I haven't been so very "duktig" at writing anything into this blog. Summer sort of does that, I've noticed; it swallows up time for pensive, indoor rituals and forces you outside to engage in summer-approved activities such as socializing, herbalizing, frolicking and stressing about "utnytta"-ing summer's time and presence. I'm kind of glad that summer is drawing to a close. I love the warmth and sun and most of all the greenery and flora, but it's also kind of an intense time. It started getting chilly this week—like in the 50°s and 60°s—and I've finally been able to wear pants, tights and light sweaters again. I must admit, it was wonderful to have a few months of dresses and belly-button shirts, but the coziness of hoodies, tea and stay-in-bed-saturdays is alluring to say the least. Mostly I just can't wait for it to calm down a bit. Everybody needs to meet everybody and be everywhere in the summer and either there are thousands of plans to be made, or nobody is spontaneously available to hang out because they already have other plans. I'm over it. I've picked enough St. John's Wort to accompany my moods throughout the winter and I have a home so I think I'm all set.
Well, sort of. Now it's time to find a job, and figure out what I want to do next. Herbal medicine? That might actually be my direction, I'm just being terrible at making a decision. There's a school not too far from where I live, where I could go and study natural medicine, and get some sort of herbalizer degree, it's not downright university but some sort of college/ vocational school degree that is hard to compare with any other country's standards. But since I'm SO in love with our home at the moment (I actually have a stable home for the first time in my life and it feels great) I couldn't stand to live away at the school, so I'd probably have to get a car to get there every day, because it is too far by public transport. Right, but getting a car means getting a Swedish Driver's license, and actually learning how to manually drive a car. Driver's licenses are pretty damn expensive here (about $1000 and up) so...yeah, new job first?
I'm on it. Working on a resume (in Swedish this time) and a damn cover letter. It helps that I'm now enrolled in a proper Swedish course, and we actually write real essays every week, with topics that require a broad vocabulary and some mental capacity. For example: Reflective essays about what myths we had heard about Sweden before we all came here and whether the country lives up to them or has let us down, and how our initial experiences and impressions may have changed over the course of our time here; Argumentative essays, where you actually have to pick a view and defend it, about topics like whether children should be raised bilingually if one of more of their parents speaks another language, or whether egg or sperm donation should be anonymous, or similar sensitive topics. So, no first grade cat and dog stories or hi-I'm-Julia papers. I feel like I'm back in high school, with a thesaurus, a dictionary and google-translate on my side and some damn good psytrance in my ears. It's not stressful like high school was though. I don't really care about the grades or the transcripts, I just want to extract as much from the course as I can, and that's nice. It's homework that I do gladly and since I enjoy writing as it is, I don't mind straining myself once a week to produce some 500 Swedish words in a given context with good grammar and proper syntax. Challenging but nice, and I've already learned a ton in just two weeks, class once a week. Hopefully this is the first step to getting a better job.
Well, I guess I'm a lot better in the language than I was a year ago. Then I didn't dare to write a resume in Swedish because I was terrified that it would imply that I actually spoke Swedish. Now I feel like I need to prove to people that I can understand 85% of what they're saying and with some effort, actually hold a conversation. I freaking immigrated to a random European country, which most American's can't place on a map and constantly confuse with Switzerland, and just over a year later I'm in a Swedish high-school writing essays and resumes and having pretty valuable conversations with people about valuable topics. Sometimes I get a random flash, like when I look at a building for too long, or I stare at street signs so that the words burn into my brain, or youtube-ads come on in Swedish, I and get this wave of "like, what—am I seriously living in this country?"
I guess it's just forward from here. Resume + cover letter -> new job -> driver's license -> car -> school -> education -> potential future job..... heh... It's bad to make too many plans, but this one might just be worth it.
For now, my most immediate plan is to read at least 10 more pages in this really good book I have to read for school, and fall asleep into my wonderfully, cozy botany sheets which were just so me that I had to get them. Godnatt allihoppa.
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