347 days and 5 hours (GMT time)!...

Sometimes one has a kind of peculiar feeling just before a trip... Some butterflies flying wildly about in your belly, some sort of underlying sensation that you'll forget something dreadfully important, the vague thought that this, after all, might not have been the best of times to leave your fortress and wander about in the world... With me, it's often a severe combination of all of them and so many many many more - “the plane will surely fall”, “we'll loose our luggage”, “something terribly bad will happen in our absence”, etc etc etc. I surely could (and maybe should) write a book about the 1001 reasons why one shouldn't go on vacation – and, often, when one has 1001 reasons why one shouldn't go on vacation, it kind of rings of a desperate need for that time off.

The trip to Sweden is now behind my back. It was costy, in many levels, but we made it here and I'm nos sitting out in the sun, zipped up in my coat, enjoying the warming sun and fighting off the chilly wind with layers and layers of clothes.

The trip here was rather smooth... in a way, I guess. There was no screamy baby wanting out of the plane. Instead, we got a quite excited and cooperative 5 y.o. Who stared in amazement at pretty much everything and that happily mocked my panic look at each take off and landing.

On the other hand – of all the things that could go wrong, we got a bit of almost everything. We had a delayed flight, nearly missed the second flight and, in the end, arrived to our destination without luggage, as we made it to the second flight, but the bags didn't. So, I set foot in Sweden, bagless, exhausted to the marrow of my bone and with a not so handy urinary infection. Me suffers!

The first day on Swedish ground (which was yesterday) was planned out to be a handy fieldtrip to the nearest health center and pharmacy, but now I confess to be feeling a little bit better and not so potty-dependent. The weather, yesterday, was a bit of a downer – rain, rain and even more rain and with such low temperatures that it just reminded me of winter back home. Now the sun is out though, no threat of rain for now, clear blue sky and all these birds singing. There's also the sound of the wind passing through the leafs of trees and bushes and the waving of flags. Quite soothing, really, and it's this soothing feeling that often disarms me and makes me crave this space when my own reality settles in and life becomes a heavy burden to try and carry forward.

Many days have passed without words from my side. My Swedish learning plans still stand, though poor health has kind of settled in. No big reason behind it, which is both good and bad – good, because it's nothing serious, it seems; bad because I don't have a good reason to be feeling as bad as I've been feeling.

I will get back later with more news on my Swedish learning... for now, I'm just going to kick back and enjoy the world around me...

349 days and 13 hours to go!

354 days and 11 hours to go!

One day has passed by and silence installed itself... Health still hasn't improved and the results of the testing aren't ready either. Life has kind of stopped in one of the worse moments for that kind of pause. All that is there to do, seems to be to wait and to rest...

* - * - *

Since writing is a bit out of question at the moment, with my painfully swollen fingers, Swedish studies have taken a whole lot different twist.

For starters, I did finish that episode nr. 4 of "Kommissarie Winter" - out of all that I have seen so far (4 and 1/2 in total), episodes nr. 3 and 4 were surely the best ones. I must, though, make a severe criticism - the directing of the episodes is in general quite great, bordering on artistic really (except perhaps that really really really bad running scene, in the beginning of the 5th episode), but the script lacks information (not all ends seem to meet, which is pretty bad in a crime story) and there is the repetitive use (in EVERY episode!) of sex scenes and running-after-the-supposed-bad-guy scenes. All in all, I guess, the actors do a pretty good job - except maybe for Fredrik-the cop, who seems to have a thing against foreigners and happens to be together with the only non-Swedish-looking female in the squad... Hmmm...

Needing a break from all the criminal stuff - and mostly needing a rather easy laugh - yesterday night was time for "Sällskapsresan", with the always peculiar character "Stig-Helmer Olsson". We haven't watched the entire movie yet, though (but enough for me to finally figure out why Stefan kept on telling me that you'd get orange juice if you pressed the overhead button on a plane... Hmm!...). It seems always to go by halves...

But what I really wanted to tell you about is something a bit different... :-) I did tell you about my quick visit to IKEA, but I haven't yet rambled on about all the interesting things that exist there for us Portuguese. :-)

Well, today I'm going to tell you about two extremely interesting articles they're selling - the "Trampa" doormat and the "Bestå" bookcase storage system.

As for trampa, it's Swedish for "step on", but it's Portuguese, for... - hmm... how to put it in a minimally appropriate way - ... "crap". :-S So, not only it probably makes the buyer laugh his head off, it makes me laugh myself senseless, just at the thought of turning to someone, pointing to the mat and gently asking them to - "please, do clean your shoes on our crap mat, will you?". :-)

As for the Bestå, the thing with it is that Portuguese people have no clue on how it's pronounced - an A is an A here (independently of whatever they wanted to mean with putting a º over it! Hm!) - so Besta it is! And the things with "besta" is that it means "beast" and seems to be a quite handy word to scream out in traffic to the guy that just stole your parking space. So, it's not at all uncommon to hear people asking the assistance of an IKEA employee, because they'd need some help to put their "beast shelf" together. I'm yet to figure out if anyone seems to react to the word or if they're just playing cool, happily putting a face for the sake of not caving in to the obviously funny name. But I've decided that one of these days, when I'm tired of throwing myself on their sofas and beds, of moving around the decoration of their showrooms (hmm... should I even be saying these things?!...) or of going around touching the bedding, I'll make sure that I'll occupy some of the employee's time by asking all there is to possibly ask about a "beast shelf" - I'm waiting to be corrected or, at least, to see if anyone reacts to the "beast"! :-)

* - * - *

Now I'm going to lay this computer to rest and do the same to myself... Time for a book now!

Have a great weekend everyone! :-)

356 days and 8 hours to go!...

Yet another sunny and warm day... It's funny how the weather improvement seems to still come as a surprise every morning!... It has been such a long, cold and rainy Winter for what we usually have and even the Spring was a bit shy to show itself around. But now that it finally did, in its full splendor, we've jumped from 15ºC to 30ºC in a week - with the consequence of leaving us really really tired.

There's an interesting detail about my life and warm weather - it seems like warm weather manages to turn my husband into an infuriated wild animal. :-) I'm saying this with a smile, but it can truly be a scary thing to see... Despite the fact that he's been wearing t-shirts and short sleeved shirts for a few months now, and that's he's always picking the thinest of his summer pants, he's always complaining he's too warm, sweating himself senseless and making the speediest (possible) run home so he can jump into a pair of shorts. To be really honest, I've never really met anyone so fond of his shorts as him - and I'm born and bred by the seaside!

