Misha in Sweden: From Brown Cheese to MacBooks

Hej hej!

That's something I have noticed; In Sweden just one hej is simply not enough. What if the person thinks your hej wasn't sincere enough? Two is safe.

So I'm going to try updating my blog every week or so. I doubt I will miss more than a couple weeks throughout the year - my mom couldn't tolerate that :) I just want to take a quick moment to thank my parents with my whole heart for letting me come to Sweden, it really is the chance of a life time and I am so lucky. We chat every so often and they are always there when I need them. Thank you times a million to Bob and Tomoko!

It's been a little over two weeks in Europe and it feels like at least a month. It has been so much fun and quite a bit of learning. It is a little detrimental for me to be a native English speaker since it is so easy for me to get along on just that instead of forcing me to speaking Swedish. However, I am surrounded by kind, supportive people who enjoy teaching me a new word a few times a day. I've gotten in the habit of writing my new vocabulary down and laughing with my host brother later that evening when he tries to help me learn the pronunciation.

My best teacher has been my host mom, who has such patience and a knack for explaining the grammar to me. My classmates say that I am learning very quickly and they love to hear me speak. In class today, I actually gave a mini presentation in "Swinglish" and I got a round of applause, which helped my ego. My host brother is another story - he laughs at my pronunciation errors and says that I have a Japanese accent when I speak Swedish. Which I said is ridiculous, since he has never heard a Japanese person speak Swedish. All the same, I can report that I am making progress!

School has been a ton of fun and I appreciate how open and friendly my class is. A few people are a bit shy about speaking English with me, but I would say that everyone is friendly if not outgoing. I feel like I spend the majority of my time everyday with a new group of people and it's as natural as anything. Whoever I sit next to in class is usually kind enough to translate a few things for me. In the beginning of the week, more than a couple students raised their hands in the middle of class to tell the teacher that I was their exchange student and I don't understand very much Swedish yet. The teachers were well informed, but it's lovely to know my class is watching out for me :)

Last Friday my class took a trip to the island of Brännö. It's something of a school tradition and it makes me laugh how casual it is. My teacher gave us a time to meet at the school, where we would all hop on a tram and then a ferry to the island. Otherwise people were fine meeting us there and then ultimately finding their own way home after the end of the trip. Compared to Swedish gymnasium, high school in the states feels like kindergarten when we had to hold hands to cross the street. Many of my classmates had been to the island lots of times before, so they laughed at my awe in how beautiful it was! We had an unusually warm day and a lazy afternoon of fika and get-to-know-you games.

The next Saturday morning, we ate breakfast as a family and I got to try Norwegian porridge and brunost (It literally means brown cheese). My host family is a blend of Swedish and Norwegian, but the Norwegians in the house sometimes do their own thing. Like eating suspicious brown cheese that is the most sickening mix of sweet, nutty, and rotten and also slimy warm porridge with a clump of butter placed exactly in the center of the bowl, dusted in cinnamon and drowned in syrup. I tried a little of everything and made my family cringe as I mixed everything in the bowl together to make even bitefuls of each component of the dish. It makes perfect sense in my mind, but you don't. mix. the. porridge. Europeans! Whatcha gonna do; we have thought differently since the colonization.

The buz around school this week has been the brand new MacBook Pros that all the first years get at my gymnasium. After signing a slip, we were all handed a beautiful, shiny new laptop that people use in their classes and during breaks. There are no restrictions on the use of the computer and we can do what we want with it until we give it back at the end of the year. I've been struggling with the Swedish keyboard, but it has been fun to guess and check what each little icon will do when I push it. However, I got my host brother to change everything to English for me later.

Tonight my host family used the taco seasoning that I brought as a gift in our family meal. It was apparently MUCH spicier than their usual taco seasoning, but I think they appreciated the more-authentic Mexican food. I also made some Mexican wedding cookies for dessert which I'm hoping will turn out well. Conclusion: I miss Mexican food and I miss El Parasol and Chipotle and Cafe Rio and spice and Los Alamos and someone please give me some real chili cheese fries right now I'm about to cry. k thanks.