Tag: Sweden Page 1 of 3

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.

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.

May, Glorious, May

By Theresa Haynes

On May 31, 2018

In Uncategorized

Spring and Summer

Spring came abruptly and quickly gave way to summer.

I had been waiting for spring, anticipating the anticipation, and when it arrived the only thing that surprised me about it was how short-lived it seemed. One day the first yellow and purple buds were piercing through the grass, and then, a week later there were tiny buds on the trees. And then BANG – May 1st arrived and it felt like summer.

This is what spring looks like from a Swedish apartment window.

On May 1st, after a disappointingly cold and rainy Valborg night, the sun came out and the world celebrated in shorts and t-shirts. By Ascension Day, May 10, which is also a public holiday in Sweden, it was California hot. I wore an outfit I bought for a Rio trip two years ago, and Kip and I walked to Davidshall for an impromptu date. We bought a couple of beers at a restaurant with sidewalk tables, waited for a table outside and spent the next few hours sitting in the late afternoon sun, watching all of Malmö past by on the street. There is nothing like the combination of first summer sun and a public holiday to bring the entire inhabitance out of hiding. It felt like Malmö had tripled in size.

The garden at slottsparken in the last week of April, just before the heat of May arrived.

Just a few weeks earlier, in April, the tulips bloomed in Slottsparken. By mid-May, they were gone and the park looked like summer.

Earlier in the day on May 10, I met my girls at a café in Slottsparken, one of Malmö’s gorgeous city parks. Slottsparken is literally translated, the Castle Park, and it felt like a royal experience that sunny morning. We ordered salads and veggie burgers at Slottsparken café, a charming and particularly scrumptious garden restaurant surrounded by trees in full bloom and Swedish families enjoying their prized outside culture. The café and surrounding park were full that morning, Disneyland full, of people enjoying the day — walking, jogging, biking, paddling canoes through the park canal and playing Kubb — a Swedish block throwing game that may or may not have anything to do with Vikings. And it seemed like hundreds of people were lying on picnic blankets in sundresses, shorts, and t-shirts, or just swimming suits, soaking in the Swedish summer sun.

Sunny day brunch with the girls.

And this is still true, even three weeks later. The parks and every open green space is filled with people on picnic blankets, mostly in bikinis or shorts, soaking in the sun.

Celebrations

In May we also celebrated River’s birthday. It was his first birthday spent away from his friends in California, which was a little sad, but it provided an opportunity for us to invite some of his new friends home for a breakfast-for-dinner party in our apartment.

Jenga anyone?

One group of friends got together and bought River a box of Swedish treats, both good and quirky things that represent Sweden – the best candy and chocolate, the traditional crackers, meatballs, hot chocolate, super salty liquorice and a can of surströmming, the infamous Swedish fermented fish which has been named among the world’s worst smelling food — a heartfelt box of welcome whose generous gesture was not wasted on any of us.

And then we asked them to sing the Swedish Happy Birthday song.

For Kip and me, it was a really important moment. The long days, the sun, River’s new friends, it seemed like we had turned a corner in our experience here. We had made it through the winter in Sweden, and our son had finally made good friends, and that made being here so much easier.

And More Reasons to Celebrate

Taking our Colorado college kid for a hike in Sweden

And then, a few days later, Micah came back to Sweden.

Micah has been in college since August, a full 8 time zones away from us. When she left for school it was difficult for all three of us left behind. It was a sorrow intensified by the distance and the disorientation of being in a new country with new expectations and rules. But it was also a sorrow soothed by watching her mature and grow intellectually. I am sure it is an experience that every good parent has, sorrow for the childhood that is over, joy for the adult who has emerged. But getting her back for a few months this summer was just cotton candy, the icing on the cake.

Last Day of May

As I am writing this blog post it is the last day of May and we are still amazed at the good weather here in Sweden. It has truly been a month of California weather with sunny skies and warm temperatures, and it seems too good to be true. In a few weeks, River will be finished with school and we will begin a truly busy season of summer visitors and road trip adventures, but for now, we have enjoyed this month of summer bliss. There is nothing like a good, long winter to make the summer so special.

