Tag: expat

Homeschooling in Sweden

On May 8, 2024

I wrote this piece in August 2018.

For the past two weeks, my social media has been dominated by American back-to-school pictures.

Last week it was kids with backpacks standing poised to step off the front porch into the conventional school world, and this week it has been by my homeschooling friends posting their images of life outside of school — kids playing in the backyard, kids reading in their pajamas and socks, kids snuggling on the couch with their mom, kids at a museum, kids at the beach.

And while my Swedish friends don’t seem as likely to post pictures of their children embarking on a new school year, I am fully aware that the season has dramatically changed: vacation is over, school is back in session. The schools are full and the houses are empty.

Except for us.

River is not going back to school. Earlier this month he went to the international school he attended last year, turned in his school-owned MacBook and unenrolled himself from school. In America, we might call him a high school dropout, and it is basically the same concept here in Sweden.

In Sweden, while it is legal for children over 16 to “drop out,” such a decision makes River instantly ineligible for the generous monthly stipend the Swedish government pays all students under 20. It also likely prevents him from attending the famously free Swedish universities and trade schools, as entrance to these institutions are only available for those who have passed through the conventional system. As far as I know, there is no legitimate path for independently learning students to validate their education and enter into the publicly-funded university system.

Sweden is one of the few remaining countries with draconian anti-homeschooling policies. Homeschooling is legal in neighboring Nordic countries: Norway, Denmark, and Finland, but in Sweden children under 16 are legally required to attend state-sanctioned schools. According to the international homeschooling rights advocacy group, Homes School Legal Defense, noncompliant families in Sweden have suffered fines, litigation, and in some cases, children have been removed from their homes and parental rights terminated. Some Swedish families have allegedly left Sweden to live in Swedish-speaking areas of neighboring Finland, rather than comply.

As one of my Swedish friends said, “Of course I have heard of homeschooling, but I have never met anyone who does it.”

It’s a radical step off of the conventional, accepted path, in a country that deeply respects convention; and I am well aware that River may be the only homeschooler in Sweden.

But River is 16 and legally eligible to “opt out,” of school, so thankfully we are not concerned about the legal ramifications for our family.

And, as this was primarily River’s request and decision, I am convinced that he is motivated and ready to work towards his goals, and I have no doubt that he will be successful.

But why homeschool in a country where we have no homeschooling community and little social support?

Kip and I decided to support River’s decision to return to homeschooling because we thought it was the best decision for him and for our family. I love Sweden and I respect the reality that society and culture are different here than in the US, but in the end, we had to do what works for us.

Here are a few of the many reasons homeschooling works for us here in Sweden.

Time for Creativity

We were appalled at the amount of wasted time River described in his school experience. Modeled after the parents’ expected workday, the school day is long, often lasting from 8:15 until almost 5 p.m. During the winter River walked to school in the dark and came home in the dark. After school and homework, there was little time or energy left for him to engage in creative, life-giving activities he had always enjoyed like making stop-motion animation videos, playing guitar and skateboarding.

Educational Content

River attended a private International Baccalaureate school here in Sweden, and we had hoped when he enrolled that it would be an appropriately rigorous education. And while he enjoyed classes that he had never had before, like jazz class and design class, overall, we thought that most classes were less rigorous than the homeschooling options we had in Los Angeles. His English class, for instance, read and discussed only one book for the whole year. They also discussed the international epidemic of fake news, wrote one opinion piece and analyzed poetry, but it was a pale substitute for what our daughter had the year she was 15. During her sophomore year of high school, she studied and performed multiple Shakespearean plays, read 25 nonfiction and fiction books, wrote about 10 papers, wrote and delivered multiple speeches and made group presentations with her weekly “class” of homeschooling students.

Furthermore, going to school revealed areas that River needed to improve, but as is the nature of traditional school, there was little time to stop and catch up. With River being home during school hours, we are beginning to address the areas where he needs individual tutoring to get “back on track.”

Mentoring

When River was attending the IB school he had “mentors,” assigned, adults who were supposed to be involved in his academic life and help guide him in personal development as well. I initially liked the idea, but the reality was that these arbitrarily assigned mentors never developed much of a real relationship with River and subsequently never had much of an impact on his school experience or personal growth.

However, when we decided to homeschool here in Sweden, one of the first things we did was enlist the assistance of real mentors. I asked my dad, who is a medical doctor in the US, to oversee River’s biology program. River is working through an excellent biology textbook and will be fully participating in biology labs here, but by including my dad, River will have a weekly mentor meeting to talk to another adult who will be interested in his learning progress.

River also reached out to one of his favorite educational mentors in Los Angeles, Shawn Crane, a veteran homeschooling mother who has created her own homeschooling support organization that hosts excellent, rigorous, scholar-level classes for homeschooling teenagers. River will be following along the reading and writing assignments for one of her classes, participating in weekly class discussions by way of an Internet-based video conferencing call.

Social Life

When River started school last fall we had hoped it would be a good place for him to make local friend and connect with other teenagers living in Sweden. But for the most part, it really did not work out that way.

We found that after spending hours at school, the last thing River wanted to do was spend more time with his classmates. It was not until late spring that any of River’s friends from school came over, and even then, it was really just one friend that River wanted to get to know on a deeper level.

