Three month update. And snow?

It has been a full 3 months since my last post on this blog, meaning THREE months since we moved back to the US from Stockholm. So much has changed! And is changing!

But before any real update, happy halloween. We spent our Halloween Saturday night (when most people shoulda been dressed up and drunk) watching movies under piles of quilts, since the heat in our new building hasn't turned on yet. And we had a frickin' BLIZZARD on the East Coast in October, making it way too cold to do anything but make things in the oven and then leave it on and open for extended stretches. We checked: it was 15c degrees in Stockholm; 6c in Washington D.C.

Anyway, Stu & I spent the first nearly two months of our return in Virginia, living with family, catching up with friends, applying to jobs, eating awesome and cheap American food, and watching a whole lotta crappy morning news shows (pathetic, I know, but I didn't realize how much I missed the Today show and Good Morning America.)  There was nasty DC August heat, a hurricane or two, an earthquake, a tornado, and now, a snow storm in October.

We moved back in my 7th month of pregnancy, so the slow pace of transition was a really, really good one for me. Finally got our shipment of stuff from Sweden almost a month later than planned, but all intact and with few major problems. But by late September, we still didn't want to *unpack* our Sweden boxes without knowing where at least one job would be. We'd both had a few job interviews but no real bites, and my belly kept getting bigger, which made life a little more stressful since we didn't quite feel settled yet and the range of possible scenarios when Baby arrived was sooooooo wide. Oh, and diapers are expensive.

But within literally 12 hours of each other, Stu and I both got AWESOME job offers in DC, which we both accepted embarrassingly quickly ("Really? You want to employ me? Ohmygodyesyesyes!" It was seriously like a marriage proposal for me. At 8 months pregnant, a shotgun wedding?) Within a week, we bought a car and rented and moved up to an apartment in Arlington, and basically did a complete 180 from the "back-up" plans we had put in place.

Dressed up and gigantic!

Stu has been at his new job at a big consulting firm here in DC for the last few weeks, and so far likes it a lot. I am incredibly excited to start my new position as an art reference librarian with the Smithsonian (the job I have been working towards for years now.)  However, I don't know *when* that start date will be, since I have been sitting around waiting for my federal background check to process for the last month, and I have exactly 3 weeks until my due date. Best case scenario: I start November 7, work for 2 weeks, then pop out a healthy baby boy in a quick and pain-free delivery, just in time for Thanksgiving. Buuuut, I am full-term and could literally go into labor at any time, and the government is frickin' slow. So I won't be surprised if I have this baby the day I get told I can start work, then immediately take maternity leave until late January (and the quick & pain-free delivery was probably never in the cards.)

So here we are, in our last few weeks (or days?!?) of being a family of two, still figuring out the day-to-day grind. I had to find a new doctor near our new place, which is really tough when you are on Medicaid and 34 weeks pregnant and in the DC area. And the doctor aside, finding day care in this area is damn near impossible: 10-12 month waiting lists for centers that charge $1900/month tuition for an infant. Almost a year? "Tuition" for a 3-month old?! $1900?!?  Needless to say, we were completely ruined by the prospect of Sweden's system of health and child care.

The nursery in process.

And we miss a lot of aspects of our life in Stockholm, the city, our friends there, our awesome apartment. It isn't completely gone, though. I will probably never wear shoes in my house again. We still speak in Swenglish to each other, though I'd say the most oft used phrase is "Vad fan gör du?" by Stu to me, and rightly so, since pregnant women do a lot of strange things ;). We made kardemummakaka last night in an attempt to warm up our frigid apartment. We've gone to an event or two at the House of Sweden. And I have spent more money than I would like to admit at Ikea recently.

But we definitely think, especially with a little clarity from these last 3 months, that moving back to the US was the absolute best possible choice for us. And also that our time in Stockholm was so, so, so worth it. The travels and the experiences, and even the education (though I complained a whole lot about mine!), were life-changing, and I can honestly say we are in a better place in our lives than we would have been without those two years in Sweden.

So that is a little of what we have been up to since leaving Sverige. Aside from a picture or two to announce our new little Swedish meatball when he comes, I probably won't post much more here, and would rather keep it as a kind of time capsule of our lagom life in Stockholm. 

