Eric, 20 november 2008
Zweden , Tranemo

Du måste lära lite svenska dig själv!

First, it’s time for you to learn some Swedish!
STT: Svenljunga Tranemo Tydning (and now also Ulricehamn)
http://i359.photobucket.com/albums/oo33/Istiophorus/SS852616.jpg
UT: Ulricehamn Tydning (to small to read)
http://i359.photobucket.com/albums/oo33/Istiophorus/Photo-0047.jpg

And now my final message on this website. It’s only a couple of weeks still; time has flown by! It’ll be sad to leave Sweden, but I already made arrangements to come back here in July or August. Then I can not only see my friends and colleagues here again, but also Swedish nature in its utmost glory! (and I will go on an ATV-cross in a special area with someone )

These last weeks I’m going to help with an exchange programme with Scottish students, who will come to our school for a week! I’m looking forward to that, as their accent is brilliant! I say about the Irish, but that goes for the Scots too, “In order to converse with their equals, they are forced to talk to god.” The fact whether It exists or not, is hereby a moot point With the pupils I have discussed and dealt with many many different subjects. The higher grades have written essays on the American elections; who’d win, what they think about their plans to resuscitate America from a brain haemorrhage, whether they agree with or are against the candidate’s views, and their opinion on the very different American electoral system. And right now they are almost all happy with Obama (me too, anybody else would have been terrible again for the people). With another class I am preparing the pupils for their national tests and all the skills they need to improve. What I can say so far about their skills, is that they are very good at speaking. Discussions and other conversations are no problem whatsoever to them. What I focus on most now, is writing. With others I am learning some basic Dutch, and I noticed they could already understand many words! I let them listen to the song “Rood” and drew seven pictures on the whiteboard: a rose, a setting sun, a glass of wine, the Dutch flag, a heart (figure), a human heart and some drips of blood. Their task was to find the Dutch word in the lyrics they had in print. They managed every single word. “Uttal är lite samma,” they say, and also the written language looks alike. With others I am now also discussing Animal Farm, and with some I talked about a Swedish play we’ve seen at the theater, called “Vildanden” (the wild duck). So my work here has much variety and is also multi-lingual! (nederländska, tyska, engelska, svenska och lite franska) And finally I am reading Roald Dahl with the same class as I’m preparing the national tests with, and I found out that I don’t really like his stories. I mean, they’re okay. That’s it. I feel so happy when I am home with The Amber Spyglass waiting for me… only 100 pages left… sniff… and then it’s over with Lyra’s adventures… When I was at chapter 10 of the last book, I decided to read book 1 and 2 again, to make absolutely clear who’s on which of the many sides. This time I enjoyed both books much more, despite not really having liked them the first time! Also, reading with dramatic irony is quite interesting, especially with Mrs Coulter, and although I have some pages left, I have to say that this trilogy contains the best fantasy books I have ever in my whole life read. So I can recommend to all of you; read His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman! And if you don’t like book 1 at first, you will. I promise.

Now I must share with you the following:

- I had peasoup in the middle of the motorway;
- At a certain age, boys really love drawing pictures on the school’s parking lot;
- I met Iorek Byrnison, a panserbjørne;
- And finally I have to say to you all, “siviilikriisinhallintaoperaatiosta!”

(five minutes pass)

Still with me? Oh. Didn’t quite expect that An explanation might come in handy now. I was invited by one of the two principles to have lunch at her home, so I could see where she lived. She and her husband have a really big land-area, around ten acres with a pony and two horses. I was there, the sun was shining, and it was the first time in a very long period of time when I heard absolutely nothing. No distant cars or other motorized vehicles, no aeroplanes, nothing. Just being there, like a sponge absorbing the beauty of nature without any disturbances, was really amazing. When we returned to the house, I was offered peasoup. Now, it so happens that the family have many animals. Nine cats and a dog. And they all eat at the same place but not at the same time, and the dining table is right between that place and the door. So when we had lunch, there were cats passing perpetuously, brushing their fur and tails on the way and butting their heads, and the floor under the table really was the motorway for all nine cats and the dog, which tried to eat the cat’s food, but was stopped by a vicious claw from the ‘boss cat of the house’.

