After Anya left for school this morning, I reviewed some Swedish to prepare for my new tutoring session at 10:00 am. Lennart is a retired Greek teacher, who has taught Greek in 4 languages besides Swedish! I know that my ability to speak Swedish is related to my sense of comfort with my conversation partner. Right away, I felt comfortable with Lennart, so I sensed a bit of growth in my speaking today.
He is a widower, but he keeps busy with committees and things. One of his sons lives in Stockholm with his family, including two of his six grandchildren.
He has a collection of over 300 elephants from around the world. He lived over 15 years in India and 5 years in Thailand, as well as a few years in Indonesia. These homes and lots of international travels, including gifts from friends, have built the collection.
Lennart prepared tea and coffee served with some saffron cake and ginger cookies! He is so gracious. I did bring some Seattle Theo chocolate, in good Swedish cultural form.
We spent 1.5 hours today, and we will continue to meet regularly on Fridays. What a great blessing! (J & M, he is a friend of Jim Bergquist.)
After my tutorial, I biked over to the vaccination center, which was actually in that neighborhood. There was no line at 10:45 am on a Friday morning. I went right in after filling in a form (in Swedish). I started my session in Swedish, but eventually, we ended up in English. Whew! (When it relates to medical issues and banking, I really appreciate English!) I had my yellow immunization card, so it was good to know that all I needed to prepare for Ethiopian travels in February was an oral cholera vaccine. This is new to me and isn’t done in the USA in my recent visits. The cost of about $50 for a travel vaccine is not covered by the socialized medicine, but it is work-related, so JTH will reimburse me, I’m told.
Then, following the river, I could find my way to the city center.
There are no mountains here to give a sense of direction in a very flat land, but the cathedral spires are the landmark to help get around. Uppsala’s population is over 130,000, the fourth largest city in Sweden, but the law is that no building can be higher than the cathedral spires.
I met Anya at the tax office. We are getting her an official Swedish ID card. Then she doesn’t need her passport to get a package at the post-stop in the neighborhood grocery store. There may be other reasons too, but it just seemed prudent to have in advance of any potential need.
The tax office was in the Swedish news today, because today Sweden is estimated to have reached 10 million inhabitants, including me. It isn’t just citizens that the tax office counts, but anyone living in the country.
On the way home, I stopped by Clas Ohlson, (like Fred Meyer without food or clothes, i.e. a basic collection of home, kitchen, bath, electronics, art supplies, luggage, camping, hardware, etc.). I left the store to discover that while I thought I had parked in a bicycle parking area–due to the dozen bikes there–it wasn’t.
This is not a ticket, just a friendly reminder! So, I looked for the closest bike racks for the next time.
My afternoon was spent streaming “How It’s Made” on YouTube while working on resoling some shoes.
The evening included some more Swedish. I found a newscast in easy Swedish today.
However, I think the radio newscast with online transcriptions of the Swedish is more effective for my learning. I can cut and paste the unknown words (which slowly seem to be decreasing in number) into an online dictionary. In enter some words into my Anki intelligent flashcard system on my computer, which syncs in the cloud. Then, I can practice these words anytime on my phone (like when I was waiting for Anya to show up at the tax office during her break in the school day).
It is great to have lots of good resources. I will need to get a couple more conversation partners set up for weekly times for me to practicing speaking. All the technology doesn’t help me learn the the speaking part, but it helps with all the building blocks: vocabulary, grammar, writing, and listening comprehension.
With blessings,
Beth (one in 10 million!)
Jim Bergquist would appreciate knowing about Lennart and his helping you. Do you have Jim’s email?