Here we go~ 15 December 2009

Been a busy month or two but here’s what photographic evidence exists…

Early snow but it’s been warm since then. It snows fairly often but never enough to stick.

We threw together a last minute Thanksgiving in three hours! Only two Americans but we all got stuffed in the traditional style!

Made more tofu. Mwahaha. May be getting a soy milk machine to make it even easier.

Ponies!

Mistletoe for sale at the Julmarknad (Christmas market)

Hi Yuki!

The Fyris river which candles and all.

Decorations in the central square, Stora Torget

Lots of cold misty nights. Though, actually, that’s at 2 pm–so not night after all.

Yuki took a picture of our thermometer–I told him to just wait and see; it’ll surely get lower yet.

My SFI class went on a field trip to Stockholm! Hej!

We acted like tourists a bit. Isn’t he just adorable?

Toured Riksdagshuset and watched the parliament (hardly anyone even there…)

Did a bit of Christmas shopping!

More decorations and more Julmarknad: this time in Stockholm.

Ljusstake everywhere! We have ours up in our window at home, of course, but there was even one on here on the bus we took from Stockholm!

And of course we just passed Lucia!  Listen to some Lucia songs here!

Things have been going pretty well! I’ve been picking up some interesting translation jobs and enjoying my writing as well. SFI continues to chug forward; I still only understand 50-60% of what the teacher says but I’m moving on to the next level anyway it seems. I passed the national exam, so from January I’ll be in the D-class. We are headed to Seattle in two days and looking forward to visiting the States, buying up a whole suitcase of supplies at Uwajimaya’s, and getting to take it easy for at least a bit! Hopefully by the time we get back, Yuki will have decided on his dissertation topic, I will be all ready for the D course at SFI, and we will have a suitcase full of Japanese goodies to keep up going for a while!

A lapp in the face 7 November 2009

Life continues in Sweden. I am doing by best to  catch up in Swedish class, since my group is set to take the C level exam at the end of this month, and I have been watching  the news and reading articles as much as I can stomach. Which is how I came upon the happy news that the Nordiska Museet (Nordic Museum) in Stockholm is doing an exhibition on laundry rooms. This might not sound like the thrill of a lifetime, but it is pretty damned amusing because Swedes Take Laundry Seriously. If you live in any sort of shared building, as 42% percent of the country does, then you know the joys of the tvättstuga. This shared washing room must be booked in advance and any violation of the tvättstuga rules will land you in hot water with your neighbors. Forgot your laundry in the machine? Went over your time by twenty minutes? Left lint on the floor? Well, you might just be the lucky recepient of a lapp, a scrap of paper with an angry note left on it. They are showing a collection of them at the museum and since I won’t likely be making the trip down to Stockholm any time soon, I satisfied myself with a quick google image search. Here are a couple of examples with my bad translations (could be wrong — I’ve only been studying for three weeks, after all).

You who took my washing time, move out!

If Britta P. reads the rules maybe she can learn to book one slot at a time!

Why are you doing your washing at my time, 1700  on June 22?

Can you not read? Remove your laundry by 1745

Note! The clothes on the floor are not mine. My clothes are only those in the drying closet. Because you had not come by 1500, I started the machine to dry my clothes and dried my  clothes until 1600. Then I left the door unlocked. Next time grow some balls and open the door. I would like to talk to you about what is going on.

Bloody steal my time, will you! There was one time booked all day (MINE!) and still you have to take it?

Because I had to stop and empty your machines I will take an extra 30 minutes in the drying closet and the drying machine.

Haha, angry Swedes. So far we haven’t received any angry notes in our building, thank goodness. We’ve been doing our best to follow the rules. Otherwise, life continues. It’s been snowing a lot more again–but it never sticks. Been pursuing job opportunities and watching others slip away. I’ve avoided mentioning it but I got the opportunity to do a translation trial for a company that I’ve dreamed of working for since I was in high school. I did not ace it. I did not even squeak by. No, I bunged it up well and good. I moped around for a few days and finally let myself just cry about it, and since then I’ve been slowly getting over it. Perhaps I can try again in a year or two, when the horrible details of my oh-so-less-than-stellar translation may have faded from their memories.

