not much happening

Nothing much happening in my world, nothing that I really think is blogworthy at least.

I could write about how weird I find it that in the Swedish lunch meal at work you can choose the following drinks: milk, water and light beer. But for a healthy juice you have to pay extra. Here´s another weird thing about Sweden. The alcohol is controlled by the state, meaning only special shops are allowed to sell alcohol and these shops are belonging to the government. Their opening hours are therefore very limited..... Ok, now here´s the weird thing, they show a lot of commercial for different alcoholic drinks on TV but once you go to the store to buy it, there are signs and leaflets to help you if you have an alcohol problem, you really almost feel ashamed to even go in a "System Bolaget" as these shops are called. While you queue at the cashier you have a lot of time to read the signs and at the end you feel guilty for even drinking a glass of wine. Beside that it is totally weird to have commercial but then these leaflets, I find it even weirder that most Swedes like it, they think it is a good system and it helps the country and it obviously works. Of course there are many that think it is ridiculous and are convinces that it will change with time and alcohol will get free on the market, allowing better prices and better opening hours.

I could write that it is still snowing with no end, we still have to scrape the car every morning. We had the (hopefully) coldest day of the year on Wednesday with -17celcius (about 0 Fahrenheit). I was told that the winter will continue for another 2 months. Even though it is beautiful, I am kind of ready for spring now. At least the days are lighter now. From around 7am - 5pm. But I rather attach some pictures, they say more than words.

I could write that my husbands grandparents celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary. Both are in relatively good health. How fantastic and seldom these days to be married for 60 years! A big Mazel tov to them (even though they are of course not reading this blog)!

I could write that I can´t wait to go to Zurich in April, I really start to miss my family, my friends and the city and country itself a lot lately. It´s been now 4 months since I last visited, I know it is not long ago, but still it feels very long.

I could write that we still didn´t finish all the renovations. We are still living without skirting-boards (I got this word from the translator, I mean the small wooden strip that comes between the walls and the floor and between the floors of the rooms). We still haven´t unpacked all the boxes. And we have to go again to Ikea to buy some things.

I could write that today my study-partner is coming over and we are starting to prepare for our exam in May. I created a study plan, we each prepare individually and then meet to go through what we studied during the week. Afterwards, her husband and 1-year old child will join us and we´ll have dinner together. Our husbands haven´t met, so we both hope they will get along well.

I could write that it is 7:30am and I woke up even though I can sleep in. My biological watch is obviously set to week-days and 7:30 is probably enough sleeping-in for my body (usually I get up at 6:40) I can´t fall asleep again once I am awake..... So I might as well start to clean the apartment and prepare for later (or blog).

Last but not least I could write that I got a Kitchen-Aid, Kitchen assistant from Mr. J.S. and I am now baking Challes with no end. I love the machine and the freezer starts to fill up with Challes - Yum!

Ok, and now I really run out of things to write. I hope you all had a calm and nice Shabbes and I wish you a good new week!

3 Questions

Question 1:
What is it with men and remote controls? My husband is a little technical freak, he loves technology, always wishes to have the newest gadgets and loves to have a remote control to everything. One for the soundsystem, one for the media system, one for the TV, one for the TV-card in the computer, one for the lights and that´s just the living room! On our livingroom table we have 5 active remote controls! And no you can´t combine them in one, apparently they are already combined with things that I don´t know.... I am just waiting for the moment where he will find a remote control for his wife :D

Question 2:
How can people go to sleep between 9 and 11pm on a daily basis? How can they find time for themselves? Let´s say you work until 5 (which I don´t think many people do) and let´s say you are not having children, so you might be home by 5:30, cook until 6:30, eat until 7:30 maybe hang a laundry or iron until 8:30, who can go to sleep at 9pm? Let´s say you are having a class after work, so you are maybe home at 9pm, eat something small and clean up a bit until 10pm, who can just go and sleep without having any time to read, watch tv, surf the net or blog? I don´t know, I never manage to be in bed before midnight, most nights it is around 12:30 - 1pm. I asked people at work when they go to sleep and they all said between 9 and 11pm and I just wonder how? When do you go to sleep???

Question 3:
How can you not be in touch with your family and say you are having a good contact? We had a discussion at work the other day. One of the guys said that he didn´t see his parents and siblings since Christmas. So naturally I asked where do they live? They live 10min away from him. He says that they have a really nice contact and talk on the phone maybe once a month, they meet on Christmas and Eastern. I was shocked! Then another guy said that he has just nothing to talk to his mom, he only picks up every fifth call of her, beside the weather they have no common subject and he never calls her, since she calls him. Then a girl said, that she hasn´t been in touch with her family since 15 years when her father passed away, there were some issues they just couldn´t work out. Then a woman (she is about 50) said, that she visits her parents once a month but it is a "must" nothing she really wants and it bothers her. By then I was sitting in total shock. I know that people in the north might not be as family oriented as people in south of Europe, but almost every one of my co-workers does not have close contact with their family. I see my husbands family at least once per week on Friday night for Shabbes, Mr. J.S. talks to his mom almost every day, when we lived in Switzerland we met my parents and siblings at least once a week, I talk to each one of my family members individually at least once per week (this includes my father, my mom, my sister, my brother and my grandmother). Since I moved here 5 months ago, both my sisters and my mom came to visit me and I went home once. Is this because we are Jewish? Are Jewish families having a stronger band per se? How can you bring up children and when they leave the house not keep in touch, not try as much as possible that the siblings keep in touch, that the cousins and grandparents are in touch?