River found that his greatest source of friendship in Sweden was not at his English-speaking school, where he shared little common interest with other students, but at a Swedish youth group, a church just a few blocks from our apartment. Despite the fact that the youth group meetings were all in Swedish, River found that through translation and the kind hospitality of the youth group leaders, he could relate more deeply with the Swedish kids there. Since then he has developed strong friendships in this church and also at an international, English-speaking church we attend on Sundays. As a bonus, his natural connection with local teens has made him the most motivated person in our family to learn Swedish. He currently dominates the rest of us in Duolingo.

Do I worry that River will be lonely, come the middle of winter when the days are short and cold? Yes. I do. But as he so acutely responded when I suggested that, “I would rather be lonely at home than lonely at school.” Winter is winter in Sweden.

Freedom to Travel

Last spring River skipped the school trip to go on an epic motocross ride across the Italian Alps.

One of our main motivations for living in Europe was the opportunity to travel extensively. Already this summer we have seen Italy, Norway, Germany, Austria, Slovenia and Hungry. Last year Kip and I made it to Spain and Madera, and next month I will get an opportunity to study in Rome for two weeks. And as we hope to continue seeing Europe while we are here, homeschooling will give us the opportunity to travel as a family on our own schedule.

So what does homeschooling look like during school hours?

River has a schedule of assignments that he and I have agreed upon, mostly reading and responding to his reading. He has a stack of over 25 books that he is interested in reading, mainly biographies, histories, and nonfiction. He will also be working through an Algebra II curriculum and a Biology textbook along with the accompanying lab work. Different family members are planning to read books along with him, and so far, this week he has been busy working on academic pursuits from morning until late afternoon.

Will he be alone during the day?

No. Like many modern professionals, Kip frequently works from home, a fact which is perhaps the strongest evidence that homeschooling is part of a larger social deconstruction of centralized work centers. My graduate school consists of mostly independent reading and online classes, so I too am home during school hours.

And what about college?

River plans to go to college. When we return to the US he can continue his homeschooling, attend a community college and eventually transfer to a four-year university. If he wants to go straight into a four-year private university, he could also take the standard college entrance exams (SATS and ACT) and apply directly. We are designing his homeschooling course study with college in mind.

Why are we being public about our decision to homeschool in Sweden?

We have been hesitant about talking to even our friends about homeschooling in Sweden. Most Europeans who have been raised in socialist settings do not have a flexible framework for understanding nonconventional education, and I would rather avoid the conversation than hear well-meaning suggestions on how we can make school work for us.

But I think it is important for people in Sweden to understand how homeschooling works and why someone would choose it over a traditional school experience.

I also think it would be beneficially for Sweden to rethink its public policy concerning homeschooling. Homeschooling in the US, a movement not without flaws, has produced a generation of self-motivated, highly-educated adults who often excel in their areas of business, athletics, education and art. They are in many ways the social entrepreneurs of their generation.

Sweden is experiencing an economic boom, and now more than ever there is an emphasis on, and support for, startup endeavors, new high-tech companies and new business ideas in general. Opening the educational system to better support motivated, nontraditional students could help the country cultivate a generation of creative, problem solvers who value innovation over time-filling, the risk of entrepreneurship over the stability of employment.

And furthermore, I think homeschooling could work in Sweden because there is a public will to fund creative educational experiences. There is a general desire to equip all types of students for their varied futures.

For instance, there are many creative, diverse, publicly funded gymnasiums (high schools) that River could have chosen if he were Swedish literate. Before we decided to homeschool we visited a Swedish school centered around a professional-level indoor skatepark. The school day there consists of traditional morning classes and skateboarding, photography and free art classes in the afternoons. It was a lot closer to the school experience River was looking for, but in the end, we chose to homeschool because he wanted more freedom to choose the actual subjects and course study. And he wanted to be home.

So in conclusion, we are homeschooling because after considering River’s desires and personal commitment to his own education, we decided it was the best decision for our family. But I have decided to be open about our decision because I hope to give my European friends a glimpse of what an American homeschooling family is like. And furthermore, I hope Sweden will re-evaluate its outdated, anti-homeschooling policies that are counterproductive to its general commitment to tolerance and its growing support of entrepreneurship culture. I think it is time for this notoriously liberal country to liberalize its educational system to accommodate homeschooling.

Update January 2019: I wrote this piece in August 2018, but decided not to publish it right away. We have continued to homeschool River, but we have found that it is not without challenge. Homeschooling in a country without any other homeschooling teens has been difficult, especially when the short winter days can leave you with a serious case of cabin fever. I do think it was the best educational choice for him as he seems to be progressing in science and math better than he did in the traditional school setting. But I won’t sugar coat it. It is lonly to be the only one.

Update: May 2024

It has been five and a half years since we decided to homeschool River in Sweden. Since then the COVID pandemic made homeschooling a household word, around the world.

Homeschooling was the right choice for us in the fall of 2018, but it ultimately contributed to our leaving Sweden in 2019 and returning to the US so River could finish homeschooling in a community. After graduating from our homeschooling, he took a year off of school and then went to a private university in Oregon where he has just finished his second year of Civil Engineering.

