life in sweden

aoch...

2010-02-22T14:18:00.000-08:00

this stair gave me

this bruise

but I promise the stair is way worse right now - covered in snow and ice. aaand you should know that I fell down the whoooole way !

Winter in Sweden

2010-02-11T09:42:00.000-08:00

exclusive for you few who reads my blog , winter pics from sweden !

Swedish Christmas

2010-01-16T09:29:00.000-08:00

The Baking

The christmas in Sweden starts of for real the Saturday before First advent, with “the yearly Christmas preparations”. The mothers with help from their children bake gingerbread biscuits, “Lucia Buns”, toffees, caramel and other Christmas candies. Closer to Christmas Eve we also make a “gingerbread biscuit house”. It’s really neat, because we do different houses every year, we did a church once, and last year we did our summer house (the picture).

Decoration

We also start to decorate the house with brownies or young pucks, stars, angels, and most important advent candlesticks and advent stars that are suppose to remind us about the star of Bethlehem. The day before Christmas Eve we take the Christmas tree inside and decorate it.

Advent

At First advent (usually the first Sunday in December) we have a advent coffee, eating the Christmas candy we baked the day before and light one of the candles of the advent candlestick. We do this the fourth Sundays before Christmas Eve, light one more candle each time, so the last Sunday before Christmas Eve all four candles are lightened.

Everyday in December before Christmas Eve the children are watching this show called “The Christmas calendar” at TV, it’s a show with a new episode everyday, and the final episode is shown at Christmas Eve. There is also a thing called “Advent Calendar” that is popular by children. It’s a calendar with 24 “doors” that represent the 24 four days in December before Christmas Eve, under each door there’s a picture, or in some kind a piece of chocolate or a small gift.

Lucia

At December 13 we celebrate Lucia. Lucia was a girl born year 280 in Sicilian that became a Saint.

We celebrate it through having a “procession of Lucia” led by a girl that suppose to be Lucia, she is most often very beautiful and has long blond hair, she wears a white dress with a red ribbon tide round her waist, in her hair she has a crown with candles. After her there’s a group of attendants, they have white dresses, another sort of ribbon round their waist and a ribbon or a wreath in their hair, they hold a candle in their hand. The boys are called “star boys” or boy attendants to Lucia, they also have a sort of white dress, and a “top hat” decorated with stars and a stick with a star on it. Sometimes there’s also some “gingerbread biscuits men” and young pucks that walks in the very end of the “procession of Lucia”. How ever, they walk slowly in to the room and sings songs about Lucia, “the star boys” and the young pucks. It’s very beautiful, the best ones are at churches, but if you have children you will probably go to their school or preschool and see their performance.

After or during the performance the “Lucia Buns” and gingerbread biscuits will be served, and usually when we eat this things we drink coffee, tea or hot chocolate.

Drinks

The most typical Christmas drink in Sweden is “Glögg” or mulled wine, it’s a hot drink, made of heated wine, sugar and spices and it’s served with almonds and raisins. For the kids there’s one without alcohol. We drink these before dinners, to our “Lucia buns” at the afternoon, and it’s also common with “Glögg parties”, where people meat just to drink this and have a good time, and it makes you warm after a walk in the snow.

Other common drinks during Christmas are Christmas beer, a Christmas soft drink that is called “Christmas must” and snaps. The adults drink snaps for the Christmas dinner and sings drinking songs typical for Christmas.

Christmas Eve

So of course, the most important day, Christmas Eve, in Sweden we don’t celebrate Christmas at Christmas Day as you do.

What people do on Christmas Eve are usually pretty much the same, but it’s very different in which order you do it, hand how you do it, all depends on family tradition, how patient the children are. So I’m just going to tell you about how a Christmas Eve usually looks like in The Lundgren Family.

Usually we spend the Christmas holiday in Southern Sweden with my dad’s family, and the only boring thing about that is that they don’t get any snow there. But except that I love it!

