Hej! Hej!
Jar är ledsen! (I’m Sorry!) I know this post was supposed to have a video of our apartment…but we have been having issues with our toilet (more to come on this). So because of the issues our landlord has been in and out and I have been trying to just stay out of the way. I have some more pictures of last weekend’s adventures though. We didn’t explore any new cities or go far. We found a second hand shop and a Swedish IKEA!
The second hand shop was a lot of fun. We were wishing we had a way to send furniture back. Some of it was pretty awesome and at a great price. We settled on some smaller things. A few trinkets for around the apartment, a couple duvet covers (for some of my Pintrest crafts, they were way cheaper than buying them new.), I got a German camera (for like $10) from 1948 that I am hoping to find some film for, David found a bottle opener made out of an antler with some carvings on it that he though was pretty cool, and just a few other things to make the place more homey.
What we didn’t find at the second hand shop we took a train to IKEA for. It was fun walking around IKEA dreaming up things for our house someday. We also bought some stuff for our kitchen and a few picture frames. All in all it was a pretty successful day.
An IKEA in its home country. I also found out the clothing store H&M is from Sweden.
David deemed this car picture worthy so I was allowed to stop a take a picture in the IKEA parking lot.
Duck we found walking down the canal on the ice.
We have found a church that we have settled into. It is the only English speaking church that is within 2 hours of us. It has been a lot of fun worshiping with people from all over the world. The church is a new church plant and the pastor is Australian. It makes for a very different Sunday worship experience than in the U.P. This last Wednesday we went to our first Connect group (it’s like a small group) and we enjoyed getting to know a few of the people from church better too. It is a very international group with the couple who hosts it being Swedish and English, a Jamaican woman, a German woman, Indian man and another American. We are told the group is much larger than that but those are the only people who showed up the one time we were able to go. They are all studying or have studied at the University in Malmo.
Yes, you did read that right. We don’t have to go to church until 4 in the afternoon. This is because we share a facility with the Salvation Army and they have their services in the mornings.
A huge blessing has been a family from Texas who attends the church. They have been in Sweden a little over a year so have been able to help us with some of the hiccups of being in a new country. They also have a daughter who attended a university here and is now writing a novel. She has already made my weeks a little more interesting. She has a craft group once a week at a coffee shop. It is basically a bunch of people getting together for coffee and just hanging out. She taught me the beginnings of how to crochet which I am hoping to get better at while here.
We have also done a lot with David’s classmates. We learned how to play a new sport, floor ball. It is basically hockey with a whiffle ball on a gym floor. I will try and post some pictures after this next week. We have also attended movie nights and birthday parties. Once again it is a very international campus and we probably come in contact with people from 5-10 countries on a weekly if not daily basis.
I am catching onto Swedish pretty easily. I still can’t talk fluently or understand when people are in the midst of a fast moving conversation. I have been able to figure out what they are saying on the train and figure out what the cashiers are asking for or telling us when checking out. The class I am in is moving pretty fast so in 3.5 more months I am hoping to be able to hold a decent conversation in Swedish.
My Swedish Visa card. Yay! We didn’t have to get deported to the US to get them.
My last little treasure that I was so excited to find in the Coop Forum (a walmartish store of sorts) was a book that I have the English version of. If ever I get back into a classroom or have a daycare of my own it will be fun to have as a cultural or international book in the classroom. It is also fun because David’s heritage is partly Swedish so it will be fun to share with our kids someday. I have already been in many book stores here and haven’t had any luck (with finding a book that we have in the US) so was extremely happy to find this one. It was always a huge fan favorite with the 0-3 year olds, so it wasn’t a bad book to find.
This weekend we are going to go into Malmo again and are going to go see Star Wars 3D for David’s birthday. They play most of their movies in English with Swedish subtitles so it should be just like seeing a movie at home. David is very excited!
I will try and get up a video of this week so that everybody asking to see the apartment can finally see it:)
