Midsommar

Midsommar is a big deal in Sweden. There's the same sort of pressure to have a great midsommar as there is to have a really exciting, unforgettable New Year's every year (or maybe that's just my neurosis?). The city clears out as everyone goes "to the country" to celebrate with family and friends. Of course there's various events in the cities, but the real midsommar parties are on in yards tucked away in all corners of the country. Midsommar is a celebration of summer (go figure), but oddly is not celebrated on the solstice as one might think, but the Friday before. This year it was June 19. Anyway, the festivities involve dancing around a self-made maypole decked in greens and flowers, like this one at Trevor and Malin's house: The dancing is done to songs called things like "3 small frogs" and involves hopping around saying "oink oink" and the like. In other words, it's hardly somber.And then of course there's the food and booze. After pigging out on strawberries and cream at Trevor and Malin's in the afternoon, we went to Ulf's house (a colleague of Adrian's) for a delicious meal that included various pickled herrings, boiled potatoes, cheese tarts, fruit, crispbread, meatballs, and, of course, schnaps (note the bowl of mini bottles in the picture below). Ulf made one traditional dish that is done in a cake pan and is a layered concoction of crushed brown bread topped with sweet pickled herring, onions and sour cream. Kind of odd and tasty at once.
Ulf has a gorgeous big yard, and Ava, Julian and Priya spent most of the evening wandering around exploring the bushes and eating cheese doodles. After we left around 8pm I think the party went on until 3 or 4am and involved lots more schnaps, which I'm told is pretty standard for midsommar gatherings. It was great to be part of a really Swedish tradition and get the inside scoop, even if we were in bed before everyone else.

Ode to Nothing

Funny that all this sunny weather has got me thinking about all that's happened over the past year. I suppose it's because our first months in Sweden were so gorgeous that the weather has brought me back to the beginning of our time here. One reflection that I keep coming back to is how moving abroad, even somewhere as organized and safe as Sweden, makes you revert to a childlike state of not knowing. You don't know the language, how to get around town, the process for getting your kids in school, where to get your haircut, why everyone wears leggings all the time, etc. And there's beauty in not knowing because you get to challenge your assumptions about the way the world works because now if I do A and B it leads to D, not C. Hunh?? It's also very humbling because you sound like a big dork a lot of the time in the new language and you're always doing something culturally "wrong" - like getting angry at the bank teller or yelling too loudly at the park.

As someone who very much prefers to be right, being wrong a lot has been a good thing and has kind of shaken me back to being a nicer, more accepting person (I think). Adrian is always nice and humble so I haven't seen much of a change in him, bless him, but I have certainly seen the change in myself. So this is a mini ode to knowing nothing. I guess there's something to that Zen koan "only don't know" after all.

Graphic recording gig

Trevor and I spent a hectic but fun day working with a client near Gothenburg doing some future visioning sessions. He facilitated and I did the graphic recording for each session and then merged the output of those sessions into a single large poster (about 9-ft long). There were a couple of moments when the groups were talking about surgical techniques for implanting bone-anchored hearing solutions and kept using words like transcutaneous and osseointegration where I thought the world might end, but it turned out OK. The result is the (very badly lit) picture above. Happily the CEO was in one session and various marketing directors from around the world and they dug the graphic aspect of the workshop, so that was a good reminder to me that visual facilitation is loved by one and all.

My package is bigger than yours

Among the expat community there's much talk of your "package" i.e. what the company pays for or doesn't pay for while you're on assignment. For many expats, being abroad is a great financial deal because the companies pay for their housing, car leasing, school fees, language instruction for the whole family and various other goodies (career coaches, per diems, flights home, etc.). So imagine you had no mortgage, no car payments, free schools, no health insurance costs because those are covered by the state anyway, a really nice salary, and possibly a lower tax bracket than your local colleagues because you get the expat tax break. You're just awash in kronor. The joy! I think this is what people imagine when they hear the term "expat" -- visions of flash cars and cash and stay-at-home moms, no?

Then of course there are those of us on local contracts who pay for everything just like the locals and manage to just about break even every month. We got a lot of help with our move, of course, (which cost our friends down the street $30,000 out of pocket when they moved from Arizona), but there's no extras from the company and we're still duking it out with the tax office for the expat tax break. So the benefits of being expats for us are the cultural and personal ones, not the financial ones. And that's just fine. We sure hope Ava and Julian like their public colleges! ;)

Graduations

'Tis the season for graduations. Ava and Julian both had graduation ceremonies last week from their Lion and Bunny classes. The ceremonies included a slide presentation of cute pictures from the year, the handing out of diplomas, and eating copious amounts of salty and sweet snacks in quick succession. It turns out Ava's teacher Shea, otherwise known in our house as Ava's Soulmate From a Past Life (on the right in the picture below), will be her teacher again next year in the Dolphin class, so we are thrilled for both of them. Julian will in fact be a Bunny again next year with the same teachers he had this year, so I'm not sure what the diploma is all about, but he dug the ceremony in any event. Or maybe it was just those weird marshmallow sticks he dug? I had a little graduation of my own (involved a very large and tasty latte and a cookie) after passing the final test for my SAS-G (stands for Swedish as a Second Language, Basic level) Swedish class. This stunning achievement means that I can start with the next level course (also free and subsidized by the government, by the way) in the Fall.

And finally, high school students throughout town have been doing their annual ritual of celebrating their graduation by riding around on flatbed trucks decorated with birch branches screaming at the top of their lungs while dance music blares from huge speakers. All of this must be done wearing sailor-style hats specially crafted for these graduation festivities and as much white as possible. Julian loves these trucks and every time he sees one says "more truck people Mama!"