We had a pleasant surprise this last week. Christina and Joel dropped in for a visit. They are on vacation and made a special trip to Gothenburg to come see the island I've been talking about.
It was really nice to have them here. and see the how someone with less experience with Swedish culture than I reacts to it.
They slept trying to get past the Jet Lag phase as fast as possible. We went on walks around the island, watched some football matches and watched videos Joel had found on the internet. Mostly though we laughed...this was a shock to me, not that we laughed but that I noticed it. I realized how much I hadn't laughed during my time here. Not to say I'm not having a great time and enjoying being around family or enjoying being with my kids all the time. I just haven't been laughing...which anyone who knows me knows that that is pretty much a non-stop noise coming out of my mouth.
You experience so many things that being in a different culture that are unexpected and might even go unnoticed.
The comedy of one culture is highly divergent from another coupled with a language barrier...We were are a Kräftskiva (Crayfish party) the other night.
is a very important cultural event for Swedish people and seems to have been highly anticipated by many.
Many people from the island attended sitting at long tables. At each place there was a plate with ten Crayfish on it, a near by basket of bread, butter (always on every table) and some other things I'm not sure about.
While we ate they sang drinking songs...at the end of each everyone took a shot of what ever liquor they had... although not tradition we went with "Captain Morgan's Black Rum."
It was fun to experience this, as I haven't done so before. But I didn't understand the words to the songs which limited the amount of enjoyment, but I still linked arms with the people on either side of me and swayed back and forth to the music.
following the dinner there was a rewards ceremony for the football tournament that was held earlier in the day. I hear this was really fun because all of the jokes...
No comments:
Post a Comment