Walking in a Winter Wonderland!

Sp this past weekend I, like a real jetset, flew to Stockholm from Gothenburg. It takes about an hour. My friend Karin works as a travel agent for http://www.flyme.se and they had a campaign going on right now, so it was cheap. It was a beautiful friday and the landscape passing outside the bus on the way to the airport was covered in frost.

The reason for my trip was to celebrate my dear sister who had her birthday last week. And to, yet again, take Kajsa swimming. She has been talking about it ever since the last time. And the first thing she said when I got there was; "I´ve been longing to go to swimming with you". We had a fun day and after we both had a little nap. After few hours of jumping in and out of the water we were both tired and had a little nap! :)

Madde had some guests over for dinner Saturday night and during it we had the first snowfall! So pretty and of course as they were all leaving, a couple of the "boys" had to have a snowball fight and my dad made a snowman... Some things you are never too old for! :)

Fall Colours

Went home to Eskilstuna for this weekend. Had a date with my cousin Pernilla yesterday and she came over after work, we had some chinese and wine then walked down town to a bar. Met some friends at Grappa, Karin, Nicke, Macke, Fredda, Alex and Mattias, and had a couple of drinks with them before heading over to Harry´s for some dancing to good old 80´s music! :) Had a great time and what started as "going out for an hour or so" ended up "staying until close".

Today I payed a visit to my cousin Susanne, her husband Robert and their baby Dante. Hadn´t seen them in a while so I wanted to go over there to squeeze Dante a little. He´s such a cutie and a real charmer! Also sporting my new hair colour for this fall. Wanted to try something new to go with my new beginning. Or something like that! (More like; Linda, my hairdresser, convinced me to do it! :) But I´m pretty happy with it. )

Tonight might be another going-out-night with some friends, we´ll see. But right now, I have a nice hot bubble bath waiting for me!! Best thing about fall and it getting chilly is sinking into a bathtub!!!

Big Difference

I had forfgotten how much different it is to work in Sweden compared to the Carribbean. I never saw it when I worked in Stockholm before I flew the coop, but now it´s starting to show.

I had my first proper work day yesterday at the gym, and oh my God, are they (I guess I should say "we" since I actually AM Swedish too...) ever stiff!!! And I´m not talking stiff as in the dirty kind of way, or remarkably stiff muscles, but as people! Very awkward and at times they feel very uncomfortable. And these are not massage first-timers either. They´ve been for treatments before, but yet so... I don´t know... shy and hard to get a smile out of. On the other hand they have no problem taking their clothes off (not entirely of course, sorry to burst the stereo-type-Swede-bubble) with me in the room, an American waits until you´re outside most of the time. But after that, very difficult to have a conversation with and, lord forgive, crack a joke! And J-E-S-U-S when they get out of the room and I ask "so how do you feel?" they can hardly look me in the eye when they stammer "eh..fffine" and awkwardly shake my outstretched hand. I guess I guess I shouldn´t expect to get: "Wow, that was really great, I feel awesome, that was one of the best massages I ever had" very often here... :)

I shouldn´t say they´re ALL like that, two maybe three out of six actually were very quite pleasant and easy to work with and on. I just have to get used to the fact that we´re different here in Sweden, we don´t usually let people in that we´ve never met before. I´m not expecting to be their best buddy, I´m not even talking about them spilling their guts and sharing their life story (I HAVE gotten a few of those from Americans) but letting someone inside your personal space past your guard, seems a VERY difficult thing to do...

I guess those darn American tourists gave me a new point of view, opened my eyes to things I never saw before, discovered things I would never have seen had I stayed here in Sweden. Now if that´s good or bad, who knows.... :)