I'm famous! (Again!)

You might remember that I was in the Ubyssey (UBC student paper) last November, talking about UBC's Lucia group. This Thanksgiving, I was interviewed by my friend and student radio host, Rikki.

http://soundcloud.com/fika-with-rahel-rikki/episode-4-fika-with-rahel-and

Here's a link to the (shortened) podcast version of their hour-long Wednesday afternoon show on Studentradion. Rikki did her Korta Vägen internship here, and interviewed me about Canadian thanksgiving. If you only want to hear me, skip to about 8 or 9 minutes :)

Fredagsmys

Hej allihopa! Time for a new update. First, yesterday's high-tension match of Sweden vs Portugal (Zlatan vs. Ronaldo).

Let's just say this match was a pretty big deal...
First, Fredrik and I and a couple of friends went around to the nations and bars about an hour before the match... but NONE of them had any space, we were waay too late. Fredrik and Joe decided to stick it out standing at the back of Stockholm's nation,

 but I headed to Angelica and Max's apartment for some fredagsmys.

OLW Fredagsmys (video/song) (lyrics... now it is the end of the week, time to relax, sofa and candles and a table with lots of good things, bla bla) fredagsmys has entered into the Swedish vocabulary in the last 5ish years, basically invented by the chip company OLW. Fredag=friday, mys=coziness, and it usually involves family/friends, TV, chips/candy, and chilling at the end of the week. So, arriving at my Swedish friends' home, I was greeted with Doritos, skittles, popcorn, trail mix, coke, and a blanket on the couch in front of the game. As we say in Swenglish, najs!!

fredagsmys.

This is a bad habit of Swedes. They invent Swedish words which are actually disguised English words... dejt (date), fajt (fight), najs (nice), nät (net), nätdejting... etc etc, that when pronounced the Swedish way sound just like the English word.

So, what have me and Fred been up to lately....
A few days ago, getting up for work, I looked in the fridge and found this apple:

Fredrik apparently made it in the middle of the night. He never ceases to surprise me.

Three weeks ago or so, we visited the summer house for the last time this year. We just had to check out the newly finished kitchen and bathroom... with hot water !!! No sewage yet so there isn't a toilet... but it was wonderful to have a kitchen sink and a HOT shower. I am so lucky to have the opportunity to go there, it's so wonderfully cozy (mysig!) to build a fire and cook freshly picked mushrooms from the forest.

On our drive there, I was amusing myself by translating the Swedish place names we passed.... and some that we didn't pass but have funny names anyway!
Romberga - rum mountain
Vintrosa - wine underwear
Burtrask - cage swamp
Rackarbergsgatan - Rackets mountain street (now you know!)
Örebro - Cent bridge
Malmö - Ore (as in iron ore) island

And here are some I didn't find myself but are also worth a laugh...  (most of them are a little bit rude though, be warned) Read them here

Another strange thing Swedes do is they love to describe what their body is doing while they are doing something. It sounds rather strange in Swedish to say "I'm watching TV" or "I'm cooking"... you should really say, "I'm sitting and watching TV" or "I'm standing and cooking"... ?

This Monday, I have my language test for KV coming up. Only three more classes... and three more weeks of internship. It seems to have gone by so quickly... it's hard to believe I've been living in Sweden for 7 months already!

Oh, if you haven't seen it, here's my halloween costume for this year....

muskrat hat

Hahaha. I got a lot of thumbs up for that one. Canadian Lumberjack... I had an axe at one point but other people also enjoyed playing with it so I don't have it for the picture.

Hmm... Some interesting themes at Biotopia recently... last month was Microcosmos, so I built myself a clay Tardigrade (you likely have no idea what that is, I certainly didn't... microscopic organism which can survive extreme temperatures, pressures, and can go 10 years without food). And this week, I got to do some recycled crafts, so I made myself an Advent ring using old soda lids and cut up used tealight holders :)  oh, and we ringed some birds too! (I just watched) ...I also made myself a bird feeder during fall school break week, which inspired some copies.

this is what tardigrades look like in 'real life'

my version

my bird feeder

...and some inspired copies

bird ringing

oops... we caught a big one too

recycling theme... beer can tealight holder and an advent wreath from... old tealights!

And, I did some more nice excursions with my friend at Upplandsstifelsen, Åsa.... pics coming later for that.

Oh, and we had a scooter fire next to our house...

the fireman thought it would be best to snap a pic first.

