Take your protein pills and put your helmets on

Each year, my siblings and I create a music video. This year we did a couple. Bowie's "Space Oddity", and "Angel of Music" from Phantom of the Opera. I love my Canon 60D, but in camera audio isn't great and it's really hard to hold still.

Enjoy!

don't think too hard about it

"Är du bra?" The third concerned Swedish lady called to me as she ascended up the hill next to me. Are you okay?

"Yeah," I shouted back, making a face. Her concern wasn't surprising; I was half lying, splayed, halfway up the steep slope leading to the expert skiing hill. No, I hadn't crashed and burned after attempting a fancy new stunt. I hadn't even made it to the top – I had lost control of my skis while riding the T-bar lift up the hill.

We arrived with a group of seven: three of my siblings with their three out of country visitors. And me. Unsurprisingly, I was left without a partner for the lift up the hill. I went first, careful to lean back and not sit, while keeping my feet parallel. It was with a slow motion horror that, 500 meters up the hill, I watched my skis begin to split directions, dragging my feet outwards, yanking my knees toward each other.

I ended up on my back between lines of ascending skiiers, trying to figure out how to stand up. My six companions drifted past me, shouting various bits of conflicting advice, including: "Stand up and wait for an empty one," and "Take your skis off and walk up." I chose the latter (deciding against an accidental trip down the steep slope.)

**

Donc, I spent the initial 45 minutes of my first skiing trip lugging my skis and poles up the side of the hill as 50+ people glided by me on the T-bar. My ski shoes were stiff, unwieldy, and heavy.

When I made it to the top, I discovered that the path to the bunny slope was not actually a path, but the intense intermediate course. Will had practically rolled down. Llama saw this, removed her skis, and walked. Our guests – all of whom were experienced – skiied smoothly down. Emma and I discussed our options. She decided to go for it. I watched as she went headlong down the hill, straight down, and out of sight. She crashed on the other side. Fair enough; she had never learned to do the "S" thing or to stop.

I took a deep breath. I was sick of walking in my lead boots. I was here to ski. Anna – Will's visiting girlfriend – had told me I would be fine. I put my skis on and eased forward. And then I was off, speeding like a maniac, absolutely clueless to how to slow down, or even turn. My heart was doing its "You're an idiot" spastic irregular rhythm, and then suddenly I lost all semblance of control and crashlanded.

My landing was reasonably soft, and the experience had been so thrilling that I was laughing like a nutcase. "Did you see me!" I yelled at Emma, who was still untangling from her fall. "No! Isn't this fun?!" "Yeah!"

Then followed three hours of magic.

**


Life Advice for First Time American Skiiers in Stockholm.

1) Know all of your measurements in metric. Weight, height, foot size. We spent 15 minutes trying to gauge these based off of each other's estimates.

2) When speeding downhill, don't shove your poles into the ground.

3) Sitting down will not stop you. It will actually make you go faster.

food glorious food

My contribution to our Christmas dinner will be scalloped potatoes because, as my mother put it: "You like potato stuff right?" She was, of course, referring to my obsession with mashed potatoes.

I looked up a scalloped potato recipe online, and the first hit had many positive reviews, including one that began with this line: "I got a call from the man saying he had a yearning for scalloped potatoes."

Come quick! There's a man on the phone and he has a yearning for scalloped potatoes.

**

Swedes don't do eggnog. Actually, many people don't – it seems to be one of those love/hate items. I happen to be a lover. (Yes, you can quote me on that out of context). I believe I spent my sophomore and junior Novembers in college sitting outside of Vons having eggnog chugging contests in the car. My other California years, bereft of fellow eggnog lovers, I simply stocked the fridge and drank them by myself.

Eggnog Time!

This year, without the (Southern) comfort of the easily accessible nectar, I decided to make it myself. I looked up a recipe online and was happy with the results.

I also made roasted cinnamon almonds. I highly recommend the recipe.

