I went to a children's birthday party today.
At the last minute I decided to dress up as a fairy. Luckily the shops are entirely full of gold sparkly things at the moment, so I was a purple and gold fairy.
So then it started to snow. It's so beautiful, floating past my balcony. I'm all jumping up and down, trying to get some other people enthused about snow, but a noticeable lack of response from my flatmates.
Then of course I realise that Fairy twinkletoes is not exactly the best dressing option for going out in the snow. Fairy t. plus large coat, scarf and woolly hat didn't cut quite the same dash...
So the party actually turned out quite fun. There were nine children ranging in age from 2 - about 8, with English, Dutch, Swedish and Spanish. I even managed to communicate in Swedish a little bit. We played pin the nose on the witch (one small child down, with a pin in the foot), musical statues and musical bums (various injuries from throwing themselves on the ground too hard), hot potato (I SAID don't throw the ball... oh dear).
Nobody was seriously hurt, and all had to be dragged away kicking and screaming, so I think a good time was had by all.
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal...
5. ...along with these instructions.
"'You don't want to meet a bear in the forest,' adds Silja. They are no longer afraid of humans, they are urban bears now. Corrupt bears. Not nice bears. Even a bear with a soothed head is not one you would want to meet.'"
Voyage to the End of the Room - Tibor Fischer
Obviously I'm the only person left who reads fiction. Much as I suspected.
I've been having some good conversations with strangers in Swedish. It's nice. Strangers don't correct my grammar, and so I feel more compentent (and the falafel shop guy tells me I can't possibly be that old, I only look 23. A compliment?).
In our continuing attempts to translate da hood into Swedish, I bring you:
hemma flicka/pojke = home girl/boy
söt som socker = sweet like sugar
I am VERY SAD. After a year-long boycott of the news (post-Iraq invasion, I got bored with the never-ending repetitive awfulness of it all), I had just started to read newspapers again (one article a day, in Swedish).
Now I find that Kerry has conceded defeat. Yes, I am impressed with him having the maturity to concede, rather than drag it through the courts. No, I don't think the world should be like this. Bah humbug.
Another day, another class telling us how long it's going to be before we finish. I was feeling quite good about it, because I managed to say all the things I wanted to say in Swedish. Then I remembered that I didn't actually get any answers.
We are learning work words. Some of them are quite cute, like a snickare snickrar = A carpenter carpents (or rather works with wood, it's just not so good in English)
Entertaining things about Swedish #35:
-Not knowing the alphabet. As there are three extra letters in Swedish, Ö is the official last word of the alphabet. Instead of having an A-Z, we have an A-Ö. I couldn't find anything in my dictionary for the longest time.
-If you pronouce cook (kock) wrong, it's quite amusing for Swedish people. This is a shame, because it's also dead funny for me to pronounce it correctly.
I have to keep myself amused somewhow. You can expect more of this later.
Summer time finished yesterday. I hate it when the clocks change, it totally upsets my sleep patterns for a week or two. It's now fully dark by 5pm. All the migratory bones in my body tell me to fly south for winter.
I made a great vegetarian sausage casserole today. Just the thing for those long winter nights. Probably fantastic with mulled wine. :)