Stockholm for 5 days

We got back from nearly 3 weeks on the east coast Wednesday night. I'm not even sure what to blog about! It was a great trip, despite that it was a bit chaotic (why did we even try to make a schedule...almost nothing went as planned!), it was a bit short (shoulda done a month, you know?) and it was HOT in DC (try 102 more than one day we were there!) 

Some of the highlights were my little sister graduating:

(Go Elena!)

Our friends Nancy & Andrew tying the knot:

(the wedding party, with Stu on the far left)

And one of my best friends Melissa having her first baby, little William Joseph Chalkias, born 25 June 2010!

(here with exhausted-looking papa, Mike)

We met baby Laura for the first time:

(with great friend [her mama] Cait, at the SI Folklife festival)

We even managed to see Stu's dad a few times, when he was able to get truckloads in our direction:

(Stu with his dad and Gabby at the NGA sculpture garden)

And we got to hang out with quite a few friends. Not nearly as many as we would have liked, nor for as long as we would have wanted, but considering the packed 2.5 weeks we were home, we did alright.

I should have taken more pictures, for sure. Oh well. So we are back just long enough to get over the jetlag before we leave for a week in Scotland and a week in Germany. I'll be attending an art librarians conference in Edinburgh, so there will be a little bit a work going on, but other than that, it'll be just vacation. And with Stu's mama and cousin Judi! 

Speaking of jetlag...its been tough to get out of the house, since I want to take a nap every other other. We have definitely missed some of the best time to be in Sweden. But our friends Sam & Sean will be here in an hour to stay the weekend with us, so we'll get some prime Stockholm time showing them around the city. So off to enjoy some BEAUTIFUL Stockholm weather.

First Sunday in February

Makin' Superbowl chili and Superbowl cornbread. Drinkin' Superbowl beer. Watchin' Superbowl pre-game commentary (I know, right? Did I hit my head?) Its an American tradition.

But the game starts after midnight, because our timezone is GMT -1. I know now I am not going to make it through...Stu is far more dedicated. And he even has a presentation tomorrow.

Even though I only really care about the commercials and the awesome food on Superbowl Sunday, it still feels a little sad to miss out on the parties back home. Especially the boys' 3 hours of football shit-talking, Blonde Justice's ridiculously awesome Velveeta cheese dip. Patrick's ridiculously ridiculous Bacon Explosion (woven bacon strips rolled up with sausage and cheddar...a heart attack in log-form.) And inexpensive beer.

I'm having a little homesick moment, oddly related to tonight's Colts/Saints game. Though I'm hoping the Saints win (I like the black & gold color combination.)

Back to the land of ja's and toilet seats

Happy to be home in Stockholm, though I think we are both missing Italian pastries just a little. Okay, more than a little. We ate nothing but sugar and dough or cheese and dough for an entire week, and it was heaven. The paticceria San Gregorio in Milan was a favorite. We went to the grocery store today to fill our fridge back up, and both managed to screw up and say "Si, grazie" instead of "Ja, tack" to the check-out ladies.

But more than wanting pastries, I am happy to be in a country with a toilet in every bathroom, and a seat atop each toilet (where did they all go in Italy?!? There was evidence that these toilets once HAD seats!)

The art and architecture was amazing, the food and {cheap} wine was wonderful, the sun was AWESOME. Here are a few pictures from the trip (minus pictures of porcelain holes in the ground.) You can click the slideshow to make them bigger.

Shredded wheat & cranberry sauce

Why not? Today was my last day of classes until January 12.

Hej December!

The month rolled in gorgeous, and thankfully, after a 5-hour exam period of presentations on Tuesday, I have nearly a week off from school & schoolwork  (while Stu has a final exam on statistics on Monday!)  Let's hope it stays this sunny for a long while.