Milan for a Moment

By Theresa Haynes

On July 17, 2018

In Uncategorized

Years before we moved to Sweden, I heard stories of amazingly cheap inter-European flights. Expats living in the UK whisking away to Spain and Italy on a $20-weekend excursion. But disappointingly, since we have been in Sweden I have found that these bargains are almost nonexistent. Either we are too far north to benefit from these legendary deals, or they are just that, legends of the past, a memory of the days of cheap carrier price wars. It is actually very rare to find even a $25 one-way flight anywhere from Copenhagen, except to Milan.

For some reason, Italy’s fashion capital is the exception. I often see extremely cheap tickets to this less frequented Italian city, so when Kip and River began planning their epic motorcycle adventure to Italy, I noticed Ryanair was offering one-way flights for $17.

The more we thought about it, we realized Micah and I could fly to Milan, stay for a couple of days and then meet the men in northern Italy to help them drive back through Germany to Sweden. It was a simple plan that would allow Micah to see a little bit more of Europe while she lived with us for the summer.

The boys on their Italian motocross adventure.

Bergamo

By the time we ended up buying our last-minute plane tickets, it was more like $30 each, but it was still cheaper than a train ticket to Stockholm, or a train ticket from LA to San Diego for that matter.

Flying into Milan on Ryanair usually means arriving in Bergamo, a small city about 50 kilometers outside of Milan. Most people take the 5 Euro bus directly into Milan from there, but we wanted to have an old town Italian experience first, so we took public transit through Bergamo to a funicular that took us up a hill to the old town of Bergamo where we stayed at an Airbnb apartment in the old walled city.

Bergamo, Italy

Our Airbnb apartment, another bargain for $70 including fees, was on a narrow, quiet cobblestone street, near enough to a convent to hear beautiful church bells on the hour, at the evening vespers and again first thing in the morning. The old stone buildings with their wooden shutters and balcony laundry lines seemed to be preserved in time, unaffected by either progress or war.

We walked around the old town like two kids in Fantasyland and someone mentioned it seemed like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride or the Pinocchio ride must be hidden somewhere around the corner.

“It’s like Disneyland, but the real thing,” Micah must have said as many times as I did. It reminded me of C.S. Lewis’s concept of Shadowlands, the idea that everything good in this life is a mere shadow of the real thing beyond.

We found a restaurant and ordered pasta. It was some of the best I had ever had, and when I took a picture of Micah I thought about my Italian friend Marlo who insisted we stop by her parents’ house in Pittsburg after we took Micah to the Pittsburg Zoo for the first time.

When Marlo’s mom found out that Micah had never eaten spaghetti, she was delighted, overjoyed, to watch her try it for the first time. I think Micah was about 9 months old, trying her first spaghetti to an audience of enthusiastic Italian women. I wish I had a picture from that moment, and I found myself trying to make up for it by taking a picture right then. Sometimes honoring the past is embracing the present.

Milan

Micah did not know that Milan was known for fashion. I thought that was hilarious, and I mentioned it every time I looked up an article about Milan and found that it started with a description of Milan being the fashion capital of the world.

However, what Micah did know about Milan was far more substantive. Having just finished a church history class at Colorado Christian University, she was exuding with information about the Edict of Milan that legalized Christianity in the Roman Empire, Ambrose the brave bishop who stood up to the emperor and Ambrose’s own protégé, a philosopher-turned-theologian that even I was familiar with, the great St. Augustine of Hippo.

She highly recommended me listening to her Audible copy of The Story of Christianity, so while we were flying to Milan I listened to the chapters pertaining to the city’s history and we were able to talk about the historical relevance of the churches and people who occupied that city more than 1500 years ago. We spent most of our time in Duoma, Milan’s overwhelming cathedral, and to Micah’s utter delight, we saw the fairly recently unearthed archeological site where Ambrose baptized St. Augustine in 386.

The baptismal where Ambrose baptized St. Augustine.

In Milan we stayed at a youth hostel with bunk beds and shared dorm rooms. With the exception of the remote mountain lodge that the kids and I stayed in last summer when we hiked the Kungsladen in Lapland, I had never actually stayed in a shared dorm room. It is a little outside the typical American traveling experience, and I was a little worried that it might be strange. But it was actually fine and I was glad to share the company of a few other women along our journey. I suppose as an American I tend to think of the risk of sharing sleeping quarters with strangers instead of the benefit, but in a high-quality youth hostel like the one we stayed in, I think there is actually more security in the temporary community of fellow travelers.

We spent a little time walking around the fashion areas of Milan, buying nothing. We found a chain store on a side street away from the high-end Italian brand stores, and Micah bought a little black dress that looked amazing on her. And I felt that our Milan experience was complete.

After a little over 24 hours in Milan, we took a train to Turin where we met Kip and River. They were tired and happy, having been on motorcycles on Alpine trails for the past four days. But they were happy to see us, especially since I had ordered pizza at a typical Italian-Middle Eastern restaurant called Pizza Kabab and it was ready as soon as they arrived. I laughed about the fact that the only pizza we ate in Italy was not particularly Italian, but it was pretty good anyway. Not everything has to be authentic to be authenticly good.