I never want to admit how much something means to me because that just opens the door to pain and loss and ridicule, but every now and then, I have to swallow my pride and admit that I really do care about something. I really wanted that job. It was one of the few dreams that I have had in my life. I’m not the sort of person who has always had some dream, like “I want to be a doctor” or “I want to fight for justice” or whatever. Sure, when I was a little kid, I wanted to be veterinarian (I’d read every James Herriot book by the time I was ten) but then developing allergies to cats, dogs, horses, and birds and five years of unsuccessful allergy shots put a stop to that. Then when I was a student, I thought I wanted to work in publishing. I really would have liked to design book covers because–say what you will–people do judge a book by its cover. It would have combined my love of reading, books, art, and design. But I never trusted that I could be successful in art and I figured I would have to give up on my dream of working in publishing because I was never going to live in New York or even London. Now the only two dreams that I still have are to write my own books and to translate the stories that I love, and I have always kept these two dreams clutched secretively to my breast, never talking about them to anyone. But I do hope that I’ll be able to accomplish even one of them someday and so it is time that I start openly pursuing them if I want to give them my all.

My best friend just had her first child. Yes, she has simply done something that most humans in history have, but at the same time she has created something that no one else ever could have. I just have to keep reminding myself that losing one dream is not the end of everything. Some things are still just beginning.

Stockholm! 1 November 2009

We had Friday off as it was the Autumnal holiday for students and so manage to actually go down to Stockholm and walk around a bit before our quarterly Japanese food dash. In addition to visiting three different Japanese stores around the town (all tiny and mostly have the same things) and running into Yuki’s Japanese mates in the process (it’s a small town), we wandered around town and through Gamla Stan. It was cold but the sky was ridiculously blue as it can only be on a freezing day and it was lovely to just be free for day. Then Saturday was back to teaching for me and today I am catching up on the four chapters of SFI that I missed by joining the class midway. Just found out that my teacher expects me to take the national exam at the end of November along with the rest of the class. So I have one month to learn what they will have learned in six months. I may not be passing it. But if not, it’s not the end of the world — will just get sorted into another ongoing class and have to meet people again. I hope that I might pass, though, because even though it would mean that I’ll continue to be tremendously behind everyone else in the next level as well, I think that the class I am in now is very good. The students are motivated and nice and everyone seems quite eager to do their best. After the stories I’ve heard about some of the other classes, I definitely want to stay in such a group. Anyway, pictures!

Uppsala Station (from the one side that it actually looks like a station. On the other side, it’s hardly more than a shed.)

Sweden (or at least around me) looks so much like Washington that I seriously have difficulty thinking that it is a different country.

Except that they have nice and relatively modern trains that don’t even smell of urine. (We were very tickled by this little private room in the middle of the carriage. Wouldn’t that just be lovely to share with a group of friends or family on a nice train journey?)

Here is Stockholm (in stone). We spent most of the day on the middle island of Gamla Stan, as well as hiking up a bit through the southern part of the city, Sodermalm, and going back up in the northernly Norrmalm, to visit our Japanese grocers.

Yuki blocking the door at the Stadshuset or City Hall.

Look at the sea!

Look at that SKY. No photoshopping: the trees were really that gold and the sky was really that blue.

There were lovely little details all over, but I’ll have to settle for just a few in this post.

Stockholm is of course built on a series of islands, big and small. How about this one? One tiny island with a single building on it. It is an international agency for promoting democracy and it seems inappropriately amusing to me that democracy is so marooned all alone out in the middle of the sea.

Yuki exclaimed, “Take a picture! It looks so… European!”

The royal castle — from the outside, of course. We did pay to go in anywhere, but we enjoyed just walking around and looking at all the different architecture.

At least their guards don’t have to wear anything half so silly as those in England.

My, what’s this lovely little receptacle on the road? Why, a public toilet, of course! But you don’t have to pay for this one, unlike most toilets in Sweden, so guess who was inside it while I was taking pictures from the outside? I bet you guessed correctly.

And there is the fellow himself, recreating a shot from when he first came to Stockholm ten years ago.

We searched for a place to eat and instead found a 7-11 on these ancient streets.

Eventually found a great lunch deal at Sallys in Gamla Stan. Less then 100 kronor for each of our meals! Gotta love lunch.