I wake up around 9 o’clock, classic or Christmas music is played in the stereo and there’s lightened candles everywhere and it looks really pretty. -Candles during the winter in Sweden are by the way very common though it’s so dark. In northern Sweden the sun is only shining for an hour. –

Last year we went to a early Christmas-morning service at church, but we normally don’t do that, it’s not very common to go to church in Sweden anymore, it was more common back in the days. But it was pretty neat.

Any ways, in our family it’s kind of a tradition that everyone gets a book or a magazine in the morning of Christmas Eve, just to have something to kill time with during the day.

Around 11 o’clock the whole family (my family and my uncles family) goes on a long walk, we usually walk for an hour or so. It’s really neat, when we are at home in Stockholm we walk in the forest and there’s a lot of snow, so it’s all pretty, in southern Sweden we walk on a small mountain, over the fields and the hills, no snow, but still very pretty.

When we come home from the walk we eat rice pudding, or “rice porridge”, it’s served with milk, cinnamon and sugar. As a tradition there’s an almond in the pudding, and who ever gets the almond have to make a rime about the food, or in some families will get married during the next year, it’s just different for what family tradition you have.

At three o’clock the whole family sits down together at the TV to watch “Donald Ducks Christmas”. It’s a show that is every year at Christmas, showing parts from old classic Disney movies, and every year they show a quick view from some new animated movie. While we sit there we eat our Christmas candy and drink “Glögg”.

Donald Ducks Christmas is very important to most Swedes; it’s almost a crime if you don’t watch it.

Around six o’clock we start to eat dinner that is called “Christmas smorgasbord” or “Christmas Table”. It’s a buffet / smorgasbord of Swedish Meatballs, small frying sausage, spareribs, herring, ham, potatoes, crispbread, “Jansson’s Temptation”, and every family have something special, my dad’s family have a potato cake with cumin and other spices, and my mom’s family eats pig feet in jelly (pretty gross to be honest).

For desert we eat a biscuit made of sugar, butter and flour, and we eat this with melted and sweeten cloudberries or raspberries and whipped cream.

After the dinner that always takes a long time we sit down round the Christmas tree and start to give each other Christmas presents. But we only give one gift at time, to one person, so everybody can se what it is.

At all Christmas presents there’s a rime that the person who’s giving the present have been written about the gift, and then the person who gets the present have to guess what it is. That is really fun! Everybody in my family writes really good rimes.

When all presents are opened it’s usually really late at night and everybody is exhausted

Santa Claus

Santa Claus doesn’t come through the chimney in Sweden, he comes to everybody’s home and knocks on the door with a bag of presents, and then he comes inside and hand out the gifts to everyone.

In my dad’s family I’m the youngest child so we don’t have Santa Clause coming to us anymore, but when I was younger my dad always, for some reason, was out buying the newspaper when Santa Claus came.

It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.

Christmas is not over yet though.

The Celebration will keep on going at Christmas Day and the day after Christmas Day with walks, “glögg”, dinners and more Christmas candy with all friends and relatives.

hello again

2010-01-16T09:26:00.000-08:00

I suck at this..
I've been away all christmas, 22 days in asia. It was amazing. I will tell you everything another time. During my stay in US I wrote two assignments in Floral Design that might interest you. One is a cock book, the other one is about Swedish Christmas.
So I'll just copy paste. Don't have time to read through it now so I do apologize for spelling and grammar mistakes.

miss you muches

today is a good day - anna ternheim

2009-09-10T06:58:00.000-07:00

I'm not really sure what to write about .. Life's good, I exercise a lot, hanging out with friends a lot, and according to my parents I'm never at home, but you see I am right now, but they aren't.
Tonights plans are first afro dance at the gym with my friend Klara, it'll be fun, never done it so I'm excited. Afterwards we'll meet Jennifer to find some nice spot in the forest around here to eat buns and scream a little, haha so we thought that would be fun, there's this children's book called "The robber's daughter", and she however is doing this "spring scream" each spring. which means that she stands on top of a mountain/cliff/rock and screams. Sooooo we thought we could do that, but in the fall.. hmm kinda weird I guess, but it'll be fun :)

the world is not a nice place

2009-08-27T15:09:00.000-07:00

first I just want to say that I've had the best summer ever, and now I'm back to school and it feels pretty good, this weekend it's a festival in town and I'll see MGMT, I'm so excited! I will probably die. And last weekend I saw Coldplay live, it was awesome. I've been to a really big festival this summer to, saw the killers, kings of leon, and much much much more, it was too much fun, anyhow enough about me and my awesome summer of music and fun.

