social butterflies

The sky is lovely shade of blue and almost fluorescent green buds are bursting on tree branches. Swedish winter, like Canadian, really helps you appreciate the spring. Last year living in Spain I can only recall a few moments of sitting in awe of the changing of seasons. This is sad considering a Cordobes spring is a thing of wonder mostly due to the smell of azahar, or orange blossom. I guess ice, darkness and the cold will do that too you.

Juan and I have had some great times during these last few weeks. We had our first wine night, which I believe was a true success! Next time I think we’ll invite more people and make it a bit more international. We also crashed no less than two parties last weekend – a personal best! Friends came over, we went to other friends’ – we have been quite social and it’s good.

Sometimes I get a bit uptight before we have guests (and not all guests, just some). Usually this is because of poor time management which leaves me with wet hair or finding a pile of stuff that Juan has ‘cleaned’ from one tabletop to another. I actually don’t like that about myself. I don’t think real friends care if the table they rest their beer on has dust or not, or if they have to wait a bit before I serve food. I don’t know why I do this but I will be working on it, for both Juan’s and my sakes. 

In June we will have some visitors which we are really excited about. In fact they will be joining us on our trip to Latvia. Actually these visitors are the perfect visitors. I love it when within an hour of knowing a girl she walks into your kitchen and starts taking about what she wants to cook in it. 

Now that I think about it, maybe that’s my problem. I like people to feel like they are in their own house when they visit. I like it when they get up to get their own drinks out of the fridge without asking leaving me to put the finishing touches on dinner. Hmm, yes I think that’s my problem.

Dandelions

 

1st dandelion

So I think you officially know it’s spring once these things start showing up all over the place. I had to pull out my camera and set it to macro. I’d love to take a photography course one day to help me figure everything out. Until then I just continue to try and take good picture.

Happy to report…

… that our waterfront is filling with boats!

It all started like this:

snowy day

Then it evolved:

ice walk

Next:

sunny day

And finally:

1st boat

Although it’s only a short distance from our side to the other, they say it’s impossible to swim across because of the quantity of boats! Bring on summer.

Stockholm Spring

Every once in a while you spend time with someone and then have a profound respect for your parents and the way they brought you up. I am so thankful that in my family we travelled and us kids were made to try new foods and weren’t sheltered. We were given a pretty long leash, but all of us kids had to do dishes, cook and had responsibilities around the house. We were encouraged to try new sports and activities. I believe all this has helped me become a well-adjusted adult. We all complain and compare new things to what we think is ‘normal’, but I told Juan that he can shoot me the minute I turn my nose up at a perfectly good vegetarian dish just because it has an ingredient I am unfamiliar with.

Thanks to peer pressure I am now enrolled in Swedish courses. I think it’s horrible that I don’t have a strong interest in becoming fluent in the language of the country I am living.  Firstly, I am not sure how long we will be living here. Our current due date to leave is at the end of November 2009, but of course this could be extended if the right opportunity comes along. Don’t get me wrong, I love living in Sweden, but I just don’t see us here long term. My attitude might be different as well if the Swedes didn’t speak such good English. Who wants to have  a conversation in a grocery store in muddled Swedish gained after a couple months of studying when you could ask and expect an intelligent response in English. I am intrigued in learning how languages work, so I think it will be interesting. Plus there is a lot of info on Swedish culture and maybe even field trips! So thanks dear friend who I was to accompany on registering – you didn’t, but I did!

I am now in the middle of some spring cleaning. Soon I start work, so I am trying to use my time to get some stuff done around the house. The sun has come out and it hasn’t snowed in a while, so I am putting my sweaters away and bringing out my summer stuff! This weekend I got a mild sunburn -ah, that’s the life!!!

Reyes

I feel that we have the perfect dog, really! She is amazingly adaptable to any circumstance we throw at her.