Here's some cooking Life Advice :

1) Whiskey and eggnog don't make a wonderful combination. (Possibly a personal taste...)
2) Egg whites will not stiffen if they are compromised with a touch of any other substance. It doesn't matter how long you beat them.
3) Internet recipes with reviews are wonderful. It's a community effort to tweak and adjust recipes until they're perfect.
4) If your family is immature, expect silly comments about taking photos of your nuts.

love lifts us up where we belong

"I'm late...I'm never late."
"You couldn't handle the truth!"
"Everything you ever told me was a lie!"
"Someone once told me..."

In the fabulous creative writing class I took at Biola, our professor asked us to think of some of the most common movie line cliches. My favorite has always been "Everything you ever told me was a lie!" mostly because it's so dramatic, and really fun to yell at random moments.

**

One of my students has my number and finds it extremely funny to text me 5 minutes before class every week asking me where I am. I actually find it kind of funny too.

Something to do:

Pick an animal and learn how to draw it as a cartoon. Find your favorite cartoon version of it online, print it out, and copy or trace it until you can do it on your own.

**

I'm currently reading On Writing by Steven King. I loved, loved, loved this section. Writing is engaging in telepathy. Yes.

you...you would be mean

In the mail I have received:

- 2 memory cards
- a battery pack
- a camera carrying bag
- a lens cover
- a Rode microphone


I have not, however, received the amazing Canon 60D camera which I ordered at the same time. These items have been sitting in my room for a week. When I was talking about this at Lifegroup, my friend KZ said it sounded like a good setup for a sermon.

My life is filled with those.

**

Today was a breakthrough. I was walking my doggies when I realized that I didn't mind the cold. In fact, I rather enjoyed the feeling of being bundled up and impenetrable to the forces around me. It was -5 C with winds at 13 km/hr. Before I moved here, I considered anything below 18C to be absurdly cold.

Before today I had vocally questioned why Swedes have stayed here. Why would they stay in a land that is dark and cold for 9 months of the year? Why not just move?

I would look out my window at the hatless pedestrians strolling around in freezing weather, and I would literally shout at them: "What are you doing? The heat is leaving the body through your head!"

But now I know. I understand. I feel like I've been let into an exclusive club.

well i've never seen a king or beast with quite so little hair

It was 4:15, but the sky was already dark. The snow faintly glowed in a quiet beauty on the sidewalks and lawns of the street I was walking on. A small figure, bundled in a coat and poofy hat, walked 20 meters ahead of me. He must have been about eight – that was one of the pleasant things about Sweden; parents feel safe enough to let their kids walk around by themselves, even in the dark.

I checked the time; it wasn't 4:15, it was 4:20 and the bus was at 4:24. I started to jog. Ahead of me, the boy turned around, saw my increased pace, and burst into a sprint. He looked like he had seen a monster and was running for his life. I smiled to myself at his panic. I guess parents still warn their children about running strangers.

**

Our teaching term ended today, and I've spent the last week picking out my new favorites for Spring semester. These include any kid who gave me something edible as a thank-you/Christmas gift.

learn to find your way in darkness

Yesterday morning I woke up with the lyrics of "Learn to be lonely" running through my head. Specifically, I woke up with "Learn to be lonely da da da da da" running through my head because it's one of those songs with a memorable chorus and a lot of filler words.

I started to think about the words. Learn to be lonely. What exactly does that mean? If you're lonely, you're meant to give up on relationships with the people around you and learn to accept it? Or is it a lover's lament – without me you must learn to be lonely?

Lonely people. I began to think about Hitler. Was he lonely? I stopped this train of thought when I remembered that multiple friends have described me as the type of person who would defend Hitler. Nope.

So I'm leaving the song to its context. It belongs to a disfigured child who is taunted and abused for being different. He grows up in solitude, grasping for power and significance, haunting the halls of an opera house, watching the merriment from afar – from his shadows. He falls in love with a beautiful young singer with soft eyes and long dark hair, singing to her and training her from a distance. She responds to him differently than anybody ever has; with curiosity and – affection? She is his. All he wants and needs and desires. But she chooses another. And now he must learn to be lonely.