Then I had some 'american pancakes'

 And walked around town...

And walked around some more...

Ate a pumpkin cake...

Got a super deal going to a fish spa with some friends...

Walked around some more...

Went to school...

Tried some gingerbread-flavoured sparking water...

Went to a football game...

Had coffee with good friends from last year...

All in all, a busy but fun month!!

Aaaannddd.... it's exactly one month until me and Fred head back to Canada!! So looking forward to seeing everyone!

that darned fox... and other wildlife

The focus of this blog post is wildlife.

Let's begin with the worldwide phenomenon of the Fox, and what he says.

If you don't recognize this photo, you may (or may not) want to watch *this video* which is now the world's most popular viral video, made by the Norwegian comic team Ylvis. They made this song as a part of their comedy TV show "Tonight with Ylvis." You may or may not have seen ther *elevator videos* (which are hilarious in my opinion). However this fox song is now playing everywhere I go... radio, nations, friends' houses...

Side note, I have only ever seen one fox in Sweden, and it was dead by the side of the road...

Today, though, I saw some real wildlife. During my internship I have already had the opportunity to go on two self-guided 'field trips' to two nature reserves, where I cycle there and give my opinion on the signage, and start translating the information into English. Today, I was invited out to Härarjö, a nature reserve about an hour south of Uppsala, by an Upplandsstiftelsen worker (like Uppsala County nature board, or something?). She works with Emelie (from Biotopia) and invited me along on her trip to refill the brochures, check the areas for damage, and give a general report on the condition of the signage and rest spots. On our way there, I met this guy...

MOOSE

A moose. In Uppsala?? Fredrik tells me he has seen 2-3 moose in his car-driving travels in central Sweden. I feel pretty lucky. And surprised.

hello roedeers

I also happened upon some roedeers.

And while in the forest, I happened upon these two friendly things:

Some forest trolls.

See some more pictures of autumn in Uppsala...

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10200560560929913.1073741832.1635420126&type=1&l=18226e5762

Note: This course includes an excursion to the Baltic Sea.

Since I want to remain a student (for various reasons) I am taking a mish mash of online courses this term, one of which is The Baltic Sea Environment. Unlike in Vancouver, many of the online courses in Sweden have several mandatory meetings... ? Well, last weekend we had a lecture, a field trip, and some hours in the lab as a 'course introduction.' Here are some pix of us a couple of hours northeast of Stockholm, trying to find some sea life! It's a beginner's course, so we spent more time having fika than we did actually straining for tiny sea critters.

we didn't find too much...

my new french-canadian friend with our plankton sample

good thing we had time for fika! conveniently located 20ft from the beach we were 'studying'

Praktikstart!

Biotopia Uppsala

Today marks the first day of my internship (aka praktik). It will last Tues-Fri until December 6th at Biotopia. It's a very small, very old biological museum for kids, with an upstairs devoted to dioramas (with stuffed animals as old as 100 yrs) and a downstairs newly renovated in 2007 with an exhibition on the evolution of Uppsala's landscape. The plan is for me to help with the school groups in the mornings and work on a project in the afternoon, to be confirmed tomorrow in a meeting with my career coach from Korta Vägen. Started off the day with a nice fika, and fika at 3pm too of course :) The morning school group were 8 years old and they searched for bugs in the garden. The 15 year olds came in the afternoon and picked things out of the river with nets, brought them back in buckets and classified them by order. It was a lot of information and pretty overwhelming, but I met some nice people, Emil, Oskar, Dag, Anna, Karin, and Erika.

If you can figure it out, you can actually see the dioramas here: http://www.biotopia.nu/vinterland

Emil holding a stuffed something. Stole the pic from Sverige Radio!

I haven't updated my blog in a very long time (nearly two months!) because these months have practically been the busiest months of my life. SFI school, KV school, (homework for both of those), working at Snerikes, getting strep throat and several colds, and trying to visit with everyone before they disappear off to another part of the world, not to mention a couple of activity-filled weekends with Fredrik's family and a last-minute not-so-relaxing-but-still-exciting daytrip to Tallinn, Estonia.

