Bunnies and Lions

Yesterday Julian became a Bunny. He joined the Bunny classroom at ABC Preschool, the same school where Ava is a Lion. The classes are divided by the year the children were born (i.e. all 2005 kids together, all 2006 kids, etc.), and I suppose "Lions" sounds better than "2005 room." For some reason the Bunnies are comprised of kids born in 2006 and 2007. Not sure why they have the biggest age range for the kids where the age range makes the most difference ... and I'm not even going to ask. I think the answer would be something like: it just IS that way. And it's the BEST way, because it is that way. This, in my admittedly still limited experience, is the dark side of "the Swedish way." It's sort of an unquestioning commitment to the way things are done, regardless of your opinion of it.

I'm beginning to understand why Swedish women are ranked as the most trendy in the world -- in the literal sense that they follow the fashion trends like lemmings running off a cliff. Sometimes I feel like a telegram was hand-delivered to every woman in Sweden reading:

Skinny jeans and black boots still in. Stop. Huge scarves to be added to wardrobe, preferably in white. Stop. Keep wearing black and gray everywhere else unless forced by foreigner to do otherwise. Stop.

And God help me, today I wore exactly that!

End of school blues

Ava and Julian had their last day of school of the Fall term on Friday and don't go back until January 7. ABC (Ava's school) had a little party for the parents a week ago (see pic above). Good thing they decided to do it a bit early, because shortly thereafter a vomiting epidemic broke out at the school and all but closed it down for the remaining 5 days. At one point 9 teachers were out and Ava was one of about 30 kids at the school, which usually houses 92. We thought Ava and Julian had escaped, but on Friday Julian started puking and last night the barfing came a knockin' on Ava's door ... at 2am, 3am, 4am, 5am ... you get the idea. Unluckily for us, the laundry room is booked until the 24th, so we have a huge pile of barfy laundry just sitting in the corner of our room. Merry Christmas!!

On a positive note, we got word that Julian has a spot at ABC beginning in February. The only reason we got a coveted 1-year-old spot was because the school is expanding and decided to add 2 more classes for the littlest pupils. Ava is a "Lion" and Julian will soon be either a "Panda" or a "Bunny." I'm pulling for Panda. Much cooler than Bunnies for sure.

In-Schooling and other good stuff

I have three pieces of good news to report. First, the kids started in-schooling yesterday, which is the process of getting them used to going to school. Both of them start with one hour at school with mom or dad, then work up to a full day over the course of two weeks. So civilized. And might I note that people get paid time off for this here. Extra civilized. Since Ava and J are at different schools I've been going with J and Adrian's been taking Ava. Today Ava "threw a party" in the play kitchen at school and invited all the other kids. I don't know WHERE she gets it. Must be Adrian.

Here's Ava heading out to her first day at ABC Preschool:

And here's what happened to the school after Julian's first day:

No no, just kidding. This is the view from our front balcony of a building on our street that caught fire Sunday night. We woke up to plumes of smoke and the kids went to school smelling like BBQ. No one was hurt in the fire, luckily.

The second piece of good news is that I have had a good response to my hi-I'm-Nevada-from-SF-and-I'm-a-facilitator-and-might-you-have-work-for-me emails. I'm meeting with the heads of a facilitation and training company with offices in Gothenburg and Birmingham on Friday to see about working together and I'm having coffee next week with a woman who runs a small consulting business here in town as well.

And finally, I've finally been assigned a Svenska for Invandare (Swedish for Immigrants) spot. These are the free Swedish classes offered by the state to all immigrants (that's me!). I'll start prataring Svenska 3 hours/day on August 18.

Preschools

I'm thriiiiiiiiilled today because I've just gotten the final word that we have preschool spots for both Julian and Ava beginning August 4. Julian will go to the International Preschool in Guldheden (close to where we'll hopefully be living) and Ava will go to ABC Preschool right by Adrian's work. Both schools are wonderful -- I'm totally impressed by the facilities, teachers and curriculum -- and I feel totally lucky to have secured spots. Both schools have waitlists, but had some last-minute drop-outs, so we got those spots. Because they are considered "private" schools (though they get state funding and are basically free) we have a lot of flexibility in the hours the kids will go (any time betwen 7am and 6pm). The state schools would probably only give us 15 hours/week per kid because I'm not working. So this is huge because it means I can take on facilitation or other work projects if they come up, on top of taking Swedish classes. Hurray!