Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Midsommar and regular summer

Midsommar!
One of our bunches of flowers!
Dancing around the Maypole. Notice the dog, he was not happy with us doing this. He barked the whole time.Akvavit! Helan går! Famous Swedish drinking song, translated "the whole goes down!"
Dinner (served around 2pm).
One of the drinking songs. Lasted about 5 minutes and throughout the song you put the hat one, then the ears, then the teeth. It's so funny and hard to sing with those teeth in!
Cousin Caroline. Could she be any more beautiful and Swedish looking!? :) I love her to death! She's such a great person to be related to!

My husband, who just happens to be the most handsome man on the earth! Even when he's wearing a crown of wildflowers!
The boys posing with our May pole. Johan on the left is Caroline's boyfriend and Pontus on the right is Maria's (Fredrik's sister) fiance.

Midsommar is now my favorite holiday. Well, Christmas and Midsommar are a close tie. Midsommar is like Christmas, minus gifts (which as you get older isn't a big deal), and minus the cold weather. We had beautiful sunshine, great food, family, songs, flowers. It's the perfect holiday.

We picked a lot of flowers. A LOT of flowers. Everybody who came brought a huge pail of flowers with them. We made a "Midsommarstång", which is the maypole. We covered it with birch wood and leaves, we made crowns made of birch and wildflowers, we set 13 places, for the 13 people. It was great.

We ate sill, fresh potatoes with dill, meat balls, boiled eggs, caviar, I made enchiladas :), small sausages, shrimp, all sorts of bread. Doesn't sound appetizing, but it is! There was a game at dinner that made dinner so funny. Everybody had a secret "assignment" from Fredrik's mom. Mine was to say "back home in Kansas..." as often as possible. Fredrik was singing all the time, Maria was asking everybody to pass everything all the time, Hanna was insisting we sing songs every 2 minutes, Pontus was talking about how great Abba Sill is, the whole time, Nina was taking things from Johan's plate the whole time, Caroline asked everybody if they wanted more food all the time. It was hilarious!

We drank "Akvavit" which is Swedish Snaps. We sang songs. We laughed. We talked. It was one of my favorites days here.

After we ate, we actually danced and sang around the Maypole. That...was...hilarious. To watch grown men dance and hold hands and sing silly songs with silly hand motions. I laughed the whole time.

After about 10 minutes of singing, laughing and dancing we had dessert. Yum. If you don't think Swedish food sounds good, Swedish desserts make up for it! We had "sockerkaka" made my Fredrik, a delicious red velvet cake with lime frosting and fresh strawberries, strawberries and cream, cookies, coffee, more Akvavit! We were stuffed!

The rest of the day we spend talking and singing more songs, drinking a lot of beer, wine, cider and snaps. What a great day.

Regular Summer!
The day after, luckily with no hangover, we spend the day outside. It was warm and very sunny. This is us taking a break with a small hike around Ljungskile, which is a smallish town about 15 miles from the cabin. It's beautiful with lots of boats and ocean.

Now that Midsommar is over, we go back to regular summer. We spend our time taking walks, going to new places. Just enjoying our time together. Soon we go to Germany, and that is a WHOLE NEW kind of adventure for us. We will both be foreigners! How exciting and a little bit scary.

Hope everybody has a great 4th of July! This is my 2nd 4th of July I've spent in Sweden. The first one wasn't so pleasant. A lot of people protesting against the U.S., but that was only about 2 and a half years after 9/11. So hopefully we can have our own quiet celebration, and I don't have to deal with *ahem* assholes. I'm going to make a fresh raspberry, blueberry and strawberry cake with cream cheese frosting! Yum!

The Swedish thing of the day is Abba Sill. This is very, very, very popular in Sweden. I think 13 of us went through like...20 jars in one day. The first is mustard sill, then onion sill, original sill. They eat this for Christmas, Easter, Midsommar, and other special occasions.

The Swedish word of the day is "härligt" which means "awesome" or "nice" and is pronounced "haerligt".

Sunday, June 20, 2010

cake #1

I think it's a little flower heavy. What do you think? I also think smaller in diameter. This made a ton of cake! Too much to be one on each table. This needs to be a lot whiter and I think the chocolate frosting would be better in the middle.
It was nice to decorate the cake while I watched Princess Victoria marry her prince! What a romantic and beautiful wedding this was! They are truly in love and watching them marry one another was like a real fairytale! And how gorgeous is she! Her little sister and brother are very attractive too! Typical Swedes. ;)
Of course, Happy Father's day to all the fathers. Especially my dad and step-dad. Two men that I could never truly thank for all they have done for me. They are really amazing guys and I am so glad they are both in my life.
The Swedish thing of the day is Sweden's (Sverige) carbon footprint. This is impressive. I am aware that Bangladesh and Columbia are not provided with the ammenities many of us want, but Sweden is, and their footprint is nearly half our size. Yikes. I think, when we live in town, we are going to try and walk to a lot of places I would have driven to before I lived in Sweden.