I've got to conclude that we're the perfect antagonism... Well, despite all our physical differences, that can scream out ANTAGONISM just by themselves, there are many funny differences in our way of reacting to the weather. For example, shorts is an item that definitely runs short in my wardrobe. In fact, up until 5 years ago, I didn't own a single pair - and the only pair I've been owning for 5 years was a father-in-law inspired buy (though not quite as inspired as I think he'd like... but that's maybe the sort of information I should leave for some other time... hmm...). I can enjoy the warm weather without it bringing out the shorts-wearer in me. Though I seem to manage the warmth sort of well, one I can't really deal with is cold weather, so Sweden in the Winter, for me, poses a bit of a challenge... It's also a bit like dressing for a play!... :-) You know all those things you'd NEVER wear back home, like extra fluffy woolly socks, scarf, gloves and hat (hat!!) - the kind of items that, when on, make you feel like you're looking like a sausage - oh my, how they turn out to be so handy! :-) And then I head out, looking pretty much like a rather short version of the abominable snowman, still freezing every bit of myself off, while Mr. B. puts on his skimpy coat (with just a shirt or so underneath!) with an assuring smile - the kind that just says: "don't worry about me, I'll warm up really quick, once I'm started with chiseling you off that block of ice!"...

* - * - * - *

Yesterday was a rather long day for me, that started with blood tests and ended up with falling asleep to the 5th episode of "Kommissarie Winter" and - this must be said! - without finishing to watch the 4th! Why? Because this sweet hubby of mine watched it all on Tuesday night and didn't wait to watch it with me! Mean mean mean! So I'm now supposed to watch the 2nd half of that episode all by myself! Hm!

In the afternoon, Miss B. went to her ballet class and is now the proud owner of a new pair of ballet shoes (and socks, and ballet suit, and skirt... hm...). Her ballet examination is approaching, just a little over a month left and another particularly emotional and stressed out period is soon upon us. It's always so inspiring how cool she is about all this - and interesting challenge and nothing else. It kind of becomes a bit of an eye opener for all those moments I feel my life is going to fall into pieces if something or other just doesn't turn out in this or that way.

Afterwards, it was time to go and pick Mr. B. up from work and head for a quick shopping trip to IKEA and the shopping center attached to it.

One thing I must confess is that I'm a bit of an IKEA-addict. Sometimes I'm just feeling like yesterday (a bit too many times, I'm afraid...) - blah! - and then I just do the quick drive down to IKEA and just stroll around in the store, occasionally just throwing myself on a sofa or on a bed, letting my daughter play house in (as she calls it) "other people's houses" (a.k.a., showrooms) or go around hugging the bedding. Yes, I can turn myself into a bit of an embarrassment, so I choose to do so in the most unlikely hours for any common being here to be shopping. As I'm not a fan of crowds, it just suits me fine!

For dinner, of course, we had the all-so-typical, but yet to be mentioned - köttbullar med kokt potatis, brunsås och lingonsylt (= meatballs with boiled potatoes, brown sauce and lingon jam) and, for dessert, a mini prinsesstårta (= princess cake).

And now it's time to move on... Major laundry day today and I'm feeling sooooo tired! :-S

357 days and 12 hours to go!...

I love days like today, with a hint of Summer in the air... There's plenty of sun, making the world around you so much more colourful and life somewhat more inspiring. It's not yet that kind of warmth that makes you sweat senseless, but it's warm enough to make you wear short sleeved and lighter clothes.

There's just something special about this time of the year... I open my bedroom window each morning to a radiant sun, but there's still a light breeze outside keeping the temperature in a reasonable balance. I throw on a light short sleeved blouse and I search for a pair of sandals - and all would be quite perfect in my world, really, if I wasn't in a deadline mess and feeling all so battered. So, instead of heading out for a coffee and a bit of reading somewhere, before the day had officially to start, I headed out to, what a friend called, "the vampire station", to a seemingly never ending exam. Five tubs later, I head out, with a tingling arm, unsteady on my feet.

There's really nothing special about taking blood tests, I know. I think I'm far from being an impressionable "needle and blood" kind of being. Still, there's just something about blood tests that seem to suck the life out of me and leave me a bit like a vegetable that has been standing out in the warmth.

The good news is that a major part of my medical tests is now out of the way, though there are still a couple of them left, to be taken as soon as I figure out where and when to take them. And then, eventually, they'll figure out what's going on with me these days. Fingers crossed!

* - * - *

As for Swedish, well... I'm full of complaints!

First, I'm starting to get a little annoyed with my textbook. Why? Well, mainly because when, after a text/dialog, they present the vocabulary part, the author's main concern seems to be mostly to translate entire expressions in what seems to be the best sounding English correspondent, with no regard for what the words individually mean.

Let's see if I can make myself understood with some examples... "är det här lagom?" is (though correctly, of course) translated (in the book) to "will that do?", which, in my humble opinion (and don't forget we're talking about a book addressed to those who are learning the language on their own) isn't pedagogically helpful. I really don't see why it shouldn't be translated to "is this enough?" instead, as it still makes perfect sense and it's somewhat closer to the Swedish equivalent, though helping the learner grasp better both the vocabulary learnt and the verb forms. Does it make any sense or am I just rambling?

The second complaint on my list goes to Mr. B. He has supposedly taken up the heavy duty of helping me with pronunciation and my vocabulary cards. Still, as we have both realized long time ago, 24 hours seem to be an awfully short period of time to fit in all we must do per day, so... he decided to speed things up a bit, on the assumption that I knew by heart all of the words, meaning that he cut short the exercise to the mere pronunciation. And that's a bit like robbing me of any margin for self-esteem! :-S Mainly because after the 10th time that I, seemingly in vain, try to pronounce "att skina" (= to shine) and "att skjuta" (= to shoot), all my glow is gone and I confess to starting to feel a bit homicidal. :-S

The actual problem with these two words (but not limited to these two, unfortunately!) is that you'd never really guess how they sound, unless you speak Swedish yourself. And to add to my list of language sufferings, I should add that the people who recorded the audio files that go along with the book seem to pronounce "att skina", as "att shina" and "att skjuta" as "att shuta", which, if you ask me, sounds so much easier to pronounce than the rather throatily sounds Mr. B. is trying to have me say.