Curious to read your thoughts!

Have a good week everybody!

Writing

Writing is therapeutical. No big news I guess. But I only came to realize this some time ago. It quite often happens lately that I sit down, compose posts about subjects that bother me and after I´ve written it all down, I feel either silly to be even bothered or if I am lucky I am seeing the solution chrystal clear in front of me.

Yesterday I wrote a long post about school systems and my life and my dreams, I got frustrated during the writing and then when I read through it again, I felt silly. My life is almost like a dream. I married the man I love and still love and I am being loved back, I have a great family and great friends, I am lucky to find a job whenever I want, whenever I move to another country, and so on and on and on.

So far I never posted the posts I thought were silly at the end or nothing interesting to read as I don´t like to complain about my life. Now I decided that I will never the less post this one. So happy reading and I am curious about your thoughts:

Studying, working, family …… just a few thoughts

Soon it is time to apply at the different universities if one wants to start to study end of August. As many of you know, studying has been a dream for me, well; it still is even if things didn´t turn out as planned.

(for my new readers: Mr J.S. and I planned to study in Eastern Europe, but for several reasons it didn´t work out, my studies never started, it´s a long story and if you are interested drop me an email ; my husband failed some of his exams, so we moved to Scandinavia)

So now I am thinking again about studying and what I should do with my life. Some things never change! There are several obstacles that keep me from studying. The biggest one is that I don´t have a gymnasium degree which is the most important and is mandatory to have if one wants to study in Sweden. The Swiss school system is totally different; I went to business school after 9^th class, for 3 years, it´s an apprentice ship. I worked for 3 days and went to school for 2 days per week. After 3 years I passed the exams and got the federal diploma. Later on I studied marketing and communications in a higher education institute, after 2 years I passed the federal exam and got the federal diploma. In Switzerland the federal diplomas are the most important ones, unfortunately they are not internationally comparable and only useful in Switzerland. After I completed my marketing studies I couldn´t find a job in my field. As I didn´t want to become unemployed I accepted a job opportunity as an executive assistant for one of the board members of a large Swiss company. In the beginning I wanted to continue to look for a job in my field but when time went by I just stayed in my job, I liked my boss, the people and the money, I earned ridiculously much and thanks to that I could afford to travel a lot, stop working, move to Hungary etc. The problem is that I didn´t gain any experience in my field since ending my studies. Towards the end I was really getting frustrated with my job, the tasks, not the boss or the people. I was looking forward to a change in life, to join my hubby and study as well. As you all know plans don´t always work out and we made yet another change in life.

When we moved to Scandinavia, I found almost immediately a job. Again as an executive assistant, this time for two of the managers in one of the biggest world-wide companies. I was very lucky and very grateful. But it didn´t take long and I got frustrated again. Not with my bosses and not with the people but with the tasks. I feel like I am loosing my mind as I never use it. I am working like a robot, done everything a thousand times. What I forgot to mention before was that I studied marketing and communications as I wanted to change my job, as I was frustrated of being an assistant, thought I would take my life in my hands for a change. Well, here I am again, 7 years and 2 countries later.

Oh wow, this starts to become a really frustrated post. I am sorry, but it´s good to get it all out.

So now what? I can´t stop thinking about studying, I am surfing the net and try to come up with the perfect solution. First of all I don´t know what I want to study, I don´t know what would make me happy, what I would want to do day in – day out. The most logic would be to continue in direction marketing and communications, maybe add media. But how would I ever get a job (after I studied), that would probably mean to start as a trainee again, start from the bottom. The other option would be to change totally, use my talents, maybe do something in the area of languages, teaching or tourism. But payments in these areas are really low. I am feeling kind of trapped.

Let´s say I decide what to study, then I would probably have to obtain a gymnasium degree first. There is one more obstacle, I can´t do math. Never could, always just somehow went by, and always thought I will anyhow never use it as I would never want to work with anything that has to do with math. So I stopped math after 9^th grade that was 16 years ago. Not only did I stop, I also never understood it in the first place. So how the hell will I ever understand it now? And if I want to study I probably need math A (the lowest level). This makes me feel so stupid sometime.

Ok, now I gotta stop and think about all the things that I can and try to focus to find a solution. Feeling sorry for myself will not take me anywhere.

