Hej san!
I can't believe how close I am to the end of the school year! I've received an email detailing how to get my transcripts back to CU and turned in my philosophy paper, but I'm still cramming madly for Swedish. Making things plural is still giving me fits, no matter how many times I review the rules. There are just so many exceptions. My innate sense of grammar is still there, thankfully, though I should probably expand my vocabulary a bit so have some words to put in the right order.
But school isn't the only thing I've been doing. On Thursday last week I made Mexican food for Henri. Shopping for the ingredients was a bit of a laugh; the only brand that sells "Mexican specialty items" is called TexMex, and even the extra hot salsa barely qualifies as medium at home. I went for making burritos, so I had ground beef, avocado, corn, cheese, pinto beans (no refried or black beans at the store, but I figured pinto worked) and of course the salsa. It was a resounding success, if I do say so myself. The taco seasoning I used on the ground beef tasted right, so everything had the proper flavor, even if it was a little mild. Henri thought it was awesome, though I told him he'd have to come to the US and try real Mexican food someday.
This is actually something that might happen in the near future! To finish his master's degree in material physics, Henri needs to do a second internship and he's looking into labs in Boulder, Chicago, and California. He hasn't heard anything back yet, but he's hoping to get a spot in Boulder. Now that he's making good on his promise to come to the US, he's started bugging me to fulfill my promise to come to Paris and visit him. I keep telling him there's no way he's getting out of my visit, regardless of when I start planning it!
We had one other good adventure this weekend; on Saturday we took the train to Gävle, a town about an hour and a half north of Uppsala. We'd realized we'd traveled to four other countries during our time in Sweden, but the only towns in Sweden we'd been to were Uppsala and Stockholm! Gävle is a beautiful town with about 70,000 people and a delightfully preserved old town hidden between modern streets and squares. My favorite part was the river that ran through the town. I like the river in Uppsala, but it's a flat river; you can't see the current. The river in Gävle looked so much like the Yampa river, current and all, that it almost made me a little sad. I was more happy to revel in the beauty of it, though. The city has made parks and paths for a very long way up the river; Henri and I walked for two hours from the center of town and I don't think we'd reached the end.
I loved Gävle, but at first I had a hard time explaining why to Henri. There was nothing particularly extraordinary about it in terms of history or culture. Gävle's not well-known for anything. It's a pretty town with a river and colorful Swedish-style neighborhoods and a low-key downtown. And I think that's in part why I loved it so much. The shops and restaurants on the main street were the kind of places people would actually go to buy something. They weren't trendy or fancy. The houses had toys and bikes in the front yard. It just felt like people lived there.
There is something that irks me a bit about this. I should appreciate the culture and history offered by places like Rome and St. Petersburg and even Uppsala. There are wonderful things about cities; the myriad of opportunities, the constant energy, the innovations in design and business and everything else. Things happen in cities. But I am, and I think I always will be, a small-town girl. I do believe this is very much a product of the fact that I grew up in a small town; Henri is quite sure he could never live in a place that small and boring, and he grew up forty minutes from the center of Paris. But I have never been able to stand the cookie-cutter houses of suburbia (although not all suburbs have such houses, some of them sure do!) and I feel like cities are just so...transient, I guess. Everything is always changing, and I've never been very comfortable with change. I think I prefer visiting cities, and living in a place where people put down roots.
My other adventures for the week merely confirm there is a great possibility of my growing up to be a complete home-body. I made two different types of bread this week, and a large batch of potato soup so I didn't have to bother with cooking while I was shoving extra Swedish vocabulary into my head. I'm happy to report that my honey-wheat bread turned out much better this time! I can't wait to make some for Mom and the rest of my family. I also made a loaf of squash bread, courtesy of my corridor-mate Mia's bequeath while she was cleaning out the fridge. In sort of the same way that loving Gävle irked me, the immense satisfaction I get out baking bread irks me a bit. It's a little too simple, too easy. I part of me feels like I should be doing something productive instead. Baking bread will not save the world. But it does taste way better than store-bought bread, it makes the corridor smell incredible, and it makes me happy, and that's reason enough.
