We had a family dinner tonight down at Olof’s parents’ house, so I did manage to get rid of the remnants of my Mississippi Mud Pie (I’ll get the recipe to you soon, Ulrika). Olof has such a close-knit family, and they’re all so nice and down-to-earth. I’m very lucky to have them nearby, especially since my own family is so far away. The one downside of family events is that Olof’s mom has a hard time accepting the fact that I don’t eat meat, and she always seems a little put out whenever I pass up the meat course. It makes me feel bad, because I know it hurts her feelings and she sees it as a personal affront of some sort, but what can I do?<\/p>\n
I have so much homework for my Swedish class and I just can’t bring myself to do it. It’s sooooo boring and I can’t get motivated. I think the teacher is good, and overall the class is good, but what I need is to S P E A K, not to read simple exercises in a book and fill in the blank with this or that preposition. The test we took on Monday was practically a joke it was so simple, and I can’t imagine anybody found it challenging. I think the main problem with me fitting well into a class is that most of the people taking Swedish have speaking as their strong suit and are less comfortable with reading and writing. Myself, I read and write pretty well, and I even understand the spoken language well, but I’m not confident speaking. Actually, I speak relatively well, too, but I need more practice and a larger vocabulary. I guess I should try to cultivate some Swedish friends and force myself to become conversationally fluent, but that’s much easier said than done.<\/p>\n
The language and how it affects my personal relationships really is a frustration for me. I feel as though my in-laws don’t know me well, because I can’t be my “true self” in Swedish. What they know is just the superficial me, and since Olof doesn’t talk much about personal things with his family (or with anyone, really), all they know about me are just the very basic facts. I know that one of his sisters and I would be close if we didn’t have the language barrier to contend with, but neither of us is comfortable enough with the other’s language to build a true friendship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We had a family dinner tonight down at Olof’s parents’ house, so I did manage to get rid of the remnants of my Mississippi Mud Pie (I’ll get the recipe to you soon, Ulrika). Olof has such a close-knit family, and they’re all so nice and down-to-earth. I’m very lucky to have them nearby, especially… Read More This and that<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}