Leisure time as I see it from an American perspective

As the summer quarter at Bellevue College ends, I feel that I should present a sort of sign off, although I will continue to blog about life here on the island.   Thank you for following us and I hope you learned something that you can use in your life.  

As an enticement here are some of the entries to come..."Ghost stories", "Liseberg - the Disneyland of South Eastern Gothenburg" and "Research project ideas."

Vacations is supposed to be about leisure time.  Taking time do the things you don't normally have time to do.  Being in a different culture I seen somethings are the same other things are complete different.   

Föt bol or soccer as we know it is huge here.  Every other person is wearing a jersey from their favorite player or team... I, of course, do not recognize any of them...in some cases I can't tell the difference between the team name and the players names...Örgryte, is that a person or a team?  Two of my kids (Vincent and Elsa) were in a soccer week long soccer school.  Just to highlight the cultural differences, my kids came to most days I their shorts, t-shirts and tennis shoes (they work Soccer jerseys one or twice).  Compare this to the local kids who wore the entire uniforms of their favorite player/team right down to the socks and cleats.  I bet some of them even had matching hair cuts.  

It really is the only team sport kids can get into.  

Being that this is an island, water based activities will be a large part of the culture.  

Fishing, everyone does it and they all get excited when they catch a fish.  Most people have boats so you don't see much shore line fishing.  Most of the time people are trying to catch mackerel.  From the boat you usually use what I've come to call a fishing box...I know that its not a box, but I don't know the really name for it.  

One of the most amazing experiences of my life occurred here while fishing.  My nephew took me out on a boat about one hour out to see.  There were four of us fishing, each of us had a line with five hooks on its. From the first "caste" to the last, every hook had a fish on it.  In about two hours we caught almost 1000 fish...I was getting sore from  pulling up all of the fish.  

Swimming is a constant, even on less than ideal days, there are people in the water.  Night time... I've heard people swimming as late, or as early as 4:00 am.  

They also start them young.  Elsa and Vincent took swimming lessons.  These lessons were very similar to swim lessons in the U.S. with the exception these are conducted in the ocean.  

They are effective Elsa learned how to swim, whether because of the lessons or because she is constantly in the water.  It is a totally different environment and life style when your day is based on swimming and playing in the water.  

Being the opportunist that I am and my experience swimming I know that people are often hungry after swimming.  I decided to open a Hotdog/Hamburger stand...actually a Barbaque and a small table.  I sold hotdogs (or Korvs) for 10 Kroner (about $1.50) and hamburgers for 30 Kroner ($4.50).  This was a life long dream of mine...to own and operate my own eating establishment.  I did it for two days and make about $50 dollars profit.  

Another thing that is common out here are boating activities.  Such as water skiing, wake boarding and inner tubbing...we don't do things because last time we were here Madeleine broke her arm inner tubbing and I had to swim her back into shore about 1/2 mile...that made for an awesome rest of the trip.  Vincent was only about 14 months and Elsa had never spent the night sways from us...talk about stress try breast feeding a baby with a broken arm...or in my case trying to help someone breast feed.

Brän bal like Madeleine already talked about is a game played here ins Sweden as well as other Scandinavian countries.  It is like baseball in some basic was, but for the most part it is completely different.  I would say that the differences are about as great as Rugby is to American Football.

So there are two teams.  One in the field, on "up to bat."  The field consists of four "bases" each one evenly spaces into a diamond.  

The players on the hitting team take turns hitting. To do this they throw the ball in the air and take a wild swing at it.  If they hit it they move to the first base, they can continue on. However is they are caught between bases when the Bränner get the ball they have to go back to the last base they were are...again you never get out.  If you swing three times and miss the ball, you automatically go to the first base.  That is why I call it baseball with a heart.  Because no one gets out, no one feel bad about being a bad hitter or catcher.  Another thing is that people do not have to advance a "base" when the ball is hit, you can literally have ten people running from one base to the next...like a herd of stampeding  animals.  Really funny to watch from an out sides perspective.  

Teams trade sides when a certain amount of time has passed, between 5 and 10 minutes.  Scoring happen in several ways.  You can be the hitting team and score by getting all the way around the bases...I think there are some special rules to this but I'm not sure.  The team in the field can also get points by "burning" people (catching them between bases) or catching the ball in the air.  It actually is pretty fun, and can be a mind blower when viewed by someone familiar with baseball. 

There are some many more thing to write about but I don't want to drag this out any more that I have to.  One thing that I learned about this summer, that I didn't expect to is the joys of riding girls bikes, you know the ones with the low hanging bar.  It makes getting on and off the bike much more conformable.  Here a closing image for you... Me a Cambodian American, riding around a small Swedish island with my bright red lycra shirt, a pair of very long Bellevue College basket ball shorts, my blue and white toe shoes on a girls bike...all the while blasting "The Final Count Down" (the 1986 rock anthem by the band Europe). 

You'll have to come back to get the rest of this story.