May 9th, 2011

Kristina's Deck/Dock :) :) :)

The River in front of Harald's house

Dinner with Per and Henning

Hoping to be able to sleep in, we were only able to sleep until 7:30am. We woke up and made Swedish Pancakes. Henning came over for breakfast and we had a sampling session on Swedish breakfast foods. I tried fil, which is basically plain yogurt with a variety of cereals. After breakfast we got ready and hit the town. We walked to town because in this town you walk everywhere, there are many people walking and even more people biking. It is about a 5 minute walk from the apartment to the heart of Karlstad. We looked around and then met Kristina at her office before we went for lunch. We ate at Wayne’s Coffee in Mitticity (meaning middle of the city) basically, a shopping mall. We had sandwiches with tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and pesto. Kristina went back to work and Harald and I walked around a bit more. We got pretty tired and the weather was really nice, about 75*F, so we went back to the apartment where they have a deck right on the river. We got in our swimsuits, laid in the sun, and read. It was so relaxing that Harald actually fell asleep, but he can fall asleep anywhere really. We had plans to have dinner with Harald’s dad, Per, and Henning so we got ready and headed to Per’s apartment. Per doesn’t speak very good English so it has been a little hard to connect with him. I’ve met him and Kristina once before. They came to the states last Spring to visit Harald for a few weeks. I’ve noticed that even though Swedes know English (they are taught at the age of 8 in school) they are very unconfident when using it so it is hard for them to open up to you. I was really happy this time because Per talked a lot more to me this time. There were times when Harald had to translate for both of us but over all it was a nice dinner with good conversations. We had a delicious dinner of pork and potatoes with a muschroom cream sauce which is actually something very similar that my dad makes, and a salad. Again we were pretty tired so we left around 10:00pm and went back to Kristina’s apartment. She was still awake so we played a card game called Sjuan (meaning The Seven) basically you start by laying down all the seven’s and you can only play the card above or below the one on top of the pile. We played two rounds and then went to bed.