Unrelated to travel even tangentially, comes this gem from Chris over at Practical Theory, a blog about teaching and school administration:

"What is the worst consequence of your best idea?"

I'm blown away. Though not original (no doubt it's been said before), it's an interesting thing to think of in this time of bad government and in trying to be one of the good people fighting for better government.

Swedish

I've decided to fail my Swedish re-exam.

I've studied for it (and I studied for the first one too), I attended most of the classes (some I was out of town, one or two I was sick), and I put work and effort into the homework.

However, i failed the first exam and I'm equally certain that even if they give the same exam a second time, that I'll fail it again.

Because I'm not comfortable taking the failure (and I'm *certain* there's no way to avoid it) without a lesson, here's what I'm thinking:

1) Minimize the damage
a) contact Study Abroad and ask what can be done so this does not impact my GPA, my finaid, and in an ideal world, it wouldn't even appear on my transcript (I'm taking enough credits w/o it from my teacher ed class to stay FT).

2) Call it a failure to learn Swedish, but reframe personally and professionally as a calculated throwing in of the towel. Recognition that my motivation and goals were flimsy and insufficient to achieve a passing grade in this class.

Learning a new language depends on mother tongue acquisition, rules, and competency - and my realization is this: beyond the rote memorization required to grasp vocabulary, my grasp of the rules of the English language is nill. My understanding of English is based on what "sounds right". While perfectly fine for using English in a communicative context, the result is a utter lack of background for learning other languages.

Building a house on sand, if you will. There's no bedrock, no background, no other experience of language rules to pull from, no ability to make comparisons, realizations, or mental structures of similarity and difference to work with. (Learning biology without knowledge of evolution?).

Rote memorization of phrases and vocabulary has gotten me this far. However, that's so utterly insufficient as to make rectifying that in a solid month of studying Swedish a sad and tragic joke.

On a personal level it's made me determined to do my best to raise a multilingual child - both for the value of learning new languages (for travel, living abroad, and for the humbling experience of attempting to communicate in a language other than your mother tongue) and for the global implications of travel and cross cultural communication.


Also, personally, I'm determined to stop saying "I have a hard time learning languages" and just shut up about the subject. Repeating that phrase and others like it, while seemingly true, is in no way helpful for learning anything. Also, on the child front, what's the value in telling a child that they're expected to do something their mother "can't" do? I'd much prefer to model the things I can do, encourage hard work, experimentation, dedication, determination, etc... stuff I have done, and will continue to do in other areas.

I'm still waffling about joining some sort of deaf get-together. The experience would be good for me. I love the culture, the astounding kindness and openness (deaf culture for me is the experience of American culture for the rest of world, perhaps?), but straight-up: I'm terrified. It's like being 12 and wanting to talk to the cute guy at the dance. I expect to be laughed at, ridiculed, and maybe even gently and pityingly humored... but above all else, I don't have the feeling or belief that I have anything of value to contribute, I feel that my presence is unwelcome or accepted on kindness, but not out of genuine interest. It's a clusterfuck of overwhelmingly negative feelings.

However, like the dance - I want to go anyway. Some sort of sick determination to be accepted, to gain that _feeling_ of acceptance (which is harder, takes longer, and requires a trust I can't conceive of) and a pigheaded belief that acceptance into a community can be based on showing up.

So that's the trade I guess. I'm going to take the failure in Swedish language but find a deaf monthly coffee or deaf camp weekend or something. It's the brutal soul-searing culturally-immersive experience that travel abroad should encourage - but without the plane ticket.


More personal realizations: I'm sad. I'd hoped that this experience of being an exchange student could be a "testing out" of the idea of emigration. A dry run, with a safety net and a return date - a preliminary venture, a making of contacts, and a testing of my personal adaptability.

In that, I've failed miserably. I don't think I can realistically consider living in a culture that requires learning a new language. That limits my options significantly.

You know, it feels... dishonest... to read this and have written that.

But maybe that's the point. I still stand by what I wrote, Sweden _is_ an incredibly racist society on every level and has zero awareness or interest in rectifying this state of affairs.

Then I look at us and wonder - how much better are we?


I want to feel virtuous about the fact that we at least have news articles about these things, public awareness is far higher (I feel), and people understand and believe in the concept of institutionalized racism in a way that is inconceivable here. (Even considering that my unscientific 'sample' is heavily biased towards upper middle class white educated liberals and that my grasp of Swedish news media is limited, at best).


But we have poverty in a way they don't here. Does poverty + racism = genocide? Is money the only thing that's keeping Sweden from the same fate? Or is there an ethical component - would Sweden object, were they still poor, to disproportionately rising live birth deaths... among the immigrant population?