 

reyes and her bone

 

 

Reyes walked into our lives on Jan. 6th, 2007, in Córdoba, Spain. We have no idea what her life was like before because we found her alone in a downtown park. The common consenses is that she was a hunting dog owned by gypsies (at least that was what some waiter told us at one of our favorite cordobes tavernas). She didn’t have a microchip, but she did have some parasital friends. She jumped into our car like a pro and drank a bunch of water before we headed back to Cádiz. The first vet we took her to gave her a clean bill of health, except for a scratch on her eye. We microchipped her there an then and de-parasited her. We got her the appropriate collar and she became the talk of our little beach town. Through having her we were able to get three galgos out of some pretty dire circumstances. She loved running on the beach and rolling in the grass.

 

lounge dog

 

 

Then we moved to another province where both of us would be working. She had a little trouble adjusting to the new life (ie. ate a doorframe) but working with a muzzle, rescue remedy and lots of training she pulled herself together and learned to relax when alone in the new house. There we found a nice vet who spayed her and helped us through a pretty horrible discovery that she had leishmania. We all suffered through her twice daily injections, pills hidden in cheese (Juanito specially bought brie because she liked it best), flaky skin, creams, ect. It was so scary to think she might leave us forever (that was the first suuggestion of the vet). But she showed him and no one was more surprised when two rounds of treatment went by and we received the tests back which said she was clean! We have since taken her off treatment and regularily test her blood to make sure leishmania levels don’t rise again. She returned to running her heart out on the beach. This same vet, during her last visit, mentioned that her skull had been fractured at one point. Its true the top of her head was never exactly smooth. Also its likely that she has chewed something strong (like the chain that was imprisoning her) because her teeth had to be fixed too!

There was also the time that she escaped form our hotel room in Madrid and spent the evening in reception, giving us a major heart attack when we saw her behind the desk. She has always been a people person and prefers meeting new people to dogs any day.

Earlier this year we moved from southern Spain to Stockholm, Sweden. We bought our poor sun loving hound a jacket online and she happily hoped into the car for a weeklo!

She really amazes me because she is unfazed by riding the bus, the elevator or the metro train here in this big city! The same girl who prefered to use the stairs rather than the elevator when she first entered our hotel in Granada. (she has since become a pro at that too, thanks to one of our apartments, always rushing to be the first to enter)

We have no idea of how old she is, and it saddens me a bit seeing her go grey. She is an extremely effective silent communicator. I could go on and on about her! We love her so much and couldn’t imagine our lives without her! She amazes us daily.

 

paw

 

 

¡Olé mi Reyes!

mix up of ideas

Well its never fun when your significant other is sick; worse when they are suffering through the viral torture of chicken pox. It makes you stop and wonder how diseases were designed. Who sat down and said, “hmm, I think I’ll make it so that tiny blisters filled with a concoction of pus and virus, which itch to hell all (and I mean ALL) over the host’s body.” Luckily most people only get it once in their lives, thus I’ve also learned it is also cruel punishment (like they need another annoyance in their lives) to ask an adult sufferer of the disease “didn’t you have it as a kid?” Juan is doing better though, thankfully.

• **

I have meaning to write for a while and say that I think one of the reasons we enjoy our new life Stockholm so much is because of the people that we have met here. Very few we ‘knew’ before but all we hope to continue to consider friends for life. We have some great neighbors (Swedish and International, ok mostly International) that have made us feel very welcome in the little corner of our island. Just after a month after arriving we attended a wedding for some friends that I mostly kept in contact with on-line and never knew personally before coming to Sweden. Juan is lucky to work with a fun bunch of people who have we have shared some unforgettable nights with. This week I am excited to reconnect with a girl I went to high school with in Ottawa who just moved here. There have been others too that have gone considerably out of their way to help us adapt to life in this foreign country. Even strangers in the street are friendly and I expect that to become even more evident as the sun starts shining stronger.

• **

When you move to a new country its easy to think that you won’t have a problem finding work, especially when you come from a great job. Then reality sets in and you realize you were crazy to think that as you don’t speak the local language, plus you know you aren’t going to be there for long. Things we looking hopeless for a while, but I am happy to say that I have found a job! I will be working with a tourism company here in Stockholm for the summer. I am excited about it and think it’s an ideal work situation for me for now.

Wakey, wakey

Juan and I used to play a little game every morning. Juan would hide my alarm clock (old cellphone) and I would have to find it to be able to turn it off or press snooze. Just to give you an idea of how annoying this could get in the morning sometimes he would hide it  in a purse, or in the wooden closet underneath a pile of clothes.