Third on my complaint list comes the fact that I eagerly watched the second part of the 3rd episode of "Kommissarie Winter" only to realize it's another of those "to be continued" episodes. Grrr!... And, of course, we started watching the 4th episode too, but 20 minutes into it I was already craving my pillow, which means that there are now 2 bodies, 1 "suicide letter", 2 suicides that are supposed to be homicides, 1 cop who speaks to himself and to someone in what seems to be his own head and that doesn't want to go to Spain! It's getting better and better by the minute! *laughs*

Fourth complaint - Hm! Someone seems to have added sweden.se to my speed dial page!...

And, finally - fifth complaint! - I have managed to pour half my coffee over my Swedish textbook! Hm! Remember how I mocked Mr. B. and his "coffee rings" in anything that resembled a book?

* - * - *

Well, now it's time to move on, get some lunch, get started with some work - life moves on - eventually have a walk as well. The weather is great and the pain has calmed down a bit. I won't be able to get all of the exams done before I'm due to leave for Sweden, so I guess that I'll just take it easy and try not to be thinking about all of this all the time.

And with all that has been going on, I haven't managed to get together my "pre-30 bucket list"... :-S I'm really getting old! Hm!

358 days and 10 hours to go!...

Today has been a particularly complicated day... I woke up with even more restricted movements, after a nearly sleepless night and I'm now fighting off this sensation of just feeling... blah... I think Swedes have a quite good and hardly translatable word for this - seg.

The fact that I have less than a week to sort out my situation in college, which virtually means that I'll have to finish a presentation and actually sort myself through another paper I'm supposed to hand in, doesn't really help much. Not to mention all the other things that have to be done before packing the bags and taking off to the "Old Free North"...

Yesterday evening, on the other hand, was a bit of a paradise in this mental and physical chaos of mine. My parents decided to adopt a new furry family member and, after some discussion on what she should be named, everybody liked "Lucy". For those of you whom I haven't tortured yet with photos and descriptions of this cuddly Miss, here goes a sneak-a-peak of the "girl" who has recently stolen everybody's heart around here... :-)

We had a lovely family dinner... nice warm sunny weather, grilled food and plenty of running around after a very tricky and messy puppy.

* - * - *

As for Swedish, I decided to re-translate to Swedish the first 2 dialogs of that all-so-mentioned Chapter 2 and I ended up realizing something - when I translate a dialog to English, I'll have to be more careful in introducing details, because when I translate it back to Swedish it often misses something. Still, my level of correctness this time around was higher, which is always inspiring, I guess...

I should also tell you a little something about the tools I use when dealing with vocabulary. Every time I come across a new word, that I'm supposed to add to a word card, I first pass it by http://en.wiktionary.org/. It not only allows me to grasp the meaning of a word and also insert in various contexts, but it also gives me a lot about the type of word I'm dealing with.

You should give it a shot! Really!... Take the word "svenska", for example. To start with, it tells you which language you're dealing with. Then, you have a sound file so you can have a clue on its pronunciation. Finally, it tells you that it can be both a noun and an adjective - and provides you with both a declination and inflection chart for the word.

Wiktionary has really proved itself to be a most valuable tool. It's a pity, though, every time we trip on a word that isn't there... So, here's my personal appeal to those of you who speak the language - do help improve Wiktionary! :-)

The day ended with a rather amusing vocabulary practice... - some word cards workouts - just so I could tune in my bable fish for the 3rd episode of "Kommissarie Winter". I start to feel like my fishie wishie is actually starting to process the odd accents and the strange vocabulary. Either that or the topic of this particular episode seemed more appealing somehow and my attention was captured more easily.

We didn't finish the episode though... after half an hour, we were both slumbering away. Maybe tonight we'll be able to finish it up - after I'm done with this presentation that just doesn't seem to want to cooperate with me. Hmm!... :-S

359 days and 10 hours to go!

Sundays seem to be able to bring out the baker in Mr. B. ... Hmm... it's either that or he just can't resist messing up a newly clean kitchen... Not that I'm complaining! (Well, in fact, I am, but just a little bit...) :-)

I took most of the afternoon trying to reply Maria's letter. This reply posed a particularly big challenge as, first, I so much prefer to handwrite my letters than to type them (and we're still out of ink in the printer, which is something I have to solve today! *mental note to self*) and with my aching wrist isn't the easiest of things; and, second, I had to pick a typically Portuguese recipe to send her and translate it to English.

The first challenge was managed on a "paragraph basis" - write a paragraph; rest; write a paragraph; rest - which definitely isn't the most efficient way to write a letter, but then again, it's better than not having it written.

As for the second challenge, well... that was a true challenge! I'm saying this mainly because, as some of you might already have experienced, trying to enter the realms of international cuisine is entering a very frustrating world! Somehow, if you pick up a foreign cuisine recipe book, you'll be ruling, at least, half of the recipes in it as "un-cookable at the current moment" just for the fact that you'll never be able to gather all the ingredients required.

For years now that we've fought that battle every time we want to make something Swedish, but it does tend to happen more on special occasions - and particularly much more so at Christmas. We really don't find here things like lutfisk (some sort of especially prepared fish that I have no idea what it could be called elsewehere) or julskinka (= Christmas ham) (unless we're lucky and the local IKEA makes the favour of selling it for quite a price!) and I think you cannot get inlagd sill (= pickled herring) in any other place than IKEA's Foodstore. On the other hand, the same goes for some other items, like (Kalles) kaviar, pepparkakor (though it's now also sold in a national chain of supermarkets for an interestingly high price), glögg and many many other articles.

Other ingredients are also something we cannot come across here, just like sirap (= syrup), kokosfett (= coconut butter?), pomeransskall (= pomeranz peel), kardemumma (= cardamom) or mandelmassa (= almond paste).

So, most of the times, we're left to improvise what to substitute these things with. Other times, we just ask someone to bring it or mail it over - and that's what happened last April with 1 Kg of mandelmassa! :-)

Almost every Sunday after that, I've been requesting a special sort of bun toward which my stomach has grown a particularly big affection - the semla! :-)

... it does have powdered sugar on top, though it has been in the refrigerator and it kind of melted... but tastes just perfect anyway! :-)

Another thing that you can usually find in IKEA's Foodstore is kanelbullar (= cinnamon buns). But they're also one of those incredibly simple recipes to make. I put my frustrating wrist pain aside and rolled those myself. Well... they do miss the pärlsocker (= pearl sugar), which seems to add another item to the ingredients you cannot find here. :-(

And, finally - bread! :-) Nothing beats a warm slice of these, just out of the oven, with butter melting all over it - hönökaka! :-)

And now I'm off to lunch... Do have a great Monday and a particularly good start of week, hopefully as sunny as here. :-)

360 days and 8 1/2 hours to go!...

