välkommen!!

❄ today i had my swedish introduction class at the folk university.. the lovely teacher monika asked us questions in swedish to determine which level we were at before handing out the level test. after my turn she said 'anna, i dont think we'll bother giving you the test.. we'll just pop you straight in the beginners class' .... and there i was thinking i was pretty good for understanding all the questions! everyone else could answer them in swedish too! 

in the group there were students from egypt, brazil, palestine, eritrea, cuba, gambia and thailand... jerry's comment on that was 'i knew you'd be the only normal one'..(!)
i actually found it fascinating being amongst people from such exotic places, imagining the lives they'd come from and how they'd ended up in sweden of all places...

the teacher told us that the most important thing was to practise our swedish outside of the classroom as well. she asked all the students if we had swedish friends we could speak with and most of them said no! one woman said the only people she could practise on were her small children! i seemed to be the only one who has swedish friends here! in fact i dont know anyone here who isn't swedish! and for that i'm very lucky because they all can't wait for me to be able to speak swedish with them. jerry in particular is very excited about having a good laugh at me. he said he'd love to send a dictaphone along with me to class each day so he could listen back and take the piss.

in fact i know he's very happy that im learning his language (and living in his country) and that's why he's paying for everything and even spoiling me, working double shifts while i stay at home watching 'Idol'!.... though to be fair, i'm also being a very thorough housewife!

while everyone else in the class took the test, monika walked me down the corridor and told me i'll resume full time studies (7 hours a day) tomorrow morning. she showed me where my classroom would be and as we peeped our heads through the doorway, five happy, arabic-looking male faces turned around to greet me... 'välkommen!!!!'

:o)