Picturing the Milan cathedral

Swedish Summer Saturday

By Theresa Haynes

On June 10, 2018

In Uncategorized

Swedish summer in Västra Hamnen

Today, like nearly every other day for the past month, the sun rose early, pouring into the apartment like the savage heat of a Mexican vacation.

The birds started their daily chattering around 4 a.m. in regular observance of their fowl social hour. And before long the radiant sun was pressing through the layers of our drawn window blinds and thick, velour curtains. It was hot, really hot.

I usually keep my extra thick face mask handy, just in case I wake up and cannot get back to sleep. The face mask is amazingly effective, cradling my closed eyes in soft satin and soothing darkness. I am sure that I look scary, but not nearly as scary as I look when I only get four hours of sleep.

This morning I slept in, thanks to the mask and the relative quiet of our apartment with the men gone on their schools-out, summers-in motorcycling adventure. I stayed in bed late and then took extra time to journal, read, pray, and drink coffee on the balcony under our tree, now thick with its summer leaves.

It has been a mixed week for me, a few days of enjoying our life here, and a few days of struggling with the ongoing search for a job and the ongoing problems I cannot solve. The futile job search is a difficulty I should have expected, coming to Sweden without highly sought tech skills or a proficiency in Swedish. But even so, looking for a job can be deeply discouraging, and some days I just need a vacation from planning and thinking and trying. And so, this morning I decided to do just that.

Micah brought me an avocado-cocoa-spinach-almond milk-date smoothie, and we talked about life, not the distant future, just the present; and when the smoothies were done I told her I thought we needed to go for a long, hot run and jump into the ocean.

She was reluctant, not so sure about the jumping-into-the-ocean part, but I prevailed and we ran across Malmö in the midday heat. We ran through some of our favorite parks with the tall trees and their delightfully shading green canopy. We ran past the museum that she has not yet been to and then on to the long sandy beach strand. We ran along the beach, choosing a trail and avoiding the stream of people using the bike and pedestrian path. And then we ran through our “old neighborhood,” Västra Hamnen, the stylish new apartment village where we lived in a small, temporary apartment last summer. That already feels like a long time ago, even though the anniversary of our arrival is next Saturday.

It was almost 80 degrees again today in Malmö, and I was surprised to see how much of the grass had turned yellow, sun-scorched like California in September. Everyone is talking about how unusual the weather has been, and Swedish officials have even sent out social media warnings, urging people to use less water.

When we arrived at the docks, I took off my running shoes, walked to the end of the pier; and to Micah’s surprise, jumped in. Last Saturday I met my friend Jennifer at the docks and she urged me to jump without thinking. Jennifer often gives me really deep advice without realizing it. “Just jump in,” she says with her cute shrug and reassuring smile. And she was right. It really is the best way, because even in June, the water is still freezing cold, and the only way in is sudden, full immersion.

Later in June Micah jumped off the highest point at the docks.

But here is a nasty secret most people don’t know about California: the water is cold there too. It looks warm and balmy in movies, but it is not Hawaii. In the 14 years, I lived within three miles of the Pacific Ocean, and I only swam a few times. And when I did swim in the ocean it was almost always in August when the warm sun had finally warmed the water to the mid-60s. In June I was more likely to wear a sweatshirt to Santa Monica beach than a swimming suit.

According to some resources, the water in Malmö is actually almost the same temperature as Malibu throughout the summer months. Today it was about 62 degrees, and it was 63 degrees in Malibu. But unlike swimming at the beautiful California beaches where you have to brave past each cold, crashing wave; getting fully immersed in the Öresund Strait is as easy as running and jumping from the public docks. And after the cold shock of it all, nothing feels so exhilarating and calming as washing away all the sweat and dirt in an instant.

After swimming around long enough to feel warm, we got out and did what everyone else on the dock was doing. We let the sun dry us and then we jumped in again — like the sauna routine without the sauna.

Families around us shared picnics, parents with small children, young people with grandparents. Couples talked or read books, both in English and Swedish. One young man next to us read a biography of Stalin in English. Two young women laid next to each other, reading the same novel in Swedish. I wondered if they had a book club or if it was for a class.

The crowd was wonderfully age-diverse, elderly men and women sunning and swimming alongside teenagers. I noticed again, how gracefully Swedish people seem to be able to transition from winter white to golden brown. I, on the other hand, got the first sunburn I have had in years.

After we swam, Micah and I walked slowly back to the apartment, stopping to play on an empty playground, talking about the creative play structures and her childhood friends. We watched an endurance race with multiple obstacle stations, teams of people crawling under a maze of ropes, crossing the city moat on connected barrels. It looked like fun, the kind of thing Kip would like. We watched for a while and then meandered to my favorite falafel stand. I ordered a kycklingrulle, a middle eastern chicken burrito, the best fast food deal in Malmö, and we walked back to the apartment. Satisfied. Happy.

One of us said we liked the simplicity of our life here. The other agreed.

It is Saturdays like this that I want to remember when somebody asks what we did in Sweden.

I wrote this piece in June 2018.

Do you like Malmö?

By Theresa Haynes

On March 22, 2018

In Uncategorized

Do you like Malmö?

I hear that question frequently. What do you think of Sweden? Do you like Malmö?

