swedishdreams.blogg.se

Hi guys!

 

As much as I want this to be just another update on my every day life here in Sweden, it won't be. I would LOVE to catch up on everything that I have fallen behind on. But I decided today that it's not worth the energy. I think about blogging every day but don't do it. I want every update to be perfect and include all of the things that happened and if I don't have the energy to write all of that down, then I just don't do it all. Hence why it can go long periods of time without any updates ;) I am going to take a break from the blog up until when Nick comes to Sweden in 11 days (yaaay!). After all, the main reason for why you guys are reading this blog is probably to follow our life journey.

 

To give an update on what's been going on in the last month. I have a lot of free time since I am not booked as sub teacher so much during summer time. I finally could afford a gym membership and love going there with Sofie. I have bought a wedding dress and wedding shoes for mine and Nick's short ceremony this fall, whenever that will be :) Regarding the visa process. We have been terribly nervous about whether or not our new evidence would be approved or not. Nick called them about a month after we had sent the evidence and they told him that they had just opened up our case again yesterday. Basically we would get a letter within 30 days with the verdict!! Scary! But Nick called me a few days later at 1am, waking me up, telling me that our case had been approved. He had tears of joy in his eyes and I was in a "Huh? Wait what?" mode. It took me a while to realize that it wasn't just a dream :D Now the National Visa Center will go through some things, then send it to the U.S. embassy in Sweden and then I will go to my interview.

 

We celebrated Midsummers with pouring down rain! Ugh, such a bummer. My last Midsummer in a long time and I didn't even see a Midsummer's pole. I was looking forward to dancing around it for once, haven't done that since I was a kid. Although we did have a wonderful celebration and danced around our own Midsummer's pole at a preschool that I worked at for two weeks. I really miss the kids that I worked with for two months at the other preschool, they all climbed over in me in one big pile and hugged me and told me how much they loved me when I said good bye <3 On my last day there I was the only person responsible for them and had to take care of everything, together with some other sub teachers. It was great getting that leadership but I wish I hadn't been sick!

 

The bad weather just kept on coming. I can imagine the city festival lost a lot of money because of that this year. Seemed like a lot of people stayed at home instead. But the first night was amazing! Me and Jasmine went to the big stage to see Hardcore Superstar. They kicked ass like always. Afterwards Backyard Babies played and none of us had ever checked out their music so we gave them a shot. And WOW! We were blown away. I am a huge fan of their band now. Great live! Power Meet was just a few days later but that too was also whiped away with rain. At least the big parade on the last day, which is usually the big crowd pleaser. I was getting really sad about all of this rain because I felt like it was ruining everything that I had been looking forward to doing one last time before moving to California.

 

Me and Sofie decided to celebrate the 4th of July on our own, haha! Obviously it's not normal to celebrate it in Sweden but since I am practically half American now we thought it was a good excuse to party ;) it ended with us having a good old time on her balcony for hours and then taking the bus downtown to Oleary's to have some typical American food (while it started raining of course) and then practiced the wedding march on the street, lol! Let's just say we were the only people on a Monday night having THAT much fun! ;)

 

Sweet baby Agnes, my sister Josefine and her fiancé Johan are here for the summer which is wonderful! We've had lots of baby cuddles :) Agnes' great great grandmother and great aunt have both gotten to meet her. And me and my parents got to baby sit her for the first time a few days ago while her parents went to a restaurant. She was a bit cranky but lucky for her auntie Caroline knows what she's doing when it comes to babies ;) so I managed to put her to sleep (didn't dare to move for 40 min in case the little devil would wake up haha). Now we are looking forward to her name giving party (she won't be christened) on Sunday! Auntie Caroline will bake strawberry cakes :)

 

I have close to a billion perfect pictures that I would like to share with you guys, but it's too overwhelming for me right now. At the end of the day what matters most is that I have them to look back at and smile. If you want to follow my every day life - check out my Instagram! :)

I am so happy and grateful that Nick is so openminded about having many of my Swedish things in our future home. He is always so positive when I show him things that means a lot to me. I have a ton of stuff that I would love to have in our house one day, both as decoration and to use, and he never says one bad word about it. He is just grateful that we have more things to fill our home with to make it look as nice as we want it to. We will spend so many years just saving up money and living in his family's house, that ones we get our own we don't want it to look boring and empty. We want to make it OURS and start our life together in a nice house with a warm feeling and a vibe of who lives there and what kind of people we are.

 

Lately I have gotten even more things from my parents that I thought were long gone. I got a picture frame that I have had since my first birthday. You can change the picture from month to month. It's beautiful and I think I got it from my grandma. Can't believe we still have it! I want it to hang in mine and Nick's house one day as a reminder of the seasons changing in Sweden!

 

Speaking of things for our home. The bed sheets that Nick and his dad ordered for us arrived! They look great. They are red and purple which are two important colors for us for reasons that I won't tell ya... just yet :) you'll find out some day! He chose them for us so it was a great surprise!

 

In June I saw Petronella who had come home from the US a few weeks ago. We just hung out at my place and then had pizza downtown while listening to the thunder.

 

Me, Sofie and Jasmine spent time together on one Sunday night. They have really been my two rocks through some rough times this spring. It does a lot to just hang out and talk to people who you have known for years. You don't need to explain every little thing about your personality or your whole life story for them to get you, because they have been there for most of it.

 

On June 6th we celebrated the national day of Sweden! When I was a child we always had to ride our bikes to the Djäkne mountain downtown which took a good long while. Then watched a speech held by a boring old man, someone waved a flag and then we all rode our bikes back to school. But since 2005 it's been a holiday so we are all off school and work. That means a reason to celebrate! So now there are thousands of people who gather all over Sweden to see performances and have picnics. It's not like in America where you throw a BBQ and watch fireworks ;) Nick was in Monterey with some friends and I really wished I could be there. But tried to make the best of my day anyways and it was actually great! Me and Sofie went to Djäkne mountain, saw some Thai dancers and enjoyed the atmosphere. Sweden are very good at welcoming new cultures and immigrants on this day every year and celebrate those who have become new citizens. We had a math exam coming up so we sat there studying while looking over the view of Västerås. Our studying went well according to us (until we realized later that day that the exam would be much harder than we thought).

They ended the celebration with two guys coming down from the sky with the Swedish flag attached to their parachutes. But it was so windy and the landing area was so small. Sofie had never seen parachuters before but I told her that this didn't look good. And boy oh boy... the first guy flew right into the tres and excaped the flag poles by inches and landed right by us in the crowd! Luckily he managed to not land on the family who sat right next to us, but I'm sure his heart was racing when he realized that it would all go very wrong! The other guy must have gotten nervous when he saw his buddies attempt to not kill someonoe xD I sure would have been! So he tried to take it easier and managed to hover above us for a while so that he could make a controlled landing. Just when I thought he would be okay the wind grabbed ahold of him so hard that he flew down to the ground hella hard. He managed to go down to the landing area but it definitely wasn't a soft landing. Must have hurt his feet! We were so impressed by these guys though and how they actually saved everyone from getting kicked in the head!