Saturday, May 31, 2008

Sweden, Days 14 & 15: Stockholm & more Stockholm

Stockholm is marvellous.

I don't have any more time to write at the moment.

More later.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Sweden, Day 13: Bollnäs & Växbo

I really must be quick about blogging tonight. Did I mention that this computer has some problems with malware? It is only a matter of time before some incredibly inappropriate window pops up with extremely obnoxious sound effects. I haven't been able to figure out how to turn down the volume so the whole sleeping household will suspect that I am (once again) visiting porn sites.

Another reason to be quick is that it is already past 11 pm & I must be up at 5:30 am to catch the train to Stockholm. Our time in Hälsingland is pretty well over (far too soon) & the next stage of our exchange trip includes 3 days in Stockholm. We will be attending some meetings & doing a little sightseeing.

We didn't knock ourselves out working today. We started off with a visit at the Gymnasiet (high school) where we met Elisabet, one of the headmasters. Like Canada, Sweden suffers from a shortage of health care professionals & they have devised some innovative programs to address the problem. Elisabet looks after the healthcare programs (we would probably call them Practical Nursing programs) at both the high school & Komvux centres. Students at the high school can take Healthcare as one of their program options for (senior) high school completion. Adults can take the comprehensive Healthcare program at Komvux. For the Gymnasiet students, the program is 3 years long & includes all the other necessary high school courses. For the adults, the program is 1.5 years long & is concentrated solely on nursing. It is definitely a different kind of high school - postsecondary partnership than we are used to, & I can imagine the arguments. Do students at the Grade 10 level even KNOW what they want to do yet? Isn't 18 a bit young to tackle the realism of nursing...? It seems to be working for our Swedish partners.

Afterwards, we met with one of the Gymnasiet nursing instructors who is a self-proclaimed techie. Like our friend Per in Söderhamn, she uses the SMARTboard to teach her students. However, her focus seems to be less on the preparation of comprehensive lectures & more on immediate, on-the-fly interaction with her students. We found it a bit funny to be learning about SMARTboards here, on the other side of the world from Canada, when the SMARTboards are actually made just over the border from us in Alberta.

In the afternoon we all went to Växbo to visit the linen mill there. For a fibre junkie like me, it was like a pilgrimage. We saw how the fibres were treated & saw a mechanical loom in action. Then I had a chance to handle all the finished materials -- both yard goods & finished products -- & finally bought a few items, mostly as gifts. Ewa also bought me a beautiful table runner which has to be seen (& felt) to be believed.

But the best was yet to come. In the evening Ewa's mother-in-law, Kaisa, took us on a tour of the immediate neighbourhood. We went into the kyrk (church) & viewed some of the ancient statues & bas-reliefs. Then we went to the 'weaving house' (vävstugen) where we saw 15 - 20 looms, each one in the process of weaving some fantastic linen article. The pieces varied from delicate curtains to sturdy woven linen hotpads to modern wall hangings to traditional Bollnäs weaving patterns to rag rugs. Again, for a fibre junkie it was the treat of a lifetime. Finally, we went to the old building (gården) which has been the town hall for Bollnäs for maybe 500 years & looked at the furnishings which have been used by families in the community, continuously up until the 1940's or '50s. We are talking about furniture, cloth, cooking materials etc. etc., some of which are hundreds of years old, & they are sitting around as if the family just left for a week's vacation. We could touch stuff, open drawers, look under the covers on the beds, leaf the pages of books. Of course, this is a super-lucky treat because Kaisa was, & still is very active in the community & has keys to all of these buildings. I have touched so many incredible things today I'm reluctant to wash my hands.

But that's what I've got to do: wash up & go to bed. Did I say this was going to be short entry???

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Sweden, Day 12: Bollnäs, Bollnäs, & Kilafors

My head is full. And if Ewa hadn't poured for me a very helpful glass of wine, it would feel even fuller. My memory is already numbed a little but I do have 7 solid pages of notes to remind me of our meetings today. We met with Peter, Jonny & Jan & between the 3 of them received a very thorough overview of how the Swedish governmental system is arranged, especially as it relates to education.

Really, it is quite fascinating. Peter's presentation has gone a long way to reduce the confusion I had about how things work here. It seems that there are 4 main levels: the Kommun (municipality), the Län (county), the State (country) -- & now a 4th level created by participation in the European Union. There is a sort of 1.5 level, too: the informally defined cultural, historic regional identity inherited from times past. For Bollnäs & Söderhamn, this historical region is Hälsingland.