**

According to my father, the word for snow in Farsi is "barf." During his childhood in Iran, one of the major laundry detergent brands was "Barf," named after the pure, white, cleanliness of snow.

**

It turns out that Taylor Swift is quite the figurative little lovechild. I tried to maintain continuity in one of my classes by using another of her songs as a listening exercise. I have three of her songs on my iPod which helped narrow my choice to: Teardrops on my guitar.

Drew ______ at _____
I fake a _______ so he won't _______

etc.

The problems started early. "Who can explain this first section to me?" I asked. "Drew looks at me, I fake a smile so he won't see."

Stefan volunteered. "Drew is...like this," he made a scribble on his paper.

"Yes," I agreed. "But in English it's also a name."

"No it's not."

"Yes it is. Drew is looking at her and so she fakes a smile so that he can't see she's in love with him." They stared at me.

We moved on. "'Drew talks to me. I laugh 'cause it's just so funny, that I can't even see anyone when he's with me.' What does that mean?"

"She's laughing because he's funny."

"No...she's laughing because it's – sad." More like ironic. But I wasn't going there.

"What?"

"Look at it. She laughing because it's sad because she loves him so much that she can't see anyone else when she's with him."

They stared.

"It's a metaphor," I added (yes, I went there). "It's not that she can't actually see. When she's with him, he's the only person she can see in the room," I mimed blocking them all out and focusing somewhere else.

Clearly my kids aren't old enough to understand the depths of love Taylor has experienced. At least not in English.

**

I've discovered the key to the craziness of the Swedish language: word stresses.

In English, each word has one stress. "If you hear two stresses, you hear two words." (Englishclub.com).

In Swedish, they throw around stresses like Bjorn Borg underwear ads.



(This one is all over the SL Metro Stations)

Seriously. And they don't just throw a couple of stresses into three or four syllable words – where there's a syllable, there's a way: they stick them into two syllable words. I have several students named "Karin" and couldn't pronounce it for the life of me until someone told me that I needed to stress both syllables.

**

Speaking of Swedish Tunnelbanan ads, some of my latest favorites are ones titled "The many ways of sisters." This is a series of (what I'm assuming are) clothing ads with the same girl duplicated several times in each photo. Yes, she looks like she could be sisters.



(on the ads, they have "The many ways of sisters" in black letters across the image)

After the sister campaign started, they launched a "Brothers" campaign. Just...Brothers. Apparently there is only one way of brother.

These men look nothing like brothers except that they both share a "concerned but slightly bored" brooding look. Amadeus loves these ads. I haven't figured out why.

where you come from and where you gonna go this time?

I took the wrong exit out of the metro station and started wandering around the complex. Surely the other exit couldn't be that far. It was -1 C and positively warm after yesterday's -16 C. Maybe the weather was all relative. Or maybe I was turning into a Swede.

This idea was quickly disproven as an older man walked up to me and started speaking Swedish. Nope. Still not fluent. His tone was strange, like he was making some sort of declaration. I waited until he finished and then shrugged and apologized for not being able to speak his language.

He switched to English. "You are beautiful," he announced, emphasizing each word. "Of course," he added in a 'what else would I have said' tone. I laughed and thanked him, and we both continued on our ways.

Full of little surprises, these Swedes.

but if you really hold me tight, all the way home we'll be warm

Mcdonalds apple pies here are fried. They are beautiful. In the States they are baked and they are boring and mealy and lame.

Mcdonalds needs to stop pretending to be something it's not. It's not a healthy food place.
"There is a place in this world for junkfood," my mother says. And if my wheat-loving, organic buying mother says it, you know it's true.