The canola fields in bloom. Kip took this picture on his way home from work, and its a perfect example of the Swedish Skåne countryside.

Easter Break in Stockholm

By Theresa Haynes

On April 23, 2018

In Uncategorized

Swedes love their candy, especially lakrits, that acquired-taste, salty licorice treat. This is a chocolate lakrits egg, and unfortunately I acquired a taste for them over Easter.

Easter is no small holiday in Sweden. Even though Scandinavians are largely secular, the official state calendar still pays respect to the Church, granting not one, but two state holidays on the Friday before and Monday after Easter, creating a generous annual 4-day Easter holiday unknown in the US.

School children also get the week before Easter off from class, and so when Kip told us he had a meeting in Stockholm, we decided to tag along.

There is an easy train route from Malmö to Stockholm, taking a little over four hours if you catch the express train. Its long enough to relax, listen to an audio book or podcast, study, work, walk to the dining car to get a cup of coffee, and generally stare out the window at the fields and woods and small towns of Sweden passing by. As Americans accustomed to trips of this length happening in cars, it’s a novelty that has not gotten old.

Arriving by train

Like every other Scandinavian city, a few days in Stockholm can be expensive. Hotels, restaurants, coffee shops and museums add up; especially when you are an expat trying to see and do everything you can in the short months or years you have in Europe. So with our shoestring budget in mind, we began looking into alternative accommodations in Stockholm and found a couple of budget hostels. One looked hip and cool, with a nightly social mixer, and the other was a nineteenth century, fully-rigged ship, docked along an island, just outside of the city center.

I heard Bob Goff whisper “Pick whimsy!” and we decide to stay on the boat.

The STF Chapman is a Stockholm landmark, often appearing in images of the city. It had a lifetime of service, first as a cargo ship, then a navy teaching vessel. In the 1940s it became a hostel and now provides accommodations for over 200 guests in dorm-style rooms with shared bathrooms.

We had a private room with four bunks, perfect for a small family. River’s foot, always photo bombing.

In addition to the ship, the hostel includes a reception building that also offers daily breakfast, a café with late hours, a billiard hall and a communal kitchen. I liked having the kitchen, and we used it to make a late night dinner and prepare sandwiches for the train trip back home.

STF Chapman

When we arrived in Stockholm, the first thing I noticed was that the rivers and canals were full of ice planks. It was the last week in March and the waterways were mostly melted. The ice chunks, the last remnants of Stockholm’s long winter, were quickly making their way down the rivers, through the wide and narrow city waterways, toward the Baltic Sea.

As we walked along the marina we could hear the tinkling of ice gently colliding with more ice as it piled against the moored boats. We stopped to watch the big pieces float over a set of locks. Birds — ducks, geese and majestic swan — hitched a ride on the little icebergs, unconcerned with the temporary nature of their transportation. It was a beautiful and rare site, sun shining on ice; and by the time we left two days later, it was all gone.

Entrance is free at the Royal Armoury museum if you have a little time and you want to see a real-live Cinderella carriage.

While Kip was in his meeting, River and I wandered Gammal Stad, old town, stopping to take in a couple of free museums. But we saved the prize museum to share with Kip, a favorite historical attraction, one we had actually visited last summer with Micah, the famous Vasa Museum.

This museum, the most visited in Scandinavia, is completely devoted to a single ship, the Vasa, ornately designed and sunk on its maiden voyage in 1628. Three hundred and thirty three years later it was carefully salvaged, elaborately restored and preserved. It now stands as a powerful symbol of the golden age of Sweden’s monarchy, a tribute not only to the lavish past, but also Sweden’s future as a prosperous leader in culture and innovation.

As we walked around the museum I thought about how the Vasa represents both a colossal failure — a beautiful boat that sank because it was poorly designed, but also, ironically, a tremendous success, not only in its unprecedented resurrection, but also its consistent ranking as one of the best museums in the world. If it were a bit smaller it could have been considered a specimen for another popular Swedish museum, The Museum of Failure, which has been anything but and is now raking in success at $19 a ticket in Hollywood.

