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Previous homework!

I mentioned I would add more of the homework and written assignments I have done in my Swedish course.  Fun fun!  I have of course had to do the obligatory who I am, where I come from, who I live with etc but I figure you don't need to see all of that.  My original Swedish teacher asked me to write a piece about my dog as she apparently loves dogs.  This is not very good but here is what I wrote -

Min hund!
Jag har en liten hund.  Hon heter Cassie och hon är en blandras mellan labrador och cocker spaniel.  Hon ser ut som en labrador men hon är mindre. Hon är brun som choklad och jätte glad.  Hon är ett år och hon skäller ibland vid dörren.
Hon är jätte glad hela tiden men lite rädd för andra hundar.  På dagarna tycker hon om att sova och leka med sina leksaker.  Hon älskar mat och hon äter allt.  Hon tycker om paprika, kyckling och banan!  Hon älskar at promanera.  Vi promanera med henne minst en timme två gånger om dagen.  Hon har mycket energi men är jätte snäll.
På kvällen ligger hon i soffan med mig och tittar på teve.  Hon är så söt!

It pretty much says that I have a small dog who is called Cassie and is a cross between Labrador and cocker spaniel.  She looks like a Labrador in appearance but she is smaller.  She is brown like chocolate and is really happy.  She is one year old and she sometimes barks at the front door.
She is really happy all of the time but is a little scared of other dogs.  During the days she likes to sleep and play with her toys.  She loves food and will eat anything.  She likes peppers, chicken and bananas!  She loves to go out for walks, we walk her for at least and hour two times a day.  She has a lot of energy but is very kind.
In the evenings she lies on the sofa with me and watches TV. She is really cute!

At least I think that is what I said!  We have a lot more writing assignments coming up so it will be good practice for me to write things up here.

On a slightly different but positive note, we went to visit S's mum yesterday and they clearly spoke a lot of Swedish, but I could follow it much better than ever before....clearly something must be sinking in with all these lessons and studying!! About time too!!

Flygande Jacob

Last night I made a traditionally Swedish dish for dinner called Flygande Jacob..or translated Flying Jacob!  Although you are clearly now conjuring up images of small men called Jacob flying round it is nothing quite so abstract!

It is a dish made up of pre-roasted chicken breast, cream, chilli sauce, peanuts, bacon and...wait for it...bananas! Yes that's right bananas.  I grew up eating very traditional English food and so when I learned of the use of bananas in a dish like this I was sure I was hearing wrong or things were lost in translation...apparently not! I remember the first time I had this dish was my first ever visit to Sandra's Mum's house on my first ever trip to Umeå.  They explained what it was for me and I tried hard not to look concerned when I heard the addition of bananas!  As it turned out it was gorgeous and I have been a big fan of it ever since :)

You find banana popping up in all sorts of random places in Swedish cooking...most alarmingly I find is the much loved banana and curry sauce PIZZA that is readily available here.  Seems ever so wrong to me!  Mind you when I was younger the only place I ate bananas warmed in any way was in guides when we stuffed them full of chocolate buttons, wrapped them in tin foil and threw them on the campfire to melt!  Aside from that it was the obligatory banana splits, milkshakes etc!

So here is the recipe for Flygande Jacob as I know you are all dying to go out and try it!

Ingredients:  

1 pre-grilled or roasted chicken 

1 tub of cream

Some heinz chilli sauce

Peanuts

Streaky bacon (I never said this was a healthy dish!!)

1 banana

Salt and pepper

Method:

• Strip the chicken and put the meat in an oven proof dish, sprinkle over a handful of peanuts and sliced banana.
• In a bowl mix the cream and chilli sauce, add the chilli sauce slowly till the cream turns slightly pink. Add salt and pepper to taste.
• Pour this over the chicken.
• Grill or fry the bacon and lay over the top of the dish
• Whack in an oven for about 20 minutes to heat it all through (about 200 degrees, but then I cook most everything on about 200!)
• Serve with rice, salad, bread, anything really.

Mmmm tasty!  Smaklig Måltid! 

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Better than last week!

Class was much better than last week, thankfully but we still have the same teacher. I really hope Irma comes back as I found her much easier to understand. Anyway, the work was hard, I had to do some exercises in grammar and then we took a test to see how our writing skills were. Not so great! We had to write to an airline telling them we had lost our baggage, this is how the slightly corrected version of mine goes -

Claire Williams

Mariesomewhere 2C, 90453, Umeå

072-851 4851

2010-03-17

Hej!

