kareina

In Sweden, the first of May is a holiday—spring is a big deal in countries where they have real winter. However, Sweden, being Sweden, since the holiday is the 1st, they celebrate on the 30th of April (they do that at Christmas, too—with the parties and Christmas dinner all happening on Christmas Eve). So, how do they celebrate spring here? Bonfires! Lots of them (do an google image search for "valborg"). The official celebration at the university involves a huge bonfire—the stack of wood they had set up and ready to burn was way taller than I am. It also has an official entertainment program. Our choir (which is a “student” choir for the university, but one needn’t be a student to participate) was the opening act.

Therefore, after a busy day working from home on my part (and getting caught up on laundry in between doing stuff on the computer) we headed into Uni around 17:00 to join the rest of the choir in one last rehearsal and warm-up session, and just before 18:00 we went outside to perform. Had we done this last week it would have been sunny and warm (daytime temps of +10 C (~ 50 F) or so), but yesterday was rainy during the day, and overcast for the performance, with temps only just above freezing. Despite the less than ideal conditions we still had an audience that was larger than the choir (and since we are up to five to eight people per voice these days, our choir is a fairly decent size), and we all enjoyed it—it was fun to sing, and our friends in the crowd said we sounded good.

After our performance we hung around to chat with folks for a bit, and then we returned home with a couple of friends from choir. They have bikes, so they followed us (we had driven in, since we weren’t done with dinner till after it would have been time to start biking). I also wanted a bit of exercise, but didn’t think I could spare the full 45 minutes it would have taken to walk home, so instead I had him drop me off on the side of the road when we were most of the way home, and did a nice 14 minute walk, which got me there only a minute or two before our friends arrived.

Our left-hand neighbours had their bonfire going when we got home (the right hand neighbours had done theirs before we left to go to uni), so we four went out to join them for a bit. I am pleased to report that I was able to participate in conversations in Swedish, and only had to fall back on English words twice while hanging out with them.

Then we went inside and fed our guests some fika (in this case sandwhiches, fruit, nuts, banana muffins (which I had put in the freezer after baking them as the batch was too big to eat at once) and cookies (which I had baked a week or so back, but which keep well). Since we were sitting around the table chatting, I took that opportunity to make my version of hais, which uses a much lower proportion of bread crumbs than the original (but always home-baked bread for the source of the crumbs), and more different types of nuts and dried fruit in addition to the ones mentioned in the provided link. I also never roll mine in sugar—it is better without.

Neither girl had seen this sort of food before, and they happily helped with the grinding (I used an old fashioned hand-crank meat grinder, since our food processor is broken, and we don’t have a mortar and pestle large enough to make this.) and sampling of the finished product. After that we retired to the basement, where we watched a Monty Python movie I had never heard of before—Yellowbeard, and I made some good progress sewing on my new undertunic. (I am so looking forward to wearing this tunic—it is a very soft white linen woven in a herringbone twill pattern.)


Since I had had such a low energy day on Monday, but felt fairly good when I woke up on Tuesday, I opted to start that day with a quick run. The forest path is still not really a pleasant option, since the snow remaining on it gives it the texture of soft beach sand, but there are wet patches in addition. Therefore I opted to just run to the end of our road (which is a dirt road) and back—only 13 minutes, but since this was the second time I have run at all since autumn, I am ok with that. This morning I woke up thinking of projects, and nearly started my day with sewing. But, when I went to get dressed, I saw yesterday’s running clothes hanging on the hook, and that inspired me to do it again. Today I did it in 12 minutes. Granted, my phone log keeping app doesn’t do fractions of a minute, therefore I have no idea if the change in time from yesterday is 60 seconds, or not quite two minutes (since I don’t know if yesterday was 13 min, 59 seconds, or 13 min zero seconds, or something in between).

Since today is a holiday lord_kjar and I will devote much of our day to projects, but right now "we" are filing my taxes (which are due by tomorrow). Which is to say he is dealing with the Swedish web form on his computer and I am providing moral support sitting next to him and keeping him company. That process is nearly done, so it is time to close this and get going with my day.