On Friday we left Stockholm and headed back to Malmö to spend the rest of Easter weekend at home with our cat. Little did I know then, but it was our last real weekend of cold weather. Like a long awaited Easter miracle, sunshine and warm weather were just days away.

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.

Winter Sun in Malmö

By Theresa Haynes

On February 5, 2018

In Uncategorized

Kip snapped this picture on his train commute this morning.

The sun shone victoriously under a cold February sky today. It was a gorgeous celebration of the rapidly lengthening days and no one in our family went without mentioning it.

A layer of frost and snow glistened under the rare morning sun. River took this picture.

I rode across town in the late afternoon. It was still cold, very cold, but nice to be outside.

And even the twilight was clear as I crossed one of the partially frozen Malmö canals. Is it too much to hope for a few more days like this?

In Defense of a Forgettable Weekend

By Theresa Haynes

On February 5, 2018

In Uncategorized

He thinks I should paws for his edits. An open laptop is a laptop needing his touch.

This weekend was a blur of quiet family life, the kind of weekend that I suspect will be vaguely remembered. There were no major events, no milestones, no memorable travel. It was the kind of weekend lived once but repeated often; forgettable, but beautiful in the simplicity of its own existence.

Oh, earth,you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it–every,every minute?

― Thornton Wilder, Our Town

Saturday morning we made family breakfast — Kip, with the bacon that I always complain about but love to eat, me, with a Trader Joe’s pumpkin bread mix that I stashed in my luggage when we were in Los Angeles last month. (I still miss Micah every time I set the Saturday morning breakfast table for three, but I talked to her Friday night and she seems to be doing really well in college, genuinely enjoying her classes, excitedly recounting details of her church history class.)

Saturday we also cleaned the apartment, so much easier now that we live in a two-bedroom apartment instead of a three-story, four-bedroom, four-bathroom house in California. (That sounded like a complaint. It really is a bonus to clean up faster. Simplicity.)

Then Kip and I went grocery shopping together. I like to stock up on nuts and veggies, fresh bakery bread, and a boxed soup that I eat for lunch on cold days when I am home alone. I try to keep the processed food to a few “emergency” frozen pizzas and boxes of cereal for our ever-hungry teenage boy. Of course an occasional carton of ice cream or Swedish chocolate bar makes its way into the basket too.

Kip usually picks out the cheeses and meats, and he does a good job of it. Had we been in Los Angeles he would have gotten wine and beer too, but they are not sold in the grocery stores in Sweden. The only retail store allowed to sell alcohol in Sweden is the state-sanctioned monopoly Systembolaget.

Recently I got a very small bottle of tequila that was more than twice the price I would have paid in a grocery store in the US. Most Swedes will defend this government-controlled monopoly, saying the government has its people’s best interests at heart with its prohibition-style regulations. Systembolaget claims to be taking the negative aspects of alcohol out of society by eliminating the profit. Of course at $30 for a small bottle of budget tequila, I think someone is making a profit.

One memorable moment of the weekend was Saturday night when we invited friends over for dinner to celebrate one of their birthdays. I made dinner. They brought drinks. We had my childhood-favorite American apple crisp with ice cream, and we talked about living in Sweden. One of them is Swedish, the other from the UK. They have only lived in Malmö for a few years so they still see life here with both an insider and outsider perspective.

Easy like Saturday morning.

Sunday afternoon we made a quick family trip to IKEA. It was mostly River’s idea, as Kip can easily get to IKEA any day he works in Älmhult. But I was more than happy to go because I had not been to our favorite Swedish mega store since before Christmas. I realized when we were walking into the store that River mostly wanted to go because he was craving IKEA’s mashed potatoes, a soothing comfort food for his newly braced teeth.

We decided to start orthodontia for River this week. It is something that has been on the to-do list for awhile now, but for the last few years we have never felt settled enough to commit the time to braces. You don’t start orthodontia if you are planning to leave town. I have known too many friends who had to make unplanned trips back to LA to finish their teenager’s orthodontia treatment.

So as River starts this new dental treatment, I know it will also be a solid reminder that we are planning to be in Sweden for at least the next year, maybe a few months more or even longer. And what else will happen during that time?

