The days hosting Mark and Kathi were great, in spite of Kathi being at half-capacity in a slow recovery from the flu.
My previous post was of our limited outing in Uppsala. We also had a limited outing in Stockholm. This included lunch at Anya’s and my favorite fika spot in the old part of town, Gamla Stan. We meandered through this historical part on the way to the ferry. Stockholm is built on 14 or so islands in addition to the mainland.
Our destination on the other side: The ABBA Museum!
In 2015, I pondered on my blog (from Norway) if I should fulfill Anya’s request to visit The ABBA Museum when Anya and I were in Stockholm the day before my trip to Uppsala to interview at Johannelund. Kathi told me “Absolutely!” (Mark thought perhaps it was ABBAsolutely!) The ABBA Museum visit was a big part of Anya falling in love with Stockholm and her eagerness to consider moving to Sweden. Perhaps Kathi’s encouragement helped tip the scale to Sweden! Kathi and here sister were big ABBA fans when growing up!
We did a little tourist shopping and had a fika before heading home. We tried not to push Kathi too hard during her recovery. It did take something out of her, so we just rested the next day.
On Sunday, Kathi was up for church, which was followed by having tea with my three Chinese friends. It was a mix of trying to communicate in beginning Swedish (me and two of the Chinese), in beginning Mandarin (with Mark and Kathi and the three Chinese), and with intermediate English (with one of the Chinese and us). We had a nice time, and they sent us home with homemade dumplings for lunch!
After a nap and some time to hang out, we took the bus to the viking grave mounds for a quick visit to one of the most important historical sites in Sweden. There was a church service going on, so we got to peek our heads into the back of the old church from the 12th century. Then it was on the bus into town for dinner at one of the very Swedish dinning establishments. We ate outdoors next to the river, sharing some Swedish meatballs with lingonberries, and other delicious foods. (I’m glad that I’m slowly getting the hang of the bus too.)
On Monday morning, I helped Mark and Kathi get some laundry done in time to finish packing, have an early lunch, and get to the bus to the airport. It was great to have them here, but I hope next time that Kathi is not in recovery and back to her spunky self.
On my walk back to the apartment from the bus station (we took a taxi to the bus to the airport with the luggage), I saw an interesting thistle just beginning to bloom.
On Monday, Anya started working at the Johannelund library. The librarian’s 2 daughters, who are around her age, are also working there. The city has a program that pays teenagers half of a salary for 90 hours, or 3 weeks at 30 hours per week. This is a nice place for staff member’s offspring to work, and a good benefit for Johannelund. Earlier in the summer, other staff offspring were working on the cleaning crew. Anya’s previous volunteer work in the library landed her an opportunity there, and she is liking it (and glad that she wasn’t on the cleaning crew!). Anya is the go-to person for book repair! And the Books of the Bible song that I taught her when she was 6 comes in handy now as they are now working on getting the Old Testament books cataloged into the Dewy Decimal System. (Pam, Anya said that she saw 3 of your books today!)
Now my days are technically vacation, but I spend a good chunk of the day reading for classes in the fall. I try to be in the hammock as much as possible, but there is some reading on the exercise bike too.
The main project the past 2 days has been checking the edits of the manuscript of my revised PhD dissertation. A “technical editor” made some “track changes” edits. I’m going through to approve or not-approve them. Some of the edits have seemed inconsistent, which means checking with the production editor. So, I’m not overly confident with the technical editor’s work, but it keeps me on my toes!
The brain-draining task is to locate tentative page numbers. In the text, there are many places that refer to other portions of the text. In the PhD dissertation formatting, there were section headings to which I could refer, such as, “See Section 4.3.4.” However, for the monograph, there are no section headings, so I have to track down the page numbers where I want to direct my readers (all 2 of them, assuming there are 2 crazy people!). These will be checked with the final pagination, but I want to do the time consuming work now. Later in the academic year, things will be crazy-busy. It is better to do the work now when I have more time and can take breaks in the hammock!
The weather has been very nice with highs in the low 70s and mostly to partly sunny. This is the best time to be in Uppsala. Today, it was overcast in the high 60s, but pleasant.
With blessings,
Beth