And I'm now approaching the end of my mission's first week...

I can't really say that it has been a highly impressive first week's work, but, well, considering the circumstances, I'm quite happy with myself. My life seems to be a continuum of "shouldn't-have-happened-this-in-this-precise-moment"s, so I guess that it's time I start learning how to handle my personal chaos so it doesn't have to get in the way of my plans - sometimes, you just have to make time to have time! (Does that even make any sense?...)

Chapter nr. 2 of my Swedish textbook is called, as I think I've mentioned, "Tack För Maten!". For those of you who happen to find yourself reading this post and who don't happen to have any Swedish knowledge, it means "Thank you for the food!".

Though I don't really have anything in particular against the author of this particular book, I must say that I had a bit of an anger fit when I read its sub-title: "It was a lovely meal!". Let's hope that they didn't mean it to be a translation of the Swedish title! Really! Still, for an inattentive or less knowledgeable Swedish learner, it might raise a bit of a vocabulary confusion.

But moving on - and mentioning what I'm counting on having done by the end of the coming week - this chapter is composed by 3 dialogs, complete with "true or false" questions and new vocabulary listings. The dialogs are then followed by a "Vad ni behöver veta" (= what you need to know) section, giving... hmm... useful... (we'll surely get back to this one soon!)... information about life in Sweden. Then comes the grammar (grammatik) and the exercises (övningar) and, finally, a text.

So far, I have dealt with the first 2 dialogs - which basically means that last time I heard of the Taylors, they were famished and ready to dig into whatever the Svenssons were serving them for dinner. :-S

And we should start exactly there - dinner! Supposedly, dinner in Swedish is middag. I mean... really?... I don't even need to bring up the etymology of that word to tell you how wrong that just sounds. :-S

As for what was served, here goes the menu: inlagd sill (= pickled herring - for starters), kyckling (= chicken) with dillpotatis (= potatoes cooked with dill), grönsaker (= vegetables... or, even more interestingly and literally translated, "green things" :-)) and sallad (= salad). For dessert, smultron (= wild strawberries.... hmm...) with grädde (= cream).

For those of you who were never really in touch with the Swedish language, I must tell you that Swedes have the particular oddity of having 3 more letters in their alphabet (å ä ö) and, seemingly, making near on no use of the letter Q. Instead of using accentuation, they decided to create 3 new letters and to add them after Z - Å Ä Ö. So there goes the expression "from A to Z!"... Somehow, "from A to Ö!" just seems less pronounceable... :-S

Then I should also tell you that Swedes have what they call "soft letters" and that I truly believe it actually means "totally random way of confusing foreigners when they think they finally know a word or two in Swedish"... :-) One example of this is kyckling - in which the K isn't read as you'd read it in "kid" (or "kick"... ) but, instead, it's read as a "sh". Yes, life's hard on me!... ;-)

Leaving the "green things" detail aside - which in itself, and in my somewhat often distorted mind, can lead to many "laughables" - we'll now move on to smultron, which, if I should be honest, I have no idea what it is. I know it's supposedly a smaller sort of strawberry and I think I've laid my eyes on it, but they don't exist here, so it kind of adds them to my mental "odd things list", along with lingon berries, for example.

The very particular thing with lingon berries is that they're made into jam that is, in turn, added to several Swedish dishes. For a Portuguese person (like me), the first time someone puts jam on their plate, not with toast or bread, but along with boiled potatoes, meatballs and brown sauce, is... well... a very unforgettable moment. I could tell you that this happened exactly on my first trip to Sweden and that I was seriously confused with the whole business. A rule of thumb seems to be just staring discreetly at your neighbouring dinning companions to see how they respond to the oddity placed before them, and as everyone seemed to be just fine with the fact they now had some sort of red jam on their plate, I assumed I should act natural and don't go all hysterical pointing at it, while asking "What's THIS doing on my plate?!". Or even taking the all-so-missed Mr. Sandberg's approach (while everyone is "yumming" their food and congratulating the cook): "I'm so sorry, but what's THIS?!". (Aww... Sweden will never be the same again without him...) *deep sad sigh*

All these years later, I just don't even react anymore to the "jam effect"... I guess it's not even there anymore... and I'm part of the group of those that are looked at sideways when they're spotted eating their meatballs and boiled potatoes (though people here seem to prefer them with French fries, which also might come as a terrible shock to all the Swedes out there...) with lingonsylt (= lingonjam) in IKEA.

But let's move on to the grädde now... If it's dessert, it'll invariably be accompanied by either cream (grädde) or vanilla sauce. That's another of those things I seem to have vaccinated my "mocking brain" against, so I don't go all "grins" (anymore!), while pointing to a typically Portuguese dessert and asking "Shall we put some cream or vanilla sauce on it?". :-) Just yesterday, for example, we got strawberries for dessert, and... - Swedes, this is where you gently close your eyes for a little while -... I didn't have grädde to them, but chantilly instead! Ha! :-) No, not the city (whichever one you're thinking of - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chantilly), but the sweet and much nicer whipped cream than grädde. :-P

* - * - * - *

Yesterday's afternoon's activities comprised some vocabulary exercises with Mr. B.. Basically, he picked two of my vocabulary cards piles and we did some spelling, translation, gender, etc., exercises. I've reached the brilliant conclusion that I know 99.9% of the words in them, guessed about 95% of the genders right, got pretty much all the spelling right and... will definitely make sure I eliminate the words familj (= family) and ingenjör (= engineer), for I have ruled them as unpronounceable! I guess it doesn't help that I have one - family, I mean - that is engineer-filled. :-(

* - * - * - *

Portugal, as you might now, is a country in which the majority of religious people is Catholic. Though I was baptized as a Catholic and somehow brought up surrounded by mild Catholic celebrations, I confess that I am not, nor was ever, a religious sort of person. Still, with the 13th of May (the day of Our Lady of Fátima) and its celebrations, along with the fact that the Pope has been also visiting Portugal, Catholicism seems to be in the air and, so, my 5 y.o. has been all over me and her father with questions of various sorts, all about religion.