And with the beginning of December, we have enjoyed our last day of cable TV.  Quick recap: when we signed up for broadband back in August, the giant cable/internet company Comhem was offering 3 months of "large" internet + "large" TV for 99:- a month (about $13.)  So that's what we got. Which meant we had to buy a TV.   We thought it good to get one anyway to play our Wii, and so that Stu could watch his NFL sports package games on the big screen.  So I found a supremely cheap used little 20" on Blocket for 100:-. But it wasn't quite right. I know we're poor grad students, but it was fuzzy and small and we were spoiled by our giant flat-screen in the US. So I resold it (for a profit! Some kids working on window displays for the store Cheap Monday bought it for 200:-)  And we purchased a brand new, larger, prettier flat screen to play Wii on, watch football and watch our cheap cable.

But its the end of those 3 months, and this was our last week of cheap cable. We don't need to pay the normal 300:- a month to watch American TV. We haven't actually watched it that much in being here.  Don't get me wrong, its been great to actually *understand* the shows on TV, and we were getting Showtime, so that included some great movies.  But as poor grad students, its tough to rationalize all those sitcoms, especially when we should be reading about macroeconomics or museum audiences.

And for our final evening of television, we topped it off with a doozy. Or rather, a Razzie.  The ONLY thing on of even a teeny tiny bit of interest was an early 1990s Melanie Griffith & Michael Douglas movie, "Shining Through" about WWII spies.  Have any of you seen it?!?  I'm not sure why we stuck through the whole thing.  Melanie is a terrible actress, and that she talks sooooo slowly annoys the crap out of me. She is of Swedish descent, though!  Her mother was a Minnesota Swede who starred in Hitchcock's "The Birds." Oh, and Melanie wore giant shoulder pads this entire movie (even while in her bathrobe.)  Some wardrobe designer was channeling the 80s and didn't do her research on 1930s fashion.  It was really bad.

So no more TV. Or rather, only Swedish public TV. Which may actually cost more than Comhem "Large" TV.  Instead of explaining how we now seem to owe the Swedes 2.000:-  a year for Swedish public TV we don't watch, I'll let these Americans do it: TV Fees in Sweden and TV License.  I'm going to enjoy some sun.

Lamest weekend ever

Well, it started off on the right foot. Stu signed us up for a mjöd tasting on Friday night.  Of course, it wasn't until we got there and paid our 150 kronor that we realized it was all in Swedish.  The guy said he could probably do his thing bi-lingually, but we told him not to bother for our benefit, we'd blunder through it. We had alcohol in front of us, how hard could it be?!? 
And it was fine, because our Swedish isn't that bad, and Swedes are super nice when they are drinking! Well, they are generally nice all the time (as long as you aren't trying to get paperwork slid through faster at migrationsverket. That definitely didn't work.)  But they are especially friendly when you give them fermented honey and fruit beverages. So we had translations offered with every Skål!  Oddly, we mostly sampled California meads, and I think maybe there was a Polish mead thrown in there, but whatever. Still thoroughly enjoyable. It led to us continue the party at a terrible but super cheap bar near our place with a few fun Swedes, including one legally named Jimmy, and randomly, an Estonian heptathlete. She had actually met Andreas Thorkildsen, which we got a kick out of (Google some pictures of the guy...I think he and Stu have the same chin.)

We left by midnightish, because Stu had to catch a Ryanair flight to Frankfurt in the morning, and I hadn't eaten dinner, so I was just, uh, silly.

And that silliness caught up to me Saturday. I didn't even bother to get out of my pajamas. Stu left about 8:30am, and I spent the entire day watching bad movies, feeling bakfull. It was raining, so I didn't want to leave the house. I am not allowed to spend money, so no shopping. I technically have a paper due next week, but I managed to procrastinate the entire day away anyway.  I did bake a kvargcake, then ate too much of it by myself before Stu came home.  (It was delicious! I take back all the mean things I said about kvarg.)

Sunday was basically a carbon copy of Saturday, but I did actually get dressed and go out into the world for a bit.  And I made a homesick-fix lasagna for Stu, though I think going back to Frankfurt made him feel a little homesick for Germany...he spent 12 years growing up there! Though, come to think of it, I'm sure the liters of dark German beer, the schnitzel and the spätzle helped with that.
He brought back presents from the PX on the US Army base there, including SEVEN boxes of Kraft Mac & Cheese, thankyouverymuch. Nothing says America like fake orange cheese and noodles! 

