Thanksgiving

I have been giving thanks all week through my status updates in Facebook. Here they are:

Monday - is thankful for the wonderful experiences, staff and students I am working with this year.

Tuesday - I am thankful for my cousins. Cousins are the 1st friends of your life. When you grow up, they are still your friends. Cousins are there as childhood friends, and they are there when get older as forever friends... No one will ever understand your CRAZY FAMILY like your cousins. Repost this if you have cousins that are awesome!

Wednesday - is thankful for her brothers and father and surrogate moms and sisters. :) Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving day tomorrow. Eat some turkey for me!

So as you can see from Wed, there was no plan to have any turkey dinner at all. At lunch yesterday (I wrote this originally on Friday), I was very sad that for the first time in 38 years I would not be celebrating Thanksgiving with a special meal... after lunch when Marta came back from her appt, she was also feeling sad about this lack of special dinner so we decided to search up a place to go here in Stockholm. After a bit of internet searching, I decided that an American restaurant here might be the best way to find a spot having a special menu for the night. I had success as we found a place called the Mississippi Inn which was serving a special Thanksgiving Day menu.

We invited along one of our YBC friends, Kari, to share our traditions with him. The meal began with Tuna Cerviche as an appetizer and then continued with typical fare of turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce (not quite like home), sweet potatoes and green beans followed by a really yummy dessert. No pumpkin pie, but the meal overall made me very happy!

We then took a snowy walk home from the restaurant to walk off our meal. I came home a bit cold, but happy!

Berlin Weekend

I had the most amazing weekend in Berlin with some friends I met in Curacao, Judith and Stuart. We had wonderful weather (for Berlin in Nov - it was 5°C and sunny on Sat) and a wonderful time catching up and seeing the city transform for the start of the holiday season. We sat down for some coffee and got a show of the raising of a Christmas tree. Good company and good food was of course a part of the fun. It is nice to catch up with friends in places around the world sometimes very far from where you met and began to know each other. Berlin in Nov is quite far away from Curacao, but added to the adventures of my life. Thanks!

Here are a few photos from the weekend - the ones with me in them are courtesy of my wonderful friend Judith!

One of the Christmas Markets being set-up

The tree in the square

Stuart and I courtesy of Judith

Waiting for my Starbucks fix - Chai Tea Latte

Being silly on Stuart's balcony

Judith and I on the foggier Sunday morning via iPhone 4 self photo :)

Love wooden toys :P

Reflecting

So last Thursday the faculty was invited to a social dinner with the staff at YBC. After a wonderful evening talking to many different groups of teachers, it really hit home, that we would be leaving here in just about a month. It is exciting to know we will be headed to Sydney for the next trimester, but sad to leave all these people whom we have connected with during our stay. It made me realize that the exciting part of this job is also the hard part... moving on every 3 months.

The time in Stockholm has been pretty wonderful and this week was no different. This past weekend, we took the kids to see The Social Network. They all seemed to like the movie and enjoyed learning more about a tool they use every day. For them, Facebook has existed pretty much as long as they can remember. For the adults along with them, this was not always the case... for me it did not come about till college was long gone, but I can't imagine not having it to stay in touch with all my friends and family as I live away from home.

We have also had some visitors this week... Liz, Mike, Sally and Brad's wife Julie have all been around. It is nice to have some others around and see them at work as well. It is nice to be able to have face to face conversations. :)

Today, we had the most amazing guest lecturer, Tobias Rawet. He is 76 and a holocaust survivor. Even though I have heard a number of others speak in the past, each's story is so different. Tobias decided after he heard those talking about it never happening that after he retired at 60, he would dedicate time to sharing his story. He has been on the Swedish radio and tv as well.

Well it's off to bedtime now. Another week is on it's way.

My Does Time Fly

So life around here moves at exponential speeds sometimes. When we have our community meetings at the end of each week, it is often hard to recall all the wonderful experiences from the week. Of course you would think that would give me a lot to blog about... yes it should... but time becomes a factor as well as internet access. We have not had good luck recently where we live with a consistent signal. So tonight I am staying up late to at least give you the last week... there were many cool things the week before including a visit to the Swedish TV Studios, but alas I don't want to bore you too much.

Last week we visited Gotland, Sweden. We took a large ferry across the Baltic and we stayed in a former prison which is now a hostel. The rooms were ok, but walking outside to get to a bathroom was not the most fun. :P

The countryside was beautiful and you can see why people flock here in the summertime. Of course since the clocks were turned back the day before we left - yes Europe changed Oct 31st - it started getting dark pretty early.

It is only 16:28

Now it is 17:12

We started with a great early evening tour of Visby the old walled medieval city. Over the days there we checked out the local history museum where we saw old picture rune stones that showed that Vikings did not wear horned helmets. We raced “gotlandsruss” the special Gotlandic horse around a court with sulkies. Andrew came in 1st with Brad in 2nd.

We also saw many, many, many churches from the road and went into one and Janne our guide treated us to some beautiful songs. The acoustics were wonderful.

We even got to see the beautiful site where Ingmar Bergman is buried in Faro.

Then, the rain stopped to allow us to spend some time at the beautiful sea stacks.

Loving Pano on my iPhone

We had late lunch at a beautiful little hotel in Furillen and then made our way back to town seeing a few more sights along the way.

The last day was spent on a bike tour followed by lunch at the local university and Gotlandic games before taking the ferry back to Stockholm.  A good time was had by all and it was nice to see another part of the country.