so I was about to go to bed like two hours ago, but had some stuff I wanted to finish, and then my dad is like getting really angry cause I didn't watched the movie with him, so finally I sat down and watched it and damn! YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS MOVIE ! like, I can not believe this, it's sick sick sick, and it made me feel so bad, and i'm sorry but I just wanna blow your government and army in tiny tiny pieces it's called The road to Guantanamo and it's a true story. I just wanna change the world, there are so many things that are so wrong, I feel worthless though, it sucks. I hate this.
so my thought was that probably this movie wont get big over there so the least I could do is writing about it here so at least you three people who reads my blog will watch it and talk about it to your friends and they'll watch it and so on.

bye loves

Skåne "skaw-neh"

2009-06-30T18:18:00.001-07:00

I thought I could post some pictures from where I'm spending my summer :)
As some of you already know I work in a pub, it's pretty cool. I love it, I get to spend time with fun people, and I dont think that most people has gone on vacation yet so it's not that much people so far, but that makes it pretty chill, like tonight when I got to play cards with the four guys who where there. I get home at half past one, and now it's half past three, because I can't go to sleep, it's too pretty :) And the birds just started to sing so I wont be able to sleep now anyway, they're so annoying haha... Oh god, I should go to bed though cause tomorrow I'm going to "flickorna Lundgren" - The Lundgren girls. Which is a nice café a few miles from here, so I'll walk there with Alexander one of the chefs at the hotel I'm working at. It will be nice :)
Here's some pictures for you

midsummer eve

2009-06-28T15:27:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry I've been such a sucky bloger, I'll try to do this more often, at least upload more pictures .

So, there's this holiday in Sweden, called midsommar - midsummer I'm guessing is a good translation. I dont know exactly why we're celebrating, or what. But I guess it has to do with the sun and summer and that we need a exuse to party. The food and drinks aren't that different from what we have at christmas, it's herring, potatoes, snaps and beer. But herring is pretty wierd, so we had pie and stuff instead, much better :) . For dessert you're supposed to have strawberry cake with whipped cream and stuff but we totally messed it up so I dont think we had any dessert, but we ate tons of choclate, we didn't suffer that much haha.
Well I thought I could upload some pictures from this crazy wierd holiday thing :)
and also, you will see on the pictures, that we are dancing around a huge pole, and that's just wierd and I should probably not try to explain what or why we do that either, and we play wierd games,

party people

2009-04-22T07:04:00.000-07:00

So in Stockholm schools has this tradition that every class has a "school leaving party" in april-may, it's usually a theme, like "movie" or "crime" . Last friday it was my friend Jennifers "school leaving party" with crime theme. We decided to dress up like the characters of the Swedish movie "kopps" (cops in swenglish). It was really fun and I think we did awesome haha.
this is the orginal ->

Yesterday it was my bestfriend Louise´s party, the theme was "arrive as a song" . I was Paint it Black by the rolling stones and Can't touch this. Haha I think I looked pretty damn good. It was too much fun.

barbie girl

if I were a boy
99 red balloons
personal jesus and gold digger
dansa i neon (dance in neon) and vi drar till fjällen (we're going to the mountains)

geek in pink, indian, Lena 60, Candy girl, Paint it black.

it aint much

2009-04-14T14:05:00.000-07:00

haha I look like i dont know what in this picture, but i like the green and the horse :) , picture from October something when me and mom visited grandma at Gotland.

