I love a church where several long bike racks are full! (Yes, we biked to church.) I love a church where the pianist fills in with jazz riffs while the congregation sings and plays soulful arrangements of Pat Metheny’s jazz for the postlude. However, I then hear that there isn’t a jazz pianist all the time. Well, at least a great introduction.
The enthusiastic preacher, originally from Uganda, spoke fluent Swedish and so quickly that someone asked him to speak more slowly. Jim was asked to translate into English for other Ethiopian guests, so Anya and I each had a wireless earpiece to help us understand. We both have some basic capacity to understand the basic themes, but there is till too much vocabulary at too fast a rate of speech to track well.
After church, I met my cultural mentor, Donna. My Johannelund colleagues asked her to help me get oriented to the culture, and she didn’t hesitate to say yes. She is from the USA but spent a year as an exchange student here. She later married a Swede and has lived and worked in Uppsala for many years. Through prior connections on Facebook, I realized that her youth director is someone I know from my college networks; it is a small world!
Jim and Christina, my hosts, then invited several over for fika after church. There were nine of us enjoying coffee, tea, and a variety of treats. We talked and laughed for about two hours. Much of the conversation is in Swedish, where I can often understand the topic and some aspects of the conversation, but there were several times the Swedish speakers were laughing while Anya and I weren’t. Obviously, we didn’t get it.
However, it seems easier for me to understand Swedish when spoken by a woman. Is it because my Swedish tutor in the USA was a woman? Does it just happen to be these specific women around the table who enunciate in a way that is easier for me to understand? I’m not sure, but I’m sure I’ll have plenty of opportunities to test these hypotheses.
The conversation included Donna’s representation of the unwritten rules about fika, food, and being a guest. These traits are often just assumed by the Swedes who don’t know that they are not part of American culture. It was also fodder for much laughter.
After a Sunday afternoon nap, we said goodbye to Jacob (our host’s son), who is off for his final year in a master’s program in architecture in Stockholm. Then after dinner, Anya and I biked back to church to join a knitting and handicraft group which Donna has started. Once a month, people (mostly women) gather for two hours to chat and work on some knitting or other project.
Anya impressed them with her sock knitting, while I worked on Swedish language with some gracious women and helped Donna untangle a massive yarn knot. Donna had baked a fresh red currant pie which was very tasty.
It is a good thing that I’ll be biking all around town to balance out all the pie and pastries at fika!
With blessings / med välsignelser,
Beth