Last Week in Sweden

I am feeling sad as I write this blog. Barb and I have left Sweden. We left behind more than an experience. We have left our close friends, who became like family. We have left a countryside and a peacefulness that we had grown to love. We have left our school family, who we lived and learned with every day. While we feel like we have left so much behind, we take with us more than 900 story-telling pictures, of course, our memories, which we always cherish. Coming back to North America hit us with a bit of reverse culture shock. After living in a small, remote island village we got used to the absence of certain things that are commonplace in North America. For example, car traffic (esp. SUV’s, which really don’t exist in Sweden), English signs, and slow-paced living. Barb mentioned another thing the other day that we did not experience in Sweden - gossip. In fact, we didn’t really hear as much as a single negative comment while we were in Sweden! I think that is quite spectacular. Why didn't we hear any gossip? Well, I don’t know exactly, but I think there is a certain amount of energy that is required to speak in a second language, and when communicating takes extra effort, you leave out the useless talk and only say what is important.

Right now I am sitting alone in an Italian restaurant in Canada and I find myself listening in on three conversations that are happening at three other tables in the restaurant. Two women behind me must be lawyers or daytime talk show addicts, because they are jumping from one scandalous story to the next, while the group of businessmen in the far corner are impressing each other with their loud confident statements about seemingly unimportant things, and the table next to me is a soft spoken father-daughter tandem who are probably out for their once a month lunch, but the daughter is sitting patiently while her dad is on the cell phone, with his mind still at the office. And here I am sitting in a corner booth listening to each of their conversations...just because I can. I missed this. In Sweden, the only English conversations were the ones we were apart of. We never understood what others were saying, so their conversations with each other were like background noise.
I’ll take a break from analyzing to tell you about our last week in Sweden. I worked really hard all week to finish my chairs and to pack them into a box, disassembled.

I took a break from working on my chairs to participate in a model drawing class. Mom Best was visiting all week, so I invited her to join our class. We sat on opposite sides of the room (for no particular reason) and were ready to try our hands at drawing a nude model. Imagine how we both felt when the model’s clothes fell off and we’re sitting there with a blank sheet of paper in front of us. Has the word “awkward” ever been more appropriate? No, but really, it wasn’t that bad. In fact, I was surprised by my own maturity. I didn't even blush or giggle.
Each of our classes had very nice going-away parties for us. Barb’s class took her and Mom out for evening Fika and they gave her two children's books and her teacher, Kennet, gave her a very special cup and saucer that he made for the baby. My class gathered and we had cake together and they presented me with a beautiful sheepskin from the island of Gotland. It’s beautiful - I really love it. The headmaster of the school also came and she gave us a cookbook that was made by the students. On top of all of this several of our friends very graciously gave us many other gifts that we will always have with us to remember them by. We felt very loved in our last week.
Friday afternoon we went to the castle in Kalmar, fulfilling one of Barb’s early goals. The castle was open all night and was host to a Christmas market full of local art, craft and food vendors from around Sweden. We enjoyed the experience and had fun sampling the chocolates, cheeses, meats and breads from all of the vendors. The fours of us (me, Barb, Mom Best and our dear friend, Luca) missed the bus we wanted to get back to the island, so we sat in a McDonald’s for two hours. (Did you know their Happy Meals are served with meatballs?!) We had a good time anyways.
Saturday morning soon came and it was time to go home. Between the three of us we had 4 large suitcases, a wood box, built specially to transport my chairs, and our really big baby stroller with bassinet. In addition to this, we had about 5 carry-on bags. How on earth would we get all of this stuff home? This was a question we continued to ask ourselves until we actually made it home. Luca came with us to the train station to help us along. Then, as the train readied to leave we had the sad experience of saying goodbye to Luca. Luca is a very special friend. She became part of our family and a fixture on our movie nights. We will miss her very much.
After a 9 hour flight we were greeted with a snowstorm in Seattle. Barb’s brother John rented a van to pick us up because we had so much luggage! We stopped on the way home to have dinner with some family in Seattle. We all went to a Vietnamese restaurant that served only soup - it was the perfect meal for a cold night. Delicious.

We are now home physically, but we are both wrestling with the need to come home mentally. Our hearts are still in Sweden. We made a life there, even if it was for little more than three months. It was hard to say goodbye.

Pictures from the Copenhagen Airport...