a few veggies can go a long way

Watching the renowned cook Gordon Ramsay tear participants of Kitchen Nightmares a new one, influenced my perception of food in a drastic way. If any of the restaurants serve either frozen/artificial/canned or microwaved food hell is sure to break loose - that is, if chef Ramsay is around.

I myself wouldn't say that I am a good cook, but I am not terribly bad either. Except I don't use fresh ingredients. Freshly bought and then frozen or even frozen when bought is what I go by. Hence all the ready-to-bake pizzas in our freezer.

But I do enjoy the occasional culunary adventure and so today, after another heart-warming episode of Kitchen Nightmares, I asked Joakim to go to the store with me and buy some ingredients. What we were going to eat wasn't entirely sure yet then but I knew I wanted something with fresh vegetables. So we ended up deciding on a fresh, warm veggie soup.

In the store we stood infront of a huge counter filled with all kinds of roots and herbs and whatnot. And eventhough we didn't know half of what they were we bought like 10 different kinds of vegetables. Amongst them were horseradish (jucky stuff, by the way) and fresh parsley. It was great fun to randomly pick out stuff of which we didn't even know what it was. And working with everything, the peeling and the slicing, was a lot of fun too - plus the soup turned out amazing. And it didn't even cost that much more than buying all the groceries frozen. You should try it some time!

distractions that surround us

"talented, gifted"... hm... what was that again? Oh yeah, "begåvad (-t -e)"
Lets see, whats next on the list. "obvious" ...
My feet are getting tired.
That woman over there looks very interesting. I wonder if she got up like that or if that was intended.

Those and others are thoughts that 20-year-old Antonia Hulha has when she walks to school in the morning. Usually you can see her wearing a big black coat that is tightened in the waist and loose in the bottom with the tips of her skirt barely visible underneath it. Her neck and chin are completely enveloped in two different scarves, one soft and nice for the skin and one thick enough to keep any form of cold away from her. Her hair is loosely wrapped into a bun and her gloved fingers are tightly grabbing onto a piece of paper that she seems to be carrying around with her where ever she goes.
That little piece of paper is a compilation of her recently discovered swedish words translated into either German or English - which ever fits best. Or to say it with different words: a multi-lingual vocabulary list.

If you had met Antonia on the streets only a few days earlier and had tried to talk to her she wouldn't have reacted to you. You would have maybe tried to speak up, or, if you'd still fall short of getting a reaction, look at her more closely in order to make sure she was the right person. This would go on until you would have decided that a little bit of physical contact can't hurt and softly tipped her on the shoulder.
She would have jumped out of her skin, turned to you and lifted off her amazingly oversized headphones off her ears. Headphones, that used to be connected to an mp3-player filled with music of all genres. Headphones, that used to flod her ears with so much music that she couldn't focus on her list.

But no more. No. Antonia said good-bye to this technical monstrosity in order to focus 110% on her vocabularies.
But while she is thinking about the correct translation of the word obvious she is now distracted by the black snow piling up left and right of the street or the dog on the other side of it, too small to keep up with its owner without running. Every once in a while you see her shaking her head, trying to regain focus on her studies, but her new concentration only lasts a few seconds until she finds yet another thing to be distracted by.
This phenomenon makes it very difficult for her to study adequately and at times she gets quite frustrated. So if you happen to meet her on the street ask her which word she is thinking about. That will help her regain a few seconds worth of concentration.

(re-)connections

For as long as I can remember my dad and I had little or no contact at all. We didn't get along and as I grew older I got stubborn. We argued and faught until one day everything collapsed and we went seperate ways. That was 5 years ago. In all that time I ignored him as best as I could, i.e. evaded calls, ignored emails and above all, never met him again.

Do you know the feeling that you get the day after you had an intense dream? I for one think about the dream all day, as though it is a shadow following me around.

Some weeks ago I had the most intense dream about my dad and the next day I thought about him very much. To such an extend that I couldn't sleep the following night. As I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, I thought to myself: why are you still ignoring him? What was it that stood between you two in the first place? - And frankly, I couldn't find answers to those questions. So I got up - it was at around 5am - and started writing an email to him.

