The recap of Thursday.
Slowly, I find out more of what I don’t know. I just found out that some faculty and staff gather for prayer on Thursday mornings! No one had informed me until just a few days ago. So this week, I joined them.
In morning fika (coffee/tea break), I brought my ballot. It came in the mail on Wednesday, but I had already gone online, downloaded my ballot, and mailed it it. (Remember the comment last week about actually having a conversation with someone in a store!) So, I brought my ballot to fika and passed it around for anyone to look at it who was curious.
They were surprised to see 6 (or so) candidates on the ballot for president. They only know of the two major candidates. They were interested in all the different kind of voting, initiatives, federal, state, local, school, auditor, etc.
I don’t know what voting is like here, but I get the sense that it is important to recognize that it is a social democracy and not simply socialism. I’m hoping to have a conversation about this distinction someday.
Most of the day was preparing my essay for Swedish class tomorrow. For new teachers, typically the first semester has included 20% of the teacher’s “load” to take a course at the university on how to teach on the university level. However, with my experience, I didn’t need that. So my equivalent time has been designated for the Swedish course. I put in way more than 20% of my time in Swedish, but that is the reality of learning a language. I’m just glad to have this investment of time in my language learning. Thus, I can work on Swedish on my work computer that has Swedish grammar checker. (Microsoft Word on my personal laptop is not current enough to support grammar checker, and I’m finding out how lacking Google Translate is for good grammar.)
In the evening, Anya had some friends over to work on their Spirit Week costumes. Friday’s theme was somehow nebulous, so people could do almost anything. Anya wore her flapper dress (a previous Halloween costume that I sewed for her) that she brought along. She did her hair and make up perfectly! Unfortunately, she wouldn’t let me take a picture. One friend was Sandy in the last scene of the movie version of Grease. She rocked it! Another friend was a very cool hippie. Unfortunately, Anya wouldn’t let me take a picture. You can see that my groupie photo at our homemade pizza dinner has Anya mortified, while her friends were great sports.
My weekly rhythm includes increasing stress through the week until Friday morning’s Swedish class. As one of the weakest in (though also newest to) Swedish language learning, I have more gaps. So, I try to fill them with additional work. I worked very hard on my essay that is one of four graded assessments in this course. I carefully go through the reading assignments, look up the new vocabulary, and write the words in my text. I listen to the companion CD and mark the accents. This helps me learn, but also prepares me for class. While I still have a difficult time tracking the details of the conversations in class, I can usually pick up the subject and some general aspects of the meaning.
Today, I started with a conversation conversation partner, the guy who is fluent in Norwegian, but then another student came in a bit late and sat on the other side of him. So, now the class could be divided up in pairs, and I was paired with one of the German women. (She’s doing a PhD on human responses and interactions with robots.) She has completed level one and two, so she has less gaps than me in this level 3 course. However, today, I didn’t feel way out of it and even was able to retrieve some vocabulary to help with our exercises. In one exercise, I even aced the placement of the adverbials in the various clauses. Whoo hoo!
To top it off, the sun was shining on my way home and through the afternoon of laundry and cleaning.
One of the realities of living with only bikes is that I try to make the most of my proximity to grocery stores; I can only haul small amounts of groceries. We miss our Smith Brother’s milk delivery, especially since it seems that I’m buying milk several times a week. I’ve taken to keeping a small nylon bag in my coat pocket just for these occasions when I stop by a store. You have to buy your plastic bags in grocery stores, so while I was good at using reusable bags in the USA, I’m even better here. On one of the grocery store trips, I celebrated the new item on the shelves this week, Coke Life, with natural Stevia sweeter. I’m glad my preferred Coke is now available!
A special footnote: On this day 21 years ago, Eric and I were married.
With blessings,
Beth