Remember I said ‘used to’, well that’s because now this is not possible. Things got a little too creative last night  when Juanito decided to hide the alarm clock cell phone on a ledge high above our bed. Turns out that the ledge really isn’t a ledge and that it is an insulation wall or something, thus hollow. I think you get the picture.

Juan immediately starts laughing – probably thinking of what the hell I will do when I can’t find the alarm. In the end he told me (I knew his giggling could only mean bad).

The game I am stuck playing right now is when will the battery die on my poor, lost cellphone. RIP

Family Visit

If you ever told me that my southern Spanish mother-in-law would be the first to visit us in our northern European country (during winter) I would have thought you were crazy. But it is true, my friends. She arrives today!

I am excited to see what she thinks about our life in Sweden and what her conception about countries that have a real winters are. She is going to have to take off her shoes when she enters our house. By the end of her stay, maybe even her socks will come off too! My in-laws and the majority of our Spanish friends have this idea that it’s REALLY cold here. Yes, if you go outside in your underwear you’d be really cold. In our apartment though it’s not cold at all (and we can’t control the heat as it is done communally). In Spain I am a ‘friolera’ (ie. always cold) and right now I am sitting writing in a tank-top (sweating a bit, but don’t tell anyone). I couldn’t do that in the majority of our houses in Spain.

Our house is comfortable for us. We have everything that we need for two people and a dog. Plus it is decorated beautifully. It might be a bit awkward with three adults in the house though, considering the ‘forward’ design. (ie. if anyone has to take a shower the rest of should leave and walk the dog, haha) It will be interesting.

Some things we have planned for the visit:

On Friday morning I will take her to visit Skansen which is an outdoor museum. I think it will be like Upper Canada Village for those of you that know it. Old buildings from across Sweden have been brought here to give people an idea of how traditional Swedish life was. They also have a zoo! Some Spaniards from Juan’s work went and they were disappointed because the bears were hibernating. Hopefully we will see an elk, or something.

On Saturday we will be going on a three hour brunch cruise! Fuencisla wanted to eat traditional Swedish food and Juan loves buffet, so this is how we will spend our Saturday – eating and cruising through Stockholm’s islands. Yum!

So, that’s it! Until she arrives I will be busy cleaning

Welcome to Sverige, its time for your cervical exam

Juan originally complained after arriving in Sweden that he thought that it would be much more of an advanced country. He said that he hasn’t really been shocked at all like he thought he would. After talking about it a bit more there are some things that have  impressed us, compared to our former lives in Spain and Canada.

Canada: Juan’s Landed Immigrant Status, 9 months wait, +1,500$ CAD *

Spain: Lindsay’s Residence Permit, 6 months wait, 6.50€

Sweden:  Lindsay’s Residence Permit + Tax number, 1 week, 0€

Ding, Ding, Ding – we have a winner, folks! Not only did we receive both of our tax numbers (which you need for EVERYTHING in this country) within one week of applying, my permission to stay for 5 years (I think), as well as a card for non EU accompanying their EU partners, BUT this week in the mail I got a letter scheduling me an appointment for a pap exam! I think it was the only letter I got from the government which actually said the word welcome as in Välkommen till gyneologisk cellprovtagning! (oh yes, there is an exclamation point) Other than the date I had no idea what the rest said (one page double sided), because it’s in Swedish.

There was only one thing to do. Sheepishly I pulled out my letter for the Swedish girls in my Spanish class. Great way to make friends!  I could be wrong about this Gynekologisk business, right? Nope, and well, now I get to try out some Swedish stirrups. Welcome to efficient Sweden, where cervical cancer is a priority. Impressive.

* If I here anyone saying how easy it is to apply to live in Canada ever again… ARGH!

dawn breaks

As of late I have been acquiring some odd sleeping patterns. It is 8.48 in the am and while I have gotten in bed with my husband I haven’t slept a wink. Lying there, I thought I’d better take advantage of the situation. When would I be awake at dawn on stora essinger with enough time to enjoy its’ light again? So here I share it with you:

island houses

the water

fence

bridge

blue hue water