We're Kinda a Big Deal

Sweden has a population of about 9.6 million (a bit higher than the population of North Carolina) in a country roughly the same size as California.  That's just not many people.  It was really only a matter of time before we became famous.  After 1 month we started hanging out with TV stars at their home.  And by "TV stars" I mean a family who was featured on a Swedish reality TV show about a large RV vacation camp:


These are our friends, Johan and Helen, and their 5 children.  Their second oldest son, Olov (in the blue inner tube) is Roanin's classmate.  The show, Böda Camping, featured them because several of the children have food allergies, and this large campground carries plenty of grocery options for them at their on site market.

We snapped a few pictures of our kids playing with the little celebrities:

 

Adrienne and Dagny are becoming best buds. 

They practically speak the same language.

Who wouldn't want to hang out at a house with

5 kids, a trampoline, and a beautiful Swedish country view?

 

The great thing about being invited to a celebrity's dinner party is the unique and sectacular entertainment.  Our friends arranged a boulder explosion in our honor.  No seriously...the next-door neighbor blew up a boulder the size of a family vehicle with dynamite while we were there.  If you haven't witnessed this type of extravaganza for yourself, you really are missing out.



 

As of last night, 2 months into our stay, Roanin is officially our family's first TV celebrity.  (Read: He's briefly visible in the background at about 0:55 of this news clip.  Brown shirt, Steelers pants.)



Sweden's polls close Sunday, so as a lead-in to the national elections, this channel covered Roanin's school election.  As a red-blooded American, a representative of his nation's proud democratic history, Roanin educated himself about the issues, carefully considered each candidate and his or her party's platforms and promises, and cast his ballot.  In other words, he voted for the party with the coolest logo.  Come on...what 6 year old boy isn't going to vote for the black panther party?  Hmmm...the historical connotations of that title in America probably don't translate exactly to Swedish first graders.

There you have it.  You, dear reader, are officially following the blog of Swedish celebrities.

Swedish Gymnastics

"Swedish Gymnastics" might be a good title for a blog post about trying to check out at the grocery store with an American credit card, but this post is about actual gymnastics.

One of our new found friends invited us to bring the girls to a gymnastics class that he co-teaches.  Cora has been very excited, since she's missing her gymnastics class back home.  (Don't mistake this excitement for an indication that she really participated in her class at home.  She was more of an observer and distractor...but I digress.). Adrienne was excited since she often mimicked what Cora's class was doing while we hung out in the parent viewing room.


The class was for kiddos 2-4ish, and there were about 25 of them.  Parents were with the kids in the class.  Even so, the general chaos of 25 2-4 year olds ensued, cutely.  I think the class will be good for the girls since they can simply follow along with the physical activities, despite the language challenge.

Swedish gymnastics do seem to be a bit more hard-core than American gymnastics, though:

This is Cora and her bloody leotard after her top lip met with the metal chin-up bar.

Don't worry about that pout too much, she wants to go back next weekend.

A Walk in the Park

Living in Sweden may not be a walk in the park (especially without person numbers or credit card codes), but the Sala city park is one of the many things that makes it worthwhile. 

Sala Church of Sweden in the background

 

Fountain and Gazebo

Offstage left is an amazing playground.

Offstage right is the lake with its own fountain.

 

Fountain Close Up

The park has 3 statues and not a stitch of clothing. 

I think they've outlawed such things...statue clothing that is.

 

Room to Run

and Flowers to Sniff

 

Our own Crop of Beauty

 

Portrait by Cora

A Walk in the Woods

Send a man and his boy into the woods near our house and this is the bounty you can expect:

Mushrooms, let the research begin.

 

Anyone have a good book on Swedish mushrooms...in English?

 

 



 

Lingonberries

 

The girls and I will try to pick enough for saft (juice concentrate) or sylt (jelly) soon.

 

 

Angelo

 

The latest hostage in his aquarium (AKA former blueberry clamshell).  The snail is hoping this will secure his (her?) release.

 

 

They also found exactly 3 blueberries (techincally bilberries) that were reportedly delicious.  I wouldn't know.  I didn't get one.  harumph.