There is the tendency to talk about the weather first as this is universally the easiest small talk topic.

“Well, you know, we came from California and its sunny there all the time.”

“Yeah, so this is our first winter is 15 years.”

“You know, its ok.”

But all of that is true and completely beside the point. No one asked me what I thought about the weather in Malmö. Everyone, with the exception of one person I met from Northern Ireland, agrees that the weather in Malmö is less than pleasant, especially the long, dark, rainy winters.

But do I like Malmö?

This Sunday, a woman I met after church, awkwardly socializing over cup of post-church coffee, asked me this question. She was older, from a more rural part of Sweden, and she communicated through halting Swinglish that she understood English but did not speak it well.

I stopped, trying to articulate my words simply. I looked into her clear blue eyes in her face framed by wispy blond bangs, and I heard myself say, “I like Sweden.”

She smiled. Satisfied.

And I realized that I believed what I said.

I told her that just yesterday Kip and I had spent the afternoon with a neighbor we met on the street, a very un-Swedish connection. But even so he had invited us over for coffee, and so we sat in his beautifully Scandinavian styled apartment and had coffee and freshly baked, homemade cardamom rolls with his wife and toddler son. The candles on the table warmed the room and made me forget about the cold Saturday afternoon outside.

And last Friday night, despite the cold snap that brought the temperature well below freezing, Kip and I rode our bicycles across town to meet up with another couple and discuss our lives over imported wine and olives. After a wonderful evening of discovering common hearts in uncommon narratives, we rode our bikes back through town and stopped near Möllevången for midnight falafel from a middle eastern restaurant that keeps very unSwedish business hours. And I kept thinking about how, just a year ago, I could not have even imagined such a night.

The real Malmö … late night kebabs paid with Swedish kroner under a Swedish flag. (Note: This picture is not from Möllevången, but from our neighborhood kebab shack. These popup stands offer the best “fast” food in Sweden.)

I like our life and adventure here.

I love that Malmö is an international city, a baby city where you can ride bikes from one end to the other, but a multicultural hub where you can get to know people from around the world who have chosen to make this tip of Sweden their home.

I like the indoor winter culture.

I like the hospitality.

I like the massive bike roads and the fact that we bike everywhere, even in the middle of the night in the cold of winter.

I love the people we have met, the friends who feel like real friends, the kind that I will keep in touch with for a long, long time.

I like the coffee culture, and dangerously so, I like all the freshly baked bread and bakery treats. It’s the best I have had in the world, and there always seems to be opportunities to partake.

Swedish semla and salad, a perfect spontaneous lunch date with my friend Jennifer. Semla is the Swedish response to “fat Tuesday,” a traditionally pre-lent delight that somehow arrives in bakeries early and lingers after the beginning of lent.

I love the tree that grows just outside our balcony. I have watched it change from green, to yellow, then barren, then white with snow and now dripping with freezing rain and the pre-spring promise of budding tips. I like the reality of seasons and the rhythm it brings to people’s lives.

Our tree, exactly five months ago, the last of the green leaves.

Today, no new leaves yet, but tiny rain-dripped buds, birds and a curious cat experiencing his first spring ever.

So yes, sweet lady from Sweden with your careful worded English and your hospitable smile, I like Sweden.

My November Survival Guide

By Theresa Haynes

On November 25, 2017

In Uncategorized

Before we moved to Sweden I had heard that November was the hardest month emotionally. As the trees drop the last of their golden leaves, the days get shorter and the temperatures plummet; it can be easy to develop a case of the winter blues.

A simple Google search back in May pulled up more than a few top ten type guides, most of them proposing the same kind of advice I would give to any friend struggling with a mild case of depression – exercise, make friends, dress up every once in a while, invest in yourself.

The articles all suggested November travel and one even specifically suggested going to California for the rest of the winter. When I read that, sitting at a computer in California, I didn’t laugh. I took a deep breath and started researching light lamps.

But here we are, more than half way through November, and I have to say, it does feel like winter. The days are short and getting shorter every day. The air is refreshingly crisp as I ride my bike to Swedish class, and the sun can actually be beautiful mid morning. (I have gotten more than one happy morning photo text from Kip riding the train to Älmhult.) But by mid afternoon the weather is often colder, sometimes grey and always darkening. On nice days, a uniquely warm, late afternoon light fills the space between apartment buildings, just before the world drops into total nighttime darkness, a few minutes before 4 p.m. It is winter in Scandanavia.

Sweden from the morning train to IKEA headquarters in Älmhult

So now that I am well on my way to being a veteran of the notorious November, what are my survival tips?

Exercise

It’s cold, sometimes raining, sometimes blustery, but there is no way around it, exercise is key, maybe THE key. And for someone who once ran marathons and had a daily running route involving running three miles up a mountain and through a hilly neighborhood in Malibu, I acutely know that I have not been following this advice enough. I need more exercise.

I still lace up and run a few times a week, and I try to get “every day” exercise by biking more places than I drive. And if I am being generous with myself, I might even count the squats I do while playing with our overactive kitten. But it is not enough. If I cannot convince myself to run or bike more, I might need to join a gym.