So it was a really lame weekend for me. I should have gone to a museum, or called up one of the few friends I have here for fika, or done my homework, but I was too lazy for any of that.

On the plus side, I did manage to watch the entire first season of Glee, and am now a big fan.

The Zen of Kvarg?

Another food-related post. Sorry if they are boring...its just such an adventure attempting to navigate the livsmedelsaffär (grocery store) or to make meals that feel like home. American home.

Stu had a rough day or two...he is currently working on a big project to present to the Swedish state-owned pharmacy monopoly Apoteket.  A little background: you can't get most over-the-counter drugs in Sweden without a prescription, and then only at Apoteket (but we arrived prepared...we brought a giant box of Dayquil & Nyquil!) Earlier this year, it was decided that the monopoly should be broken up, and just Monday, it was announced that more than half of the 900 pharmacies were sold off to private companies. And this whole issue served as a live case module for Stu's management class. He can write more if I am leaving big details out, but they have to pitch their strategies for marketing and managing the transition to the big shots at Apoteket very soon.

Anyway, a rough day or two working on this project. We both have been sleeping crappy, watching True Blood too late into the night, and working a lot. And he got a haircut (finally) that was a little shorter than he wanted. In fact, he said he was emphatic to the hairdresser that he wanted "just a trim, keep it long" but it is shooooort. Maybe Army short?  And we hadn't gone to the grocery store, so there was no food in the fridge. So I guess when he stopped by the store for the basics, the lasagna noodles screamed out to him. Like "eat me, I remind you of home!"  So expecting to make a meal, he bought the noodles, and an onion, some parmasan, and some tomato sauce.

But no ricotta or mozzarella. Sweet man, he tries.  I ran out for the cheeses and more veggies, but you can't find ricotta cheese here (or I can't find ricotta cheese here.)  I know you can make it fairly easily at home, but that requires cheesecloth, and I am pretty sure cheesecloth doesn't translate to "ost duk." Stu had that problem when he went to buy shortening (like, the margarine-y stuff, because when you plug "shortening" into Google Translate, you get förkorta which is more like the verb or art term. Swedes would look at you like you were crazy if you were at the store wanting to buy foreshortening.)

So no ricotta. But I have seen cottage cheese, and figured that if I spiced & herbed the crap out of the lasagna, no one would notice...same texture, right? But Lidl (the supremely cheap grocery store around the corner) didn't have anything labeled "cottage cheese." They did have an opaque tub of something called Vähärasvainen Maitorahka Kvarg near the creme fraiches and the grädd.  Don't ask me how to pronounce that first part, I think its Finnish. I zeroed in on the "Kvarg" part.  Sounds disgusting.  But I bought it anyway.  Don't say I'm not adventurous.

Well, turns out kvarg is not ricotta or cottage cheese-like in consistency. Not even close. More like sour cream or greek yogurt.  And after some heavy-duty googling (yeah, it took a while! My research skills are rusty!) I came to the conclusion that what I had bought was Quark (thank you, Wikipedia, for pointing out how different it is from cottage cheese and ricotta). Its fairly common in Eastern Europe. But they don't even sell it in the US because it isn't pasteurized. No wonder.

So, I have no ricotta with which to make Stu a homesick lasagna. Even better, now I have 500 grams of creamy, sour, un-ricotta-like kvarg in our fridge to figure out what to do with. And soon, because I opened the thing, and its not pasteurized!  Not to mention that Stu is spending the weekend in Germany, so I am also on my own as far as eating it, whatever it is.

Anyone ever kvarged before? Should I attempt the kvargcake in the wikipedia picture? God, that just sounds gross.  And more importantly does anyone want to send me some cheesecloth?

Fall nostalgia in Stockholm

As I am writing this, we are in the middle of another freak downpour in Stockholm. It was sunny and the sky was blue, and I thought I heard someone flushing a toilet or something. But no, it was little tiny hail pellets followed by some lovely cold, gray rain. The weather report always shows a 10 to 20% chance of precipitation here, but its hit or miss as to whether anything actually falls from the sky. I have the windows open to hear it. Remind me of this when I inevitably complain of getting sick next week.