For the purposes of this blog, I won't go into the ways in which educational programming fits into all of this. It is really quite complicated & involves many different levels, distinctions, funding sources, organizational charts etc. But there were some points that especially caught my attention:
  • adult education is primarily funded at the level of the municipality. This means that teachers etc. are hired by the municipality & that educational programming must be directly responsive to municipal needs. People we've talked to see both the positive & negative aspects of this approach.
  • this Län has a very good reputation nationally for proficiency in distance education.
  • the EU funds all sorts of projects at both the national/regional level & at sectorial levels. It seems that Gävleborg region receives the usual sorts of education funding according to its geographical 'entitlement' but has not been so successful at obtaining sectorial funding. They are working on this. It means that they are especially open to considering projects & partnerships that transcend regional boundaries but they are not so accustomed to thinking in that way.
  • the research conducted on the efficacy of Swedish 'study centres' (centres like those we have seen in Söderhamn & Bollnäs that support distance learning for higher education in non-urban communities) is extremely convincing. They really do work. The study centres not only enable adults from non-academic families to complete higher education programs, they enable rural communities to retain these highly-educated individuals. What's not to like???
I could go on & on but like I said, I don't want to replicate the entire 7 pages of notes here.

The only other thing that really stands out for me is the incredible difference it makes when the government pays for higher education. The similarities between Hälsingland communities & Kootnenay communities are striking, but the differences between our communities' participation in adult education are equally striking. How much can we realistically hope to achieve in Canada when education is regarded as a luxury consumer item? Makes you wonder.

This evening we went to a lovely theatrical dinner presented by Ewa's son's school. The dinner was served at a beautiful restaurant in Kilafors (pronounced something like 'shillafosh'). The theatrical pieces were of course all in Swedish so I couldn't understand more than one word in every 20 or so but the exuberance of the young performers translates well regardless of language.

Monday, May 26, 2008

Sweden, Day 10: Bollnäs & Axmar

Blogger is acting funny or is it this computer? I am using the computer of a digitally sophisticated teenager & the browser is badly infected with malware. Never mind: I am very grateful for having such marvellous access to the internet. But I think I will keep this short.

Today was our first official 'working day' in Bollnäs. We didn't work hard. We spent the morning with our Swedish colleagues Åke & Anneli, comparing learning management systems. Anneli uses a platform called theducation. It's hard for me to report much about it since it's a Swedish product & most of the google hits on it are in Swedish. Nevertheless, Anneli showed us what she is doing with it -- she is using it a lot -- so we did get a fairly good look around. It seems to do all of the same basic functions as Moodle. From what I could tell, it is missing some of Moodle's more sophisticated features but has a few of its own. One nice feature is an automatic 'reminder' system: when the student is 3 days late with a critical assignment, theducation sends an email reminder to encourage the student to get the assignment in. It continues to send reminders on a regular basis until 30 days have gone by, at which point the student is withdrawn from the system & the instructor is notified. I'm sure these settings can be modified all over the place. The feature is especially important in Sweden where the student receives government funding as long as he or she is actively studying. Of course, the folks at Komvux must keep track of all this.

Åke then showed us a learning management system that he has designed himself. He uses a system of web pages etc. for content sharing, & then uses First Class for communication. It's a bit primative but certainly meets the needs of him & his students. Actually I've been surprised at how much variety exists in learning management systems here. Perhaps it's yet another expression of that 'try everything' approach that I've seen in other applications. On the one hand, I have wondered why on earth they don't adopt a common platform & benefit from the strength in numbers but on the other hand I've admired the high tolerance for individually configured systems. Sometimes the software seems a bit limiting but when you look at the systems as a whole, some of them provide very effective solutions.

Later, we showed Anneli how we use Moodle & set her up with a classroom on our server. The more the merrier!

In the afternoon, I went for a walk around Bollnäs & had a quick look at the Folkhögskola (Folk High School). I found out that although the Folkhögskola competes a bit with Komvux, for the most part they appeal to different audiences. Komvux is a credit-granting organization appealing more to those with academic or career goals, while the Folkhögskola reaches a more culturally focussed group. The Folkhögskola in Bollnäs specializes in music & attracts students from all over Sweden. I had heard about the Swedish Folkhögskola movement when I was studying adult education at St. F-X so it was very satisfying to meet one in person.