My Ikea kitchen

Living in Europe for several months sounds very glamorous, or at least it did to me.  There are certainly many times when this experience is amazing, and I'm very grateful that we're here.  However, many parts of my day still involve laundry, cleaning, and cooking.  We did bring the kids along after all!

Even the cooking part, while not the definition of glamorous, is at least interesting here.  I'm trying new things, in a new kitchen (more about my kitchen when it's cleaner..ahem), with new food, or at least new names for the food.  So here's a quick glance of a few things that have hit our table recently at the Vrtiska house...the Sweden version.

Last night I made pea soup and pancakes, because it was Thursday...that sentence makes sense in Sweden, promise.

My understanding is that this is the traditional Thursday fare in the Swedish military, so many Swedes make this every Thursday at home as well.  Scott became aware of it when traveling to Sweden on previous trips, because it's the special of the day in many restaurants.  The Swedish pancakes were SO GOOD!  The recipe I used was from Rockford, IL ("a really Swedish town" according to the contributor).  Scott said they were a bit eggier (that should be a word) than the ones he had for lunch at the cafeteria, but that's a compliment in our house.  If you're reading this and are more Swedish than someone from Illinois, please feel free to give me your recipe in the comments. :)  We topped the pancakes with lingonberry jelly, but Scott said they need homemade whipped cream on top, too, and what can't be improved with a bit of homemade whipped cream?  I used this recipe for the pea soup since I didn't have a ham bone.  It was yummy, and warm, but what can't be improved by a bit of bacon?  I'll try this recipe next time: http://scandinavianfood.about.com/od/souprecipes/r/peasouprecipe.htm  Or share your Swedish Grandma's recipe with me, and I'll use that one instead!

 

Earlier in the morning the girls and I picked apples from our backyard orchard for applesauce. We have 9 apple trees, and roughly a million apples.  If you can get to Sweden in the next few months, come over!  I'll bake you an apple...something.  I don't have canning jars or equipment here, and we'll only be here for a few months, so there's no way to put all of them to good use, but I'm going to give it my best shot!

On the other side of our yard is the plum orchard with 7 trees.

 We picked many plums from the lower branches, but there were so many yummy, juicy, tempting plums on the higher branches.  We really had no choice...

 

This is not spousal abuse...

 

 

This is harvesting without a ladder.

 

 

The plum tart helped soothe Scott's aching back.

 

We've been eating a lot of fish lately, but this was by far the largest so far.  Scott "caught" this one at ICA, our local grocery store.

 

 

Then he created a masterpiece:



We ate it with boiled red potatoes with dill. 

Roanin has a grilled salmon and pickle sandwich, and an apple for a snack in the woods today.  That sentence makes sense in Sweden...promise.  Every Friday the class goes and plays in the nearby woods for a couple hours before lunch.  Because he's 6.  And it's Friday.  And why don't we do this in the U.S.?!?!

I'm just glad we can safely use our grill again.  We were afraid to use it too soon after the forest fire .  Someone a few towns over started up their grill toward the end of the fire fight and a helicopter water bombed it for fear that the fire had jumped a line. oops.

Now I need to go clean up my kitchen before I make lunch.  That sentence doesn't make any sense...anywhere.



What I Want to Tell My Son About Ferguson

Dear Sweet 6 (and three quarters) year old Baby Boy of Mine,

The situation in Ferguson, Missouri is very simple and very complicated.  And it's heart-breaking.  And it's infuriating.  And I don't want you to know about it...yet.

But I want you to know about it someday.  I want you to understand it. I want you to ask honest, respectful questions when there are parts of it you don't understand.

I want you to know about slavery and share cropping and Jim Crow and The Civil Rights Movement and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr..  I want him to be one of your personal heroes. I also want you to know about Uncle Tom and "separate but equal" and Malcolm X and The Black Panthers and racial profiling and disproportionate incarceration practices.  I want you to see, if only from the outside, where generational anger comes from.

