Category: Sweden
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Seventeenth birthday adventures
Ebba’s friend, a neighbor from the Berkeley days, came to spend a week with us. It was a whirlwind of travel and adventure mixed with lots of down-time for gaming and catching up. For a variety of pesky reasons, the eldest Noiceling and I missed a lot of the fun but luckily Bryant was able…
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Sommartider hej hej
Summer has been slow to arrive but today is the first really hot day, by my standards, at 84 degrees. It might even qualify as a heat wave, which in Sweden is 3 consecutive days with a high of at least 77 degrees. Because the infrastructure is built to reduce heating costs, there hasn’t been…
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Studenten Season in Skåne
The folks required lots of recovery time upon reaching Lund (a full day journey via taxi, ferry, commuter train, high speed train-with last minute platform change, bus). Our youngest (camp name Ebba) was still busy wrapping up her penultimate year at Katte but we squeezed in some small excursions close to home. Then on the…
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Gotland’s Chamber Choir
Uppsala University’s Choir at Campus Gotland has been an interesting outlet for the eldest Noiceling. She enjoys singing with them and the director appreciates her regular attendance. Drawing from quite a small pool of students and other community members, Director Dan may be a bit over ambitious, at least from Hil’s perspective. They have dabbled…
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Concordia Choir in Uppsala
We were fortunate enough to get a winter renter for our house in Saint Paul, but that further delayed my plans for a Spring visit. Then my parents began to consider a fun opportunity because the grandson of long-time family friends shared news of his upcoming Concordia College Choir Scandinavian tour. As a Concordia alumna,…
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Reading the Riot Act
First a few library photos from my travels…For a variety of reasons (OK, I confess, mainly Instagram and Youtube) I haven’t been reading as much over the past few years. I’ve always relied on libraries for the majority of my reading material, both print and audio books. In Sweden, the selection of books in English…
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Till nästa gång, so long
Living abroad in a community made up largely of expats means saying goodbye more frequently and in more ways than I had imagined. It has been far more challenging than language or cultural differences. This quote sums it up for me… “You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart always…
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Winter sewing project complete
This winter was very mild in Lund, with only a couple of minor snow events and few freezing temps. We were hoping for some ice-skating weather but we seem to have missed the narrow window for that. Instead, many dreary winter days were spent on my first big sewing project. The accumulated tee shirt souvenirs…
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Winter limbo
It’s not really Winter weather but certainly not Spring. And while the days are getting longer, it’s quite dreary, with an occasional sunny hour here and there to give us hope. But then the daily crush of bad news leaves us heavy hearted, so we look for distractions and new hobbies to distract and give…
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Jolabokaflod
The Icelandic tradition of the Christmas book flood has been part of our holiday celebration for the past 10 or so years. We started taking the girls to a local book shop to choose their own books on or around Christmas Eve as a way to support independent book sellers. Wild Rumpus, Red Balloon, Addendum…