I was very happy to get a lovely modern interpretation of a very typisk svensk (typical swedish) meal: meatball, potatoes and lingonberries!

And just days after hearing that Starbucks will be opening its first Swedish store in Arlanda International Airport, I discover that there is already Tully’s in Stockholm! Sheesh, what was the big deal, then?

And four approached, the sun started going down, and we hiked back across the islands to get our Japanese food!

With a brief stop at the station. What’s this? Some sort of concession stand? Buying tickets for something? Well, yes, for the toilet. Generally all public toilets in Sweden will put you back at least a buck or two. Better hope you have cash or that you have a huge bladder.

But don’t worry–help is on the way.

Pratar du amerikanska? 21 October 2009

I’ve been waiting to show off my pocket Svenska-Amerikanska ordbok. Yes, of course there was a wide selection of Svenska-Engelska (Swedish-English) dictionaries at the bookstore. I could have chosen from any of one them. And I would have done, if I hadn’t stumbled across this little gem as I glanced down the shelf, looking mostly at price tags: my Svenska-Amerikanska (Swedish-American) dictionary.

How could I not buy it? How could I miss the chance to justify two hundred and forty years of bitter British bitching about the atrocity that is the American dialect of English? You were right, guys: whatever that garbled mess is that we speak, apparently it is not English. At least not according to the Swedes.

Oh yes, the point of this post: I have at last joined SFI! Svenska för invandrare, or Swedish for immigrants to you, is the free course of Swedish lessons offered by our beloved Socialist government (watch out, Republicans! they have nationalized healthcare and they are looking at you) and for the simple but misleading fact that I can read and write much more Swedish than I can speak or understand, I was placed midway through the course. Luckily I’m just the sort of sadistic type to like the immersion approach, so I’ll be sticking with it. But it may be worth mentioning that  today in class I was feeling pretty damned good if I could follow even half of what the teacher was saying. Whenever I happened to understand something, I nodded so enthusiastically that I’ve probably given the poor teacher the false impression that I’m mycket bra at Swedish and totally “got” what she was saying. At any rate, I met a lovely fellow from Uganda, his cheeky friend from the UAE and enjoyed the first three straight hours of Swedish in my life.

They did warn me that the regular teacher comes back tomorrow and she is not half as gentle. But still…! Ah, this is what I’ve always loved. Every minute of learning a new language you feel limited and stupid and frustrated with your own inability to communicate even the simplest of ideas–but every day is full of tangible, immediate accomplishments. I learned the word mes, slang for ‘wuss’ today. (Though it just took me four attempts to spell ‘wuss’ in English.) I learned to say ‘uncertain’ and ‘dishonest’ and ‘polite.’ I can see myself growing and changing every day that I struggle. For how many arenas in life can you say the same? If only someone would just pay me to learn languages. I mean, let’s be honest, that’s basically why I love being a translator, isn’t it?

But now, since I just utterly blanked on how to write the word  ‘wuss,’ I suppose it’s time to keep up on my English and Japanese, since my main chance at livelihood depends on that language pair far more than Swedish at the moment.

But a new language is always so tempting…

Noll! (Or “Zero!” for the Anglophones among the crowd) 6 October 2009

This was the sight that greeted me one gray morning last week. Autumn has come to Uppsala, though Yuki would like to call it winter. The sun is going down at six these weeks and will keep growing earlier every week until the winter solstice. We have turned on our radiators for the first time (after bleeding them, of course!) and are nice and cozy at home.

We are also, we’re happy to say, officially members of Swedish society now. Yes, indeed, we have received out person number’s, after only (!) four weeks. I went out quite immediately and got myself placed into SFI (Svenska för invandrare or Swedish for immigrants). I’ll be starting on the 19th and though I’m sure I won’t understand a bloody thing for the first couple of weeks, I am excited! I hope I might finally get to know some people in town…

We also had another cause to use our shiny new person numbers, unfortunately. Yuki broke (or re-broke, I guess I should say) one of his front teeth and so had to be to the dentists. Who promptly told him that he needed to have immediate work down on about eight other teeth, as well. We weren’t surprised, since Yuki had been told the same thing back in Japan — where fillings cost about 2000 yen or 2o dollars a piece, with national insurance. But guess who never got around to having his fillings done and so now is paying over a hundred dollars a piece?

