Tagged: americanabroad

06
Apr
2018

GO BLUE!*

It’s been absolute AGES since I went to a live sporting event. In fact, I think the last one was a Red Wings game during a Christmas visit to the US probably close to 10 years ago. We’ve been to one Malmö Redhawks game here, and that was years ago, too. Even when I lived in the US, I only occasionally went to games in Chicago. A baseball game here and there, the Blackhawks, the Bulls, at least once to see the Bears when they were still at Soldier Field. The last time I seriously watched any football on TV...

31
Mar
2018

GRADUATING FROM HIGH SCHOOL, SWEDISH-STYLE

High school graduation in Sweden is probably a bigger deal than getting married for most Swedes. Many Swedes, in fact, don’t bother to get married. They live together (sambo), have kids, and sometimes get around to getting married, and sometimes not. No one seems to care that much about it either way. But studenten (which is what high school graduation is called in Swedish), THAT’s a HUGE deal. Swedes typically go to school with the same set of friends for nearly their entire undergraduate time. In our little village school, as in most, kids stay together for grades 1-6, changing...

15
Mar
2018

SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE

Not writing is habit-forming. Not reading probably is too, but I’ve never done that. Of all the things I used to do, but no longer do (with the caveat that I still could do them again someday…), writing is the one that I tend to miss the most when I don’t do it for any length of time. It’s been, give or take a couple of days, a month since my pinched nerve started acting up again, and I am still struggling with it, though this week has a seen a turn for the better. I had at least 3...

08
Nov
2017

SWINGING THROUGH STOCKHOLM

Oops! Forgot I had a blog. Heh. We had a really nice trip to Stockholm, though we missed Martin. Karin, unfortunately, was sick with a really bad cold the entire time: fever on the way up, coughing, sore throat, stuffed head, the works. We drugged her up and made her go with us everywhere though 😀 The weather couldn’t have been better. Friday was bright and glorious sunshine with blue skies and chill temperatures. Saturday it was cloudier and felt colder though it actually wasn’t. It only drizzled on us once, but we didn’t care because we were having fun....

01
Aug
2017

TRIPPING

On summer nights, with the windows open, you can hear the frogs in the pond across the street from my mother’s house chuckling. They laugh all night long. At least it sounds that way from the distance of a driveway and a gravel road. “Heh, heh heh,” they chortle. “Heh, heh heh.” ALL NIGHT LONG. The first time I heard them, I couldn’t figure out what it was or where the noise was coming from. Karin and I were sharing the big bed in the front bedroom and I rolled over and poked her. “Are you giggling under your breath?”...

20
Jan
2017

D-DAY

Song running through my head today, all day: It’s the End of the World as We Know it (and I Feel Fine) HAHAHAHA *cries*

15
Jan
2017

VICENNIAL

Last week, I passed a major anniversary. It wasn’t my birthday. It wasn’t even my wedding anniversary. It was the anniversary of the day I moved to Sweden…TWENTY YEARS AGO. I was planning to write a post that day (Wednesday) but work was crazy and I clean forgot when I came home, even though I wasn’t doing anything special that evening. So it went by unmarked. Twenty years ago. When I passed my 10-year anniversary of living in Sweden, I wrote a post about it, because of course I did. I wrote a similar post when I reached my 7-year...

12
Nov
2016

SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM

I have been mostly without words in public this week. I have spoken with my children, who were devastated by the results of the US election but I had little comfort to give them. At work, I was confronted all week long with non-Americans who were genuinely agape at the circus that has reigned for nearly 2 years and the end of it in particular. I felt myself put on the defensive, and given repeated condolences on the stupidity and wrongheadedness of my fellow countrymen. It is even harder to comprehend when you consider that if all votes were treated...

30
Oct
2016

GOING TO PERU? ALPACA YOUR BAGS!

Karin went to Dallas by herself (well, with her soccer team, but none of us) in 2013, for a week and she has been gone for a week up to Gothenburg for the Gothia soccer cup several years in a row. Martin went to Berlin for almost a week last year. My children have spent plenty of nights away from home over the years and I’ve spent plenty of nights away from them as well, during work trips and for other things. But tomorrow morning, super early, he is leaving for nearly 2 months. If he gets his return ticket...

08
Aug
2016

FUN WITH FRIENDS

It turns out, when I am selecting photos from vacation, that I tend to take all the ones with people in them. Even though I appreciate photos of the places we’ve been and the things we’ve seen, the ones that get me, that contain the things I most want to remember, are the ones with the people we were with in them. You can find fantastic photos of the Statue of Liberty and New York and Boston anywhere online, but if you want to see what I love, then here you go. Three posts coming up full of smiling faces...

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