The last major project of the week has been planning the time my mom will have with me in Sweden. We had a list a mile long of things we want to do and places we want to see and only two and half weeks. We've decided our big adventure will be to Norway; Oslo to see the city that my dad and brother raved about when they were at Telemark World Championships last year, and Tromsø, a little town in the very far north of Norway. It's 350km north of the Arctic Circle, and it's actually farther north than Sweden goes! Mom and I will be treated to the midnight sun (it won't ever set) while we're there, which has always been on my bucket list. I give Mom full credit for this idea; one of her friends from college did her ecology work in the fjords there, and Mom fell in love with the pictures. I can't wait to go.
We also planned our flight back to the US so we could be in Sweden for midsommar, the biggest festival of the year. Swedes raise the maypole on the first Friday evening after June 21 with song, dance, and a lot of flowers woven into wreaths and other decorations. According to legend a girl who pick seven kinds of wildflowers and sleep with them under her pillow will dream of her future husband. Mom and I will be spending midsommar on the shores of Lake Siljan, in the region of Sweden best known for it's carved red horses. I can't wait for midsommar, or to go to Tromsø and Oslo, or really, just for Mom to come. This is definitely the longest I've ever been away from my family, though Skype and email has made it a million times easier.
Planning everything has made me realize exactly how close Mom's arrival day is! Whenever my brother and I were looking forward to our Spring Break vacation, we would make a paper chain and tape it to the fridge, pulling off one link for every day. The shorter that chain got, the closer we were to our adventure. True to my tradition-loving self, I made my own paper chain all the way until Departure Day on June 26th. It's scary to look at, alternating because it's the longest paper chain I've ever made and because it's so incredibly short. It might be somewhat childish, but I love it anyway.
I'm afraid it's time for me to go back to conjugating Swedish verbs, but by next post I'll be finished with Swedish grammar exercises forever! I also promise I haven't forgotten about my St. Petersburg post, but it might continue to languish until after the exams are finished.
Until next time,
Hej då!
I can't believe how close I am to the end of the school year! I've received an email detailing how to get my transcripts back to CU and turned in my philosophy paper, but I'm still cramming madly for Swedish. Making things plural is still giving me fits, no matter how many times I review the rules. There are just so many exceptions. My innate sense of grammar is still there, thankfully, though I should probably expand my vocabulary a bit so have some words to put in the right order.
But school isn't the only thing I've been doing. On Thursday last week I made Mexican food for Henri. Shopping for the ingredients was a bit of a laugh; the only brand that sells "Mexican specialty items" is called TexMex, and even the extra hot salsa barely qualifies as medium at home. I went for making burritos, so I had ground beef, avocado, corn, cheese, pinto beans (no refried or black beans at the store, but I figured pinto worked) and of course the salsa. It was a resounding success, if I do say so myself. The taco seasoning I used on the ground beef tasted right, so everything had the proper flavor, even if it was a little mild. Henri thought it was awesome, though I told him he'd have to come to the US and try real Mexican food someday.
This is actually something that might happen in the near future! To finish his master's degree in material physics, Henri needs to do a second internship and he's looking into labs in Boulder, Chicago, and California. He hasn't heard anything back yet, but he's hoping to get a spot in Boulder. Now that he's making good on his promise to come to the US, he's started bugging me to fulfill my promise to come to Paris and visit him. I keep telling him there's no way he's getting out of my visit, regardless of when I start planning it!
We had one other good adventure this weekend; on Saturday we took the train to Gävle, a town about an hour and a half north of Uppsala. We'd realized we'd traveled to four other countries during our time in Sweden, but the only towns in Sweden we'd been to were Uppsala and Stockholm! Gävle is a beautiful town with about 70,000 people and a delightfully preserved old town hidden between modern streets and squares. My favorite part was the river that ran through the town. I like the river in Uppsala, but it's a flat river; you can't see the current. The river in Gävle looked so much like the Yampa river, current and all, that it almost made me a little sad. I was more happy to revel in the beauty of it, though. The city has made parks and paths for a very long way up the river; Henri and I walked for two hours from the center of town and I don't think we'd reached the end.