I want you to know that the police are there to protect you and keep our communities safe.  I want you to know that this statement is less true, or completely false, for people who look different than you.  A police badge doesn't fix a heart that beats with violent racist beliefs.  A job-issued deadly weapon doesn't make you the good guy.

I want you to know that you need to respect the police and their position in the community.  For you this is an issue of being a good, law-abiding citizen.  I want you to know that for people who don't look like you this could be a matter of life and death - wrongful, tragic, righteous anger producing death.

I want you to know that we are all equal in God's eyes.  I want you to know that you are valuable, worthy, and loved.  So is every other person God breathed into being.  This has nothing to do with the skin you're wrapped in, or the texture of your hair, or the accent of your speech, or the grammar of your language, or the style of your clothes, or the neighborhood you call home.  Not everyone believes this about all people. 

I want you to know that is wrong.  It's just as wrong when it causes a well-hidden, racist thought as when it causes a young man to lie dead in the street through no fault of his own. 

I want you to know that I am guilty of allowing appearances, including race, to affect my opinion of people.  I want you to know that you will, most likely, be guilty of this, too.  This is human nature.  This is still wrong.

I want you to know that one of the most important things you can do is be aware of this.  The more you are aware of wrong assumptions affecting your opinions and actions, the more you can work to second-guess your first impressions and see people through a purer lens.  And treat people with more appropriate respect.  And acknowledge that they, too, are valuable, worthy, and loved. 

I want you to know that this awareness takes more knowledge, not less.  More effort, not less.  More education, not less.  More practice, not less.  More love, never less.

But, right now, sweet boy, you are 6 (and three quarters), so I can't tell you these things, and have them make sense.  Because right now you are as close to knowing these things as part of your very being as you may ever be.  Your eyes have yet to be tainted by the world.  Your heart has yet to be hardened by experience.  Your mind has yet to question the value of another of God's children.

I want you to know that your view of other people, right now, is true.

I want you to know that I want the world (myself included) to know this kind of truth.

So right now, sweet boy, I won't tell you about Ferguson, because you already know the most important part of it. 

I will tell you about Ferguson when the world starts to take the truth away.

Love,
Mommy

Back to School

Technically, we're not planning for "back to school".  We're planning for Roanin to go to school...for the first time...ever.  Because of being a stay-at-home mom, and for several other reasons, we homeschooled our children to this point.  I can teach my kids many things at home, but I can't teach them the Swedish language and culture!  Living in Sweden offers us the awesome opportunity for the kids to pick up a second language in an immersion experience, which is the most effective way to learn another language, especially at their young ages.

Part of the reason we chose to live in a rural area was to be able to send Roanin to a small town school where we have contacts.  Harriet, our landlady and neighbor, works at the elementary school Roanin will attend as the supplementary Science and Math teacher.  Our friend who set up the rental for us knows the first class (first grade) teacher, and was able to assure us that she speaks English, and has used it while living abroad.  That was a huge relief!

School starts Monday morning, and Roanin is a big ball of nerves.  He's excited about going to school, but understandably nervous about the language barrier.  Swedish children don't start taking English lessons until they're in 3rd grade, so we don't expect any of his classmates to be able to communicate with him through language.  Roanin has been studying Swedish with Rosetta Stone for the last couple months, which we hope will give him enough of a foundation to begin to decode the rest of the language quickly.  From the brief research I've done, children his age are usually able to become functionally fluent in a month in this type of experience.

The "back to school" experience in Sweden has been a learning process for me.  Education is free in Sweden.  We say the same thing in the U.S., but when Sweden says "free" they mean F.R.E.E. free.  It's my understanding that education is free through the doctorate level.  I'll let that one sink in for a minute.  No college tuition to save for.  No student loans to pay off.  No starting life in debt.  In fact, university students are paid a stipend to help with their living expenses.  That kind of free.