Invest in Friendship

I read this advice on all the blogs: Get out. Make friends. Be intentional about having a social life. This is all true, and ironically easier for us here in Sweden than it was in sunny California. From the first weekend we moved to Malmö we have met generous, hospitable people who have eagerly invited us into their homes.

We may have a bit of a social advantage in that we visited a couple of international English speaking churches, both of which were full of English-speaking internationals happy to have new potential friends arrive in Sweden. But it has not just been other expats who have welcomed us with open arms. On the second weekend that we were in Malmö our whole family was invited to an elaborate dinner party, hosted by an extraordinarily hospitable Swedish couple who wanted to include us in a midsummer family meal. And that was just the beginning. Our time here has been full of meeting new people, exchanging numbers and social media, and getting together for fika, lunch at a restaurant, dinner in homes or even just a run in the park. When we had a birthday party for Kip last month our apartment was full of new friends, none of which we knew this time last year.

Selfies, fika and an international bouquet of new friends from the Ukraine, South Africa, Denmark and me.

Warm Clothes

I have heard more than one person in Malmö quip that there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing. And that is not true. Some days can only be described as “bad weather,” but the right clothing goes along way. In Malmö, the right clothing includes windproof, waterproof coats, hats, scarfs, gloves, wool socks, warm shoes; almost none of which we had after living 14 years in southern California.

The North Face coat I bought in LA made its debut the middle of October.

But I bought a few things in Los Angeles before we came here, and I have also had some luck at a few of the nicer thrift stores here. For a fraction of what I paid for the parka I bought at the North Face outlet in Camarillo, I found a perfect winter coat that is long enough to keep me warm and short enough to not get in the way of riding a bike. Even so, with every passing day of colder weather, I am making a list for Santa: longer running tights, warmer jeans, better gloves, maybe long underwear. The barefoot days of summer seem like a long time ago.

Sunshine Travel

I had read that it is a good idea to travel to sunnier places in November, but I thought it was an expat suggestion, not a cultural norm until we got a 7 a.m. flight out of Copenhagen on the first Saturday of “Fall Break.” The airport was packed like Disneyland in July. And that is when I learned that all school children in Sweden got that week off of school. Anyone who could afford to leave the winterlands headed south. We went to the island of Madeira, off the coast of Africa, and heard Swedish all week long.

Where to next November?

Vitamin D

Apparently human bodies really need vitamin D to stay healthy and avoid a whole host of chronic illnesses. Fortunately the body makes vitamin D on its own. It is one of the great things about being human, but with the sun barely shining directly on Sweden in the winter and 95 percent of my body covered with layers of clothing, I realized that I might not be getting enough. I had been strongly advised to take vitamin D, and I had been taking it earlier in the fall, but when I got busy with life I forgot to include it in my daily routine. Then I started noticing that I was tired, really tired. I started taking vitamin D supplement again and it seemed to help significantly.

Learn Something New

Swedish friends have told us that winter is the time you catch up on Netflix, and I can see how that might happen. I watched six episodes of Homeland over one weekend until I realized I was low on Vitamin D and feeling sad about not being in the US for Thanksgiving.

Entertainment induced brain slack is not a good November survival strategy. Taking on a new challenge is much more rewarding. Reading books, taking a class, trying new recipes, practicing a musical instrument all makes November a happier month.

In addition to my Swedish class, I have been reading an amazing biography on the German theologian, Hitler conspirator, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and I can’t stop talking about how amazing it is. It takes more effort to pick up a biography than watch tv, but its totally worth it.

Light up the House

I met a Swedish girl at a party who told me November was her favorite month in Sweden because it was the time she pulled out all of her winter decorations, her candles and window lights. And I can totally understand that.

We finished furnishing our apartment just before Kip’s birthday in October, so winterizing our decorations was as simple as adding a few more candles and a giant IKEA star in the window. Even though the world is dark and cold outside we have created an oasis of warmth inside.

Family Dinner

This is my own addition to the November survival list. We eat dinner together almost every night. We had always wanted to do that in California, but it often seemed difficult to make a priority. There were too many opportunities and obligations on the calendar. Here there seems to be time to eat together, in the dining room. We talk about the day’s highlights, what I read, what someone said at work or on the train, what happened at school, what the crazy cat did. Its rich.

As I am making the list, it has occurred to me that our November life is far better than mere survival. It is full of simple pleasures — family dinners, hospitality, new friends, candles, books, Swedish class. Its simple stuff, really simple; but I think deep down it’s the life that most people wish they had. Who would have thought that life thrives in the cold?

And Thanksgiving! Hosting a thanksgiving feast and inviting Swedish friends should be included in any American’s November survival guide.

Back to School

By Theresa Haynes

On November 15, 2017

In Uncategorized

First day of Swedish class

Monday was back to school day for me, the first back to school day in as long as I can remember. I got up early, made coffee, grabbed a half-filled notebook that I last used for an online screenwriting course, grabbed my bike and rode through the crisp fall morning to class. It felt amazing. I hardly noticed that it was about 32 degrees Fahrenheit.

The class, a four-week intensive Swedish course taught daily for three hours, was everything I had hoped for; and I came home the first day with pages of notes and the first real bit of faith that I might actually learn Swedish.