The Swedish word of the day is 'fader' 'far' and 'papa', which are all ways to say 'dad'.

Monday, June 14, 2010

10:30pm

Previously, I posted a picture taken at 10:30 at night. This now is 10:30 at night here (about a week ago), taken from the balcony from Fredrik and I's bedroom to our "backyard". June 26th is the longest day of the year and that is still more than 10 days away! Imagine how light it will be then! And the sun goes up around 3:30 now. It's amazing the amount of light. Fredrik told me we get something like 10 hours more light than we got on the shortest day of the year. It's incredible!

This weekend we took the Express Stena line boat to Denmark. We went to Frederikshavn, which is on the opposite side of Copenhagen. We drove to a place called Skagen, which is where two ocean's meet. It was incredible. Pictures to come!

Tomorrow is my last day with my family. Mixed emotions, bitter sweet. I sketched some pictures when I first came and I have framed those and will give them to the girls. One is a woman's sillouette for Caitlin and the other is Tara's violin for Tara. I think they really fit the personalities of the girls. Hopefully they like them as much as I do! :) And tomorrow I will make a really big Greek meal for them. Yum!
Speaking of food, I have been contenplating what to do with my blog once I have moved back home. The only people who read are people who are interested in my life here. But it's still fun to write. I think it might turn into a food blog. Although there are countless amounts of food blogs, it might be fun to document my cooking and recipes, since I love it so much. What do you think? Would anybody who reads this be interested in continuing to read that type of blog? And I would still do my Swedish thing and word of the day, because I intend to keep speaking Swedish and loving Sweden.
Anywho...

The Swedish thing of the day is Tara's whole school singing on their last day. This is when the 5th graders "graduate" and they all say good bye to each other. It's what every school does on every last day of school. It's really sweet and hearing 300 something Swedish children sing is so adorable. Apologies for the bad video/audio, but you get the picture. :)

The Swedish word of the day is "hej" which means "good bye" and is pronounced "hey doah" or sometime "hey da". Depends on where you are from, I guess. ;)

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

bröllop

Wedding! Crown Princes Victoria, of Sweden, will get married June 19th! Which is the 34th anniversary of her parents, King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia. It's very exciting. A lot of people remember when Princess Diana and Prince Charles got married. This is the same thing, to Swedes. Princess Victoria will become queen of Sweden and she is marrying a regular old guy! Daniel Wessling, a lawyer! I love Princess Victoria. I think she is beautiful, in a very modest way. She is a spitting image of her mother Queen Silvia. When she speaks, she sounds very smart, educated and classy, but is very open with her problems, such as dealing with anorexia and dyslexia.
Here they have all kinds of stuff to buy for the wedding. Towels with their pictures on it, playing cards, shot glasses, wine glasses, table runners, candles, the list goes on. All decorated with the royal crown of Sweden. They are also having a lot of wedding shows and movies on TV, in anticipation for the wedding.

It's something I've never experienced and it will be fun to watch it on TV. I might even make a small wedding cake (to test my wedding cake making skills for my own wedding). :)

The Swedish thing of the day is Swedish pie. They don't make it with the crust on top. Always this mixture of cinnamon, flour, butter and vanilla powder. It's reallly good. Last weekend was mothers day here, and Fredrik's sister, Maria, made 3 different pies! It was wonderful! This pie was raspberry (hallon) and rhubard (rabarber).

The Swedish word of the day is "väntar" which means "waiting" and is pronounced "ventar".

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Booked!

Our flight and car for our trip to Germany is booked! We fly to Frankfurt July 7th and visit Henneberg, Mayen, and tour Frankfurt for 2 and a half days, then we fly home July 10th! I'm SO excited. I have wanted to do this since I arrived in Sweden, and my amazing husband has made it happen. I'm so lucky! We will be staying in Frankfurt with Jan (our former German exchange student). I thougt it was so nice he offered that, and it saves us a lot on a hotel room we will only be sleeping in!
The weather here has been absolutely gorgeous the past few days. Last night Fredrik and I went to the lake ate some ice cream and drank some beer. Sandy feet make me happy. :)

This is Lake Aspen and it's about a 5 minute drive from my house.

The Swedish thing of the day is the inside of a train. Haha, this seems stupid. But Being here as made me realize how much we DON'T use trains in the US. We take the train all the time and I actually really like taking the train! This time we were headed to Fredrik's Farmor's 80th birthday in Ljungskile. It was a great time and we ate some delicious food and I met a lot of new people from his family. Isn't my husband so handsome!? :)


The Swedish word of the day is "tåg" which means "train" and is pronoucned "toahg". "