There are many obstacles in my way and I am not sure I will be able to overcome them. Life as an executive assistant might be frustrating but it is paying the bills and I will always find a good-paid job. We are planning to start a family (once we landed on our feet and can actually breath again), how could I combine studies with children, how would we afford all this?

At the end of this post, when reading it again, I feel silly and can only smile. I am happy, I am happy with where I am, I just have to find a solution to deal with my frustrations at work, maybe I should rather talk to my bosses and ask if I can be involved in a project or if they could add some other tasks to my job. Guess that’s what I will do!

Thanks for listening, it helped a lot to just write down all my thoughts!

Update of my week

It´s been a busy week again! so here a short update on how life is right now.

We unpacked almost all the moving boxes, there are maybe 7 left now, and a huge mountain of laundry as I want to wash all the towels and linens before using them again.

On Wednesday I had a test in Swedish to see where my language knowledge level is, it is an official state test that I took because I wanted to change from private school to public school. So far I payed for all my Swedish courses myself and went to a private school, it was pretty expensive but worth it, I learnt a lot in those 4 months. Now I feel it is time to change to public school and take lessons for free. I applied for the highest level of Swedish as a foreign language and of course they called me and wanted to test my knowledge. It was a very weird feeling to go there and put all my knowledge all I studied for in the past 4 months on the table and get a result. Well, I passed the test and am enrolled now for the level I wanted!!!

Yesterday I finished reading my first book in Swedish. It was a Swedish novel playing in Stockholm, the book has 325 pages and I finished it in one week! I am pretty proud of myself that I can read and understand a novel in Swedish and basically read as fast I do in other languages. Of course it is not some high literature but still I am very glad!

After the test on Wednesday I decided it was time to go to the hairdresser. When unpacking my boxes I came across a lot of pictures and saw my different hair styles and hair lenghts that I had over the past 12 years. Right now I have pretty long (the longest I ever had) hair, it looks nice, but I felt for a change. So I sat down and we started talking about how we could cut my hair and what would look good and all of the sudden I regretted it. I got up and left, without cutting on single hair. I have never done that before in my life, but it just didn´t feel right. And I am glad I didn´t do it. It is no fun to cut the hair by 15 or 20cm, that´s like waiting for it to grow again, either I have it long or short. Well, for now I stay with long :)

It keeps snowing and being freezing cold. We have to scrape the car every morning outside and even inside! But during daytime it looks fantastic, winter wonder land! Luckily the darkness is less and the days are longer, the snow brightens up the days and we can finally feel we go towards spring, even if covered in snow.

I wish you all a gut Shabbes and a nice weekend!

new home - new rules

Last night we had my in-laws over for a traditonal Swiss dinner, called Raclette. My sister brought a huge amount of cheese with her last weekend when she was here, so we decided to invite my husbands family to share the joy of Raclette.

What does this have to do with new rules you might ask. It´s about Kashrut. I grew up eating kosher at home. We are a traditional family, not keeping Shabbos, yet we all went to Jewish school and Friday night we had Shabbos dinner. As kids we would go to Shul every Shabbos morning, but we would drive there, yes totally double standard. The only time we wouldn´t drive is on Yom Kippur. So, I grew up this way and what can I say, even if it all doesn´t make sense and my parents had a funny way of choosing what mitzwot they liked and which they didn´t, this feels right for me.

Then I met my husband, he is from a traditional family, yet their main focus lays on the yom tov´s. They are not eating kosher at all and never have a kiddush on Shabbes evening. Mr. J.S. went to Jewish school for 9 years and to Jewish summer camp for I-don´t-know-how-many-years. So, he knows how to do everything, he knows the rules of Kashrut, etc. but never practiced it. When we met, I only had a set of milchig dishes, I would eat meat only at my mom´s so there was no reason to have a fleishig set.The big thing that disturbed me was that he ate pork, but he stopped that immediately after we met. But he would mix fleishig and milchig and made me think that maybe it was time for me to change. Please don´t misunderstand this, he would never ever tell me what to do or how to eat etc. He would never suggest me to mix food or not to stick to my kashrut rules. It was me who started the process of thinking. It was a process of 3 years, during which we had only one set of dishes and used it for both, during which he mixed milchig and fleishig and I tried once, I felt awful and guilty and needless to say didnt´t repeat it.

And then we bought our apartment and I just told my husband, that´s it, now we change and have kosher at home! He agreed without any discussion, I even think he likes it ;) and for me it just feels right.

But I wonder why. Why does it feel right, cause that´s how I grew up? Why is keeping kosher, having kiddush on Friday night and celebrating yom tov so important to me? Why does it disturb me to see another jew eat pork but I have no problem driving on shabbos? I guess it all can´t be explained by logic, I have no other answer.


(ok, I failed making the connection to Raclette, let´s leave that to another time :D)