The class and the instructor came highly recommend to me by two different people, a Ukrainian and a Brazilian, that I met at Hillsong, an international English speaking church in Malmö. I decided I needed something to get me going again in my language learning, so I enrolled.

The class is intense. The teacher speaks mostly in Swedish. She says something, writes it on the white board, waits eagerly through the blank stares, gives us a few clues and then sometimes just says it in English. Sometimes she doesn’t have to translate at all, and that makes the class both challenging and interesting.

After living in Sweden for several months and grasping bits and pieces of the language, I’m discovering that the class is filling in the missing pieces, the little bits of information that I needed to bring it all together.

For one thing, I have found that written and spoken Swedish can seem almost unrelated as the Swedish speaker often excludes parts of written words and seems to blur others together in phrases that sound like one sing-song muddle. When I have pointed this out to Swedish speakers they often say, “Oh, but Danish is much worse.” (There should be a Swedish word for Danish blame shifting.)

My first attempt to learn Swedish began in Malibu when I bought Rosetta Stone for Swedish and sat in the kitchen with my open laptop. At that time moving to Sweden still felt like a hypothetical possibility and I needed something to motivate me to begin the work of preparing for the move.

Rosetta Stone was a great start and I learned my first bits of vocabulary, pojken (the boy), flickan (the girl), but Rosetta Stone is built on inductive reasoning, educated guessing, and the program only took me so far. I was totally confused by the grammar until July when I met a German hiker on our trek in Abisko, in the far north of Sweden, in the arctic circle. In a rustic hikers’ cabin with no electricity or running water, over a candlelight dinner of freeze-dried stew, she mentioned that German and Swedish are very similar and that learning Swedish had not been too difficult for her. The biggest difference was that the articles were at the end of the nouns instead of the beginning, for instance “katt” and “katten” in Swedish versus “die Katz” in German. When she said that it was like a light went on. I had been struggling for weeks and had no idea why the nouns changed without warning, and I suddenly understood. I wanted to immediately trek back to civilization, boot up my computer and get back into Rosetta Stone.

I also used Duolingo, which is a fun free app that I have on my phone. But just like Rosetta Stone, it is not enough. Sometimes you just need a human instructor who can said, “yes, that is right,” or “not exactly,” or even give physical tips like how to hold your mouth when you say the vowel sounds or the very odd sound that is the word for “seven.” It is written “sju,” and sounds a bit like a lazy, “ch” and “who?” I am sure that I don’t have it right yet. It is a good thing that I have three and a half more weeks.

Kip is having a work-from-home week, much to the delight of katten. Kip sent me this while I was at class today. Our Swedish cat says, “Det är mycket bra.” It is very good.

Darkness is Coming

By Theresa Haynes

On November 6, 2017

In Uncategorized

The tree is almost bare by November 6.

I don’t know why people who have lived here a long time, Swedes and expats alike, feel the need to tell us that the winter is coming and that it is going to be bad, very bad. I think we know. We would not have moved here without doing that research.

I know that we are from California, but we are not unaware of what snow looks like or how to wear wool socks. In fact, the last time I went to Costco I stocked up on new wool socks. They are waiting for me, unopened in the closet. I think we are mentally prepared for a little chilly weather.

But it’s not the cold, I’ve heard.

It’s the darkness.

The first time somebody told me that, they said it with such ominousness that I thought it was a joke. Be afraid, very afraid. Darkness is a real thing. But then I kept hearing the same comment, “Be prepared. It’s not the cold, or even the wind and rain. It’s the darkness.”

We had a nasty summer here. Numerous people assured me that it was the worst summer in 100 years here. It rained constantly, and I thought it was a tragic waste of 17-hour days to have cold rain blotting out the sun. It really felt like extra-long January days in southern California. I wore my light weight jacket almost every day.

So when people talked about the coming winter darkness, I thought it was a bit of an exaggeration. How can it be worse than rainy summer days?

I understood that the days would be short, very short. I had images of poor little school children walking to school in the dark, crunching snow under their boots, coming home in the dark. I lived for a year in Wisconsin. I am familiar with the concept of winter.

But by late October when the beautiful autumn leaves were just past their peak, I began to understand what my Swedish friends meant by darkness.

It is not that the days are short or that winter clouds block the precious bit of sunshine that dares to rise. The “problem” is that the sun, on the sunniest of days, simply does not climb very high above the horizon. Last week, the last time the clouds were thin enough to see the partially masked sun, I could see that at noon it looked like the sun was at a 45 degree angle from the horizon. And that was October.

It is going to get dark by late December.

But….

I refuse to give in to fear.

Light always shines brightly in the darkness. I look forward to experiencing how Swedish people light up their world on the darkest of winter days. It sounds cliche, but it is a serious hope. Sweden may have long, dark winters, but they are not cold, depressed people. They are a people of generosity and hospitality, Fika and great baking, music and design, technology breakthroughs and political stability. I believe there is something bright here, and I will have patience to discover it.

: Going

: Going

: Going

: Gone

Live, Love and Carry Proper ID

By Theresa Haynes

On October 27, 2017

In Uncategorized

I left my son at the security check at the Copenhagen airport today and it was so much harder than I thought it would be. He is headed back to Los Angeles, on a nonstop flight that we booked back in July, back when the parting tears were fresh and my husband and I wondered if we had been wrong to drag a 15-year-old away from his best friends.