We started...and finished back to school shopping today.  This is what we bought:

Harriet told us he should bring a piece of fruit with him each day for a snack.  He picked grapes. I picked out the rest for some variety.  Total spent on back to school items for the first day: about $1.50 for half the pack of grapes.  Pricey for grapes, but pretty cheap as back to school supplies go in the U.S..  I'll also send him with his Spiderman backpack we brought with us, and a pair of tennis shoes to change into when he's in the school building.  That's it.  We might splurge a bit and buy each of the kids a new outfit tomorrow, but thats mostly because the lack of school shopping is kinda freaking me out.  A Swedish friend with school-aged kids warned me that the school will probably send all his school supplies home with him when we leave for the states.  This is so different from the "free" school system in the U.S. that it seems backward.  The question is: "Which country is backward?"

Roanin's school day will end at about 1 in the afternoon.  I think this is true for both the first and second class.  Older children stay until about 3.  That will be a nice easing-in to the school day routine for Roanin since he's never been in a classroom setting for more than 2 hours once a week at Bible Study.  Before he heads home, he'll eat lunch at school, which is also provided...for everyone.  I'm going to ask permission for Roanin to bring a camera to school to take pictures of the lunch under the guise of an illustrated social comparative project. Rumor has it Swedish schools serve their children actual food for lunch, as opposed to the preserved, frozen, nuked chemistry experiments offered in the U.S..

Here's the best part of Roanin's first day of school, in my opinion:  I get to go with him!  Its allowed, and maybe even expected, that the parents of younger children will attend school with them for the first day, or two, or three!  I'll go with him for the first couple hours, but then I'll have to leave before lunch so Scott can get to work.  I was just stunned that I get to set foot in the building during school hours at all!

After we get Roanin settled into school, we'll work on getting the girls into a nearby daycare program.  As a stay-at-home mom, I'm only entitled to 15 hours of free daycare per week.  Again with the freeness...sheesh! 

Maybe if we can get daycare set up, I'll have time for things like typing up posts about our trips to Stockholm (the Paris of the North) and Paris (The Paris), and maybe even a date with my husband!

Evacuation

After a brief clearing this afternoon, the smoke in our area has gotten progressively worse.  Here are 2 pictures of the view from our kitchen window.  One before the fire, and one taken just a few minutes ago.

 

No, the windows didn't get that dirty in 2 weeks!

 

A coworker that Scott claims to be one of the wisest people on site is evacuating his adult daughter from our neighborhood...so we're packing up, too.  We will head to a friend's house in Vasteros, and possibly get a hotel room for tonight and/or following nights.

 

Please pray for people in the Sala area, for their physical safety, as well as for their homes and livestock.  Pray for the Swedish officials and emergency workers who need to make quick, wise decisions in an event that is very foreign to them. 

 

I'll keep posting on facebook, if not here, so that everyone knows we're safe.  Thank you for your prayers for our safety and good decisions.

 

From this view out our front window you should be able to see our 2 nearest neighbors, who have taken very good care of us.  Please pray for Esbjorn, Harriet, Per, Bolin, and their families.



Siestas and Forest Fire

It was hot hot HOT today.  Not what I was prepared for when I discovered that Sweden lies along the same longitudinal lines as Alaska.  Our thermometer read 34 degrees (93 F) this afternoon while the sun was hitting it directly.  That sounds like a typical Kansas City August day.  Now take away your AC, fans (yup, all of them), kiddie pool, sprinkler, and ice cubes.  That's dang hot.  There's just generally no need for these things here.  We do have the tiniest, mini ice cube tray, but Scott was pretty shocked that we had such an American item.  I hoarded all 12 of the ice cubes for our afternoon fika. 
Roanin escaped to the neighbors to use their kiddie pool for awhile.  He didn't have his swim trunks.  That's not an issue here. :) At lunch we discussed Spanish Siestas, as the girls ate in their undies.
It was the hottest day of the Summer so far, but the weather here has been intense all Summer.  It's been extremely dry, and unusually hot for long stretches.  It's only rained once in Sala, since we got here in mid-July, and that was very light and short.  The weather has affected the wild and cultivated berry crops, as well as the forest mushrooms.  Wild chanterelles, strawberries, and blueberries are generally plentiful in Sweden, but are nonexistent this year.
The dry hot weather has created the perfect conditions for a huge forest fire that's raging in our area right now. 