And in the evening we were taken out once again for an incredible meal: this time to the locally-famous seafood restaurant at Axmar. I had baltic herring with lingonberries & mashed potatoes. It was delicious. We were able to watch seabirds on the water & swallows fishing the air for flies just outside our window.

The browser is still acting very strange. After half an hour, I still can't access my work email. What a pity! No more work tonight.

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Sweden, Day 9: Bollnäs, Gävle, & all points between

Today was a holiday in every sense of the word. Our Swedish colleague, Åke, picked me up at 9 & we headed first up a 'mountain' (not exactly what we would call it in BC but everything is relative). Somewhere near the top we went for coffee at a sort of lodge, which looked like it could have been situated (except for all the signs in Swedish) anywhere in rural/remote Canada. There was chain saw art, rustic furniture, stuffed owls, various types of fur traps, & the inevitable candy that looks like moose droppings. Upstairs the coffee bar menu was so incredible that I took a picture. I can't check the camera at this moment but I can remember off the top of my head that the list included roast beaver, bear sausage, & something to do with reindeer. Åke & I split a sandwich that included smoked moose heart. I am not making this up!

I have been quite surprised at just how 'wild' Sweden can be. All of the animals listed on the café menu (& many more) are found in the Swedish bush. The lodge had a couple of maps with differently-coloured pushpins to indicate sightings of the various species. It was amazing to see not only how many bears have been sighted in the area but also how significantly the sightings have increased in recent years. Apparently one can also see wolverines, wolves, foxes, lynx, & some sort of grouse that looks as big as a wild turkey.

After fika we headed back down the hill & took the highway to Gävle. Gävle is a city of about 120,000 & is the economic centre for the province of Hälsingland. We checked out the museum, walked around town a bit, & went for lunch. Afterwards, we idled back to Bollnäs on the old highway which follows the coastline more closely. Later we took a quick (quick!!!) spin around the Ljusnan area & in the evening our whole Bollnäs group met at Annalise's place for supper.

I can't remember the last time I played the part of the tourist like this. It really was fun. Tomorrow we head to the Komvux in Bollnäs so it should be a bit more like work.

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Sweden, Days 7 & 8: Söderhamn - Bergsjö - Bollnäs

Yesterday was our day of transition. I started the day in Söderhamn & spent the morning conducting a workshop about Moodle for the interested teachers at CFL. It was fun to be once again on familiar territory, talking about something I know (in English, no less!) to an enthusiastic small group. We left Söderhamn after lunch & headed north leisurely towards Bergsjö, where Ronny lives. On the way we visited all sorts of geographical, historical & cultural landmarks. We drove along the beautiful Ljusdal river, visited a handicraft & cultural centre at Stellengården (not necessarily the correct spelling!), drove up a mountain overlooking the Dellen lakes, & stopped for coffee in a village historical centre. Eventually we came to Bergsjö & enjoyed a wonderful supper with just about everybody who has been involved with our college's Canada-Swedish exchange project. Because I have met so many project people over the past 4 years, it really felt more like a homecoming than anything else. Priceless.

After the dinner at Bergsjö, we were traded over to our Bollnäs contacts & so headed back home with them. It was at least 11:30 pm when Ewa-Marianne & I arrived in Bollnäs but it was, of course, still somewhat light outside. I have a dim recollection of being introduced to her family & then crashed into sleep.

Today, a Saturday, I was able to first catch up a bit on sleep. Since morning, Ewa has treated me to a wonderful day driving around the area in her 1973? Pontiac Firebird. We circled the Ljusdal lake region, we saw the area (Djupa) where she grew up, had fika with her parents (a highlight of the trip), picked some wildflowers, & visited a handicrafts shop. In the afternoon, we attended a birthday party for a colleague who was, & technically still is, a Canadian.

To be honest, the day is a bit of a blur. I will try to find a decent map of the area so I can at least understand where I've been. Google maps does NOT do it justice!

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Sweden, Day 6: Söderhamn, Falun & Sundborn

It's quarter past ten in the evening & I'm exhausted but sleep still feels hours away. For one thing, it is still so light outside, maybe like 8 pm would be at home; & for another thing, my head is just too full to sleep. So I'm glad for a commitment to blog duty.