At first I was afraid that he would remind me of all the arguments we had, that he would blame me for them or that he wouldn't even answer on the mail. But when I got his first reply I knew I made the right decision. From the very beginning he was extremely happy to have received an email from me and he wanted to forget what happened as much as I did.

Ever since then we have been exchanging emails 2-3 times a week and it already feels so natural. So much in fact, that I feel comfortable sharing my feelings with him, which is not something I used to do when I was younger.

You see, when you reconnect with old friends and valued people in your life it might at first be frightening. But I can tell you from experience that it is one of the most wonderful feelings you can have. Especially if your feelings are answered and the person in question seems just as happy as you are about having contact again.

Today he wrote in one of his emails that he is proud to have a daughter like me. I don't know if you can imagine how I felt after reading that but just try imagining going 5 years without it and you might understand.

bokredovisning - book presentation

As you may or may not know I am currently learning Swedish at a facility called Komvux. German is pretty similar to Swedish in a broad array of aspects. The swedish term for burn up is förbränna and in German that would be verbrennen. You see the similarity.
This very fortunate course of events brings with it something quite unfortunate, though - I don't make any friends. Every connection I establish is immediately severed by my quick learning pace. I tend to leave groups within a month to start with more advanced courses. I just hope that I will stop migrating soon and settle down somewhere where the teaching pace matches my personal speed.

I have recently started an advanced course which requires me to read and present a book within the next 10 weeks. That is a lot of time, some of you might say, but then you haven't seen me read, obviously. I'm a terribly slow reader - about 200 words/minute - because I can't help but read in the same speed that I would if I read aloud. It's like I hear my voice in my head, reading the words to me. That is, of course, only when I am reading articles of some sort. But either way, I am not fast and I am not proud of it. (I am sure if I were more used to reading I would read faster but I am just too damn lazy for that)

So in 10 weeks I am to present a book, as I said, and I chose to read the swedish version of Harry Potter in which wizards are called trollkarlar and Hagrid is a jätte. All in all I am getting through it quite well and it is a lot of fun, to be frank. But I still have to figure out what I feel, when I read the book. Because that is what the presentation is going to be about: what does the book mean to you? (eehhmm) Why did you chose to present it? ('cause it was the only one I read in Swedish?) etc. I hope I will come up with something, because the book is definitely not intetsägande (meaningless).

Wish me luck :)

dread-o-saster

When you find yourself naked in your shower with the tips of your fingers wizened to a painful extend and your feet sticking to the surface of the tub you know something went awfully wrong.

While I was standing there, listening to the sound of water dropping onto my shoulders, it suddenly came to me: I should write a blog about this. And not only about this, but about everything that is going on in that weird mind of mine. So here I am, pressing keyboard buttons with my still hurting finger tips.

It all started some weeks ago when my boyfriend suggested I should get dreads. We ordered a do-it-yourself package from KnottyBoy and met with his sister to work my hair. You start by back-combing the hair until it gets puffy and sticks out and then you rotatingly massage Dread-Wax into the hair. We managed to finish half the head and wanted to continue the day after.

The night wasn't easy - the hair kept sticking to the protective towel and my scalp was still hurting from all the combing and rotating. When I finally got up the next day I started looking up certain things on the internet and I found some customer-reviews for the wax I used. Apparently the hair starts rotting due to the sealing nature of the wax that is plastered over it. Of course I did not want my hair to rot and while cursing myself for not looking this up sooner I started taking out the dreads.

It was not as hard as I expected it to be but still hard enough. And every so often I wanted to scream in agony. The worst part was the wax which did not only make my hair and skin sticky but also all the combs and towels I used. Even my clothes that I wore when we went home the day before were all messed up with wax.

That is how I came to stand naked in the shower with wizened fingers, lathering my hair and janking on it, in pain and with my feet sticking to the bottom of the tub.