The Swedes are Coming!!

Every "First Friday" of the month, Honolulu's Chinatown opens its doors with parties, gallery openings and other fun cultural events. I stood at a street-corner and listened to a band consisting of a cellist, guitarist and violinist playing and sining a cover of some famous radio song. Betwixt the twanging of their strings and their harmonied humming, I was able to distinguish some Scandinavian language. I can spot it anywhere, due to my oh, so finely tuned ears. [Hahaha.] I frantically searched the crowd and found a triangle of blondes next to me. I asked them if they were Swedish, "Oh no, we're Norwegian! But it's very similar! Hehehe,"they replied. Then yesterday as I was climbing up the rocks at my favorite beach, I saw three Scandinavians stepping gingerly down the rocks. I have no idea what country they were from (the many dialects within each language make it difficult to discern sometimes.) I take both of these encounters with "threesomes" of Scandies as a wonderful reminder that three of my Swedish friends will be arriving tomorrow morning on the island of Oahu. Not a single one of my friends from anywhere in the world has ever made the trip out to Hawaii (except my grandparents from Germany) and now I get three of them, traveling from as far away as it gets. Literally, Sweden is on the other side of the world. 

The Hannas are coming! The Hannas are coming. And Hanna's sister Ylva is coming! I can't wait. Right now I'm putting together a slideshow of my time at Rosenhill to send to my grandparents– who can't seem to wrap their heads around the idea that I enjoy farming– and waiting for it to export and burn onto a dvd is taking forever. I have never been one to enjoy these tiresome digital media programs. Blah. 3 more minutes of some encoding crap... I don't know what that means but it's irritating me because I really need to sleep so that tomorrow I'll bit fit as a Finnish fig for my friends.