We started off the morning with a 2-hour drive to the town of Falun where we were set to visit some people at the Högskolan Dalarna. The Swedish names for educational institutions are a bit confusing for us Canadians. Although the word 'Högskolan' translates literally as 'High School' it actually means 'higher education' & in fact Högskolan Dalarna is a university. (When you mean 'high school,' you say 'gymnasiet').

Our two hosts at the university, Joakim & Ragnar, do the same work that I do. But with a university population of over 10,000 students -- 40% of them doing online courses -- the volume & complexity of their work is an order of magnitude bigger than mine. They use essentially 3 complete systems to reach their students: a collection of streamed & recorded videos to deliver lectures, a web conferencing application called Marratech for synchronous small group work, & 2 learning management systems (Fronter, & to a lesser extent - Moodle) for the content. We saw the recording studio in which professors can go to compose their lectures & the classrooms in which they can deliver simultaneously to campus-based & distance students. We had a detailed look at Marratech (a Swedish tool that was so good it was acquired by Google!) & discussed at length the pros & cons of various web conferencing applications. And we had a look at Fronter & discussed learning management systems. We had coffee (fika!) & lunch & spoke with a couple of distance teachers but basically talked shop all day. Really, it was an e-learning specialist's dream come true.

On the way back to Söderhamn, we stopped at Sundborn to see Carl Larsson's 'garden' (home/yard). We had the guided tour -- in English, no less! -- & so were treated to yet another rich educational experience. I really knew very little about Carl Larsson before, except that he was Swedish & painted lovely, happy family scenes. Turns out that he had come to this (now famous) little Swedish cottage with his family with the intention of doing some landscape painting. However, the weather was not cooperative & rained for 6 weeks & in desperation he started to paint the activities of his children in the cottage. The paintings speak volumes about his joy in family life. But they are also celebrations of the incredible decorative sense & textile artistry of his wife, Karin. Carl Larsson's paintings launched an interior design style for Sweden which persists today, almost 100 years after his death.

It will be another early morning tomorrow, our last day in Söderhamn. We will then head to another host family in Bollnäs & I am not at all sure what my internet access will be so this may be the last 'daily' entry for a while.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Sweden, Day 5: Söderhamn & parts unknown

It's been another interesting day in Söderhamn. We started off in a session with Pär, who uses a SMARTboard to deliver some of his history lectures. If you are not familiar with the SMARTboard, it's an electronic device that looks like a typical whiteboard except that it's connected directly to the computer. So it displays whatever you have running on your computer but can also be used with its own software for a number of interesting applications. For example, if you write on the SMARTboard using the special markers that come with it, the special software can recognize your handwriting & turn it into standard digitized text. You can use your hand to tap on the whiteboard just as you would use a mouse to click & drag items around the computer screen. In this way, the SMARTboard is a highly-interactive vertical surface that marries the best of both worlds -- the computer & the whiteboard -- to let the teacher interact in a very natural way with the students.

To show off the best features of the SMARTboard, Pär showed us one of his prepared presentations (a lecture about 'Imperialism'). As he explained, "first you start off with your stories": your notes or your storyboard or the main points that you are hoping to get across. Then you prepare a PowerPoint-like sequence of slides that link to websites, notes & other documents that support your story. Pär supplemented with Google Earth so that he could use those maps to illustrate the story about the colonization of Africa. The SMARTboard let him stay at the front of the class rather than popping up & down: now to navigate the computer, now to make notes or draw diagrams on the board.

I am pondering whether the SMARTboard would be useful for us back home. It would cost more than $1000 so it is beyond the 'sweet spot' for easy purchasing at the college. The great multimedia lectures can be recorded but the file size is apparently exorbitant. It looks like it could be very good for distance delivery of math or for simultaneous delivery of both f2f & online class groups. But can it do that much more than a good graphics tablet & a motivated instructor? It's something to think about.

After that, we met with a small group of students who are studying at a distance from the Policy Academy just outside of Stockholm. This distance program was set up originally to address the problem of so few police graduates choosing to serve in small rural communities. The educational delivery setup is very similar to that of the Social Work students I described earlier: the students attend f2f sessions every once in a while but mostly work through their coursework using what appears to be a Moodle-like portal interface. They also practice practical skills with the local police department. Apparently the results show that these distance students score better on the practical skills evaluations than do the academy-only students in Stockholm: it's hypothesized that they get more realistic practice working with the department. Makes sense.