As soon as boys have their driving license, they buy an old (and I mean really old, with holes in it and flakes of paint all over) volvo or volkswagen with rear-wheel drive, tune them, drill holes in their silencers to make them quite useless, and then they start drifting on the parking lot and using their tires to draw donuts here. No one of the staff seems to have a problem with that, as it happens quite frequently. So there is more black than white on the tarmac here

Last Thursday I joined a school trip to Göteborg. We went to the universeum, which is both a zoo and a science exploration centre. We got split up in six groups, so we only saw one sixth of everything. That’s why I decided to stay there on my own for a longer time. There was so much to see, I spent six hours there! There was an immensely huge South American rain forest, very hot and moisturous, but there were snakes, monkeys, big birds, crocodiles, stingrays, termites and hand-size spiders! There were also many aquaria, a walking-route with animals from North to South Sweden, and there was a special polar-climate area to be opened on the 21st. Too bad, one week to early here, but I made a picture holding Iorek Byrnison, Lyra’s fluffy, armoured companion for life!

http://i359.photobucket.com/albums/oo33/Istiophorus/Torsdag131102.jpg
http://i359.photobucket.com/albums/oo33/Istiophorus/Torsdag131103.jpg
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And about that strange word; I have not the slightest clue as to what I just told you all I looked at a Finnish text, but it’s totally incomprehensible. It’s a sport though to find the longest word, as they stick everything together But Norwegian is really close to Swedish, then comes Danish which is quite a bit harder (especially counting), and Icelandic harder still, with two more letters; ð and þ which are voiced and voiceless ‘th’. And the Norwegians have an ø, but that’s the same as ö. So now you know a little more about the Nordic languages

On Wednesday the 19th (at which point I was here two-thirds of my total stay) I went to see a concert performed by the pupils of the primary and lower secondary school. They were really good, especially at playing the Phantom of the Opera! Even still, I enjoyed the general rehearsal much more, because there you have no parents in the audience who decide to bring their annoying, screaming little offspring with them, who just always seem to have the special ability to scream at the best parts of the concert. If ever I’m going to have kids, then I will probably adopt them, somewhere beyond the age of tantrums, screaming, crying, “I want to have it!” (when answer = no, Pavlov reaction = more screaming), moaning and bickering. Pfew. Which ‘r’ do I feel? Relief

I also spent two days and joined some classes at the Tingsholmsgymnasiet in Ulricehamn, some 40 kilometres from here, where a friend from the Stockholm meeting is teaching German. I went to Isaberg were I’ll be doing some snowboarding soon and I went to a little town called Gränna which looks like a village made of candy. But I’ll save all that and my oncoming adventures to tell you about when I’m home again, because talking to you all directly, seeing your faces again and hearing your voices, getting instant reactions and emotions, is of course a hundredfold nicer than the internet-society that was once lurking in the dark and is now daring to show itself in daylight… I hope that some day someone will obliterate the internet on a global scale, so everyone will actually SEE each other again. Where pupils visit each other at their homes, have a hot chocolate and a good laugh together, instead of setting a time to meet online, trying to make decent conversation. Yes, that is also the reason you will not find me online anymore. I prefer talking to YOU instead of a screen, so… many vivid stories await you in our Christmas Holidays!

Three crazy Germans in Ulricehamn and me, make four crazy non-Swedes in Sweden
http://i359.photobucket.com/albums/oo33/Istiophorus/Fredag311011.jpg
I also like playing with fire in the literal sense:
http://i359.photobucket.com/albums/oo33/Istiophorus/Fredag311014.jpg
The ‘easy’ side of Isaberg:
http://i359.photobucket.com/albums/oo33/Istiophorus/Lrdag011101.jpg
The top, covered in snow from early December on:
http://i359.photobucket.com/albums/oo33/Istiophorus/Lrdag011102.jpg
The hard side; I walked down and found out you have to go via a very small part down to the left (red arrow), because going straight ahead will find you fall 15 metres down into some pines. It’s everybody’s own risk and when I saw it, I understood why the sign said, “only for professionals”.
http://i359.photobucket.com/albums/oo33/Istiophorus/Lrdag011103.jpg
These are the towns I’ve visited so far:
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Zoomed out:
http://i359.photobucket.com/albums/oo33/Istiophorus/Sweden.jpg
Strangest sight I’ve ever seen. The sun in my back, thunder in front, and the sun was so low that it lighted the earth where we were, but not the clouds further ahead. It felt as if being in the Matrix, with an invisible and impenetrable wall behind those trees.
http://i359.photobucket.com/albums/oo33/Istiophorus/Onsdag121101.jpg
The Steinway piano in Tranemo’s church, which I now play every Wednesday:
http://i359.photobucket.com/albums/oo33/Istiophorus/Photo-0044.jpg

Eric in Zweden bellen kan nu véél goedkoper met HalloBuitenland.nl