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. :-)