Stranger places to find resonating descriptions of travel might exist, but this, for me, is the strangest yet. Brian, of the MP3 blog Moistworks talks about travel and I'm jealous:

"I remember feeling caught between the sadness and disgust I felt at the shore's utter ruin, and the sense of wonder, of interest (the sensation I crave most), sparked in me by the tableau-- the Christmas trees lined up like mummified sentinels and a rotted wreath hanging on a raw wooden post; some of the tires so barnacled that only their shape betrayed them, clustered and weirdly beautiful, like archipelagos viewed from a plane. It was as if the debasement of the world renewed my ability to perceive it, which is the ultimate goal of all travel, and even now, several days back into my routine, some part of me is still standing on that windy dune, the malevolent refuse of a construction project looming behind me, they sky violent and bruised, rotted pine at my feet, staring down at those artificial yet glittering skerries, caught between conflicting desires-- for the world to be always transformed, yet somehow preserved."


I've been waffling on posting about my Turkey trip with A (a male friend from the states).


It was good, overall, though exhausting, and in the end I was so tired, emotionally overwhelmed, and burnt out that I have to say I might have hated Istanbul more than a few times before we got on the plane to leave.

I expected that feeling to disappear as I got back into the rhythm of Swedish life (conformity, equality, nature). I thought the exhaustion would improve my feelings retroactively, that a good night's sleep in my own bed, a few meals of knackebrod and muesli and yogurt, and I'd be missing the amazing kabobs, the joyful insanity of taxim, and the delirious contradiction of modern transport among ancient city walls.


I still don't miss it.


It's been two weeks since A and I left and I still don't have an interest to go back anytime w/in the next 5 years (after that, yes). As I think about why, this is what I've come up with:

Turkey is like the USA. Sweden, while it has problems (oh *does* it!), is characterized by far _far_ more equal power relationships between men and woman. This is the closest thing to gender equality I've ever seen (and the best situation I expect to see in my lifetime). Turkey, while having (like us) officially separated church and state, is still a shitty place to be a woman. There are official reports I'm sure, documenting the differences, enumerating the health, economic, and status detriment that your sex has on your life expectancy, general well-being, and access to power.


My firsthand experience of Istanbul was glowingly positive for the first 4 (of 6) days that we were there. At my insistence, A and I told everyone that we were married (when registering for hostels or in casual conversation) and I told people that I was from Vancouver, Canada.


A said he was from Canada a few times, then started telling people he was from Chicago. While I applaud his convictions of honesty and truthfulness and ambassadorship for our depressingly backward country, it wasn't a risk I was willing to take (my rationale went like this: I don't agree with the policies of our country, so I'm not willing to risk my safety on defending our collective reputation).


What happened on Day 5? I told someone (a hostel-worker guy we'd been friendly with several times and were having enjoyable conversation with) that A and I weren't married.


Bad move. An hour later, we're on our second cup of free coffee, we've just seen the (private, guests not allowed) rooftop view of Istanbul including glorious view of the Blue Mosque and the nightlife of Sultanamet. Not bad, right? I'd also pried my hand off of a hostel bannister where it was crushed in an attempt to sneek a kiss while A's back was turned (don't worry folks, this was a "polite" attempt and it was foiled). As we exited this fine establishment, I got desperate hand-grabbing, promises of rides home before our plane ride the next morning, and more offers of free drinks (maybe alcoholic ones this time). Charming, huh?


I was glad I was as tired, exhausted, and dead sober as I was that evening, because I can say it wouldn't have been particularly safe to be anything else. I also feel I got the polite treatment (no, I'm serious, this really felt like the local concept of polite) because I was a tourist and in a progressive, tourist-friendly, liberal section of the city (and dealing with someone self-described as liberal, educated, and whose job and livelihood was dealing with tourists). I can't imagine if I were poor, drunk, non-western or less-assertive.

A and I walked home quickly, staying with well-traveled and well-lit public streets -- and I thought about the absence of this feeling: this fear, of bodily harm, of lack of self-ownership, of rape, that I've been "missing" for the last four months. It's subtle, but I feel no fear walking home alone across a dark campus late at night, even drunk, here in Sweden. I'm perfectly comfortable sitting in a remote, basement room of a building I don't live in, stark-naked, all alone, late at night. (It's the campus sauna, in case you're curious.)


The contrast is in how familiar that feeling was, how expected, how normal, and how unsurprising - I'm "used to" the high-alert super-paranoid expectation of someday dropping my guard in exactly the wrong circumstances and suffering the "consequences", as we call them, of being drunk, wearing a skirt, having breasts, staying out late at night... and being female.