But this morning, as we stood there, and he let me hug him and kiss him in public, I suddenly felt panicked. He was getting ready to walk through the security gate and disappear and I would not be able to follow. If he needed me, I would not be able to help him.

I walked away, forced myself to breathe, told myself to stop being silly. I would have LOVED going on a trip like that when I was 15. My parents let me go on a trip to Venezuela when I was 16, and it was life changing in all the good ways.

Besides, I am proud of my son. And I love his friends. They are all great kids with great moms who have eagerly agreed to pick River up from the airport and drive him around LA. I want him to have this opportunity. He is so excited about going to LA to visit his friends. I am excited for him.

But my heart froze.

Twenty minutes went by and he did not call to tell me he was at the gate. I went to the airport Starbucks because there are no Starbucks in Malmö or anywhere I have been in Sweden, and I had told him I would stay in the airport until he boarded the plane. Ten more minutes passed, still no call.

I called, left a message, decided to buy my train ticket back to Malmö, kill a little more time before I went back home to the emptier apartment.

This is how it is going to be. This is the future.

While we were walking through the terminal to the security gate, River had almost sounded hesitant.

“I’m used to associating travel with us, with our whole family,” he said. “It’s different to be just me.”

It was as if that reality had just occurred to him for the first time after weeks of planning, anticipating, dreaming about going to visit friends.

Yeah, that is part of this whole international thing. If Dad and I are going to live outside of the US, you are going to have to travel to us sometimes. It’s good.

I thought about my daughter in college in Colorado. I went with her to college for move-in. I wanted her to feel established in college before she felt alone, but I know the next time she flies to see us she will be coming on her own too.

Scattered.

It is part of adventures, paths diverge, converge, diverge again. There is always something new, somebody new. The best travelers love and let go and move on to love more.

Family is different though.

I miss my parents. I miss my daughter. I miss my friends, the ones I know I could still call despite a 9-hour time difference and say, “Can you pray for me? I’m feeling like a wreck today.”

River is on a plane to visit those kinds of friends this week. It’s good. It’s really good.

After what seemed like an eternity, and exactly half of my Starbucks, he called. They were holding him at passport check, not letting him leave Denmark. His plane was boarding and he could not leave.

I freaked out.

It was exactly what I worried about. He needed me and I could not come to him.

What is the problem? You have your passport? You have your Swedish ID card? He didn’t know. He just had to wait, and so did I.

I knew I couldn’t go back to Malmö until it was resolved. What if he didn’t make his flight? Would we be able to get him on another flight to LA? What about our trip tomorrow? Kip and I were planning to go to Madeira. We had plane tickets and hotels booked. We were only planning for it to be the two of us.

I walked back to security. They said, no. Of course they could not let me through to passport check. I waited for a while longer and then decided to walk back to the airline check in. I found a helpful clerk who called the gate, told them the situation. Maybe they could hold the plane…. maybe. Somehow I doubted they would hold a fully booked, nonstop flight to LA for a 15-year-old who could not convince police that he was legally living in Sweden. I was not even sure why the Denmark police cared.

Finally, River called. He was getting on the plane. It was ok. Just a misunderstanding. He would call later, when he got to LA.

In the wave of relief that passed over me I remembered that this was exactly what international travel is all about — the unexpected, the freak-out-moments, the unknown. Its why so many people don’t ever leave their comfort zones, let alone the US. I’m ok with being the one sweating in security line while the plane is boarding. I’m just not used to watching my young adult son navigate it alone.

Alone. I felt his absence.

I want my son to have an adventure-filled life. I want him to explore, to dream big, to climb high mountains. I want him to reach his full potential with nothing holding him back, not even me.

I took the commuter train back to Sweden, watched the water flowing under the Øresund Bridge, and thought about all the days ahead of us, all of us. Paths together, paths apart. Paths. Like the rhythm of a commuter train.

The bridge ended. We stopped in Hyllie, just over the border in Sweden and border control officers boarded the train. A young blond woman in a lime green reflective vest, an official Border Security uniform, stopped at my train seat when I showed her my US Passport.

Where is your proof of residency?

I showed her my identity card, just like the one my son showed passport control in Copenhagen.

That is not a residency permit.

But I have one. I have a Swedish personal number. I have a bank account and an apartment. Do you know how difficult it is to get a personal number and a bank account, obviously, I could not have gotten any of that without legal residency.

No, I need proof of legal residency, a card.

Maybe she meant the little red card we got when we arrived and were photographed and fingerprinted at the migration office?

I waited while she conversed with a group of her green vested colleagues who had gathered to determine my fate. The train stood still.

After a few long minutes they came to a consensus. She let me know my mistake and let me go with a shrug, a typical Swedish chastisement. I muttered something to the Swedish passenger next to me who responded something polite about immigrants, and I nodded. I know, it’s not personal, its just the system.

I got off the train at my regular stop, walked the few short blocks back to the apartment, enjoying the crisp fall air and thinking about my own trip to Madeira the next day. I might not pack my heavy jacket. But I’ll be sure to bring that residency card.

Live, love, let go and carry proper identification.

Just a few of my dear California friends on our last night together.