. My favorite times are when we work with the choreographer. He is charismatic, and people feel motivated and much progress is made when he is there.

I try to have few expectations and live spontaneously here. I am learning that a positive mindset, enough sleep, challenging myself to interact in Swedish, taking time to work on the language, being open to getting help, being accepting of differences, learning to be comfortable with who I am, and pushing myself outside of what I am accustomed to, being tolerant of others, and saying yes to all the opportunities I am given, have been crucial for allowing myself to have a good exchange. Sometimes all of this feels natural and sometimes I struggle and it takes a little time to move forward again. It is through the minor frustrations like not being able to express myself fully in another language or feeling like my schooldays lack purpose at times, that I make realizations about my role here. I have started to become more tolerant of my imperfections, and I am learning more about what matters to me, and what I am interested in.  This allows me to continue to be content; to continue to be in awe of the beauty of the place I am living in as the sunshine illuminates the trees and houses above the lake, too feel compassion for myself and others, and to feel excitement and hope for the future here and back home.