Our afternoon session was cancelled so I took a long walk instead. You wouldn't think it's possible to get lost in a place so small as Söderhamn but I managed. I finally had to stop & ask for directions back to CFL.

In the evening we took a wonderful boat trip down the Söderhamn inlet (or whatever it's called) & enjoyed a shrimp dinner on board. It was cold out on deck but cosy in the hull restaurant, & it was delightful to view the islands & Swedish summer cottages while munching on rye bread & brie cheese & washing it down with Hälsingland local beer. That's a long sentence, isn't it? Life is good.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Sweden, Day 4: Söderhamn - Trönö - Löftjården

It's been another busy & interesting day. We started off with an explanation of a new type of trades program in Söderhamn. The Kvalificerad Yrkesutbildning (KY) is a pan-Europe program with a strong workplace component. This, it seems, is something quite new & revolutionary in European trades training. Besides the workplace component (which usually comprises one-third of the educational experience), participation in KY offers the student extreme educational mobility, credential recognition throughout the EU, & a variety of financial aid options. The KY program is offered for many vocations (not just trades) but the one in Söderhamn is focussed on welding. It's a 60 week program with 20 weeks in the workplace. They have 25 - 30 students but 80 applicants.

In the afternoon we heard about how CFL is thinking about e-portfolios. They looked at the software product called ELGG (as we did in BC) but gave up the idea when they saw how complicated it was (as we also did in BC). They decided to use First Class -- their e-learning standby -- & just add a module to extend its capabilities to e-portfolio use. It seems that that solution, too, is less than ideal. I am going to show them Moodle on Friday & maybe we can talk about Moodle' integrated portfolio at that time.

After work, we took a drive out to Trönö where we looked at an old church. I mean a REALLY old church. The church we saw was built around 1200 & was, without a doubt, the oldest structure I have ever seen. However (& this is the really cool part), we did more than just look at it: we went inside, rubbed our hands along the woodwork, examined the alter, had a close-up look at how the very old paint still shows in places from underneath the old paint; and we could have climbed up the ancient stave bell tower if we had wanted. There was no-one else there: no restrictive fences, no roped-off areas, no curator, & not even a sign telling us not to. And it's not that this is one of hundreds of very old churches in Sweden: this is the oldest.

In the evening we drove south for half an hour to a very rural area along the protected Baltic coast, to have a barbeque supper at the summer cottage of one of the teachers from CFL. The area doesn't seem to have a name & in fact requires quite complicated driving directions to locate. The part of the bay seems to be called Löftjården so that's what I'm going with. I was amazed that the Baltic Sea has no visible tide & no exuberant sealife so it feels much more like a lake. It was cold so we ate inside the cottage which, although it was tiny & had no electricity & no real plumbing, was fitted out better than Martha Stewart could ever hope for. Really! I would have taken pictures to prove it but my camera batteries died in the middle of the visit to the church.

Fresh batteries tomorrow.

Monday, May 19, 2008

Sweden, Day 3: Söderhamn & Växhuset

It amazes me that it can be so light, so late. Driving home tonight from Växhuset I felt so tired, unreasonably tired (I thought) given the earliness of the hour. After all, it was still light enough outside to read a newspaper easily. But when I looked at the clock, it was almost 10 o'clock. I keep forgetting that we are above the 60th parallel, further north than the BC-Yukon border. So I will write quickly & go to bed.

Today was a full day at the Centrum för Flexibilt Lärande (which translates unsurprisingly as Centre for Flexible Learning - CFL). Pauline & I got a very thorough tour of the facility, then a demonstration from an instructor who uses a complicated but very efficient & effective process to digitize his math lectures. Lunch was in the centre cafeteria, then I got to interview 2 middle-aged students who are completing a degree in social work by distance education.

The net effect is that I am feeling a bit in awe of the whole thing. If there is a better facility in the world for meeting the adult education needs of a rural community, I cannot imagine it. The building is large, bright, welcoming, clean. Original art graces every corridor. The interest & support for educational technology is impressive. There are all kinds of learning spaces, from a large lecture theatre designed for videoconferencing, to regular classrooms, to many comfortable corners with tables & chairs designed to support informal learning in groups. Every possible type of adult learning is supported.

