* lots of weird birds flying around (i’ll make a bird entry another time, if i can remember)
* a big group of tranor (i guess it’s not as simple as ”crane” in english?… otherwise i’ll let you look it up yourselves. it’s a big weird bird)
* i saw two worms a few days ago, when it was raining
* we saw a bumblebee bumbling around outside our house
* the ice is melting more and more each day, and the part that’s left of it is all black
* more treas with green buds (no real leaves yet, though)
* more and more tussilago
* there is some green(ish) grass to be seen here and there
* my winter boots are often to warm to be worn on long dog walks
¶ 7:19 PM
last weekend we visited the rock carvings in nämforsen (also known as ”fredrik’s rock carvings”). it was amazing to see them in real life, even though i have seen them in fredrik’s work several times. for some reason i didn’t really think they’d be so many… i don’t understand why they didn’t have more information about them, though. like when were they found? when do they think they were made? are all the same age? why are there so many? just ”basic stuff” like that. i mean, there must have been quite a bit of research going on, considering how many they are…
¶ 7:18 PM
do you know what’s worse than finding a dead mouse on your living room floor? finding half a dead mouse on your living room floor! with its little entrails around it (is a mouse big enough to have that? or is it called something else?). and the tail missing. it’s a bit like the worm in the apple story… i hope the other half (and the tail) was eaten by the cat who put it there, even though that would mean admitting that my sweet little cats eat mice. i much prefer that to finding the rest of the mouse in my bed, or the sofa, or anywhere else.
¶ 7:16 PM
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
mépris(e)(es) (elle s'est; elles se sont): le participe s'accorde toujours avec le sujet: Elle s'est méprise sur ses intentions; elles se sont méprises stupidement.
Bescherelle: Conjugaison
...unfortunately we have the bookshelf with "real" books in the living room...
¶ 12:44 PM
tommy’s brother’s baby seems to be ok. he’ll stay in hospital a while, but the operation seems to have worked. i don’t know what was wrong with him, but apparently they’ve taken out two centimeters of something in his stomach… that’s quite a big thing on a newborn baby, isn’t it?
¶ 8:36 PM
the ice has gone back to being black again, and there is lots of open water around the bridges now. i’m really looking forward to when the ice opens up on the lake! i’m going to sit in the window and watch the big ice floes float by…
¶ 8:35 PM
today we went to a weird but (hopefully) nice old man and bought a used and repaired radiator to the car. it looked very nice, so i hope it will work…
it is really easy taking out a radiator from a car, and even easier to put another one back in again, we learned today. much easier than i would have thought.
the only problem (which turned out to be a rather ”big” one) was taking the fan off the old radiator to be able to screw it onto the new one… the two upper screws were no problem at all. the two lower ones were impossible to get out. which turned out to be a very good thing, as the result was that we got to know two new neighbours. :)
we really have extremely friendly neighbours here! first one of our closest neighbours, sören, left his shed open for us to use all his tools (as he had to go to work and couldn’t be around assisting us). then another close neighbour, henry, came home and offered us to borrow a special tool that was really nice looking but didn’t work. so he sent us to another neighbour, whose name i don’t remember, to borrow something big that couldn’t possibly fail. the new neighbour was very friendly and helped us try his big impressive tool thing on our screws, but it didn’t work. so he sent us to yet another neighbour, who was also extremely friendly and welded a nut to one of the screws and was able to get it out. unfortunately a piece of the thing that surrounded the screw melted away, so that there was a big hole left… so then he used his grinding machine to scrape off the ”head” of the second screw, which turned out to be a perfect way to get rid of unwanted stupid screws from radiators. he also gave us several new screws, so that we wouldn’t have to buy them somewhere. *and* invited us for coffee. wasn’t that friendlier than normal?
what we learned today: car trouble is a good thing when you want to get to know your neighbours. (i’ve experienced that before, so i’m pretty sure it’s a fool proof thing)
¶ 8:34 PM
jm: i'm going to look at the new blog when we next go to the library. i've had a quick look, and it looks very nice :) but (as i think i say at least twice a day...) our modem is so slow i really don't have the patience doing anything with it...