They turned the heat on in our building this week. I have heard that we are one of the first to have it on this year, and that many Stockholmers are complaining. Because its cold here.


Fuzzy & Bundled before going out.

Not too cold, but a brisk mid-50s during the day, and a chilly low 40s at night.
I love it. The air smells different, crisp and sometimes with a hint of a burning fire. The smell reminds me of every Columbus Day weekend of my childhood...about 15 close families would all travel over the holiday weekend in October to Deep Creek Lake, MD, and stay in cabins. We'd go hiking and see waterfalls, ride horses, buy apples & cider, have a huge party with a bonfire, and my personal favorite, the requisite trip to Candy Land (yes, aisles and aisles and aisles). We are actually traveling to Norway next weekend to see a friend who came to every one of those Deep Creek holidays (we decided to skip Berlin in favor of Oslo to get to see her.)

Obviously, Swedes don't celebrate Columbus Day, since their continent wasn't ¨discovered¨ by the man. Most don't even know there is such a thing in the US. Stu & I got married on Columbus Day weekend last year. Its one of my favorite holidays in my favorite month, and my mormor and morfar got married the same weekend in Sweden in 1941 (we even wear their wedding rings.) Granted in Virginia in 2008, Columbus Day was practically beach weather, and the sound of an ice cream truck could even be heard as we exchanged vows outside.

Its amazing what has changed in a year.




Maybe not so much a part of fall, but certainly fueling some nostalgia: I found American peanut butter last week. Twice the price of a jar of Nutella. I bought it, and promptly opened it & ate it out of the jar with a spoon. The brand: Mississippi Belle's, thankyouverymuch.

And the sun just came back out.

Its international

Even in Europe, I am a football widow. Stu found some site to stream NFL games, and he whooping it up in the den over the Eagles. Literally, whooping. It up.

Mascara is expensive

The exchange rate is in the toilet. At least as far as we are concerned, considering we are living off of our American savings. When we first started planning our move to Stockholm back in April, the rate was about 8.5 kronor per dollar. It meant the rent for our bigger, better Swedish apartment in a great neighborhood was the same as the mortgage on our DC condo. Fine by us! But the exchange rate has fallen steadily since its height in March, and is now hovering at 7 kronor per US dollar. It doesn't sound like that catastrophic of a fall, but it means that our rent is about $200 more per month than we were planning, just 5 months ago.

Aside from the exchange rate fluctuations, Stockholm doesn't seem all that much more expensive than DC.
Aside from the alcohol.
And cosmetics.
I was reading the Metro paper the other day (the free fluffy newspaper that they give out free on the subway, like the DC Express paper) and saw several ads from stores that sell cosmetics. They all advertised mascaras that ranged from 95:- to 165:-, and that is on sale (FYI, in Swedish, its "på rea". I learned that one real quick!) The Maybelline mascara I just tossed out was about 115 kronor...that's $16!! I am cheap, so I probably paid less than $5 for it at a CVS. Had I read the ad before getting rid of the tube, I might have kept it longer! And mascara is one of the few things I am anal about keeping fresh...they say toss it after 2 or 3 months of use, which I do. With always having contact lenses and sensitive eyes, and even more since having lasik in May, it's been important in preventing eye infections. Especially since moving, as we get free health care, but eye care and dental are NOT covered by the Swedish government (which makes me think I should stop eating all this Swedish candy soon. Probably.) But I can't afford to buy $16 mascara every few months being a broke student!

I'll miss using mascara. My eyes won't look the same. And we haven't been here long enough for me to miss all that much. American chunky peanut butter, affordable beer, friends, fam.
That's where you guys come in, friends and family. Several handfuls of you have said you will come visit us in Stockholm. And we WANT you to come visit! Come stay on our couch or blow-up bed (when we get it from the other side of the country, that is.) We'll play tour guide and make you Swedish food and entertain you. And when you come, bring a jar of chunky peanut butter, a bottle of scotch (at Stus request), and a tube or two of cheap Maybelline mascara (preferably not the waterproof kind...I would have to shell out for equally expensive eye make-up remover for that stuff!)

Please?

Things we'll miss in the US...

...Baseball.