Times Are a 'Changing

Fall is happening. Well not in full force, it's sort of stuck in second gear. Most trees are still clad in some sort of green, while a few have nearly lost everything, and some are in between, as if they can't decide if red suits them or not. As always, I love fall, but this round isn't quite as thrilling as it felt last year.

Last year I was terrified and anticipating a madness of a winter. It was pretty challenging, but I think my curiosity towards it and my drive to get through it kept me afloat. Now that I know what a serious winter is all about, I'm not so super excited, but I do look forward to a few aspects of it. Mostly, I wish winter was like a month-long ordeal and that thereafter it could just be spring again. The whole 5 months of snow and slush and sleet and darkness is a tad bit dreary. In any case, I'm so thankful that we now have our own place to live, that neither Johannes nor I have to tramp for 10 minutes through the snow to find each other. This winter can be the utmost cuddliest, coziest, homiest winter ever; our first winter properly enjoyed together.

I'm excited for the first snowfall, and to see our neighborhood decked in white, especially Delphi, the enormous water tower right behind our building (I dubbed her Delphi because she looks like a Greek temple where the oracle might abide, and the name stuck for both of us.) I bet there are massive snowball fights in Tensta and crazy cool snowmen and sledding down the huge hill to the park by Tenstavägen. I'm happy that our subway line is subterranean, because we won't have to wait out in the freezing night for our train to come, and I'm happy to get to wear knee-socks and smell like cinnamon apple cakes and tea.. I would like to learn how to cross country ski, do some more ice skating and head up north and see the Aurora borealis. But otherwise there's not too much else that I'm truly, deathly excited over. I don't look forward to going out to pubs with friends and then slipping on ice on the way home, or my face and hands drying out like a sponge in a dessert. I'm not all too thrilled for the lack of nutrition and a serious depletion of vitamin D and god forbid if I get sick again like I did last year.....I don't think I can handle a week of shitting out blood ever again. Crazy, these viking diseases. Ohhh.. I wish that January would fast-forward to April and then everything would be light and fragrant again.

I'm actually considering skipping a few of the winter months, like after New Year. I really don't need to be here for January or February. There's nothing happening here, and I don't feel at all guilty leaving. Maybe it's time to go pay home a visit. I've been feeling a bit nostalgic for Hawaii, but just for a visit. Mostly I miss my sister and swimming in the ocean and not having to wear so much clothing!

Right... I'm going to be insanely busy for the next few months, and after that we'll see. I got a job as a full-time chef at the world-famous Jamie Oliver's soon-opening restaurant in the fanciest, poshest most snobbish quarter of Stockholm, Stureplan. Hanna and I had coffee at a cafe there recently and the barista was shocked that we brought our cups and trays back to the dish-rack as if it was unthinkable that anybody in Stureplan should have to do such a lowly task themselves. Hmm. Well, the restaurant is going to be beautiful, it's not even finished being built yet and the food will be amazing. Today was our first official day, but we mostly learned about fire safety and all got to go out to Humlegården park and practice using fire-extinguishers and fire blankets.

Thursday and Friday we'll start our training with some "culture days," where we learn about the products that the brand uses and their origins, like which little town in Italy the tomatoes and from and all of that nice information. The Italian master mentor who taught Jamie everything he knows is going to fly in from Italy and train us. I think that's pretty damn cool. I must admit though, that this isn't exactly my dream job at the moment. It's totally awesome and that's why I'm going to take the opportunity and just try it out, but after this summer I realized that I really don't want to work in a kitchen. I love food and I love cooking, but I don't enjoy the stress and the noise and pressure to pump out 1,400 plates of food a la carte a day. A la carte! ONE THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED PLATES is our projected rate. Holy SHIT.... FY fucking FAN!

I am going to die in there. I'm going to be so deadly stressed that I'm going to lose all my hair and wither under the weakness of my own adrenal glands. But that's how life goes, right? Life's tough. That's life. All work is stress. Yup.... Fuck. Sometimes it all seems like a big trick.

I'm totally nervous to be working for a company too, like a proper corporate chain of over 36 restaurants in the UK alone. That's not really my style. I'm also going to be paid and employed by Scandic Hotel, the largest hotel chain in Northern Europe. Seriously, this is SO not a Julia move. I don't just go working for big businesses like that. I'm all about the mom and pop, the little, struggling, vegan, organic, dusty, farmy hole in the wall. I feel like I've just upgraded from a slingshot to an AK47 and I have no idea what I'm supposed to to with it. I get steel-toed work shoes and fives pairs of chef outfits and a fixed monthly salary and 50 hour work weeks for fuck's sake. What did I just sign myself up for? I just want to be an herbalist and hang out in a quite meadow and botanize all day.

... but I see it this way: It's an excellent thing on my resume and just for the experience alone. It's good money that I actually don't need, and therefore can save for something I will eventually want or need, like a higher education. And there aren't going to be any more plants to pick for the next 6 months, so my herbalizing would have come to a dead halt anyway, therefore it might not be too bad to be devilishly busy over the winter, save up some money, hope I haven't burnt out to dust and then maybe reevaluate and see if I want to continue.

I'm excited about it too though. It's an honor to be an initial part of the opening of a world-famous restaurant and trained by the very master who trained the chef himself. I haven't quite grasped that I just got this job after 3 minutes of an interview, the morning after a midnight-email I'd scribbled and sent out. Huh!?

I hope I'll have time for my Swedish studies. I'm almost done with my first course and really need to get the remaining two done so that I have the prerequisites to study at at Swedish university. I've gotten pretty good in the past few months and try to speak as much as possible, even when I know English would be so much easier. It was great to write difficult essays, argumentative, reflective, expository etc and try to get the language together for that. 1 year in this country and I've started to write opinionated essays about whether on not children should grow up multilingual, or research papers about language-variations with an emphasis on the baby-talk that mommies use with their infants and toddlers and how that accelerates the learning of language in babies.. uhhhh... 15 months ago I could hardly form a coherent sentence. And today I'm presenting oral reports comparing the grammatical and phonetic structure of Swedish, English AND German. I really like being back in school and I'm going to miss it so much now that I'll start a full time job. Hmm, well here comes the stress... OMG I JUST FOUND A GREY HAIR ON MY HEAD. I AM ONLY 21!!!! I CAN'T GET OLD YET! ARGHHHHHH!! NO the stress is materializing...