Work continued

I've gone from having no paid work to having a number of interesting projects on the horizon, including:

• An open workshop I designed and am promoting called Understanding Cultural Differences (primarily for expats)
• A team-building retreat for a large pharmaceutical company
• Translating a 2-day marketing course into web-based modules and then delivering them to the Indian partners of a large software company
• A graphic recording gig at a medical device company
• A cultural understanding workshop for a Swedish team at a pharmaceutical company looking to improve their relationship with their American counterparts

The open workshop has been pretty interesting because I've never had to promote a course to the public before. I've been working through the relocation companies in town, a number of international networking groups, the consulates, the international schools, and my friends ... and I still only have 4 seats filled. But it's not until April 20, so I'm crossing my fingers. Whether it's 4 or 10 people, it's great experience in making use of my network to promote my work -- all good learning for the future. Oh, and doesn't the gig with the Swedish team who can't understand their loud American teammates sound fun?!

Sunday afternoon

Sunday afternoon courtesy of Dave and Stephanie and generously supported by chili, red wine and toy cars.

Spring

A week ago I started a post about Spring. We had a few days of really beautiful blue skies and warmer weather and the heads of purple and yellow flowers started peeking up here and there out of the brown landscape. The kids were actually able to spend the afternoon outside without snowsuits (hallelujah!).And then it snowed. Spring is a fickle thing and it's been toying with our emotions these past few weeks, giving us one day here and there of beautiful, warm-ish weather, and then descending into gray, nearly freezing territory the next day. But on the whole there's a wonderful feeling of speeding toward Spring and, inevitably, Summer now. Restaurants have started setting up the frames of their outdoor eating areas they disassembled in September; stores on the Avenue now feature halter-top dresses and slip-on shoes; the hot dog guy is back in Slottskogen on the weekends; and our favorite ice cream stand appeared again outside the library this week (it's empty, but it's progress). Yes, the promise of warm weather (and getting rid of the down coat I've worn every day since November) is definitely in the air.

Natural History Museum

Ava's reaction to this crazy-looking animal at Göteborg's Natural History Museum was about the same as mine: "Yuck." I mean, really, you could have nightmares. Luckily, the rest of the museum is not nearly so yicky and in fact is really old school cool, complete with dark wood paneling and lots of large stuffed animals in glass boxes with signs that read: "Brown bear. Canada. Shot by Hans Hansson 1905. Prepared by Lars Larsson." Both of the kids really enjoyed it. Julian kept running around pointing and shouting things like "moo cow!" "big neigh!" and "big wow whale!" while Ava patiently explained that the moo cow was actually a bison and the big neigh was some sort of deer. The "Malm" Whale (so called because it was discovered beached south of Göteborg in 1865 by a guy named Malm) they have have on display is sort of a big-wow-whale moment, so there was little debate there.

My favorite nationality is ...

Dutch! Yes, I've decided the Dutch are the most fun, friendly, outgoing and pleasant people on the planet. Merel is fantastic of course, but so is my buddy Dineke from Swedish class, and my new friend Ans, a Mom from Ava and Julian's school who, happily, has a daughter in Ava's class and a son in Julian's class.

Now it could be that I really only like Dutch people who have moved to Sweden, but I prefer to think that there's a whole country of fabulous, optimistic and energetic people just a short plane ride away. Forget joining the circus, maybe I'll run away and become Dutch. I could just speak a mixture of German, English and Swedish and maybe they'd never know.

Cleaning

I have been giving some thought lately to the very important issue of cleanliness. Well, it's actually not that important to me (bring on the germs people!), but it appears to be VERY important to the Swedes. When noted cross-culturalist Richard Lewis surveyed a bunch of Swedes for his book "When Cultures Collide" about their cultural values, "cleanliness" was up there with honesty, tolerance and equality. (I just noticed that Lewis didn't include any values in his section on the United States. Nice.)

Cleanliness seems to be particularly important to Swedish women over the age of about 40. Or rather, the act of cleaning seems to be important. Merel tells me she knows a number of Swedish women with high-paying jobs who spend their Sundays cleaning the house. We're talking cleaning, not straightening up for the week. How many female directors in the U.S. or Britain do you think there are who scrub their own kitchen floors? And Karin says women who do pay someone to clean their house would prefer than no one knew, especially not their mothers or grandmothers.

How to explain all this self-mopping? Well, it's got to be connected to what the Scandinavians call the Jante Law. The Jante Law (Jantelagen in Swedish anyway) is a phrase coined by Danish author Akzel Sandermose in 1933 to describe the egalitarian/restrictive pressures of small-town life in Scandinavia. Briefly, the tenants of the Jante Law are:

• Don't think that you are special
  
• Don't think you're better than anyone else
  
• Don't think you're smarter than anyone else
• Don't think you'll amount to anything
  

Chipper, right? Don't you read those and wish you could live in small-town Sweden in 1930? But my real point is that it's not a huge leap to read between the lines and see this other tenant:

• Wash your floors yourself, missy
  

Frankly the Jante Law thing gives me the heeby-geebies, and not just because I really, really hate mopping. It's my rah-rah-individualist-American value poking up his head and going "No way Jose!!" Interesting, I didn't really even know he was there.

Scrappare

Ava and I went to a scrapbooking convention this weekend. Yes, Sweden has scrapbookers, and apparently lots of them, if the convention was any indication. Ava got her first scrapbook from my Mom for her birthday (just 4 and already a scrapbooker -- I'm so proud) and she's enjoying it. I get the sense that for her it's all about the glue stick, but hey, it's a start. For the convention I gave her 100 SEK to spend (about $12) and she picked out some truly hideous paper and a bunch of very pink, shiny, letters and jewel things. The page she did last night of a picture of herself and her cousins Victoria and Anna was ... eye-catching. I restrained myself and picked up some paper, some letter stickers, and some cool bird cut-outs, all of which Ava has been eying. Maybe passing on my nerdy hobby wasn't such a good idea after all?