¶ 12:52 PM
* today i picked the first tussilago (a yellow flower... don't know the english name) of the year. i've seen some earlier, closer to sollefteå and in forse bruk, but these were the first i saw here in nyland :) yippi!! i love tussilago!! so now we have three of them on the kitchen table, looking very springy
* i noticed some tiny tiny grean things on a few treas on the walk this morning!
* yesterday we met at big frog or toad or something on the road. he looked very tired, and moved very slowly, but he said he was ok and that spring would soon be here.
yesterday we went for a ride to kramfors, to check out a few flea markets and to have a look around. everything went well, we saw lots of nice houses, lots of (expensive!) junk and had some good hamburgers in kramfors. bob came with us (but he only had a hot dog). sollefteå is a lot nicer than kramfors! but there is much more space in kramfors…
on our way home the car started to sound a bit strange, and after a while we (tommy) noticed that the little red lamp indicating that you should have stopped a loong while ago because the water is boiling was red (i was driving… didn’t see the lamp… poor little car). we got out and noticed lots of water on the ground and not a single drop of water left in the car. tommy remembered that it was a bit wet in the garage too when we left, but he had thought it was just melted snow. so we guessed that we had a leak somewhere.
neither of us is very good at car things, but we realised it was not a very good thing driving around with no water, so we left the car and walked to a gas station not very far away. i bought some of the stuff that you *should* use instead of water according to the handbook (i’ve always used just water before, but it said that you should absolutely not do that), even though the men at the gas station though there was something wrong with me for not using water… walked back to the car and filled it up (we thought, but later it turned out that it hadn’t run down wherever it should run down, so most of the system was still empty). drove it to the gas station, where one of the men looked at it, and after reading the entire handbook and looking at all the fuses and other stuff under the hood he said it was the fan that didn’t work, and that had caused the water to leak out in a way i didn’t understand but that sounded very wise. anyway, nobody could fix it as it was saturday, but he said we could drive it home as long as we had the heating on in the car and stopped if the temperature rose too much.
after 6 km it was red again. as we were trying to figure out what to do (telephoning our neighbour and ask if he could come and help us; drive 6 km at the time and not come home until very very very late, if at all; break in in an empty house right next to where our car had stopped and stay there until monday when someone might be able to help us with our car…) a little old man came buy. his name was per (or maybe pär, i didn’t ask), and he didn’t hear very well, but he was very eager to help and told us that someone named håkan was very good at that sort of thing and would be more than happy to help us. after a while he understood that we couldn’t drive the car there, as it was still too hot, and decided to walk with us. we were ”saved” by tommy’s brother who telephoned to say that his little baby son was now ok after an operation he had yesterday, and made us realise that we could try and telephone håkan instead of walking all the way there. that turned out to be very good, as håkan didn’t know anything about cars (according to håkan himself, but maybe he was just not as helpful and friendly as per). per then remembered that 100 m from where we were standing there was a garage, but he didn’t think they would be able to help us, as they didn’t know as much about cars as håkan did.
we thanked per very much and walked 100 m to the garage to see if anyone was there, and the garage owner ”clarre” was very nice and said we could come with the car. he looked at it, and said we needed to change the radiator. then he filled up lots of water, and all of it leaked out and the car looked like a fountain. or maybe not *that* bad, but quite close. then he talked a bit in some weird dialect which i didn’t understand much of, but i think he was talking to the car anyway (or maybe the radiator) so i guess it didn’t matter. apparently there’se nothing wrong with the fan, which i guess is a good thing at least… he fixed the radiator so that we would be able to drive home, and gave us lots of water to fill it up with on our way (we didn’t have to though, cause our nice and sweet and brave little car made it all the way without any more water). i love clarre the car fixer! i can strongly recomment him to anyone who needs his/her car fixed!
