Monthly Archives: December 2012

Julafton med familjen

By lydia | Published: December 24, 2012

I was very pleased to be able to spend Christmas Eve (the main celebration day) with my Swedish cousins near Göteborg, in Swedish! I’d met Udo and Alexander in August; this time I also got to meet Udo’s daughter Lina and ex-wife Susan, since their tradition is to celebrate the holiday together. They were all […]

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Jul i Folkton concert

By lydia | Published: December 23, 2012

We were lucky to get special student-price tickets for this show, using a super-secret code that finally materialized after several rounds of followup questioning. I went with Matilda; ‘most everyone else had already headed home for the holidays. This concert is an annual gig (a tradition! touring to several cities) for a high-power lineup of […]

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Winterscapes at ESI

By lydia | Published: December 22, 2012

Lots of snow! Y’know how when you make a gingerbread house, sometimes the icing that is supposed to be snow gets all gloopy, and then it looks too improbably droopy to represent real snow? That’s what the roof of the Annex (our dorm building) has been looking like. But then the snow starts to slide […]

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Julbord

By lydia | Published: December 19, 2012

We rounded off our first semester with a big midday smörgåsbord feast. Some of the ESI Board members and/or notables showed up too, though we didn’t meet them all. There were some dances beforehand and some songs afterward — we had learned a song in class featuring someone who ate so much that his belly […]

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Traditions, not all food-related

By lydia | Published: December 17, 2012

Not all, but most. We spent our morning learning about Christmas traditions from our special guest scholar, Gunnar Ahlbäck. He brought us an entertaining multimedia lecture that featured poems, stories, audio recordings, and a considerable stockpile of images. He also included some text slides about how and why and when the holiday is celebrated in […]

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Födelsedagen

By lydia | Published: December 16, 2012

My birthday in Sweden featured the best-ever beginning when the birthday carolers came to my door at midnight:30, with harmony and hugs. I didn’t even know there were two verses! I had a fun day-trip to Uppsala, where I bought myself a most excellent book, Jul i Stora Skogen (Christmas in the Big Woods). The […]

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