Week 4- Personal

Week 4 has arrived and along with it a lot more snow; the weather and temperatures I was expecting and looking forward to is upon us.

As time goes on I find myself becoming more confident with the Swedish language. I have had one very short conversation and have also managed to loosely translate and reply to a message left in the laundry room. Although I don’t know a lot of words and mostly need to use English it is nice to be able to say a little in the language of my host country. After using the language successfully it also raises confidence to try it again and I hope I can learn more and have longer conversations by the time I leave here.

I can also understand most of the words on the food packages now as well so I can cook things according to the instructions and also buy the foods that I want with greater ease. The food here is expensive, as I expected, I have found that I shop more often than at home but buy smaller amounts. This helps to reduce the amount of food wastage that I am guilty of at home and I have become a bit more inventive with my cooking skills in order to use all the food I have bought. I have also convinced myself to try a traditional Swedish pastry which I discovered is actually very nice and this has encouraged me to try more Swedish foods if/when I get the chance.

Eating the pastries has convinced me that I need to be a bit more ‘Swedish’ and get active. I am enjoying walking to school and daycare when I have the time and when the weather is a little warmer we plan to buy bikes and get out in the fresh air more often. I am looking forward to this because although we have bikes at home we live in an area where I would not feel safe using them and so they are rarely out of the garage; here there are better cycle paths and because bikes are so common they are treated with more respect than at home.

So far Sweden is living up to my expectations of being a family-friendly country, where children are valued and listened to. Many of the adults you speak to think that perhaps the child is too much in charge in Sweden at the moment but I am enjoying the change from home. During next weeks school vacation there are a lot of free activities planned for children to take part in and the afterschool opens all day every day so parents do not need to use their holidays from work for childcare reasons. I think this is really good as when I worked I often heard parents worrying over who would mind their children because they had no leave left. Also they would ask what they were going to do with all the kids at home for the week that would be cheap and prevent boredom, next week I will find out if Sweden has the answer to these questions.