So do I want to come home? No, not particularly. I don't miss that feeling and I don't miss the lack of autonomy, or being treated like public property... or dirt. It's a feeling advanced education, a powerful job, money, investment portfolios or other markers of success can't eliminate.


Had a long conversation with another female American exchange student last night. We traded experiences and observations of the shocking-to-us gender equality, and our own responses to the occasional reminders of the constant fear we live in in the states.


We also bitched about the conformity, the culture-wide racism and frustrating same-ness... and how much we miss the diversity, relatively quick acceptance of immigrants, and widespread personal expression back home in the states.

It's not perfect here, but I expect to miss it for a long time.

"American pets are just the canaries in the coal mine on this, folks. If we don't demand an end to the FDA protecting the food industry's profits instead of the American people, if we don't demand to know where the components of our food are coming from, soon it'll be American children hooked up to tubes and wires in hospitals, victim to organ failures for what seems to be no reason at all." -BAB, on recalls

I can't claim I was particularly up-in-arms about the pet food recalls - I've been watching em, sure, but not closely, and only as a noteworthy but ultimately boring (disgustingly 'more of the same') news item.

Until this quote, above, from Brilliant At Breakfast.

I can't say I have much to add - she makes a brilliant and much needed point (and for me, epitomizes what I think of as "good journalism") and raises points for a discussion I don't expect that we'll ever have, in this (American) culture, but badly need to be having.

Public health is about choices. It's about making some choices easier than other choices. It's about making those bad choices more expensive in some way, less desirable, and the 'better', healthier choices more attractive, easier, and less expensive.

It's about making value judgments about what's good and what's bad. It's judging bad choices from good choices and trying to make those bad choices harder, make the good choice more likely. It's about controlling behavior through limitation of choice, application of rewards and increasing punishments.

It's patriarchal, authoritarian, and puts those who 'know better' in powerful positions over those with less power, less knowledge, less authority, and less empowerment.

Through the application of knowledge, power, and money over those who are poor, needy, uneducated, and with different goals... we attempt to make those lives better. Unwillingly. We don't ask the permission of the patient for treatment.

We treat, and in our arrogance we hope that we're right.

Because being wrong would be much more than just a mistake - if authority is used without consent, and is wrong - what separates that action from abuse, neglect, or even torture?

We make choices for other people on the aggregate level - and for most of those people we make the right choice. Their lives are healthier, longer, and of greater quality than if we'd not taken action. But for the minority few who aren't helped, whose lives are harder, who are hindered by our bureaucratic actions - what responsibility have we to them?

Do we have any? Or because the numbers are small, are they insignificant? Is it a balance? Do the numbers of good deeds outweigh the deeds of increasing pain? When is something wrong with the system? 80/20? 70/30? 50/50?


We need cultural answers to these questions before we can ask the larger questions about 'quality of life' of our doctors, or have conversations about assisted suicide with our family members.

We need these same answers if we're to address larger issues of public health (ignoring completely the concept of "health care") - adequate, inexpensive, and healthy food, comfortable, convenient, safe housing, reliable, affordable and easy to use transportation, education, and the existence of a variety of jobs and welfare systems for those who are unable to work.

I don't have answers as to how to create that cultural change, or how to answer the dilemma of public health with democracy, or even the answer to my ethical problem of desiring removal of the TV despite objections of my partner (my goal is greater health but my method is authoritarian - what's the solution?).


Thoughts on these questions are actively solicited. Anyone who has figured out a moderate 'third way' to these dilemmas, please speak up.

File Under: Notes

I regret many packing decisions. This is largely the effect of not differentiating between the wonderful web advice about packing lightly and the reality of moving to a new location for six months. I approached the task with an eye to eliminating weight, bulk, and keeping warm.

Turns out, at least so far, I should have dumped all but one or two of the sweaters and packed t-shirts, skirts, and shorts. In addition, though admirable, packing a suit was a bad decision (I knew there would be several formal events and wanted one solution for all of them - a sweater and pants would actually get worn, unlike the suit).

Good decisions - shoes. I don't regret any of em, not even the big huge honkin' boots (though were I forced to jettson something: them or the heels). I thought I was crazy for packing 5 pairs of shoes. I now wish I'd brought tennis shoes too (a sudden and bewildering desire for a jog, I'm not sure where it came from).

I packed with an eye to style and public comfort (and succeeded, though I wish more T-shirts and more skirts). I regret not bringing a big ugly shapeless skirt for wearing around the bedroom and equally ugly cotton shorts for sleeping in when traveling.