Happy Meals getting banned? Seriously? How much money and lobbying went into that battle? It's not that I don't think a good cause is worth fighting for – and protecting the health of our nation is certainly a good cause – it's just over the top. People know Mcdonalds isn't healthy. They go there because it's cheap, fast, and easy. I'm going to go out on a limb and say most people don't go there every day.

And honestly, this is a choice we should be allowed to make for ourselves. And yes, for our children.

And for our taste buds, because fried apple pies are better. They just are.

What's this? What's this? There's magic in the air...

When I worked for The Chimes my senior year, we had weekly staff meetings at 8 am. 8 A.M. (My entire university career consisted of about one class before 10:20.) And you could tell who the morning people were. They were smiling, chatty, enthusiastic, almost buzzed. The non-morning people slouched in a couple minutes late, clutching thermoses, wearing big sweaters with their hair pulled back (girls) or hats (guys).

We had some unusual staff members. Jake got 12 hours of sleep every night. Katie ran a million miles every day (seriously, I think around 8?). Gail drove a party bus. Well, that's what we called it.

So, Small Talk Question of the Blog: Is it possible to change your morning/night person orientation?

OK, so I'm pretty much a young, freckled, female Obama with some different political views. I believe in change. I believe you can change your morning/night person orientation. I don't really think you can argue with that.

So: Actual Small Talk Question of the Blog: Can you change your morning/night person orientation without a whole ton of intentional, time consuming, sleep hour changing effort?

Or can you simply will yourself to be a better person in the morning – ie. change your attitude. Smile. Act perky until you feel it.

unusually and exceedingly peculiar and altogether quite impossible to describe –

my new wand

Blond.

**

Kiriakos and Pavlo, the two half Greek boys that Ammadeus and I babysit, made each of us a magic wand this Saturday. I'm going to take a picture of mine later and add it, but for now I'll just say that it's really awesome. Pavlo used a knife to whittle the wood, and added a special green stripe at the bottom.

Naturally, when he handed the wand to me, I raised it up and used a spell, waving it for effect. The spell I used? Avada Kedavra. It just popped out. That's right, an unforgivable curse. And not just any unforgivable curse, the death curse. Everyone was silent and Ammadeus looked at me, appalled.

"I can't believe you said that."

Yup. That's me, making social gaffes through the most unlikely of methods.

**

Simply Sweden:

As an easily identifiable foreigner – I walk around shivering in uncoordinated outfits, don't speak Swedish, etc. – I am often asked what my favorite part of Sweden is.

Public Transportation. I love it.

The SL (Storstockholms Lokaltrafik) system is, in comparison to other cities I've lived in, terrific.

Basically, you can buy a monthly adult SL card for 690 SEK (around 100 dollars), and it works on buses, trains, and the Tunnelbanan (metro). This might not sound cheap, but compared to paying the exuberant Stockholm gas prices/parking costs, and compared to other monthly metro card prices (London, for example), it's not a bad deal.

The SL system has so far been punctual (supposedly it slows a bit during winter), extensive (covers Stockholm suburbs), and easily accessible; bus and metro stops are everywhere.

For me, it's also a personal quality of life improvement. In L.A., I didn't have a car (long story – didn't get my license until my last year there), and was forced to rely on walking, buses, and friends to get around. Unfun. This was partly because the system was not well coordinated – transferring buses involved long wait periods, etc. Also, I didn't like using my friends to get around. Even if they were going to the same place: I didn't like that it was something I could never contribute to (except pitching in with gas).

(During college, no problem. I lived on and close to campus and had easy access to most events going on. After college, unfun unfun unfun. Mostly, the problem was that everyone had a car, which meant that it was a built in assumption into people's way of living.)

So, Life Advice: Don't live in L.A./O.C. without a car. L.A. is not concentrated or connected like New York City. It is sprawling.

In Stockholm, I can get to the center of town in ten minutes taking a bus which is right outside my door. I'm independent again. Minus the fact that I'm living at home. Ah, life.