At IKEA I also got a green plant for the apartment. As the last remaining Christmas decorations make it into the clearance bins, little green windowsill plants are popping up like the first promise of spring.

I put the plant on our bedroom windowsill, next to the crocuses Kip picked up at IKEA last week. I’m hoping our kitten-cat who does not seem to be able to resist temptation of any kind, will not find them. Plants have not fared well under his teeth and claws, but I really like these little green reminders of new life and I plan to keep them shut behind our bedroom door until we have trained the cat to respect the plant life. Coexist kitty.

In November this plant met its end under the kitty’s paws. I am hoping a couple of months has matured our feline friend.

Off Season Off Road

By Theresa Haynes

On January 29, 2018

In Uncategorized

It’s a rainy Monday and I think I have come to terms with this. It rains in Malmö — a lot. I don’t know if this is true all year or just summer, fall and winter. We have been here almost 7 months, and so far it has rained constantly. Hardly two days in a row pass without rain.

My friend who visited us from the UK last week said it was similar there too. We both lived in California for a decade and we are intimately aware of our need for sunshine. While we were walking through Malmö, the sun burst through the cloud cover, and I got excited.

“I haven’t seen the sun in weeks!” It might have been a gross exaggeration for the benefit of someone who would understand, but it had been days at least.

But as I have mentioned in this blog before, weather is not a show stopper in Sweden. People bike, walk, run, and even push baby strollers through the wind, rain and drizzle. I have even heard of people jumping into the ocean in January. It is a bit of a macho Viking thing, but still, it happens. I have seen pictures.

While weather is not a show stopper, observing correct activities for correct seasons might be.

It is kind of like an LA friend once told me, “There is beach season and hiking season in southern California.” You can go to the beach in winter, but it will be too cold to swim, and you can hike in the heat of summer, but that can be hot, dry and miserable too. In Sweden it seems to be both a matter of practicality and tradition. Seasons are not just for weather. Swedish life is organized into seasons for work and food and apparently, motorcycling too.

Saturday I dropped Kip and River off near a known motorcross trail, which was really a series of dirt roads, in Skåne. I drove the car up to Markaryd, left it there and caught a couple of trains back to Malmö. It was great for me to get out of the city, drive through farmland and deep woods, and remember that Sweden is much bigger than our beloved grey Malmö. It is rural with small towns and mid-sized cities, connected by roads and trains.

It was also great for me to navigate the trains myself. Kip commutes by train several times a week to Älmhult, but I rarely use them as we live and work in Malmö. On the weekends we use the car if we need to get somewhere further away than our feet will carry us in 20 minutes.

When the train stopped in Hässleholm I walked around to get a look-and-see at this charming mid-sized city. Its the last weekend of January and it still looks like Christmas there.

I like using public transit, even if no one speaks to each other, it brings people together in a way that traveling in cars cannot. As we sit, side by side, we are traveling together, a common goal of moving through space and time, a common need to commute spawned by an infinite number of personal needs – to go to work, to shop, to get to school, to visit someone in the hospital, to get out.

It gives me time to be philosophical about people riding in trains.

The men found the car where I left it, and made it back home hungry and cold; and when I told my Swedish friend later Saturday night, she laughed.

“You know, in Sweden we have a saying, ‘When you hear motorcycles, its time for spring.’”

Kip seemed to agree. It was fun, but too cold, too soon. It might be a couple of months before the bikes make it back on the trail. In the meantime I have seen him scoping out the possibilities of a summer, Baja style, European motorcross trip.

Cool Runnings

By Theresa Haynes

On January 26, 2018

In Uncategorized

I think there are people who love to run, but I have not met many of them.

I think most runners are like me. They look out the window, observe that it is too hot, too cold, too windy, too rainy or whatever, and then they lace up and head out the door anyway. It’s never an easy start, but I almost always feel better after the run, sometimes even during the run.

Winter in Malmö is no exception.

Even with my hat, gloves, long-sleeve outer running shell and new running tights that cover my legs to the ankle, I still brace for the cold, especially if it is windy. And I find myself thinking about easier options.

