Summer came, and went, as it usually does here in the North. But what a lovely summer it was! As some say, the third time is the charm. This was my third summer here in Sweden, and finally we had what was the closest to a real summer here in Sweden. It got warm, and stayed warm! And sunny! There was hardly any rain! Which we are now paying for in the fall season. It's been getting noticeably darker and cloudier these past few weeks. I'm saddened by summer leaving. I think a large part causing that sadness is that, here in Sweden, there isn't nearly as much to look forward to in autumn. Almost nothing, really. In the States we have Saturday college football (or NFL if you prefer that league..on what, Sunday nights? Monday nights? Apologies, I don't follow NFL). You also have Halloween to look forward to, and not long after that is Thanksgiving! If you have the same traditions as my family, you even have a trip to the apple orchard and the pumpkin patch to look forward to - hot cider drinking and all. But here in Sweden there is nothing to curb the angst that darkening days and falling temperatures call forth. You know that winter is coming and that it will consume the next 5 months or so. That's nearly half of the year! To combat this, I hold steadily to the tradition of cooking Thanksgiving dinner each year. The past two years I cooked for J's family in Tibro. This year we'll be holding a get-together with some dear friends here in our new apartment in Gothenburg, killing two birds with one stone in having them to see our new (owned!) apartment and celebrating Thanksgiving.
I pretty much breezed over the entire summer there in just a couple of sentences. Where did we leave off? Oh yes, Midsummer. Well we then moved on into July and made a trip to Norway which was enjoyable. It's always great getting out of the country - I love to travel. We basically did a reprise of last year - grilling out, playing games, fishing and of course socializing (the weather this year was just as sunny and beautiful as last). What's exciting is that our Norwegian friends will be visiting us in November for Thanksgiving! How great to be able to see them not only once this year but twice. =)
Eventually in August we had two weeks of vacation and spent the first weekend of it in Tibro, the rest of the first week here at home in Gothenburg and then the second week we went to Cyprus! It was so lovely to get out of the country again and into some real heat! It was so hot. And by hot, I mean it was 38-40C (100-105F) every single day. I'll admit it, it was almost too hot. I only say that because you could hardly be bothered to do anything during the day. We stayed in a wonderful, luxurious adult hotel (age limit 16+) that did not sit right on the beach, thus resulting in J and I only visiting the beach twice during our stay. We opted most often to laze beside the lovely, serene pool on some sun chairs (and J always under an umbrella - he's like a vampire when it comes to the sun). This also happened to be our very belated honeymoon trip, hence the luxurious adult hotel. I will add, though, that we did go on a boat excursion one day! We were able to see basically the entire southeastern coast of Cyprus by boat. The water in the Mediterranean is beautiful, however, I would still argue that the Caribbean has it beat hands down. This from my little experience of seeing Cyprus to compare it with the Riviera Maya in Mexico. On the boat excursion we even went swimming twice, one of the time snorkeling. Here are just a few shots from the boat adventure.
Since coming back I resumed working as a mail carrier, and not much has happened since. Life goes on in our little corner of the world. I'll allow this to serve as a catch up on what our lives have been up to and try to start posting more often as done in the past. I (still) have all sorts of thoughts about living abroad that I surely should be able to write on here so as to paint a more colorful version of life here. Until next time...adjö!