Jag heter Claire Williams och jag bor i Umeå. Jag har tappat mitt bagage. Jag var på en flight från Stockholm till Umeå. Mitt bagage är en liten väska. Den är grum och brun och har blommor på baksidan. De väger kanske tio kilo.

I min väska är det kläder på ett bröllop. En fin hatt och ett par jätte fina svarta skor. Det är också en jacka och byxor, som är rosa. Min tandborste, hårborste, smik och balasam ligger också i den.

Om du hittat väskan ring mig på 072-851 4851 är du snäll och jag ska hämta den.

Tack for hjälpen!

Med vanliga hälsingar

Claire Williams

(All numbers and addresses have been changed as you never know who is reading!!)

It pretty much says that I have lost my bag when flying from Stockholm to Umeå. It is a small case which is green and brown with flowers on the back. In it there are clothes for a wedding, a nice hat and gorgeous black shoes, a jacket and trousers both in pink (sounds lovely doesn't it!!!). It also says my toothbrush, hairbrush, make up and conditioner were in the case too! If they find the case they are asked politely to call me and I will go fetch it!

Clearly I had blocked out all memory of these things being so traumatic from my GCSE French texts. I sat for ages totally frozen not having a clue HOW to write never mind WHAT to write! It was pretty embarrassing having my text torn apart in front of the group too but I wanted to make sure it was marked before I left so I wasn't tempted to take it home and cheat! I hope it will get easier. I find sentence structure and word order really hard in Swedish. Seems to somehow matter less when I am bumbling my way through an oral sentence. Another thing I need to work on. The girl I sit next to in class is from Cuba and speaks only a tiny bit of English so our common language is Swedish. She has lived here for many years so her spoken Swedish is amazing but reading and writing is a bit of an issue. We kinda help each other out with points and nods - I think it is a bit frustrating for her when I don't know what she is saying but I am trying.

I really need to talk Swedish to more people that aren't S or the dog, even Cassie looks at me weirdly when I am bumbling my way through talking to her. Poor S! Oh well, maybe one day I will buy a LOT of beers and turn up at Maria and Lars' place and babble at them instead...then again pigs might just fly!

I think I might add more of the texts I have written up here, it is good for me to repeat the stuff I do and typing it up will surely help a bit!? Feel free to stop reading any time you like!

For now, I must get some work done, or at least some studying done.

Vi ses snart...kanske!

Again...already?!

Surely it can't be Wednesday again already?! Is it just me or does it seem to be Wednesday an awful lot these days?

Well that means it was my morning to walk the dog (who was a nightmare!), it is laundry time all afternoon and there is class between 5 and 7. Best thing about Wednesdays is definitely Grey's Anatomy which is on at 9!!

Hopefully class will be a bit better and a bit more productive this week. The day hasn't had a great start so we will see how it progresses, surely it won't get worse than last week at any rate. I haven't had any homework this week and as the teacher wasn't in last week I didn't hand it in from last time either so I have been checking it through, reading aloud the exercises etc to try and build my confidence, seriously poor S!! Anyway, I am sure I heard a wise person once say that 'you get out of life what you put into it' so I shall be carpeing my diem for sure!

Maybe it will be time for the great reveal...we will see, refuse to get my hopes up this week!

Har det så bra!

I fell down!

Last night as I was taking Cassie for her evening stroll there was a fine coating of snow on the ground. We did our normal night time route and as I was rounding a corner she pulled and I fell on my side and banged my head. Initially my shoulder hurt like hell so I came home, finishing off her walk as normal, took some pain killers and went to bed. I didn't sleep so well and this morning woke up with a huge pain in my neck. I have been taking pain killers all day to try and help but my neck and shoulder are still sore - boo!

Now I need to take the dog for a walk again and am a little apprehensive as I don't want to fall again. I think I will wear my boots which hurt my feet but at least have some grip to them to try and help. I am just taking her to the shops and back this evening as I need to pick up a few things for dinner and I don't think I could go much further to be honest. It will be interesting carrying everything back but hopefully it will be ok.

So, enough procrastinating, I best get on with it. Hopefully it will be an event free walk so I can enjoy a night of excellent tele!!

Vi ses!

The right song!

