Sportlov, day 2

What kind of sporting did you do on Tuesday Meghan?!

I'm so glad you asked.

1. Walking Greg to the office. I once again enjoyed the longer route through the woods home. I saw two dogs and a man on his balcony in a robe smoking a cigarette.

2. Duolingo. I can't keep my bars up, and I'm trying really hard to fix that this week. Here is an actual duolingo sentence:

Vargen hoppar över stolen.

It means:

The wolf jumps over the chair.

This is not the only gem I've gotten.

3. Knitting.

4. While listening to podcasts.

5. Fitness for core strength.

6. Cooking dinner. There is usually a pretty long turnaround time between when I find a recipe online and when I actually make it. However, when you have had an idea to make tomato soup in the back of your mind for months, and then a recipe that looks super good appears, there is just a one day turnaround. I'm happy to say that you would not regret it if you made this tomato soup. Top it with some avocado slices and you won't regret that either.

7. Reading.

This day was pretty much exactly like yesterday only different and better. Because, Tuesday!

Hunting and gathering

I want to be the sort of person who can be good at gathering. I think it would take my almost-crunchy ways to perfect crunchiness. And maybe one of my favorite reasons for blogging is that I can just write whatever I want without ever worrying that I'm confusing non-native english speakers with my weird language tendencies.

A month ago Greg and I went apple picking in a park in the middle of the city. The open apple picking policy in Sweden is a really good thing. Especially when you also find tiny pears.

Earlier this week I had an adventure day planned with a new friend who has dreamily wonderful gathering skills. She showed me where to find mushrooms and also told me which ones were not only edible but also delicious. We found three kinds: fingrarsvamp, taggsvamp, & trattkantareller. Sorry I don't know what they are called in English. I felt so proud and accomplished after getting so many good mushrooms. Plus I completely trust myself to be able to get a positive ID on a trattkantareller on my own. Knowledge! Too bad I have to be practically standing on top of them before I actually see them.

In the afternoon we hunted for geocaches. I had good memories of 'catching geos' with Nicki in college, and returning to the activity did not disappoint. Although I think the geos are getting smaller, as evidenced in the photo above.

Humpa at Stornoret

Last weekend I spent some time in the woods. It is one of my favorite things, to go enjoy the slow life. The Swedes called our excursion a 'humpa' although I'm not sure most of them knew what a humpa was. But had a humpa we did! Here is the photographic evidence(:

7QT - really quick ones!

1. I was using the Tasks feature in gmail to make a list of things I wanted to do in the near future. The list included the item 'sweep' which was corrected to say 'zweep.' I feel so confused. And blogger is trying to correct zweep back to sweep.

2. On a scale of one to ten, how stupid would it be to carry some homebrew on a ~45 minute walk to a cabin in the woods (while also carrying food/sleeping bag/camera/etc.)?

3. OH! An item I will be carrying that is not debatable is the makings for s'mores. Swedes don't even know about s'mores which is such a tragedy. I am so looking forward to sharing a bit of my gold (graham crackers brought directly to me from my dear mother when she visited last summer) so that they can have this experience!

4. For the past few Fridays I have had notably bad things happening, work-wise. This week decided to switch things up and deliver the news on Thursday. Basically I have to re-do about two months-worth of work.

5. I have no means of watching the olympics here. We don't have a television, and it is not being broadcast online (at least not for a free or reasonable price). I really wish I could be watching hockey, but the best I can do is to watch text updates from the IIHF, which I find surprisingly riveting. They have little webpages that automatically update every ten seconds and show info like shots on goal, saves, goals, and penalties. The anticipation of waiting for something to change is really intense. That is not sarcasm.

6. Although I must say, if Sweden plays the US in the gold medal game, we are either going to a pub or inviting ourselves to someone's house to watch. I would be so disappointed with myself if I didn't make an attempt to see that game.

7. And an info graphic to describe my workday yesterday:

- The End and The Link-up -