Good tech decisions? Computer, firstly, was a necessary investment. Also, I get more use out of my travel mouse than I ever suspected (I thought I'd get used to the track pad... I still hate it after a month of intermittent use). The mouse came as part of a 'travel accessories' pack for $15 from buy.com before the holidays (I was most interested in the USB hub at the time, though I've also used the reeled RJ45 cable, I've not used the phone line). Wise investment, and came with a handy packing case to boot.

Less-wise tech decision? Travel wireless router. I'd use it (particularly because it'd let me move my desk across the room) but I'd have to buy another power adapter for it... and it never occurred to me to buy a second one before leaving.

Baseless angst? Medicines, both traveling with them, and overestimation of my need for a variety of OTC meds (that I knew I wouldn't be able to obtain here). However, I suspect that the first time I get sick I'll stop thinking this was wasted money and effort.

Wishes - that I'd known the very real need for duty free alcohol and took full advantage of the 5L (or 2L, or whatever) that I was allowed to bring into the country. Still kicking myself over that one.

Impossible wishes - that I'd brought a supply of gum, a wok, my stash of spices, and beer-brewing supplies with me.

Things I need to buy here that I suspect will cause me considerable angst: bras, underwear, and large-sized clothing.

Unanticipated costs: shipping! I expected to be mostly self-sufficient once I got over here - able to purchase whatever I needed in town. This hasn't been the case, both due to cost of items here, and being unable to find larger-sized clothes. I predict a request for a box of clothes from home soon. (Shorts, T-shirts, skirts, running shoes, and new bras). In addition, I'm feeling an intense desire for a sewing machine to make more skirts - they're by far the most used item in my wardrobe other than shoes. I am hoping to find either a super-cheep super-tiny/light model at home or the ability to borrow one while I'm over here.

I love evolutionary theory. I'm sad that I'm finishing my undergraduate degree (not sad about that!) and won't be able to take an evolutionary theory class before I graduate.

So much of what is being discovered through this method of approaching various areas of science is immediately applicable to our lives. It's far more accessible than the historical disciplines and provides a popular understanding for psychology, nutrition, and understanding of biological or business processes.

More importantly to me, it provides a framework for understanding scientific process, discovery, new methods of thought, and fashions of psychology or nutrition in a critical way. Criticizing the latest nutritional scam shouldn't take advanced degrees in nutrition or health, it should be a logical, simple, and straightforward process to apply to the conclusions of a study, author, or public figure.

The tragedy that is the dumbing down of science and the farce that is "intelligent design" is another post for another day, but it bears noting that the future repercussions of the educational decisions we make today will be with us for the next 80 years at minimum. Isn't teaching students to be critical thinkers while respecting scientific thought, research, and discoveries one of the goals of education?

Thinking about security.

It's what we desire. As humans, though it means different things to everyone, we all crave it and spend our whole lives trying to attain it. Some find it in education and well paid jobs, some find it in saving a portion of what they have, others find it in family, in children, and in ensuring their dreams live on in someone else's life. Some never find it no matter the money, the investments, or the energy spent on it's pursuit.

Some never find it for other reasons - mental illness, their born gender and socioeconomic status, chance and changed circumstances, early death due to war, health, or accident, or perhaps chronic health problems or economic or personal strife.

In my Swedish language class the other night someone asked the professor why he liked Sweden. He thought for a long second, admitted it wasn't the weather or the weak beer, paused again and said that he liked 'the Swedish system'.

Interesting choice as I view the security-obsessed white house republicans scrambling for votes, for assurances, for a continued stream of hate to fuel another four years in office.

Perhaps we'll buy the insecurity of war, dressed as an endless supply of oil and an eternal American way of life. Perhaps genocide will be more attractive, with the security of knowing our neighbors are all 'just like us'. The real security of civil liberties, health care, social programs, and equitable distribution of wealth will be feared for the reasons it's always been feared: the unknown 'other' (painted with the conservative brush: the faceless brown tide of illegal immigrants, Welfare Queens, the too-lazy to work minorities in the inner-city and rural small town).

Will we, as Americans, ever be able to choose to trust a government to provide for all, equally, over an individualistic 'winner takes whatever he's able to hang onto' and a system where losers are all those who aren't able to be winners?

Will we as a country ever get the hang of 'security' based on something more permanent than the transitory thrill of having the biggest gun?

Children are allowed to close doors in preschool here.

They are allowed to play outside of direct adult supervision behind closed doors.

It doesn't sound like much - but think about it. In this post-Columbine school environment - the idea that students would spend any time at all unsupervised, except by accident, is shocking!

There's a reading room with a bed in it. I saw the (male) preschool teacher throw no less than three children on the ground and spank them (in fun, outside in the snow, during some inventive variant of 'tag').