Finally the right song actually won Melodifestivalen! It is an ace song by a contestant on Swedish Idol the year before last. The artist is Anna Bergendahl and the song is called "This is my life". Here is a link to the performance on youtube. We had a fun night watching the show, started out with a nice dinner and a few beers and then when the show was on we watched it filling in our score sheets and generally having a ball. It was lovely...yesterday was NOT so lovely, eugh the hang over!

When I was at University it was no problem for me to drink multiple flaming sambucas on top of as many other drinks as I could fit inside, ten years on and two sambuca shots and a few beers lead to a major hangover! Sandra was good and walked the dog for me both times and it felt someone had beaten me across the head with an iron rod. I eventually recovered enough to make a stonkingly good cottage pie for dinner and we chilled out watching TV for the night.

It was generally a great weekend. We walked into town on Saturday afternoon which surprisingly only took us an hour or so and took some pictures and tried to introduce the dog to busy areas. Man she is unstoppable! An hour walking pretty fast and she still was like a pocket rocket, so busy, eyes everywhere, leaping about! We brought her home on the bus and she was a bit calmer then and eventually when we got home and settled down she fell fast asleep on my tummy for a few hours!

The snow is going pretty fast now with the warmer temperatures in the days. The pavements are pretty slidy in places but the places that have thawed out are much easier to walk on now, especially as my winter shoes are knackered so I have to walk in my trainers!

No rest for the wicked, so I best get on! Vi ses!

The sun is shining

A beautiful day in Umeå today, the sun is shining and the temperature is a barmy 1 degree! Friday is by far my favourite day of the week because it means I get to spend 2 whole days not worrying about work and being with my family.

It is the final of Melodifestivalen tomorrow and I am really quite excited! That being the competition in which Sweden chooses it's entry to Eurovision this year!! SO camp, although without Alcazar in the final it is a slightly more sombre occassion! It is such a fun competition and the songs in it this year are actually really good. The songs in the final are good anyway, the others were pretty damn rubbish! I am going to drink beer and sing badly, even to the Swedish songs, thanks to lovely teletext! Poor Sandra!

I took the dog for a walk this morning and fell in the evil slush/ice flurrys so have hurt my knees, I will survive though. The weather is warming up so the ice melts in the daytime, gets trampled on and driven on so gets all mushy then freezes again overnight when the temperature drops...makes walking an extreme sport - especially with a slightly hyper hound! Hopefully this afternoons walk will be incident free, I have offered to take her again today as Sandra has a lot of pain in her ankle for no reason at all - seemed mean to make her take the dog for a walk too!

I have done some more work on my secret project today, am going to do some more so I can reveal it next week...fingers crossed people will like it, I am a sucker for needing reassurance.

Well, best get to it. Jag önskar er en trevlig helg! Vi ses!

Disappointed

I am really cross with myself today, well not so much today but I was last night. I was so excited about class and possibly showing off my secret project and seeing my new friends and when I got there I totally froze up. Could barely utter a word with fright. Just about said hello to people and that was it. It made me sad that I let myself do it but I just couldn't help it. We had a different teacher too as Irma was away. I got all my work back that I handed in and it was all good. She set me a task to write her a script about my dog, so I did that but was even too shy at the end to hand in this weeks homework and that assignment to the substitute teacher so left, still clutching it all!

Ridiculous.

I had even thought about maybe inviting the friends I made last week over this weekend for beers or fika but clearly that didn't happen. Oh well. Maybe I will do better next week but for now I am just really disappointed.

The teachers seem a bit stumped by me too, clearly my written work and comprehension is really good and I have been flying through the written chapters and homework I have been given but I might as well be mute! My spoken Swedish and listening comprehension is nowhere near as good as my written work but if I won't open my mouth it won't get any better. Sandra, bless her, is going to speak more Swedish with me, she started today off just talking Swedish which was excellent but difficult for her. I will try harder, all I can do is keep trying, makes it hard when all I want to do is cry when I have to do it though!

Well, nobody said this was easy...hmm I am sure that is a song lyric! Hej då!

Wednesday again already!

That means it's a school day! I am quite excited this week as I might reveal my secret project, then again I might just get too shy and save it for next week! I have done all my homework, which was really hard this week, and am looking forward to getting my work back from last week - now THAT was a lot of work!

I am not feeling 100% today so not looking forward much to actually having to speak Swedish but I guess it is good to do things that make you uncomfortable every now and then!

Wish me luck! Vi ses!