This picture is of my brothers girlfriend, she had a party last thursday (to celebrate her birthday). My brother is still in Zermatt but I got to go anyway :) it was fun fun

I've been trying to shut down my computer the last 5 hours, but I'm just a little bit too atticted to facebook so I thought I could post something :)

adopt me

2009-04-05T12:28:00.000-07:00

This picture crack me up, oooh i can't take it, i think it's hilarious , haha . oh. I should study, I haven't done anything last 4 hours, except avoid writing my paper. It's about evil. I'm writing about the difference between being evil and selfish+naive+greedy.

tomorrow will be my first day of spring(easter) break :) , except that i'm going to clean our house, but tomorrow at 5 pm I'll be free :) yay !

and my room haha ! (including my friend Malin)

2009-04-01T16:22:00.000-07:00

my favorite food is coming up ! I dont know what it is yet.

for jenna ! haha

2009-04-01T16:05:00.000-07:00

picture of my mom
right away !

haha ok, that wasn't very nice of me, I'll find a better one, though i think that one is pretty funny tehe

christmas eve, isn't she lovely ?

Billie the vision and the dancers

2009-03-12T11:13:00.000-07:00

This song remindes me of my grandpa (obviously).
I like it a lot but it makes me sad..

The Last Waltz

2009-03-10T15:26:00.000-07:00

This is my life right now:
school.

Yes that's pretty much it.

Here's the link to my flickr where you can se pictures I've taken. http://www.flickr.com/photos/21871820@N02/

Ok. I lied. My life isn't all about school. I went to my hairdresser today. oh she's so lovely and funny and she understands me and she has some awesome ideas and vision about my hair. So I got some more blonde to it and cut cut, I think it came out pretty damn good. Probably a little bit crazy, cause that's how it usually ends up.
Afterwards I went with some friends and my dad to a show called "The Last Waltz" , some of you might heard of it before. You can read more about it here --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Waltz. So anyhow, some students from a music school kinda had that show. It was really cool. They played all those old awesome songs and the had some cool gueststars (not like Van Morrison, but some of their friends who was really really good). Everytime I go to shows where peolpe in my age are performing, I get really sad and mad at my self that I can't sing or play anything, that I quit play the piaono and stupid things like that, and now I'm just to lazy or dumb or busy to learn anything.
But still, I loved the show and it was simply awesome and impressive to see so young people be so freaking good at something. I would be so proud of myself if my grandma came to town just to see my do something I'm good at. I just need to find something that I'm good at, haha.
Oh well I should go to bed now, early to bed early to rise makes a man healthy wealthy and wise. Guess that's already too late haha
Hope you're doing well :)
Miss you, parts of you, I dont know who you are, but those I miss probably knows it :)

yep yep

2009-03-04T13:52:00.000-08:00

We came home from a absolutely wonderful and fabulous week in Zermatt a couple of days ago, so that's why I haven't been writing. I got a sunburn in my face, so right now i look like a freckly tomato, haha ! So Zermatt is in Switzerland, the country everyone think about when I say Sweden, but it's really really different.. And Zermatt might be the opposite to Lubbock. Becaus all you can see is mountains, very high mountains. I think it would be a pain to live there too, because you get the feeling of being really locked in, and you can't get anywhere, but luckily i didn't want to leave ! haha .. oh my, i need some rest.. I'm really really tired, it's 11 pm and i need to study for a test tomorrow. blah

And I've also been up to doing this awesome movieposter, it was an assignment in my photoclass :) I think it came out pretty good :)
well poop i dont have it on this computer, i'll upload it some other time

until then i hope you're all doing good :) I miss you, I think, I dont know who you are I guess, tehe.

maybe

2009-02-16T13:20:00.000-08:00

this is outside Swedish wall mart.. well I dont know if you can call it that.. It's called Ica Kvantum. I dont know what that means, if it means something. You can buy lots of food in there.. haha..
It's during summer, obviously it's not sunny and warn during the winter here.
It's been snowing the whole day, it's not melting it just like the snowflakes dont make it to the ground. Flying around.. blah, totally worhtless.

