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!