Yesterday's evening, we had a religious parade passing just outside our door. People spent most of their day decorating the street's pavement with flower carpets - and eventually driving anybody wanting to move about by car insane. Little Miss B. wanted to go out and take part of the parade, holding a candle as anyone else. Since one of the things we always agreed upon on the way of bringing up our child, was that we'd leave her all the margin to learn and get involved in whatever she'd want to try and that wouldn't be harmful - we were out and about with her, following her and closely monitoring the movements of that often wild candle in her hand.

I'm not quite sure what she got out of the experience - we haven't yet had the opportunity to discuss it... - but she seemed quite happy when she got home. If nothing else, we got to see some of the flower carpeted streets - they are always quite artistic, though my current health condition doesn't really allow me great walks and we didn't see a great deal of them. I'll leave you with some of the pictures... and do have a great Sunday!

361 days 6 hours and 45 minutes to go!...

Of coffee and preserves... Carla is in in a language pickle!... :-S

Yesterday was one of those days of which I seem to have a lot lately... almost, plain useless!...

After an encounter with someone who has the natural tendency of leaving me distraught, I went to catch a bit of air and bury my sorrows in a HappyMeal. :-S I don't know if any of you, eventually reading this, has ever gone through a series of major disappointments with someone who's very close and dear to you... I do hope not. One is always left not really knowing how to handle it all - shall we cut the connection?, shall we try to mend it over and over again?. After several years of the same thing and several seemingly useless attempts at healing it all, knowing that cutting away from the person in question is a nearly impossible task, I just try to avoid contact as much as I can. Still, at every encounter, there's a painful mark that is left. Years later, there are a billion pieces building up a sad puzzle in my mind and, on a bad day, I can't help but feeling so alone in the world.

For over a week now that I've been having what it seems like constant joint pain. I've started a special medication that is supposed to help me sleep better and be pain free. Well, as for sleeping better, it kind of works, as long as I don't move in bed, which is a hopeless feat for a person like me. :-S Poor Mr. B. has been sleeping on the other edge of the bed, I've noticed. At least, I haven't woken up in the middle of the night to find a knee dug into my back, which is kind of a novelty I sincerely appreciate. The day time medication that is supposed to help me with the pain, well... it's kind of working, for the moment, but, sadly, it's effects do not last for 24 hours. :-(

I've been on a quite crazy health roller coaster for the past years. So far, there hasn't been anything that serious, but, by now, I'm a bit drained of always being treating something or complaining about something. It's time I should get a break, or?...

* - * - * - *

There's just something so cozy about Friday nights...

There's the end of the working week, the throwing your feet up on the sofa in the evening (or, in my case, snuggling in bed...) watching a movie ("You've Got Mail" will always be that special feel good movie around the house...) and the sensation that you can let go and relax because there's just nothing you must run to in the morning, right? Wrong! :-)

For the past 5 years and 1 month, my Saturday mornings have been the same senseless thing... Wake up with the alarm clock (which happens to actually be the mobile phone), sneer at it while you turn it off ("Ha! It's Saturday!), doze off for a few minutes and then... then both eyes open wide, you jump out of bed and, very White Rabbit alike, I and/or Mr. B. go around stating the very obvious - "It's late! It's late!". And so, almost invariably, we're late for our daughter's swimming class.

But now that the swimming class is done and over with for yet another Saturday morning, and that I'm now back home, sitting in my office, her activities take another shape... She's into fortress building!... There's a very long story behind this setting, but, to sum it all up, I've been told that penguins are perfect guards to keep the princess safe in her castle, just in case some wild animal wants to snatch her away... Hmmm...

* - * - * - *

I must tell you something about my husband... He seems to think that nearly all problems can be solved with the adequate gadget!...

Just yesterday's evening, he was listening to me complain about his carelessness when handling his cookbook (remember those glued pages?... and let me not even start on those "all-so-Swedish" coffee ring marks on pretty much any sort of book he owned before getting here... hm!...), so he comes up with a "I should get you an iPhone!".

Well, that wasn't a first, really... - for the past 3 wedding anniversaries I have got different sorts of computers, in different colours and sizes and, supposedly, with specific purposes (but that's a particularly long story I should probably leave for some other time...) - but this time I was actually wondering what was behind his "brilliant" conclusion. "Well, then you could just type in a recipe and it actually would search for one for you and add the ingredients to a shopping list and... ..." (I'm not fully sure that's what he said, but I strongly suspect it was...). "For that I'd have to be cooking, right?", I replied. "Yeah" - he shrugged his shoulders. So, I guess that pretty much settled it...

So... now that it's Saturday afternoon and officially weekend and that the sun is shinning though it kind of feels pretty cold still (in my humble opinion), hubby walks in and happily asks - "Vill du ha kaffe nu?".

And then it hit me a major *light bulb moment*... I've got to tell you all about the puzzling Swedish/English/Portuguese words... Hmmmm!...

Well, nu in Swedish means now, but nú in Portuguese means naked! For some reason or other I have a particularly amusing bable fish that tends to take an extensive amount of time laughing at these funny word combos, rather than assimilating the words for what they mean as they come and moving on. So, there I'm left with a grin, imagining us, coffee cup in hand... naked! :-), while he wanders off to the kitchen.

Moments later he screams back - "Fika nu!". Well, as for fika, I'd dare translate it into "tea time". The thing with the word fika, though, is that it's Portuguese homophone is fica and it's the imperative form of the verb to stay. So... stay naked! :-) Isn't my home life particularly amusing?... :-)

On one of my battles with my vocabulary page, I've come across the word inlagd. I guess we could translate it into laid into something. Going through my texts, I got the point that it's an adjective often used as pickled, as in pickled cucumber or red beet - inlagd gurka och inlagd rödbeta.

But then again, apparently, you can also be inlagd in a hospital - what I'm quite sure that, in my case, would definitely leave me in a pickle!...

Back to my vocabulary page!

Have a great Saturday - hopefully as sunny as mine and pickle-free! :-)

362 days and 8 hours to go!...

