Chocking nudity

Yesterday I spoke t my friend Katrin. We both work a lot (well, Katrin quite a lot more then me at the moment) and are trying to juggle work, family life, kids and some social activities. I think that 80% of the time that we call each other we do not have the time to talk (and we like to talk) so we usually speak to each other at nighttime. Yesterday we spoke for an hour around nine and then agreed to continue an hour later (Katrin had to get some more work done). At eleven I decided to take a shower and go to bed but just as I turned on the water the phone rang.

Out I went, into our dark bedroom in search of the phone. After six months we still have no lamp in our bedroom! I found the phone and did what I guess most people do who are on the phone. You go to a place where there is light as it feels a bit odd to sit in a dark room. After 20 minutes (time always goes very fast with Katrin!) I realized that I was standing in our lit, window filled hallway at nighttime wearing absolutely nothing! Luckily Ulricehamn does not have an extreme nightlife and our street is more or less dead at night but anyway. God knows how many people who passed our house yesterday evening seeing a phone speaking naked woman on the second floor.

I am not an exhibitionist and you will not even see me topless on a beach in summertime. I envy people who are so comfortable with their bodies that they can be as they are but I am just not like that. The only time people see me naked is when I forget to put on the swimsuit at the swimming pool (happened years ago) or when I mistake a shopping window for a toilet (a very complex and embarrassing story). Actually me friends have selected me as the person with the most embarrassing moments but as I suffer from a very selective memory I live under the notion that I am a controlled and serious person.

Today I am off to give a presentation about international work in an educational environment for headmasters and leaders in Ulricehamn. I will focus on how we reach the once that are not interested in international encounters and how one can be international without leaving Ulricehamn. As a mother of 3 I know how difficult it is to travel and be away for several days but there are many ways of making the world come to you!
Time for work! Have a great day!

I am a soccer mum!

Every week I bring Ingrid to the soccer practice and to the games and stand along the field with all the dads (!?). The season is almost over but today (finally) they won their first game! Way to go girls!!! Next week is the last practice and then the mothers will play against the girls (if we can get a team together). I can’t find my soccer sneakers but even if I did they would probably be too hard and old to use by now. I do admire you girls (almost reaching 40) who are still playing soccer in Nijmegen (the Netherlands). Why is it that we suddenly get too old to do team sports?

For Ingrid the soccer has a really important social function as she gets to know people outside her school environment. They are only 9 kids in her class and with only four girls in the group she feels a need to extend her social network. She still misses her girlfriends in Nijmegen but the sports activities outside school help her to feel more at home here. I understand how she feels. It takes time to make new friends and you have to have some luck as well.

This weekend we enjoyed great autumn weather with a blue sky and walks in the forest. We baked a ladybird cake with Elsa for her birthday and had a pre party with a small group of friends. Time is passing by a bit too fast at the moment and I feel a need to stop it somehow. Maybe the planned weekend trips to the Netherlands and to Stockholm (celebrating 20 years of friendship with Jenny and Helena!!!) this fall will help getting the energy level up again!
Sleep tight!

Lobster fishing or moosehunting?

My colleagues were debating during lunch hour weather the lobster season (which starts the first Monday after the 20th of September) is more extreme then the moose hunting season. I guess you can compare these two events with the week of carnival in south Limburg (the Netherlands). Suddenly nothing else matters. Shops are closed, there is only one subject on the agenda and people get totally obsessed. The lobster fishing does not happen here in Ulricehamn but along the west coast of Sweden and I have never seen it or experienced to my colleagues big surprise. We have fishing and crayfish rights at the lake where our summerhouse is located so next summer we will try to catch some crayfish. The lobster fishing will have to wait:)!

This weekend Elsa had her first lesson of horse back riding. Instead of joining the local club in Ulricehamn we went to a farm in Dalum (a few kilometers outside Ulricehamn) where the lessons are held in the forest. It was a cold but sunny Sunday morning and all kids got a pony each and off they went into the forest. The parents walked as a group a bit behind in a quiet untouched forest passing small rivers, large stones and it was a very peaceful 1 ½ hour walk. Elsa loved it and asked if she could do this every day.

It is getting colder and the changing of season is much more noticeable here then in the Netherlands (or in Lund, south of Sweden, for that matter). I like that. Suddenly one want to light the candles, drink hot chocolate and read a good book after a day of working in the garden. My parents-in-law are here now and Nell is making use of our apples and pears. Elsa’s birthday is coming up and she wants to have a baking party and will get a sewing machine for her birthday. So, during the dark afternoons and evenings to come we will be busy making pillows, blankets and other nice things.

Dutch invaders

When I told my colleagues at the embassy in the Hague that I was moving back to Sweden to the small town of Ulricehamn the ambassador said;
- I guess we will see you back here next year at the emigration fair, trying to attract some Dutch people to Ulricehamn!
More and more people in Sweden move to the bigger cities and in some parts of the country small towns have completely disappeared. Everyone has moved away to places where you can find jobs or get the services you need in today’s life.

Borås is a city located half an hour drive from Ulricehamn. 150 years ago the cities (Ulricehamn and Borås) had the same size. This was the textile region of Sweden. Today Ulricehamn has approx. 22 600 inhabitants and Borås 65 000. What happened? Well, one thing is for sure. Ulricehamn was not ready when the textile industry moved away from Sweden.

The goal for Ulricehamn is to become 25 000 inhabitant in 2020 and there are many ideas on how to reach this. One idea is to attract foreign companies and the Dutch have showed many Swedish municipalities that they are good at settling in and starting their own businesses. So, now I am working on this while Jochem worries about the Dutch invasion! The emigration fair takes place in the beginning of next year but I will visit the Netherlands already in the end of November and I hope to see many of you then (I will be in Nijmegen and the Hague from the 19th to the 23rd).

As for life in Ulricehamn the semester has started and the kids are busy with school and all their sports activities. We just heard that the football season will be over in two weeks and wont start until April! Surprising but Ingrid will try handball and badminton instead and Elsa will start horseback riding on Sunday. Jochems parents are arriving on Friday for a 10 days visit and in two weeks time we welcome my family to celebrate Elsas 8th birthday. Time really flies!

Making the right choices

Elsa (who is turning 8 in a few weeks time) asked me today why there are mothers who leave their newborn babies at the hospital. She had seen a piece on the news. What do you tell a child when they come with such a question? I tried to explain that there are people who feel that they are in such a bad situation that they see no other option and that they think that their child will be better off with someone else.
- So it is not because they don’t like their child then, Elsa asked.
No, I answered. Almost all parents love their children very, very much!

As a parent you never really know if you are doing the right thing. You try to. I want to be a good mother and I want to give them a start in life that will make them strong enough to make the right choices at the right time. But how do you prepare them for life? When our guards in South Africa used machine guns on burglars in our back yard the kids slept through it all. When a paedophile was picked up outside our kid’s school in the Netherlands we never told the kids anything. Was I worried? Of course, but I did not want my fear to reach them.

Compared to our life in Johannesburg and in Boston, life in Sweden is pretty safe. Yet, things do happen everyday and everywhere. I don’t want my kids to worry. I don’t want them to know the full picture yet (which I myself can not comprehend anyway). And at the same time you cannot let them live in a bubble. They see things, hear things and they want to know. They have a right to know – at least at a certain age.

But, why do some people leave their children behind in today’s society? I have no good answer but I think that whatever the reason might be it is never done easily.