Estonia pictures have not been sorted, nor have the pix from when my Belgian friend Mira stayed with me for the week back in July. At some point soon I hope... SFI is completely done with now, after many many exams and assignments, and just today I applied for the SFI Bonus (12,000:- coming to me in three weeks! 150% of what I made at Snerikes over the summer...) I celebrated by buying a pair of 700:- leather shoes for 99:-.  :D
The first half of KV is over now, the purely Swedish lessons part of it. Now I only have Swedish lectures on Mondays, and my praktik the rest of the week. It barely pays anything but it will be excellent experience, I can already tell. Basic things like that salt water is called "sweet water" in Swedish... and the names for worms and snails and bla bla bla will come pretty quickly.

Side note, it's very easy to mix up bl.a. and bla. "bl.a." in Swedish means bland annat, which means "among other things" (that took me forever to figure out!!). Also the fact that röst can mean either voting or voice... and so many other words have two very different meanings. Rör for example... it can be a verb, to move, or it can mean pipes.
Also I have discovered a significant lack of proper English translations for words which seem so normal to Swedes... such as skadeglädje. This means taking joy in seeing other people's pain/failure, such as laughing at someone who crashes their bike (me on Saturday... the one crashing the bike anyway). There are a lot of words formed by simply sticking two words together that in English take up a whole phrase (can't think of any examples just now).

Another thing that has caused me a significant amount of confusion is the fact that a boss or a CEO is called "chef" in Swedish, pronounced something like 'hweef'. A chef (person cooking food) in Swedish is "kock". Yikes. The worst thing, though, is that the Swedish words for fill, drunk, and ugly sound almost identical to each other (fyll, full, ful). Vowel differences are crucial but sooo difficult...

One more strange thing I thought I would never see: a gypsy caravan. While driving through Stockholm a while back, we came across what appeared to be a long train of cars on the highway all with their emergency blinkers on. Upon closer inspection, it turned out all the cars were full of Finnish gypsies in traditional clothes (I've described them before, the long black sparkly velvet skirts with a ledge and long sleeved shirts). Maybe 15 cars in a row with their blinkers on the whole time, I guess so they could follow each other easily? Interesting experience.

Anyway, right now I'm just starting to figure out how this fall will go. Soon it will be decided what my tasks at Biotopia will be specifically. Fredrik starts school on Friday, he's finally done with the trekking back and forth between Vasteras, Eskilstuna and here for his summer job, though he may still have a few days here and there covering for sick people. I am registered in two classes right now, but am not sure if I will actually take them or not (depends on their hours among other things) and luckily there is no disadvantage to me (no fees or penalties) if I decide to drop them. Depending on how my money situation goes through the fall I may try to get a job with my classmate Rikki at the airport, but the hours are funny and they normally want someone for at least 60-70% time.

The weather is changing very quickly. Two weeks ago it was about 20 C during the days, last week around 18 C, and yesterday going to school it was only 12 C. Some leaves are already starting to change colour...
The new students are ALL here now and are ALWAYS in the park outside our apartment. Luckily we don't have to keep all the windows open all the time anymore.

tastes like chicken? actually like skyr

Well, I've been experimenting with an awful lot of new dishes here, mostly because the cheapest food here is not the cheapest food in Vancouver. Fresh vegetables (as I have mentioned before) are super expensive comparatively, but frozen veggies are much much cheaper. Frozen spinach, salmon and cod, and boxed tomatoes have become somewhat staples for us due to the price (all WAY better than Van), and a new wonderful discovery of kvarg. It's called quark in English, and I have never ever heard of it, and still don't know exactly what it is other than yet another dairy product they have here that I have never heard of (apparently Russians eat it every day?). Full of protein, low fat, and you can use it in baking or have it for breakfast with some jam mixed in. Plus it's like $2.75 for a kilo?!


Well, it's time for me to squeeze in a nap before going out to visit my friend Juliet from UBC who's been visiting old friends for the week. She started her master's in Vienna and will be here in Uppsala next year.

Pictures soon !

Midsommar video... Raising the maypole

Enjoy this video of the men carrying the maypole and the women singing (rather unenthusiastically if I may say... to be fair many of them are preteens who don't think it's cool...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuKpqcRtH5Q

Midsommar!

So, I took the long long ride to the west coast of Sweden, as documented with iPhone screenshots in my last post...
Capri (destination) is a small resort/nature reserve in Strömstad, Sweden. It has maybe 30 cabin-style houses for rent throughout the year, along with a beach, dock, tennis courts, pool, and small shop. Fredrik's parents started renting out week 25 (midsummer week) back in 1978, when Capri opened!