What a cold and grey day we're having!... :-(

For over a week now that I have been having pain in practically every joint. As I had promised, yesterday I went to get my wrist checked and to present all of my various complaints to my family doctor. For the first time ever, I found him extremely attentive at the description of my symptoms and also quite inquisitive about them. I really can't deal with the suspense doctors have the tendency of creating in these situations... “We'll first start you on these pills and then you're going to take this... and this... and this... and this examination... just to check the possible causes of all this...”. I always feel like I'm being treated like a child, as if I can't handle whatever information he's withholding from me and so I press on, almost eager to quote him the Code of the Order of Doctors and all my prescribed rights as a patient. So, he then asks me, quite seriously “Do you have anyone suffering from Lupus in your family?”. I double blink, trying to hide an inner laugh and almost throw at him the legendary Dr. House's quote - “It's never Lupus!”. But the fact is that I'm now brooding on Lupus and the scary things I read about it, while trying to write this post in a light tone and with a still hurting wrist. :-(

On the plus side of that doctor's appointment, though, is the fact that there I seem to weigh 2 Kgs less. :-) I even offered to buy his scales from him, but he took a chance at weighing himself and found them very flattering too - so he decided to keep them. Hm!

Another thing that was particularly interesting with the appointment yesterday is that the doctor decided to challenge my daughter to build a pretty cryptic puzzle. Ten minutes later, upon her vain attempts at fitting all the weirdly shaped wooden pieces into the puzzle's frame, he revealed the solution to be on the bottom side of that frame – cheater! - and he proceeded to put all the right pieces in their right places. Then he scrambled it all again and, with a smirk, told my daughter - “See, I did it! Now you try, but you can't cheat!”. I'm proud to say that it took her about 5 minutes to make all the pieces fit, much to the shock of everyone present. She seemed to have memorized the location of every single piece in the few seconds he had showned her how they would fit and that was remarkable. As a prize, she got offered a DVD with cartoons – though off season (yay for Santa and his raindeers!), she enjoyed it as much as she would have enjoyed it any other time of year. :-)

But enough about this medical soap opera of mine...

Yesterday I was finally able to finish watching “Kommissarie Winter”'s 2nd episode and figure it all out. Hmm... I think so, anyway. I confess that I was left with the sensation that not all loose ends came to be tied together (which raised a major curiosity about the book), but then again, I cannot say I understood every word of it, so I might have got lost in translation somewhere along the way. I did guess who was the author of the letter Winter was reading throughout both episodes, though. So, yay me and my detective skills! :-)

Besides that TV series' watching, I confess to not having furthered my Swedish studies... But still, I can tell you about another handy tip in language learning that I try to use as much as possible.

Well, in the end of every text or dialog in my Swedish textbook, there's a “true/right or false/wrong” exercise to test your understanding of what you just read/heard. One of the things I try to do to maximize the worth of that exercize is that, not only I rewrite the sentence given into my notebook, along with the mention of it being “rätt” or “fel”, I also try to correct the sentence when it's false/wrong. Along with that, you can make a negative sentence, or a positive one, or even convert it into a question. You can change genders, if that's important in the language you're learning, and substitute nouns for pronouns, for example. You can test your knowledge of verbs too, by putting the sentence in the past, present or future, or any other more elaborate verbal form. It's really all up to you how much you can get out of such a simple exercise, though also much depends on the level of knowledge of the language you're at at the moment.

* - * - *

Today's lunch was a bit of an adventure...

Everyone who knows me well enough, knows that I'm not a huge fan of cooking on a regular basis. But today I've woken up to realize that I had to cook something and that there was really nothing handy and quick to make, so... all of a sudden, something popped to mind - *light bulb moment* - why not an omelet?

Though we often cook omelets in this country, they're often chunky and stuffing and I had this vision of an old Julia Child's video in which she cooked a nice smooth looking omelet in less than 2 minutes. I wanted that omelet!!...

So, a bit like a Sim on a gaining skill points' mission, I set myself to work gathering my tools...

Well, the recipe book is called "Vår Kok Book", by Birgitta Andrews and Barbro Lindgren and this is an edition from 1999. This actually is the all-so-famous cook book Mr. B. packed in, on that also famous first trip to Portugal. :-) On top of it lays the pièce de résistance - Norstedts Lilla Engelska Ordbok - Engelsk-Svensk/Svensk-Engelsk - absolutely unrecognizable after its surely tribulated life, but still quite handy in moments of need. :-)

And this was the challenge I soon enough encountered... Hmm!... :-S

Well, the recipe I wanted, for "Fransk Omelett", was now held hostage by two glued pages that wouldn't unglue and so I proceeded, with the utmost care, to sneak-a-peak in between pages, to figure out the simple recipe.

It was quite worth it though. I "swedified" it a bit by adding lingonsylt (lingon jam) and inlagda rödbetor (pickled red beets) and that's how it looked... :-)

... and now... time for coffee! :-)

363 days and 8 hours to go!...

The good news for today is that yesterday I was a good behaving girl... Well, partly, anyway...

The not so good behaving part was that I didn't make it to my lesson, which was kind of important. Mainly, I confess to being sick and tired of this extra slice of studies I set myself up to do and that hasn't really been all that inspiring. Why?... Well, despite the fact that I did pick an area of my interest, what happens is that nothing really works in that place. Professors don't follow the rules for the course, invent creative papers that aren't that creative after all and just hang on our already heavy loaded shoulders even when not predicted by the evaluation methods, don't provide a decent bibliography let alone a plan for the course, don't seem to bother replying urgent e-mails and (my personal "un"-favourite of the moment...) book extra lessons randomly, when it's most convenient to them, that fall out of the schedule and... on the days of my planned and paid for vacation! So, along with the fact that the professor who's class I just missed yesterday has come up with the brilliant idea of booking extra classes, just to have the presentation of a few works, in the beginning of June (Hello?! NOT here!!), I just received an e-mail warning me that on the 28th of May another professor will be teaching an extra class - while I, hopefully, will be laying on my back on the grass, with a cozy pillow and a stack of books (Oh Swedish weather, do not disappoint me!).

... take a deep breath; move on ...