In excactly one week i'll be on a flight to Switzerland. I'm excited, very excited :)

fyi

2009-02-15T03:08:00.000-08:00

I became a meatball in US. But it's alright. It's not that bad anymore. By summer I should be normal again, haha.

And i got glasses. Cause obviously i can't see with my right eye. Ok it's not that bad, but now I can see what the road signs says and what my teachers are writing on the board. I guess that's a good thing.

well well, I should study.
Happy late valentine's day ! (In Sweden it's called "All hearts day")

another music video

2009-02-11T14:50:00.000-08:00

I think the girl, Amanda Jensen, won the swedish idol the season i was in us.. i'm not sure though. But now days she's waaaay too cool for that kinda stuff. I love her though.. even though she got famous through idol. She's pretty unique..
The guy, John ME, was playing in some hardcore band long time ago. The song, Love is my drug, is his, but during this awardthingy they sang it together and it was beautiful. See for your self :)

and haha , i might worn you , the host, Anders, is a comedian.
I think he's hilarious, the way he talks, his voice is just awesome, haha. But just like fyi, he's not serious.. the clothing..

Adiam Dymott ..

2009-02-10T04:36:00.000-08:00

.. She'll release her first album in March, I think she's really cool and I love this song. Hope you like it.
Yep, that's all I wanted to say :)

Saturday night ..

2009-02-09T13:46:00.000-08:00

I just wanna warn sensitive readers. My English is not the best at 11 pm. And I'm writing about a Saturday night in Stockholm, wiild thing, haha jk. not really. Well, we're all different :)

Saturday
I woke up early (9:30 ! ), had a delicious breakfast including buttermilk and cereal ( i know that you probably think that sounds disgusting, but buttermilk in Sweden is the best ! haha) on top of that (not like really on top of the buttermilk haha) a made me the best cafe latte ever ! It was so good. Took a shower, dressed up and left home at like 12 am.
Me and Malin went shopping in Stockholm (it takes 20 minutes with the bus to get there from where I live), I tried some awesome clothes but all i got was a pair of socks, cool ones though ! We went to her house, ate some food, went back to Stockholm, saw a theater, it was so funny ! It was called " Carola and me ", (( Carola is a huge singer over here, hated and loved. She got famous when she was 10 and now she's 40, still famous. ))

After the theater we went to a pub called Golden Gate where we met up with some guy friends (Niklaz, Lukas, Martin and some others). We stayed for a couple of hours, it was fun fun :) . We spend the rest of the night at a club called "friends & acquaintance" (in Swedish "vänner & bekanta") . Where we met some other friends (Klara, Karolina, Hugo, Danne among others)
At 02:03 Niklaz calls and says that he's on the bus, and I decides to run run run, knowing it's only 4 minutes to the bus leaves, but i made it, i was happy and a little bit proud (very proud really)

first pic: my cafe latte
second pic: Malin
third pic: Martin
fourth pic: Klara and Danne(Daniel)

That's all i got this time :) peace.

tennis and chemistry

2009-02-02T11:52:00.000-08:00

We won the game !
It was really fun haha! We played against two ladies, 40-50 years old. Everyone (including me) got surprised by how good I was !
The picture is of Louise, my bestie that I played with.

I have an exam in chemistry this friday so I'm just gonna study 24 / 7 this week, fun fun fun. I hate chemistry, no I don't, I'm sure it's fun if you understand, but I don't so I put my hate on our teacher. blah ! old , acrimonious lady. (yes I looked that word up in a dictonary, and i like it ! )

men men men

2009-01-31T15:00:00.000-08:00

I thought I would post something, and I had a request (haha) about pictures of Swedish hot guys, to be honest I couldn't find any.. Except famous people.. This pic was the closest I could get, father and son, haha. Ok not really, but I think they look pretty cute together. And I do miss my brother a lot. He's in Zermatt, skiing and having way too much fun. You can see his pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/23034013@N04/ .