Well, at least we got one filling done and the broken tooth repaired so far. We are waiting on the rest, as we’ll need to pace them out over several months. Or more. Still, Yuki is happy to no longer look like a hillbilly with one of his front teeth half-missing, I am continuing to teach my little online classes and sniff out translation opportunities, and life goes on.

Silver Week 23 September 2009

Apparently Japan has decided that it still doesn’t have quite enough holidays and it’s gone and thrown in the new “Silver Week.” Of course, it is a play off of the long holiday “Golden Week” back in May. This now brings Japan up to four long holidays a year: o-bon in August, new years in January, GW in May and SW in September. And people are still miserable! The people in charge just keep throwing vacations and stimulus packages and child perks at people and can’t seem to figure out why none of it works.

On the other hand, things seem to be going quite well over here in Sweden. Of course, it is no holiday here. Yuki got back from research last week, I promptly got a head cold, and then it was back to school and business for us. Still no personnummer (the Swedish sort of social security number) though we did at last manage to get cell phones. And everywhere you look people are out on the streets, taking their babies out for a stroll, shopping and relaxing on the high street, stopping for coffee and sweets at their favorite fika spot, or just sitting by the river and enjoying life.

People seem so happy here that it is almost confusing, after living in a high-stress society like Japan. We’re thinking we could get used to this.

Now back to job applications.

Min kulturdag 14 September 2009

So Saturday was Kulternatten, or culture night, here in Uppsala. I didn’t go out for any of the night things since I felt bad going without Yuki (who is still away on research). But I did sneak out a bit during the day, ostensibly to run some errands. Since there were so many people around doing so many strange things, I didn’t feel as embarrassed as usual to pull out the ol’ Canon and act like a tourist. So here’s a bit of our fair town:

It is very much a typical old European town in most places. Lots of tables and chairs waiting for the fika rush.

The cathedral: our main claim to fame and the largest in Scandinavia. Makes a good landmark when lost.

While wandering around looking for an elusive, larger ICA that was supposed to be in the area, I came across a lovely graveyard. It may sound a bit morbid, but I really enjoy graveyards. They are so quiet and peaceful and somehow thinking about all the lives around me helps me to remember that whatever problems I’m having are only temporary.

The graves are also often lovely. A great many were family graves, which I didn’t realize they did here. I also saw many of the more recent graves that had the deceased name engraved in their own handwriting (presumably). I thought that was a lovely — though thoroughly modern — touch. Signatures do seem to show a lot of a persons character.

All in all, I enjoyed my little stroll… but I do wish I had some company.

Two more days.

To-fu or not to-fu? 9 September 2009

Well, the unpacking is getting along, our apartment is definitely looking more lived in, and Yuki is off for a week doing research in the wilds. That leaves me to finish an essay and a translation, finish cleaning, get his birthday sorted, and experiment. Which leads me to the retelling of my great tofu adventure. But I won’t talk about it here, as I know not everyone is as amused as I but strange things happening in the kitchen. Instead I’ve started a cooking blog where I can go on all I want. Pop on by, if you’d like to hear about my utter tofu failure.

Now back to work!

Luck foils me again 2 September 2009

Jill here.

Now I can finally post, before everything goes to hell tomorrow. We have just got word that our thirty-three boxes that we sent from Japan via container will be arriving tomorrow. Unfortunately, we just also got word that the delivery service that we are paying for will only deliver to the apartment building’s front door. No further. Which means that I will be carrying thirty-three not-light boxes up four flights of stairs by myself. Yuki will be in class all day, of course.

The work doesn’t really faze me at all. If I could spend all day doing it at my own pace, it would be nothing but a good excuse to exercise. But I know I will feel rushed and harried, because if any of the occupants of the ten other apartments (it’s a small building) arrive home or go out, I will be mortally embarrassed to have blocked the entire teeny tiny foyer with my 1.5 cubic meters of possessions. I’m cursing the bloody delivery service because, if you ask me, that’s no service at all. I’m also afraid that they’re going to have to leave things standing out on the pavement, because I really don’t think there’s enough space in that little foyer, and one of the neighbors normally parks her baby stroller there as well. Then I’ll have to rush, be embarrassed, and worry about my things being stolen. So tomorrow is going to be nuts and then I’ll be unpacking boxes for days on end, so this is my last chance for a while to update things.