It started Thursday, and blew smoke our direction for 3 days straight.  Saturday evening it blocked out the sun and scented all of our clothes with an authentic campfire aroma.

 

 

The smell was so strong, I hung them out again today to try to diminish the smell.  I can't tell if it worked, or if I'm just too saturated with the smell to notice. 

Our neighbors don't seem to be concerned about our area's safety at this point, but we're keeping a close eye on the news.  (Dear Google Translate, we love you.)  It's about 10 miles away from us now, but I feel much less nervous about it when the smoke isn't blowing straight at us.  As of today, Sweden has called many emergency workers and military staff home from their vacations (Swedes call it "semester") and reached out to Italy for help with firefighting equipment.  Nine firefighters had to be rescued by helicopter this afternoon when the fire closed in around them.  We just learned that about 1,000 people are being evacuated tonight from the fire's previously rural path.  The current prediction is that it could burn for several months because it's burning underground.

There are no global warming deniers in Sweden. 



 

Planning the Day

I'm sitting at my kitchen table doing a bit of planning for the day.  So here's a little teaser into our Swedish life.  Diapers are in the washing machine.  It's a water-efficient front loader, so the cycle takes 2 1/2 hours.  I need to get them on the line ASAP since I'm running low.  I also need to sit down with Google translate and see if we can't figure out all these fancy settings.  I only have a Swedish instruction manual.

We're out of a few essentials like milk, filmjölk (a thin, mild yogurt we use on cereal and in place of sour cream), and knäckebröd (crisp bread bigger than crackers we're using in place of breakfast toast and regular crackers and bread).  In a couple hours I'll head to the ICA (pronounced E-ka) grocery store with the kids for some shopping.  Scott has our car, so the grocery shopping will involve a bus schedule, Google Maps, good sturdy shopping bags (I brought several from home), and Roanin and Cora's backpacks to help with the schlepping.

 

After an early dinner, we hope to get Roanin and Cora to the local futbol practice by Roanin's school (Kila Skola).  It depends on Scott's success with seeing a doctor for the orange-sized bruise/infection/thingy that he picked up from some plant or insect on a remote Swedish island last Sunday. 

 

But first I'm off to hang the diapers and water the sheep.  How's that for a teaser?

 

The view out my kitchen window (Photo credit to Roanin)



Steps 57-5,000

If you're reading this blog because you genuinely want to know all 5,000 steps we took to get to Sweden...sorry. :(  Steps 57- 4,995 mostly involve ignoring your blog, tearing your house apart, checking airline regulations, stuffing vacuum seal bags full of clothes, and praying that some poor, unsuspecting TSA agent doesn't try to search your 49.7 pound suitcase.  Thankfully that didn't happen.

We've been in Sweden for almost a week, now.  The house in Sala is unpacked.  There's a bit of food in the kitchen.  Clothes are hanging on the line.  And 3 kids are simultaneously napping...at an acceptable time to be napping.  So it must be time to finally blog from Sweden!

First, a little catch up:

Step 4,996: Hop a JetBlue flight from Pittsburgh to Boston.  We were greeted at the counter with the pleasant news that we could check 2 bags per person for free, since this was the Icelandic Air policy.  We'd been told that when you travel internationally the policies form the first airline carry through to subsequent airlines.  Evidently, it's the international flight's policies that count.  Scott said we should have packed more.  I (the main packer) stared at him briefly.  We quickly rearranged a few items to check 1 more bag and lighten up the carry-ons a bit.

The kids were pretty excited about the air travel, which helped immensely!  Here they are at the start of their big adventure at about 11 AM Pittsburgh time:

The first flight went well. The kids got their pilot wings.  It was Adrienne's first airplane flight, but of course Roanin and Cora needed their wings when they saw Adrienne's.  Roanin was introduced to the wonder that is silly putty.  Thankfully, the wonderful grandmotherly type who sat next to him (he was across the aisle from me) borrowed part of her husband's newspaper so Roanin could experience it's full glory.  I forgot that essential piece of equipment.  Scott was smart enough to make Cora go to the bathroom in the airplane lav, and then mention the huge, loud sucking action it would make when it flushed.  She didn't use an airplane lav for the rest of the trip.