Here's some other pictures at men. Famous men stalked by my friends and I .

This hot man won Swedish Idol 2006, his name is Markus Fagervall and I was pretty much obsessed about him back then.. And yes, I was pretty shaky and nervous and giggly when I met him, even though it was this fall, haha.

These two guys are pretty damn awesome ! They're free skiers / extreme skiers , world's greatest. They're also the owners of a brand called Kask, designing awesome beanies, googles and stuff. The man in the green shirt name is Kaj Zackrisson and the other ones is Sverre Liliequist .
When we met them we laughed a lot, they cracked us up, we cracked them up. It was so much fun ! And not tence at all, and they were not haughty or anything. Just simply awesome.

I'm gonna need to take more pictures of my friends. So I can show you the real deal, haha.

I'm going to bed now. I'll have to study alot tomorrow. And maybe maybe I will play a tennis game(match), haha that will be fun. My best friend's partner in the double is sick so i might play instead of her. That will be interesting though I have only played two times last two years. Wish me luck!

a picture from "The Who Valley"

2009-01-21T12:30:00.000-08:00

Me (front) and Karolina in the slope. (further back as small black dots the rest of the gang)
It was 5 °F and windy = cold as *u know what* !

oh well, back to work !
hope y'all doin good =D

2009-01-19T10:22:00.000-08:00

I really want to write about my weekend. We went to Vemdalen (directly translated "the who valley). I dont think I've ever laughed so much, i dont know if it's because we're easy to amuse or if we're just a bunch of very fun(ny) peolpe.
But right now I'm way too tired for writing... My eyes are hurting and so does the rest of my body. So I'll eat some dinner and go to bed early. Besides I've tons of homework to do. And you know the rules, school comes first. When i'm done with all my assignments and tests, sometime in june next year I'll write inte this blog again, haha jk, but that's how i feel right now.

here's a good song, and the picture is my friend Malin and the guys in the band. It doesn't have anything to do about the weekend except that we listened to that song on the bus, haha.

2009-01-12T15:18:00.000-08:00

so first day of school.
Not very exciting.
I got an A on a assignment in photo class, our assignment was to do a power point about a photographer. I did mine about Amy-Rose , they loved her pictures and my teacher was very impressed, so that was pretty awesome :) Congrats to me, but mostly Amy-Rose :)

I got to spend some time with a friend at the mall before i met my mother at the libarary. I lent some books about refugees ( ? ) in Sweden because I'm gonna write a paper about their health and stuff.

Thursday I'm going to the mountains with 80 students from school. Well Im going with 5 friends. It's gonna be so much fun, can't wait :)

That pretty much it.

I tried to change the language to english but i dont think it's possible.
If you want to comment,

you need to click on "kommentarer",
write something
and when you're done u just press "skicka kommentar" .

it should work. if it says something wierd like "kommentera som" , you should be able to write your name if you choose "namn/webadress" which means "name/internet address" kinda haha. I dont think it's as complicated as i just made it sound.

Good night or whatever time it is where you're at :)

Pictures from Christmas time in Skåne

2009-01-11T03:28:00.001-08:00

Welcome dear friends

2009-01-10T16:20:00.000-08:00

So my thought is to try write about the interesting things in my life and post some pictures from special occasions and from just everyday life. So that you, my american amigos will get a better picture of how it's working over here, haha. And just like, I dont know, it might be fun, it might not.
Check it out and see for your self :)

And if you ever wonder anything, just ask. Even if it's like "hey , how does the swedish Wal Mart look like?" , and i will take a picture of it and post it, haha. or , "what did you wear on new years eve?" , or maybe "what is the name of the swedish king?" and I'll tell you, haha .
Hopefully you will ask more interesting questions than that.

And you are more than welcome to correct spelling and grammar and tell me when i'm writing about boring stuff.

Stay tuned !

Fanny Sofi Lundgren