And why not?

Sweden continues to full of surprises, some good and some not so good (like the shoddy shipping company). It is always the best thing about living in different countries, though, I think: to explore all the funny little surprises of things that you never once thought anyone would make or do, which are completely normal to the people who use or do them. For example, these little ice cube bags. It took me a moment to figure out what they were for, but looking at the little pictures on the back of the box cleared it up immediately. They are plastic bags for making ice cubes. Each bag is a big flat rectangle, which has been stamped to make little individual squares. You pour water in the top and it runs through tiny holes between each of the squares to fill the whole bag. Then you freeze the whole lot and when you need your ice cubes, just pop open the bag and break them apart. Now to me, ice-cube trays have been around for a long time, so who would think of making little disposable bags to do the same work? I don’t know, but someone obviously has. And no, I did not buy these little curiosities — they were left by the previous tenant.

In fact, I’m not up to buying much of anything. Because we bought far too much at first. We were feeling fairly confident in our financial situation, as we went out and bought what seemed like just the necessary things at IKEA and at electronics store, but we soon after discovered that the exchange rate had changed and not in our favor. Now we are buying only the cheapest foods, but even those are tremendous. We got a big pack of six chicken breasts, trying to save in bulk, and they still cost 110 kroner, or about 16 dollars — and that was the cheapest chicken in the store. That’s quite dear for plain old chicken breasts. We’re going to be eating a lot less meat — we split one chicken breast or pork chop or whatever between the two of us for dinners — and are going to try supplementing with other protein sources. The eggs are a bit more affordable, but only a bit. Thought we might be able to eat tofu, but it’s 40 kroner (6-7 dollars) for one little block, which is not even a whole chou (the standard measurement for tofu). I’m looking into making our own tofu, but I need to price soy beans and soy milk at the store to see if it’s feasible. It couldn’t be worse than the hard, chewy stuffy that they are selling as tofu.

Now you see, eh?

So we’re going to be a bit more frugal than planned, from here on out, and bit more desperate for me to start finding some work. But it’ll wait until at least next week, as I have unpack all of our thirty-three boxes and organize everything first. Yuki is utterly swamped with school, so he’ll be no help. He has class from 10 to 5 most days and 8 to 5 a couple of days each week, and once he gets home he is stuck reading textbooks and articles. I can hardly ask him to go through boxes, when I’m the one with all the free time. So once that is over with, I’ll get back on the job hunt — and hopefully into some Swedish lessons.

Until then, keep your fingers crossed for me. Our streak of bad luck has been exhausting — injuries, illnesses, slights from friends, no bonus for Yuki (the withholding of which is technically illegal), having to pay his municipal taxes even though we don’t live in Japan any longer, our visa applications going missing at Migrationsverket, our last minute dash to get visas in LA two days before flying out of the country, flights being delayed, canceled, and full of poor service, missing important meetings with friends and family that may never come again, the exchange rate going south, being confounded at every turn… it’s too much to think about at times. We used to joke that we used up all of our good luck for Yuki to get into grad school, but it doesn’t really feel like a joke anymore. So please, please let our bad luck finally be exhausted and let us find a way to live and work in this country for the next two years.

From sleepless in Seattle… 30 August 2009

…to sick in Sweden.

Jill here.

In Sweden.

And sick.

Got tremendously ill my first week — in fact, by the end of my first whole day — in Sweden. Not surprisingly, considering the sheer amount of traveling we’ve done in the past four weeks. So after wasting away for two days without eating, I fought down my nausea and stumbled off to the nearby ICA to scavenge some food. I saw the red and white striped can and I was sold! Campbell’s Chicken Soup! Or kycklingsoppa, if you will. It’s definitely not the classic, American chicken noodle soup, but it was the first thing I ate and it was beautiful. (Though when I ate the rest of it, the next morning and no longer maddened by deprivation, I realized that it really wasn’t all that good.) I am almost perfectly recovered now so I will try to post up more about our recent nightmarish travels (12 flights, 7 countries, more cockups than you could shake a stick at) when I get a free breath in between unpacking and setting up our new life!

Oh, and finding a source of income, AKA a job…