So, *inhale* the reason for me not to be attending that class was that I took my daughter to the doctor and there just wasn't any other time available. *exhale* And it was a well spent period of 30 to 40 minutes, as a huge load of worries lifted from my shoulders. The year long repetitive episodes of sickness seem to be behind our backs for good now and she came out of the doctor's office with a clean bill of health. On the other hand, I was informed that she was very likely to grow up to be a little over 1,78 m. I just wonder how much longer I have before I'll need to carry a chair around to stand on so I can have a minimally impressive eye-to-eye talk with her... :-S

But, well, I was also quite pro-active in this new goal of mine and have dedicated a few hours to the study of Svenska. :-)

The thing I started with was a non-dealt with list of vocabulary I had left from the study of the first dialog of Chapter 2 of the book. What I usually do, in terms of dealing with new vocabulary, is that I read through the texts and collect the new vocabulary. Later, I pass it into word cards, with the Swedish word on one side and the translation of it on its back. I also add to the cards important information about the word - mainly its gender and some grammatical rules about it - so I can feel I'm learning a bit more than just a word. I picked this interesting and useful tip from a quite handy book called "Secrets of Learning a Foreign Language", by Graham Fuller. Especially if you're in the quest of learning a new language all by yourself, trust me, you can use a few tips so you can make the most of the time you spend studying. I don't mean that you should start buying any book on the topic; I'm just suggesting that you should devise a plan that you should follow before you start and that it can be useful to learn from the experience of others. You'll find, spread through the internet, several articles on the topic that you can use as your own reference or why not taking a look on Youtube, as there are so many videos made on the topic too.

After I was done with the long list I wanted to turn into word cards, I decided to deal with both the first and second dialogs of that Chapter 2. If you had an opportunity to watch Luca's video, you'll know he advises language learners to translate each text/dialog in their textbook into their native language and then, on another time, to try to translate it back to the language you're learning. To exemplify a little better, it kind of works like this - day 1: translate text/dialog 1 to your native language; day 2: translate dialog 1 back to the language you're learning and translate dialog 2 to your native language; day 3: translate dialog 2 back to the language you're learning and translate dialog 3 to your native language... and so on...

Well, one of the challenges that you might face is that the book you chose to learn from is not so much filled with texts. It does really depend on the book you pick. Luca seems to advise, and I subscribe his choice, the "Teach Yourself" series of books. I have other textbooks around the house, but I thought that it'd be interesting to give "Teach Yourself Swedish" by Vera Croghan a try because its title did seem to be a whole more oriented to those who are learning languages on their own and its content (in comparison with others I have access to) seemed to prove it. Luca also advises you to give it a try to other textbooks once you're done with the first one, as there'll be always news things to learn and it'll be handy to revise what you have already learnt.

I confess that though I agree with Luca's methods, I've found it much easier to translate the texts/dialogs from Swedish to English. If you have the opportunity to read or listen to Mr. Fuller's book, you'll get to hear about the main language families. As you might know, Portuguese is a Latin language, while both Swedish and English are Germanic languages. The fact that two languages come from the same background can help you better understand expressions, vocabulary in general and even grammar rules. So, it has become somewhat easier for me that way.

More on my yesterday's Swedish activities...

I finally managed to watch the remaining 7 minutes of the 57 minutes long 1st episode of "Kommissarie Winter", which happened to be of the "to be continued..." kind, which means that you're left hanging and conjecturing about how it'll all turn out. On an attempt to figure that one out, I started watching the 2nd episode, but about 20 minutes into it, my bable fish was exhausted and screaming for a good night's rest. Which means... I'm still hanging and conjecturing... Hmmm... :-S

I must add that the episodes I'm watching are from 2010, as apparently there are some, by a different cast, that date back to 2001. And talking about the cast... A rather scaringly familiar face plays one of the cops in the series - Peter Andersson.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0027800/

If you have seen "Män som hatar kvinnor", you won't forget his face. :-S So, if you happen to have the misfortune of reading this, Mr. Andersson, I just have to say that you're incredibly scary. :-S So... either you're a really good actor, with a thing for controversial characters, or... hmm...

Well, time to get on with life!...

364 days and 12 1/2 hours to go!...

One thing that many persons probably don't know about me is that I don't like doctors... Hmm... maybe that is putting it somewhat too lightly. To explain it better, every time I get sick I find 1001 reasons why I shouldn't go to the doctor, rather than actually facing the most obvious one which would lead me straight to the doctor's office and that, pure and simple, is the fact that I'm sick. So that basically means that I can go on and on and on feeling bad from something until the point that it eventually gets cured or... that I lose my patience all together, give up and book an appointment at the doctor's.

I'll refrain from going on about public health care in Portugal, just for the sake of your own mental sanity, really, and all the reasons why if you'd actually want to be treated from whatever ailment you have you should seek private clinics. I'm also going to refrain from wandering into the intricate realms of how to make the public health services (from where you can get rather inexpensively access to the "auxiliary means of diagnosis", a.k.a. medical exams) work alongside with the private ones (where you can actually get a proper appointment that doesn't have a maximum time frame of 7 minutes...). I'm only going to tell you, with a somewhat sense of pride you get from one of those moments where you manage to fight your demons and conquer your fears, that yesterday I went to the doctor!

... and this absolutely "thrilling" introduction, just to inform you that, on the other hand, I didn't touch my Swedish textbook, nor did I touch anything Swedish related, except maybe for my husband and some items of IKEA furniture and bedding. :-S

Knowledgeable of my resourcefulness when it comes to avoiding doctors, my husband served both as a chaperon and as a warden to escort me to the all-so-dreaded appointment, which afterwards resulted in him having to compensate those lost hours. As a consequence, he left work at 8 p.m., which then resulted in a not so exquisite dinner at Burger King (maybe just to prove once again that they really should have some sort of hearing aid because the orders never come out quite as you have put them and, in the end, they happily try to convince you that it's mostly your fault... "Just because you ordered a Coke Light and I registered a Coke Light, I don't really see where the problem is if I decide to just pour you a regular Coke!").

On the other hand, we also made a pit stop by the Nespresso store, where Mr. B. spent an insane amount of money on an insane amount of coffee - it kind of reminded me of Sandra Bullock's last line in "Two Weeks Notice": "No, actually, this is for two" - just having the totally opposite meaning. Furthermore, upon being informed that we'd be going away soon for 2 weeks and that we might not need to take that amount of coffee at once, in a very Gollum-ish ("My preciousssssssssssss!") way he happily tells me that, at least, we'll have plenty of coffee when we get back! (These are the moments when I can rest assured that he's got his priorities right!) An espresso-obsessed Swede! Who would have thought of it!... :-)

Well, now I must be off minding the workload that expects me, while sipping on some nice and warm Finezzo Lungho and pondering how I'm supposed to make the rest of the day work. Oh! And eventually I'll complain immensely from my week long injury to my wrist - apparently, the anti-inflammatory cream and the tight bandage is not doing the trick :-( - while giving it a serious thought to pay another visit to the doctor's office...