I loved Gävle, but at first I had a hard time explaining why to Henri. There was nothing particularly extraordinary about it in terms of history or culture. Gävle's not well-known for anything. It's a pretty town with a river and colorful Swedish-style neighborhoods and a low-key downtown. And I think that's in part why I loved it so much. The shops and restaurants on the main street were the kind of places people would actually go to buy something. They weren't trendy or fancy. The houses had toys and bikes in the front yard. It just felt like people lived there.
There is something that irks me a bit about this. I should appreciate the culture and history offered by places like Rome and St. Petersburg and even Uppsala. There are wonderful things about cities; the myriad of opportunities, the constant energy, the innovations in design and business and everything else. Things happen in cities. But I am, and I think I always will be, a small-town girl. I do believe this is very much a product of the fact that I grew up in a small town; Henri is quite sure he could never live in a place that small and boring, and he grew up forty minutes from the center of Paris. But I have never been able to stand the cookie-cutter houses of suburbia (although not all suburbs have such houses, some of them sure do!) and I feel like cities are just so...transient, I guess. Everything is always changing, and I've never been very comfortable with change. I think I prefer visiting cities, and living in a place where people put down roots.
My other adventures for the week merely confirm there is a great possibility of my growing up to be a complete home-body. I made two different types of bread this week, and a large batch of potato soup so I didn't have to bother with cooking while I was shoving extra Swedish vocabulary into my head. I'm happy to report that my honey-wheat bread turned out much better this time! I can't wait to make some for Mom and the rest of my family. I also made a loaf of squash bread, courtesy of my corridor-mate Mia's bequeath while she was cleaning out the fridge. In sort of the same way that loving Gävle irked me, the immense satisfaction I get out baking bread irks me a bit. It's a little too simple, too easy. I part of me feels like I should be doing something productive instead. Baking bread will not save the world. But it does taste way better than store-bought bread, it makes the corridor smell incredible, and it makes me happy, and that's reason enough.
The last major project of the week has been planning the time my mom will have with me in Sweden. We had a list a mile long of things we want to do and places we want to see and only two and half weeks. We've decided our big adventure will be to Norway; Oslo to see the city that my dad and brother raved about when they were at Telemark World Championships last year, and Tromsø, a little town in the very far north of Norway. It's 350km north of the Arctic Circle, and it's actually farther north than Sweden goes! Mom and I will be treated to the midnight sun (it won't ever set) while we're there, which has always been on my bucket list. I give Mom full credit for this idea; one of her friends from college did her ecology work in the fjords there, and Mom fell in love with the pictures. I can't wait to go.
We also planned our flight back to the US so we could be in Sweden for midsommar, the biggest festival of the year. Swedes raise the maypole on the first Friday evening after June 21 with song, dance, and a lot of flowers woven into wreaths and other decorations. According to legend a girl who pick seven kinds of wildflowers and sleep with them under her pillow will dream of her future husband. Mom and I will be spending midsommar on the shores of Lake Siljan, in the region of Sweden best known for it's carved red horses. I can't wait for midsommar, or to go to Tromsø and Oslo, or really, just for Mom to come. This is definitely the longest I've ever been away from my family, though Skype and email has made it a million times easier.
Planning everything has made me realize exactly how close Mom's arrival day is! Whenever my brother and I were looking forward to our Spring Break vacation, we would make a paper chain and tape it to the fridge, pulling off one link for every day. The shorter that chain got, the closer we were to our adventure. True to my tradition-loving self, I made my own paper chain all the way until Departure Day on June 26th. It's scary to look at, alternating because it's the longest paper chain I've ever made and because it's so incredibly short. It might be somewhat childish, but I love it anyway.
I'm afraid it's time for me to go back to conjugating Swedish verbs, but by next post I'll be finished with Swedish grammar exercises forever! I also promise I haven't forgotten about my St. Petersburg post, but it might continue to languish until after the exams are finished.
Until next time,
Hej då!
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