House guests

For most Americans getting one or two weeks per year of vacation is the norm.  Many of these people instead of leaving home on a trip will use their time to catch up on their house work, complete or start little projects and probably most commonly catch up on sleep.   For us the vacation (or holiday as it is called most other places) means a time for not working or a vacation from work.   But breaks from work can be so much more.

So one thing that is interesting about visiting a single place for this amount of time is that your visit become your way of life.   We effectively have moved to Sweden for a month and an half, and our day to day is a swedish existence.

Sandwiches for breakfast - Usually butter and cheese maybe some sort of sliced meat.

This is follows by a walk or a swim.  I usually take a short nap and then work for a little while.   The kids are usually running around with their cousins or on a trampoline so we can afford to not focus on them for a little bit.

Lunch usually consists of a light meal, some sort of meat with potatoes and a vegetable  (usually cucumber).   Now for lunches we've had fish (usually mackerel), fischbolar, one time we had Flesk (imagine bacon that is about 1/4 inch thick...OH YEAH!!!).

Flesk

Lunch is followed by tea or coffee and ice cream.  Another walk or swim.

Dinner is usually a larger meal and can vary depending on what we have...Meat ball, fish, pork chops, spaghetti, chicken, of course not all at once.

Following this is a walk and visiting with friends and family. Maybe some evening fishing out on the boat.

All in all a very social life style.  The island become the playground for our children and us, and on nice days there is not place more magical on the planet.

The home we live in (my mother-in-laws) becomes our home and we pretty much have run of the house.  This is probably what makes this kind of travel possible, if we did not feel at home we would consistently feel like visitors.

These feelings are more evident when "visitors" come.  This week we were joined by visitors from Israel.  When they arrived, we welcomed them in like we owned the place.  We cooked for them, did our best to entertain them or at least find things to entertain them with.

For my wife this is probably not as unusual because she did grow-up on this island and has seen this house as her own for many years.  She also understands the culture of Sweden and can welcome people in as an insiders.  I on the other hand can not claim any of these things, yet I also welcomed them in.

I guess this come with the territory of being able to live here for nearly two months, I know no other way while I'm here.


My two favorite parts of this are the only the mother Limor speaks english so the gestural communication can get a bit out of hand...Sorry.

Second thing is that the last time we saw them was nine years ago at our wedding here in Sweden.  Time sure does fly, even on an island like this were time seems to stand still.