365 days and 11 hours to go!

Yesterday was a peculiar day...

Somehow, throughout the day, I was able to build a blinding headache, so by the time I was supposed to go and pick up my daughter from preschool, to then drive her to ballet school, I wasn't really feeling like it at all. No possibility to rely on Stefan either, as he was too far away to make it on time.

Always the same dilemma when these things happen and a billion other things cross my mind... "I have to take her there, she cannot miss class, the exam is approaching and, on top of it all, you decided to make a 'little' 2 weeks long trip to Sweden just in the middle of her preparation to the exam!" :-S My life can actually really be that full of guilt (some would say I'm a bit of an expert at feeling guilty over one too many things...)!

So, mastering the very little strength I could come up with, I put on a Spring coat (though I always wondered what Spring had to do with coats, yesterday's rain made me the favour of clarifying that one!), grabbed the keys and the bag, and headed out the door. It wasn't so easy, but I did it! Yay me! Waiting for us by the ballet school was our weekly "expected" surprise: mom. Though I do love my mother, more that I manage to show, I have to say that her presence often manages to bring out the worse in me. Upon being asked how I was feeling - which, at the moment, wasn't so good - she so typically shrugs it off in an instant to proceed to tell me how much worse her health condition is at the moment, was for the past 100 years and will surely be both in the near and distant future. Since she works very much like that with everything, no matter the topic she quizzes me about, my particular approach to her questions is always plain - an "all is fine" kind of answer. But, sometimes, the wicked little person inside of me just decides to play a "trick" on her and just blurts out how horridly problematic my life is at the moment and then the entire game is composed on how long it will take her to turn the conversation to her own life. :-) Quite amusing at times, but often it's just rather sad.

After getting home, and being particularly annoyed at not finding a good parking space, because the place I had vacated some half an hour before and the empty space beside it were both now occupied by a single VW Polo (hmm... either they thought they had an extremely large car or they were just under the conviction that its occupants were indeed extremely fat...), I decided to sit in the car, packing up my anger and disappointment. Soon enough my parking place was vacant, so I parked the car and headed upstairs...

I did say yesterday that my Swedish study time wasn't going to be so much... Still, I picked up Chapter nr. 2 of my text book and worked through its first dialog and its corresponding true/false set of questions. Chapter nr. 2 is called Tack för matten! and the author of the book gladly states that with this unit I'll be able to master things like discussing where I live, count from 0 to 12 and also happily use phrases appropriated for meal times and other things of the kind. Somehow, it hardly sounds thrilling to an anxious kind of person like me, but that, of course, is something I'm up to turning around as well... :-)

Well, I haven't yet told my approach to dealing with the textbook's dialogs... But before that I must explain that 8 years later (or more...) Swedish isn't completely new to me. Still, as I have never learnt it on a consistent basis, with appropriate grammar and vocabulary use, in a particularly controlled context as it's provided by a language's textbook, I often trip on things that I know, things that I am still to learn and, also, on things that I thought I knew only to realize I kind of didn't. On the other hand, the thought of actually deciding to study it on a constant basis actually crossed my mind a few times and so I have done, on and off, a bit of research to get to know the best methods by those who actually stick to learning a language on a constant basis. And that's how I came across Luca... :-) Luca is an Italian young man who much thrilled me when I got to learn that, not only he speaks several languages, he speaks Portugal's Portuguese! :-) So, for those of you who are in the middle of learning or considering starting to learn a new language, here you can find Luca's advice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6SH2U_rO6c&feature=related If you get to read about this, Luca, thanks and keep up the good work! Your advices have been really helpful! :-)

Another thing I'd like to tell you is about my culinary experience this past Sunday... :-) Oh yes, someone managed to get me into the kitchen! :-)

The fact is that I've started an exchange of recipes with a Swedish friend - Maria - and, though I've been thinking about putting it into practice for the last 3 months (I guess the bewildered look on Stefan's face when I presented him the recipe she had sent didn't help...), finally I got to cook and eat the slightly dreaded Vitkålssoppa med Frikadeller. And, you know what?, either I'm this excellent cook coming out of her shell or - 1000% (!) more likely - it just tastes good. :-)

One thing that is of utmost importance in our kitchen is Stefan's cookbook, which shockingly enough he packed and brought to Portugal when he first came for a visit. I suspect that he thought I'd be starving him or something. :-S But ever since, I've grown a particular affection toward that cookbook (spelled exactly like that, Mr. B.!!), that has provided so many new (for me) and tasty recipes.

Yesterday's dinner was raggmunk med lingonsylt och bacon. Tasty! And the best part? I didn't have to cook it! ;-)

But the night revealed even more surprises...

After putting me to bed in this particularly interesting attire... (Yay! for 2004's Euro and for having double reasons to sit in front of the TV, with a particularly large belly... The kind of fun that isn't going to be repeated this summer, but that, on the up side, has the advantage of leading to less pillow fighting...)

... Mr. B. delved into the scary realms of online SVT, where he found Kommissarie Winter's series. So, Sanna, unknowingly, Stefan had the same thought, just not so much comedy in it... :-S

The series is based on the books of Åke Edwardson, that I confess had not heard of and much less read anything by. Still, curiosity is one of my traits and so here are the links to Wikipedia's page on this author and also his own page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Åke_Edwardson

http://www.akeedwardson.se/

(So, Mr. B., it's supposed to take place in Göteborg and not in Stockholm, which kind of explains the quick trip the the "so called" beach.)

He wrote (supposedly) 16 crime novels featuring the same main character - kommissarie Winter - the same character that gave name to the TV series, composed of (supposedly) 6 episodes...

http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kommissarie_Winter

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0295787/episodes

... and I should add that none are translated to Portuguese, though some of them are translated to English, German and French.

Well, now I must go and grab some lunch, because a very long afternoon awaits. I'm considering conjuring another headache (kidding!) so I won't have to go to that all-so-dreaded doctor's appointment that was so annoyingly re-booked. Did I ever mention my doctor-phobia? I'm sure there's a name for it too... And then I'm more than due to finish a stupid work, in case I might actually have to present it tomorrow. Long long long story, that I'll leave for some other time!...