Swedish Life

It is April 1st and I find I haven’t written a post in nearly a month. I am rather perplexed how it can be that I have been in Sweden for eight months. I now have my return date of July 26^th-a day before my visa expires.  I sometimes feel a longing to see friends and family back home and to express myself fully in my mother tongue, but I feel sadness that my year is reaching its final months. Next year, most people won’t be able to speak Swedish with me, I won’t get to see my wonderful host families and friends, cuddle with my host cat Milton, and travel to interesting places with friendly exchange students. I will miss my home here.

I can now say I participated in a musical. I spent three intensive weeks preparing with my classmates. Before that, beginning in September, we had two class periods a week. It was a little-known Swedish musical called Ringo. I had a small role, but it was fun nonetheless. I spoke Swedish in front of an audience, danced, and sang. Being a part of a musical was something I had never thought about doing before, and I probably won’t again, but it was fun.

It seems I barely moved in with my second family, and it is already time to move again. I feel comfortable and it feels a bit stressful to be uprooted again, but fortunately I have gotten to know my next host family and I lived with them two weeks in January. I have been lucky to have three amazing families, and look forward to living with my third family, but I will miss my second family. I am sure I will be back. My favorite moments are at dinner or when we sit and fika together. We are often busy and going and going our separate ways so these times are special. I feel I made many improvements with regard to my Swedish and we only spoke Swedish at home. The words flow out more easily now and I can have real conversations. It is something of a miracle actually. Last year, I could only admire the poetic quality of the language, and could recognize only a few words. About a week ago, I started a classic Swedish book by Vilhelm Moberg called Din stund på jorden. (Your Moment on Earth). He is more famous for some of his other works, but my school library only had this novel available. He wrote fictional but realistic stories about Swedish immigrants and their journeys to the USA and memories of Sweden. I have read some other Swedish books but nothing this difficult or eloquent.  It is exciting.

In other news, I did my Rotary presentation in Swedish a few weeks ago. I feel like I had to read off my script more than I would have liked, but I did it entirely in Swedish and spoke for thirty minutes about my life, experiences in Sweden and differences and similarities I have noticed. I have a wonderful Rotary club here in Sweden. It wasn’t as nerve-wracking as I would have expected. I have done about ten presentations about the USA and Minnesota for various English classes at my school and that helped prepare me. Today I have a rather free schedule, and went to my host sister’s class and presented about the USA in a mix of Swedish and English. The twelve year-olds did quite well at understanding and had many questions.

Next Tuesday, I prepare to go to Kiruna, which is the northernmost city in Sweden. It is a city sixteen hours north of Stockholm. I am taking the night train. We will be learning about the city, driving over to Northern Norway, viewing the large hotel constructed of ice, and enjoying the company of about forty other exchange students.

I usually choose to blog when I am quite content but I can most definitely say that my exchange has been a mix of extreme happiness, being content, stressed, and also a bit discouraged if I am overly tired. Fortunately, I usually feel quite happy and grateful to be in Sweden. There is no real way to summarize my range of feelings. One of the aspects of my exchange that I wish I had more control over was my schooling here. Now that I have no more musical rehearsal, I have rather a lot of free time and not much homework. I have had to be self-motivated to study Swedish but have also had time to simply read, bake, jog, and interact with my host family and friends. I have also picked up the violin again. I would go insane if I didn’t create this structure. My third host mom works at a small school, so perhaps I can also arrange to volunteer once a week there. I have had to find a balance. This year has offered me the chance to read more, discover a new language, allowed me to get to know beautiful families and friends, made me realize the importance and enjoyment I get out of exercise, the happiness I get when I play my violin, and the pleasure I get from baking and then sitting down with my host family for fika afterwards. 

This post was not the easiest to write because my English has started to go down the drain. I will try to update again though the longer I am here, the harder it is to find time to blog.

I am off to make pizza dough. My host family is having my third host family for dinner tonight.