2017.05.28: I’m getting old!

I distinctly remember my 30th birthday. For the first time, my birthday party was not predominantly attended by young singles. Instead, the majority of the people seemed to be families with kids! There was a very different feel.

I had a very different feel on Friday night. I was invited to a “girls” gathering, and I was probably the youngest one there. This group of women has been meeting for over 25 years. They said when they first started meeting, there was always someone breastfeeding. Now the youngest offspring are in college and the conversation includes pending retirements.

They were warm, and often the conversation turned to English for me. I am getting more of the conversation, but when they talk in an excited way, the words come to fast. (Yes, sometimes Swedes get excited, but the one who talks the fastest is an American.)

The view was nice from our hosts apartment, up about 5 flights of stairs.

But the most beautiful thing of the evening was the hand-knit sweater in the final stages of reinforcing the button holes.

The pattern is from Norway. The Swedes admit the Norwegians have better sweater patterns. The other beauty of this sweater is that it is made for the EX-daughter-in-law for her 40th birthday. The knitter says that she still wants to keep connected to this woman they shared 15 years with and is the mother of her grandchildren. (The knitter also used to live in Tanzania, and she was excited to learn that I will be going there on Wednesday.)

Saturday morning at the gym, I was reading a student’s essay on the exercise bike. To the left of me was a guy, I’d say about 30, who was doing multiple pull-ups with a 12 kg (26.5 lbs) weight between his knees! He was finishing up as I was wiping down the bike, and in that moment, I said, “Wow!” His response in Swedish, was “Thanks! The same… (I couldn’t understand this part) …exercising.” So, I assumed it was something like. “The same goes to you to see old people exercising.” After all, how could he say “Wow” to me by just being on an exercise bike? As I left the gym, we saw each other and smiled.

Anya is mortified to know that I’m talking to strangers in Sweden. It is so un-Swedish. But my sense is that Swedes, by culture, are not going to initiate a conversation, but they don’t mind it when a conversation is broached. And the one woman I talk to whenever I see her at the gym (mostly in simple Swedish!), was actually the one who initiated the conversation.

Speaking of Swedish… This past week, I worked through my message that I’m planning to give in Swedish on the 5th of June with both a young woman co-worker, Elin, and again with my Swedish tutor, Lennart. I asked Elin to check that it was language that would connect with young adults. She was very careful to understand what I wanted to say, and then she made some word tweaks. Lennart helped me with the pronunciation, checking the correct emphasis of the syllables and the clumping of words. Elin will also make an audio recording, so I can hear her pronunciation when I practice. This is a lot of work for something I won’t get paid for, but it is a good Swedish learning project.

Finally, I’ve spent a huge amount of the last few days reading student essays. I’ve now come to realize that I prefer reading the ones in Swedish (with some help from Google Translate), because I’m exempted from having to evaluate the grammar. There will be a second reader. The Swedish guy who is writing in English has understandable challenges writing in English. I’ve put in a lot of amount of time correcting the verb agreement, punctuation, etc. (Swedes do punctuation very differently, which makes phrasing difficult for me. And I won’t even begin to gripe about different Swedish word order after an adverbial clause!) I know that all the notes and comments are important for developing his skills in writing English for his planned masters program in Scotland. (Fortunately, I will not have to write papers in academic Swedish. Even the theological conferences here include papers written in English. Oh that’s right, I still will have messages to give in Swedish!)

Amazingly, it was actually too hot to read the essays in the hammock, so it meant reading indoors, with windows shut to try to keep the cool air in. This was one of the few days we got beyond 70 degrees, and it actually got up to 80.

With blessings,

Beth