 One flight down and they're still excited enough to be dancing.

Step 4,997: Airport security Round 2.  The bad news in Boston was that we had to go through security again.  Pittsburgh security was a breeze.  Shoe stayed on.  Electronics stayed packed.  All Vrtiskas and bags zipped through.  Boston wasn't quite so breezey.  Shoes had to come off.  Bags had to be unpacked.  When we got through security in Pittsburgh we filled up water bottles and received several on the airplane.  We tried to dump all of them down a nearby water fountain in Boston, but we missed a couple.  So those bags had to be searched.  The TSA agent was trying to be helpful and was going to get a test strip to check the liquid in the water bottle, but I was finally able to convince him to just dump it for me instead of involving more TSA agents in what was quickly becoming our family's fiasco.  Trying to juggle 3 kids, claiming bags, reshoeing, and not letting them touch the precious bag search table for fear of a full-on pat down was a bit much.  We thought we had everything and everyone safely out of the security zone, when the very helpful TSA agent had to call me back to claim my purse.  Uh, yeah...I was planning to bring that with me.

Step 4,998: Fly from Boston to Iceland.  Icelandic air was awesome.  I don't have any recent
international airline experience to compare it to, but it was great.  They handed each of the kids one of these cute little backpack/blanket swag bags and a bottle of Icelandic water.  We'd seen the same bottled water in Giant Eagle a few weeks before.  Roanin was confused about why you would buy it in the US when you could just go to Iceland to get it...umm. We might have created a problem with the kids' distance perspectives by taking this trip. 

They read this book during the Childrens' Story at church awhile back about telling people that Jesus loves them. 

It emphasized that we should spread the word everywhere by juxtaposing Iceland and Timbuktu.  Roanin's response was: "I'm going to Iceland!"  Faraway point fail.

As thankful as I was for the in-flight movie screens, I wish the kids had spent a bit more time looking out the windows during take off and landing.  Here's Cora's version of what she and Roanin did most of the 5 hour flight to Iceland. Headphones - check.  Snack bag - check.  Neck pillow - check.  Adrienne was more rambunctious.  We managed to get OJ, hot coffee, and Icelandic water spilled in various volumes during the flight.  Very productive. 
She was a pretty happy traveler, though.  Our biggest problem was that she wanted to be dancing in the aisle most of the time. 
This is what Roanin and Cora missed outside their windows as we went in for a landing in Iceland at about 11 PM, Icelandic time.





 We had about 2 hours to spend at the Iceland airport.  We went through customs, which was much easier than security, thank goodness.  Scott did notice that the customs agent used a liberal amount of hand sanitizer after processing our family.  huh.  We took in the art:




(Notice the midnight sun through the skylight.)  Then sat down for a we-made-it-to-Europe celebration snack.  But first, Adrienne tipped her chair backward and smacked her head on the hard tile floor, so we had to get ice in Iceland.  It seemed appropriate.  Here's the proof that we had a snack in Iceland: Just in case your Icelandic is as rough as mine, here's further evidence:

Isn't airport food awful?  geeze.







Step 4,999: Fly from Iceland to Sweden.  We left Iceland around 2 AM local time.  Here's what Roanin and Cora missed out of their windows this time:

The sun never truly set, as if flying across 6 time zones wasn't disorienting enough.  The flight to Sweden was about 3 hours.  The girls had finally had enough of traveling toward the end of the flight and cried/fussed/screamed for half an hour.  I find 30 minutes out of 12 hours of traveling perfectly acceptable.  They all finally passed out just in time to miss a first glimpse of Sweden.  

 

This could pass for a view of our neighborhood.

 

Step 5,000: Arrive in Stockholm!  Wahoo!  We landed at about 6:30 AM local time, 12:30 AM Pittsburgh time.  All flights and lay overs went as scheduled and all our bags made the transfers.  Success!  We celebrated by playing with giant chanterelle mushrooms in the kids' play space.