Hopefully by now you've seen the pictures from my trip.
If not,
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.4960340499725.1073741827.1635420126&type=1&l=a0342f6a2b


Fredrik drove me 'into town' and we checked out a fish market, some shops, and of course had fika. We went for two short hikes in the nature reserve, and Fredrik did some 'creative' pathfinding (disaster) so it took a loooot longer than expected. We swam in the pool, and Fredrik decided to swim in the ocean just to say he did... after three seconds, he comes out with a bloody hand, scraped on a mussel or something. That was the end of that.

We had a little celebration of Alva's 3rd birthday, where Fredrik's god parents Krister and Kristina and their grandson Oscar joined us. They rent a cabin on Sydlångö (south-long-island) just 10 minute boat ride from the dock at Capri, and have done so since the 70's as well.

On midsommarafton (the holiday day) the 'young ones' packed up rain gear and took the little boat out to Sydlångö. It was cloudy but very warm. Alva was NOT happy about taking the boat. But we made it alive. Sydlångö (sude long uh) has its own little midsummer celebration, and the people renting on the island get together to make a maypole. At 2pm the kids get in a cart of some kind, right now a cart pulled by ATV, and the parents follow behind. They go to the far side of the island to pick wildflowers, some of which go onto the maypole and the rest go into the girls' flowery crowns. I managed to step in two separate ant hills while flower-picking... apparently they have biting ants in Sweden. I did not know this. Somewhere on Karl's camera is a picture of me jumping around literally with ants in my pants... I squashed some of them but they're like full mosquitoes (blood spatters) so I had to shower after that lovely experience. My feet are still covered in red itchy spots...

Anyway, 3pm everyone met by the pole so that the men could carry the maypole into the hole, while the ladies sang something wordless (I have a video somewhere). Then it was time for the songs. I had my lovely flower crown made by Kristina (I had no idea what I was doing). The song part was quite short, it varies from place to place, anywhere from 10 minutes to 1h depending on what people want. More 'traditional' celebrations, in Dalarna for example at the old historical villages, where people all dress in traditional Swedish costume, would last at least that long. Ours was only about 7 songs, but Fredrik said we hit all the main points. I didn't take any videos because I was of course forced to participate!

Here are some different perspectives of midsummer:
(ridiculous) German IKEA commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWU0CGfj-SU
General funny explanation of traditions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8ZLpGOOA1Q

After the dancing and singing around the maypole, we had dinner with schnapps, played minigolf, and ran through the now torrential rain back to the boat. A little bit of rest and drying off, then it was time for seafood. Crabs bought the day before, and crayfish & shrimps with bread and mayonnaise. Can't say I like crab but the shrimpy things were tasty!

The next day it was time to go home. We packed up everything from both the rented cabins (we were too many to fit in just one) and drove 4 hours to Örebro, where the Wäganders' summer house is. Fredrik and I were supposed to watch a football game on Sunday, so no point driving all the way home then all the way back to Stockholm. We stayed overnight there with Gudmund and Vickan, and then watched the last-ever Hammarby football game at the South Stadium (has been running since 1967). Now they have a fresh new Tele2 arena, but a lot of fans were quite emotional about the stadium closing. Everyone went down onto the pitch after the game, and people were taking pieces of grass, net, chairs, posters, all kinds of things. Hammarby is famous for its fan following... at least half the 13,000 fans were wearing green and white (team colours) and singing cheers and songs through the whole game. Especially for that night they even had some green flares... fun but very smoky...
I was reminded that most Swedish sports cheers consist of the team name. Most of the cheers were something like:
Hammarby! Hammarby! Hammarby hammarby hammarby! Hammarby... hammarby.... hamma hamma hammarbyyyy!

They also have a swedish translation of the 'soccer song',
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlvIG09pIh8
Bajen is another name for Hammarby, which apparently was born decades ago when they played an English team, that pronounced it Hammar-bye instead of Hammar-bi. Bye became Bajen... so, "Bajen is the name, football is their game..." etc ;)

"Long live the southern stadium!"

Better pictures from my camera will come later. Some fun videos too... of Fredrik screaming a LOT.

Super warm here now. Sunny sunny sunny and I got a burn from doing homework outside today... oops. 

Grill time! Got this grill for $20 at ICA and it works perfectly for hanging in the park with some marinated pork and veggie kebabs. mmmmm

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