"This must be paradise", said Signe, as we parked our bikes and spotted the horses hanging over the fence, tempting us to hurry and pet them. I guess the definition of paradise is truly in the eye of the beholder. For Signe on this day, paradise is a 4 mile bike ride to an island where we get to cut through a horse pasture and the woods to get to the sea for a picnic. "No", she says, "this is Sigadise". So it is. [View Full Entry]

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We've had our first guests and not only survived, but thoroughly enjoyed ourselves! The summer of 1982 was significant for me, it was the year I got to know "a foreigner". That's big stuff coming from a small town. Sure, we had an exchange student when I was three, but I barely remember Caesar Gomez. Ingrid Andenaes was my first foreign friend, and she was exotic in all her tall, Nordic beauty. Time is irrelavent when you're 13. I didn't remember how many days Ingrid and I spent together that summer, I just remember that we met at the swimming pool [View Full Entry]

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I understand that pride can be a dangerous thing. However, today I'm feeling a great deal of pride in my kids - if "pride goeth before the fall", then someone get ready to catch me! Emma and Signe have been in school for three full weeks and are doing great. Today Jorgen started at Eva's house, I stayed with him, as is the tradition here. When we entered the playroom, Jorgen clung to my leg as each of the three older boys introduced themselves IN ENGLISH, it touched me so that Eva had prepared them in trying to help Jorgen feel [View Full Entry]

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I'm a 39 year old mother of three...how can I be bored? Well, just take away the house, the car, the job the friends, school sports, the commitments and you've got the perfect recipe for boredom...and nice fingernails. For the first time in my life, my fingernails are strong, long and pretty. I'd rather have them stubby and peeling if it meant I was refinishing an old piece of furniture. I can just hear you now, "oh poor Maria, time on her hands, nothing to do", all said in a sarcastic tone as you race out the door to get the [View Full Entry]

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We've been here for one month now, and weekly church is about my only social interaction. Sure, I see the teacher at school, I wave at the neighbors, I see the ladies at the grocery store, but church is the only outing I choose to take each week. So we go. As I said in an earlier blog, not a lot of people attend church here. Ours is a small church that serves a large community of people and there has been room at each service I've attended. There has also been a different priest (as they are referred to here, [View Full Entry]

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I'm not physically in South Dakota today, but that's where all thought is leading me. I'm feeling bad that I'm not in Howard right now. My family is all together, celebrating my parent's 50th Wedding Anniversary at St. Agatha Catholic Church. There is mass in their honor, followed by goodies and fellowship in the church hall. It just makes me sad knowing there are Scott shenanigans going on right now and I'm not there to be part of it. To make up for my absence and to make me feel better, I'm going to tell you about the big family party [View Full Entry]

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Did I mention Car? Yes, we rented a car this weekend through an innovative car sharing program that allows you to order a car, send a code via text message when you are ready to pick it up...it tracks your miles and when you return it, the card charges you based on the vehicle you drove and the miles you traveled. Our car for the weekend was, you guessed it, a grey Volvo station wagon.! It's a nice ride, but the German in me still prefers my Volkswagon. Maybe a little more time in Sweden will change my mind. The call [View Full Entry]

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The girls first days of school have gone well. We've breathed a huge sigh of relief and are hoping that the novelty of new friends who speak English doesn't wear off! They seem to be the exciting new thing in their classrooms. Signe's teacher, Jane, said that the parents she spoke to were excited to have an English speaking child in the classroom so that their own children would learn the language better. When I picked Signe up that first day, she was surrounded by girls and they were playing with animals like we had at home. Every minute or so, [View Full Entry]

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How can I be feeling pride and serious anxiety, all at once? We just walked the girls to school for their first day. They've been excited about starting school, ready to make some friends, more than anything. We've been talking and trying to prepare them for this for months. The question, however, is how do complete amateurs prepare kids for something they themselves know nothing about ? Neither Jeff nor I ever changed schools. My classmates were my classmates nearly my entire life, and so were his. When a new kid came to school, it was a huge event and I [View Full Entry]

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August 18th. Today is my brother, Chuck's, birthday. He would have been 46. The only thing I care to write about today is my family, because it was my first though when I woke up. That's kind of how it goes when you lose someone, I've learned. The thoughts of them are often random and quite often still surreal. Chuck died on March 5th, totally unexpected, and life will never be the same. Chuck and I weren't especially close, he was the 3rd child and I'm the 8th in a family of nine. We had six and a half years and [View Full Entry]

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