School Days

Svenska schola begins promptly each morning at 8:30! (and in Sweden to be late is considered very rude. I find being late quite rude in America, too, but there you go ...). We do Swedish work for four hours with a Fika break at 10. I'm in the A1 class, which means I am a complete beginner.

There's our teacher, Henrik. He is a musician and loves to teach us Swedish songs about trolls and sailing and things. Today we learned the "Imse Vimse Spindel" (Can you guess what song that is?) We found out today that Henrik's brother is a very famous Swedish film director.

At lunchtime, we all go to our daily appointed restaurants around town and use little coupons we've been given to eat! My favorite thing about these lunches is that there is always complementary coffee and a little cookie afterwards. At 1:45, we return to schola for our afternoon courses. This three weeks, I'm in a Swedish art history course. It's nice, because we get to go on field trips once or twice each week. Johann, our instructor, is very nice; his research is about heritage sites, monuments and cultural memory.

After class, it's time to do homework! It's been a long time since I've had so many hours of school each day, so I am pretty worn out by the end of the day at 4 pm. Goodness. Day jobs must be hell.