The 2 students I interviewed were especially interesting. With only 3 weeks to go, they are at the very end of a 3.5 year social work degree program. The program is delivered from a mid-Sweden university & utilizes an online portal to deliver student services, WebCT for course content delivery & discussion forums, twice-monthly visits from a social worker mentor, & optional videoconferenced lectures. It seems that ~90% of their cohort will be graduating -- a success rate that I wanted to understand. According to the 2 women, the most important contributor to student persistence is the support provided by informal small study groups at learning centre sites such as CFL.

After supper, we went to a very interesting ecological project called Växhuset. The project is located 20? km out of town, "in the middle of nowhere" according to our Swedish hosts (although a Canadian would not describe it that way!) The owner, a man named Ralf, paraphrased something that Einstein had said: that the problems for the earth were not a result of not enough knowledge, but of not enough fantasy. He has applied his fantasy (& quite a bit of knowledge too!) to constructing a number of buildings which incorporate as many ecological, green, and alternative energy strategies as can be imagined. There are composting toilets & thermal mass walls of many kinds & pipes distributing water warmed on the roof & a house-in-the-making with walls of sand-filled car tires. There are windmills & 12-volt electrical systems & a satellite-dish solar oven & a garden "tractored" by chickens & many more applications than I can think of in my sorry jet-lagged state.

Perhaps this is the Swedish way? When faced with a problem (adult education, energy conservation), try everything! Forget about stopping with the first marginally acceptable solution that presents itself. And be positive.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Sweden, Day 2: Söderhamn & Skärså

This is a record for me: two blog posts in 2 consecutive days!

We spent a quiet day relaxing in Söderhamn. In the morning we attended the Pingst (pentecostal) church service which was conducted in an interesting combination of Swedish & English. The congregation includes so many refugees & asylum-seekers that the translation has become a necessary courtesy in order to meet the needs of attendees. In the afternoon, my host Aanette & I took a long leisurely walk around a little lake. After 2 days of sitting around in airplanes & airport lounges I badly needed the activity.

If we were able to burn off a few calories on our walk, we certainly put them back on over supper! We were taken out for dinner to a seafood restaurant in the tiny fishing community of Skärså. Incidently, the word 'Skärså' is virtually unpronounceable by English speakers. It's the 'sk' sound that gives so much trouble: there is absolutely no equivalent in English. I got a brief lesson while we were waiting for supper to arrive. You have to make a very deep exhale, right from the bottom of your diaphram, while your tongue sits tightly against the bottom of your mouth. My little Swedish phrasebook describes it as the 'ch' sound as in the Scottish 'loch' only made much further back in the throat. Maybe.

Anyway, supper consisted of [atlantic] salmon prepared 4 different ways, including smoked with pepper, raw, pickled & then smoked, & perhaps baked? All were delicious. We had some sort of pudding with cloudberries for dessert. Cloudberries was a new flavour for me. Apparently they are served sparingly because they are so hard to get: grown only in the north, on little bushes, one single tiny berry per cluster (i.e. there are no clusters) so they are very hard to collect en masse. The colour is like apricots & the flavour is possibly a bit like blueberries or saskatoons but much more subtle.

It will be an early day at work tomorrow, I must get to bed.

Sweden, Day 1: Stockholm - Söderhamn

There is really not much to say, partly because the first day in Sweden was so short: my flight didn't touch down on the Arlanda runway until 5:40 pm & we weren't on the road, heading past Stockholm, until almost an hour later. And partly because I was so tired (less than an hour's sleep in the past 30 hours) that I was simply unaware. Ronny, our Swedish host, was there with Pauline (my colleague who had arrived a few hours earlier) and the 3 of us hussled north along the freeway towards Söderhamn. It was windy, wet & cold & shortly before Gävle it started to snow! We made a very short pit stop in Gävle, which was made memorable for me in 2 ways: 1) we watched a woman at the gas station who was bottle-feeding a very small (collie-sized) horse, & 2) another woman, who had been speaking to me in rapid Swedish, understood me when I told her "Jag talar inte svenska" (I don't speak Swedish). But no doubt she would have figured that out no matter what I said.

My host family is just wonderful.

[photos for this blog are here.]

Thursday, May 8, 2008

first post!

Ah, the first post in a new blog! It reminds me of that 'fresh new start' feeling after getting a new pair of shoes in elementary school. But I have started blogs in the past (how many? Never mind.) & drifted out of the discipline of writing far too early. This time it will be different.

What is 'sansfrontierisme'? It's the French term for the quality of being without borders. More on that later.