Last week I tried an indoor gym a few times. Running on the treadmill was boring, although it offered me the unique opportunity to watch American reruns with Swedish subtitles. At no time in my previous life could I have predicted that in January 2018 I would be watching Murder She Wrote, picking through the Swedish words I know, while running on a treadmill — sweating inside to avoid the wintery elements outside.

They had free coffee at the gym, but not a single drinking fountain. When I asked the attendant where the water fountain was, he told me to get water from the toilet. That’s what he said, toilet. At least I have been here long enough to know that toilet is a general word for restroom, which is comforting, but when my free trial week ended, I decided to go back to outside running.

Earlier this month, when we returned from California and started running in the Malmö parks again, I noticed that the birds were standing in the middle of the lake. They were standing on partially submerged ice, surrounded by warmer water, and it looked like they were frozen statues floating on liquid.

But that was just one or two mornings.

Every other day that we have run the lake and ponds have been ice free. It is just not cold enough for them to freeze, and really, that surprises me. Here we are in January, one of the coldest months of the northern hemisphere, and it is so warm in southern Sweden that the ponds don’t freeze.

It has barely snowed this winter either. We had a dusting in December and last week there was snow mixed in the rain, dissolving on the streets below. People have told us that it is typical, but my Malmö friends also tell me that when they were children they remember snow sledding in Pildammsparken. I can’t imagine.

Is this what global warming looks like?

It could be. A few degrees difference would make a big difference in allowing the ponds to freeze and snow to fall. As it is, the temperatures have hovered just above freezing. No snow, just grey clouds and cold drizzle, but ironically, once you warm up, its not bad running weather though.

Today the air was the warmest yet, and deep fog hovered over the lake in an ethereal kind of beauty. Like so many things in this Swedish immersion experience, its different from what life was like before, different, but beautiful.

Awake in the Dark

By Theresa Haynes

On January 16, 2018

In Uncategorized

Awake in the darkness.

Thinking. Writing with eyes shut.

Quiet. Still. Maybe it will pass if I stop thinking.

No. Every waking thought propels me higher out of sleep. I am no longer hovering over my barely conscious dreams. I am awake.

I check the time. Just past 4 a.m.

“It’s four in the morning
I can’t sleep and it feels like a warning
Oh oh….”

Thank you, Switchfoot for the soundtrack of my life. It is the second week we have been back in Sweden and I still can not get the night sleep right. Is it jet lag? Is it taking melatonin at night and being too tired during the day to stay awake, power napping and waking up at night after too few hours?

Is it that I feel suspended between directions again, not working on a big goal, restless? At night my mind wakes up. The tyranny of choice. What to do? What should be a blessing feels like a curse. Freedom. Responsibility. Opportunity slipping away.

I am naturally a morning person, so when I wake up at night I think it is especially difficult to get back to sleep. All my intellectual energy pours into problem solving mode. Sometimes the unabashed, illogical dream consciousness holds on just long enough to make thoughts creative. I see in color. I solve in color.

If I did not think it would hurt my family/social life, I could just wake up every morning at 4 a.m. for a private writing session, followed by a long midday nap. Maybe that is what winter should look like in Sweden, for me.

This morning after I got up I walked out into the living room, stretched and watched the blowing snow in the suspended street lights. In a city that stays dark for so many hours in January, the street lighting systems are evidence of Sweden’s strong, stable government. Miles of public lights illuminate the streets and sidewalks, bike paths and even parks. Its easy and relatively safe to get around after dark. But sometimes it’s hard to sleep with the light pressing into the apartment, especially at 4 in the morning.

Snow and light and I really need to learn how to use my camera better

I can hear the wind and I am glad I don’t have to go anywhere this morning. The snow seems to turn to rain before it hits the pavement below. There is no picturesque accumulation of snow, just driving, wet precipitation. Snow and rain and ice and wind.

We were told it would be this way, but this is the first week it has been cold enough to experience it. You have to leave Malmö to see snow in winter. It just does not get cold enough here with the marine layer to support snow. It is winter without snow, like Narnia without Christmas.

What should I do with it?