Fun Weekend

This weekend was my first non-working weekend since arriving in Sweden after Christmas.  I caught up on some laundry, washed my apartment floors and cleaned the bathroom, and did a little shopping. It wasn’t all chores though; I rode my bike out to visit Camilla and Urban and family for a FANTASTIC dinner and watching melodifestivalen (the Swedish Qualifier for the Eurovision song contest) on TV.   It was quite late and dark and a few glasses of wine into the evening, so instead of riding home I stayed the night.  This was a great plan, since I got homemade bread and fresh-pressed orange juice for breakfast!

After riding home I did some puttering around, ate a big lunch, and then out to Hemlingby with Jennie and Richard for a ski.  I thought I would take a conservative pace and try for something between 24 and 30 kilometers. I took a few rest/snack breaks and ran out of light and time before I ran out of steam… that was a nice feeling, although I know I will have to go even further when I do the 45km loppet.   We have had some new snow which is soft and easy to navigate, but not so fast to glide over.  Still, since I have more fitness than finesse (and not because I am so very fit) I think these are probably ‘my conditions’.   I used to like racing in hot, humid headwinds but clearly I need to adapt my ideals to a new sport.

I finished up the weekend watching a Swedish movie with Vincent: Låt den rätt komma in.   Vincent and I did some vocabulary building and helped each other understand some of the tricky words.  It is a great movie, and I was happy to understand so much more now than when I watched it the first time before coming to Sweden.  There is now an English version of the movie, but from all accounts it is not as good.  Typiskt!