… and i must admit i do like the car a bit more now… i guess i still like cars with personalities, so i might not be so grown up after all :)
what we learned from yesterday's lesson: always bring lots of water in the car
¶ 12:48 PM
today tommy and i have been married a year! if you count "easter days", that is. we married the day after palm sunday, which was the 14 of april last year. so next week we'll have our second first anniversary :)
¶ 9:14 PM
today i met an old lady who is the eigth generation “klippener” (klippen is a small place next to nyland). she told me that this house was buildt in 1880 (not 1928, as i thought), and it was originally a mansion. in 1915 it became a school, and children came here from far far away, every second day. the teachers were “moving teachers” and moved between three schools, staying 14 days at each.
she seemed like a very nice old lady. i'm going to invite her for a cup of coffee one day :)
¶ 9:12 PM
tommy’s parents visited us this weekend. our first visitors :) it was nice, and we had lots of sun and warm weather at least one of the two days they stayed.
i have made my first pair of “tovade” socks today (don’t know the english word… but it’s a technique where you rub and scrape wool against a rough surface to make it sort of stick together...). i’ve been trying some new crafts since moving here, mostly with thin wires, but also a needle technique (which i harldy even know the swedish name for) and today i started with “tovning”. great fun. and i’m quite good at it too :) when i’ve got the right tools i’d like to start working in wood too. but for now wool is an interesting material. i’ve “always” wanted to have sheep, so i guess it won’t hurt to know how to make use of their wool.
¶ 11:32 PM
tommy’s brother and tommy’s brother’s girlfriend had a baby today. a little boy with lots of hair. i think new born babies with lots of hair normally are quite ugly, but apparently this one was something special :)
¶ 11:31 PM
we went to the cinema in långsele today, to see ”hip hip hora” (a swedish film - hora is putain in french). i don’t really know what i think about the film yet (it normally takes me a couple of days to figure that out :), but what i do know is that it was rather awkward to hear the audience (about 15-20 teenage girls) laugh when the girl in the film was abused by a group of boys while being unconscious. i suppose they may have laughed out of nervousness, but i think that’s rather frightening too… all the girls in the audience seemed to know each other (they were talking and laughing a lot together before the film started), and even if they were not amused by what they saw something made them all laugh and giggle at it. teenagers are really frightening!
¶ 11:31 PM
man kan visst inte ha mer än fem kommentarer på ett inlägg, så jag får svara dej här istället :)
japp, vi trivs jättebra. jag har trivts som attan sen ungefär andra eller tredje dagen (när man började kunna ta sej fram här utan att först behöva lyfta på femtielva kartonger). och tommy började trivas när vi fick modemet att fungera :) fast ska jag vara ärlig tror jag att tommy trivs bäst där han kan ha bredband... förhoppningsvis ska det gå här om inte alltför länge.
vi träffar inte många människor, förutom två av våra grannar som vi träffar i stort sett varje dag.och så går det förbi nån och säger hej då och då, fast inte ofta. men hästar träffar vi varje dag, och så har vi en stackars fågel som skriker och gråter om nätterna när vi går på promenader.
inga jobb i sikte ännu, men det verkar som att det finns stort hopp att åtminstone tommy får jobb till hösten. och så finns det ju en massa vikariat inom vården och sånt i sommar, så det löser sej nog alltid. dessutom är ju hyran här ungefär hälften av vad vi hade i umeå, så det går inte åt några stora pengar direkt.
jag funderar lite på att höra mej för om någon handarbetsaffär kan tänkas vilja sälja nåt jag gör, om jag kommer igång med att tova lite sockor eller så. fast det är väl inte nåt man blir rik på, förstås. men vem behöver pengar?
i'm erika, and this is my own little blog. i'm married to tommy, and we have two cats named galdor and kala bhalu, a puppy dog named sasoh and a few chicks. we also have five angels: love, arne, anton, bob and teo.
