kareina

Yesterday, for the first time since I started reading/listening to Gösta Berlings saga, I opted not to do the reading/listening first thing when I sat down to the computer, but instead chose to work first on my report, which is finally getting close to done. I managed to get it to the point of sending a draft off to my colleague at the mine around the same time lord_kjar got home from work, so I turned off the computer and we went off to his parent's house because his mother needed some computer help, and we hadn't seen them in a while. After we had been driving about 20 minutes I realized that I hadn't done my reading, and hadn't thought to bring the book. Oops.

We had a nice visit, but didn't start home till around midnight, so I didn't make it to bed till after 1, and was not feeling in any shape to drive across town for my SFI course when the alarm went off this morning. So I decided to stay home. Today's course is "Hör", where we listen to a recorded conversation and then answer questions about it. Therefore I decided to create my own course from my reading/listening. First I just sat down and listened to the last part of the chapter I had been in the middle of reading the day before. Then I found a copy of the book on line and opened it to that chapter (10) and started reading it again from the beginning. This time, however, instead of just listening/reading straight through I paused often to copy-paste words I didn't know into a Word document and look them up in an on-line dictionary, and at each major plot point in the story, I wrote a question in Swedish about what was happening, and then answered it. When I was done with the chapter I then wrote a short summary of it, and finally emailed the lot to my teacher. Total time elapsed for all of this: 4 hours, 37 minutes! But I am quite confidant that I understand this chapter!

For your amusement, here follows all of that homework, in Swedish. (If you can't read Swedish, google translate does a tolerable job with this--I know because I used it to check for (and eliminate) places where I had typed a similar word to the one I actually wanted.)

( Kapitel 10 Unga grevinnan )

This week my Swedish class is up to the chapter in the text book which focuses on restaurants and menus. Therefore our teacher assigned us the homework to write up a menu, in Swedish, including at least three each of appetizers, main dishes, deserts, plus five beverages. and descriptions for each item. She suggested even adding prices, but I am so not a restaurant person, so I did my own thing and wrote up some typical foods I eat. Note that I normally eat fruit salad that is only fruit--the almonds and cream are added for special occasion deserts only.

( typical Kareina Food )

I think the hardest part was coming up with five beverages I would drink; I normally just drink water. But I do, sometimes, drink herbal teas, when I happen to be visiting someone who drinks tea or coffee, or if I am hosting such a person--I rarely remember to bother making any otherwise. I don't normally go for bubbly water, but that is the norm here, so when I am visiting others it is easier to just drink it with the gas rather than asking for special treatment. I do like fresh orange juice, but only drink it once every few years...