Dearest Readers – well, week 17 is over. It was a normal week here in Sweden for us. Monday was a red day – which means it was a nationally celebrated holiday. For some reason the Swedes don’t even know, the day after Easter is a holiday. They call it “Annandag PÃ¥skâ€Â which kind of means the next day of Easter.  Saturday, April 30 was also a celebration day know as Valborg. According to the YSA it was originally a day of bonfires to scare away the witches but it has turned into an excuse to drink all you can possibly hold then have a bonfire. (and don’t ask about the witches because they don’t know that either.) One of our young men recalled a Valborg from his teen years when he and his dad brought the family minivan into Göteborg the day after the celebration and gathered the aluminum beer cans that had been tossed here and there and everywhere. They filled the van to the max and took them to the store to recycle. (the grocery stores have machines that count the cans or bottles then give you a printout of how many you have recycled and what your “pant†is. The pant is the money you get back.) in those days the cans were worth ½ a crown apiece. They got 10,000 crowns!! And he claims there were lots more cans to pick up but they had no more room in their van. The next holiday was Sunday May 1. It was called “the Workers’ Dayâ€Â but we didn’t notice anything actually happening.
Oh the Joy of the Summer Sun
As far as our week, it was totally regular until Wednesday evening. We decided to have a free welcome spring dinner for whoever wanted some. We had become the recipients of dozens of footlong hotdogs with all their fixings and couldn’t fit all of them in the freezer. So we cooked hotdogs, had a green salad and some chips and some Swedish kool ade for everyone and anyone who came in and was hungry. We got rid of about 50 of the critters and everyone had a fun time. One of our young men ate 10! He only ate 2 buns, but he downed those dogs like he hadn’t eaten for a week. Then we served V’s chocolate chip cookies for the after institute treat – only we had some Swedish M & M’s (which aren’t very tasty) so we chopped them and put them into the cookies as well as the chocolate chips. I figured we would need about 60 cookies for everyone to have 2. But we only had 13 show up for classes that night. So they got as many as they wanted, with milk. Then on Thursday we had to go to the immigration office to renew our visas. We had driven to it on Tuesday so that we knew where it was. It opened at 9am and closed at 12noon. We got there at 8:45 and had to get in line to get a number. Our number was 412! We went in and sat down and at 9:05 the first number came up on the light screen: number A001!!! We looked at our number again, and luckily it was B412. When the B’s finally started being called, the first one was B400. It took nearly 2 hours to get to B412. It took 30 minutes for the young man to help us and another 30 minutes for them to decide if they would renew it or not. We left the building at 11:55am. We got renewed and can now stay until next June, if we need to, which I don’t think we do.
We then came down to the center and parked the car and walked downtown to the Pizza Hut. A man in the ward had invited us out to lunch with the young sister missionaries. Pizza Hut does a buffet at lunch time with 3 kinds of real American pizza and real green salad. (Swedish pizza salad is shredded cabbage in a vinegar dressing) It was a yummy lunch.
Beautiful Spring Flowers
Friday was, of course, chill. They had decided to play ‘kub’ (pronounced: koob) it is a really fun outdoor game with wooden sticks and tall cube shaped pillars. You throw the sticks trying knock down the pillars. There are more rules than that but that is the gist of the whole thing.
The president of the YSA council has just left on a 3 month vacation
Two China walkabouts and one Swedish Elder who needs some walking
– he and his best buddy are backpacking around China. They each quit their jobs, let their hair and beards grow for about a month, and flew out to Beijing on Sunday. No cell phones, no computers, just some American money and a few Swedish crowns and an airplane ticket.
Robert tried to get in touch with the fellow who is farming Oliver’s farm on Friday to see if we could visit them on Saturday. He couldn’t get him so we decided to do other things. We did our shopping then went to Botaniska Trädgårdan. It is a beautiful public garden that we pass everyday on our way to the center. The trees and the bushes were in leaf and bloom and there were flowers everywhere. It must be 40 acres and its right in the center of town. There were large grassy fields where people were having picnics and there was a band playing in one of the big fields. We walked all along the main path and sat on benches in several different places. It was a lovely spring day and the garden was wonderful. Saturday night about midnight our phone rang and it was the fellow from the farm! He and dad set up an appointment for Sunday at 2:30. While we were in sacrament meeting he texted dad and said he wouldn’t be home at all that afternoon. So we didn’t get to go, but we hope to soon. Then we will be able to talk with Grandpa and find some answers to several questions, we hope. We had gone to Alingsås for church so we could get to Lerum in just 30 minutes, and to pick up the elders so they could translate for us. Since we didn’t get to go, we just went to a local park and ate the lunch I had taken. It was a long drive all for nothing.
We hope all is going well for each of you. Thank you for your prayers and your support. We love you. Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, Rob and Nikki