Outside I watched children hide behind bushes, play alone, in groups, on jungle gyms, throw snowballs, wedge themselves between a fence and thick bushes, and run wildly in circles. Inside two boys closed themselves in the block room and proceeded to throw toy trucks across the room (not at each other). Another child sat at the kitchen table and played a memory game by himself.

Other children played with blocks, legos, barbies, and one boy spent 15min pushing a baby buggy with a doll in it past the exchange students smiling at us the whole time.

There were 4 preschool teachers and 32 children from 1-5 years old. We watched them sing songs, dance in a group and alone (hen dance for girls and a cock dance for boys), hear stories about magic eggs and farmers and play bongo drums while being accompanied by their classmates in song. After this high-energy music extravaganza, lasting 20-30min, the children were 'free'. Most chose to go outside and play in the snow. Some chose to stay inside, unsupervised (or perhaps the instructors were relying on us to supervise?).


In my observations about yesterday, I am most struck by the free and comfortable touching that happens between teachers and kids and the incredible freedom that children are given to choose what they would prefer to do. In addition, though everything was brand new and the school is considered quite prosperous (nicer neighborhood, music specialty profile), there was an amazing (to my jaded American eyes) disregard for what we'd call "safety".

I didn't see anyone get hurt and only heard one child cry, once, for 10seconds because she discovered that an exchange student that she fancied was leaving. Children played with incredible restraint, even the truck-throwing boys (they played only in the block room and only with the door closed and never threw anything at each other).


I'm not quite sure what conclusions to draw from this. The preschool students look far healthier, happier, engaged, interested, and creative than any preschool I've seen in the United States. However, the safety standards here are obviously far different - with apparently the result of producing healthy, safe, creative, independent children and adults.

I don't understand.

So in contemplation of Swedish cultural views on drinking - I spent this weekend drinking. It was fun, comparatively moderate, useful socially, but has left me with an association of slothfullness. I'm not sure if I've (this quickly?) internalized the Swedish cultural view of working hard and partying hard or if I just happen to be ready for a new challenge and the boredom is asserting itself particularly after a weekend of heavily social recreation.

Thinking about thinking - ended up reading today about mind and concept mapping, both as study tools (they look more useful to me as review tools than as a method of studying - the lack of detail seems prohibitive for lectures) and as 'learning to learn' tools (learning a framework, then details, to be 'hung' on the framework 'pegs').

In reflection, I think the timing has much to do with personal events awaiting me in the States (impending professional school) and a desire to find a coping strategy in advance of jumping in. I feel the coping strategies that got me through undergraduate school are unlikely to be rigorous enough for the stresses of professional school.


Personally, professionally, and mentally, I feel a sharp desire for optimization - cutting useless fluff, increasing focus, and a researching of options post-professional school (without goals, staying afloat becomes goal enough).

Reflecting on my American cultural tendencies, my strategy would be to "try harder"; more rigorously control my time, my actions, and to carefully schedule metered work increments to attain specific goals. (Goal attainment through rigorous planning).

The Swedish view (as I currently understand it) would be to further those goals five days a week with intent, passion, and deliberately focused attention. On the two weekend days, forgetting, relaxing, and recovering from both the workweek and the weekend excesses would be the goal. (Goal attainment through excess). Planning happens in the early stages and has more to do with agreement about intent, consensus building, and 'broad strokes' work than details - those are handled independently by the person encountering them in the process of completing their work.


On a personal level, this would mean navel-gazing about the reasons for my goals, brainstorming about possible methods of attainment, exploration of alternate scenarios, fleshing out specifics of long-term-goals and then working on those items without step-by-step planning or periodic reassessment of goal progress (my time being better spent on actual progress rather than planning).

I haven't died, gotten ill, or fallen into a ditch - though I haven't posted in a while or taken many pictures.

Nor has my brain rotted in my head - wheels are still turning, cultural adjustment is taking place, and I'm still making observations.

However, I feel slower about these - not quite sure of my conclusions. Still percolating.

Two subjects at the moment: the Swedish school system and their astounding focus on individual choice and democratic decisions as a basis of their process in a way that I can barely picture or comprehend. The school visits we'll be making next Wed and Thurs should be instructive in this area.

Secondly: drinking. There's a very different cultural expectation than I have experienced elsewhere on the subject. I am curious about this area both from my interest in discovery as well as from a public health and addiction perspective. I'm curious how addiction is defined, treated, and handled socially and culturally and what/if there are public health repercussions of this cultural model of drinking (which involves fantastically heavy drinking on the weekends and complete sobriety during the week - and I'm not talking only about college students).

There seems to be a pervasive refrain of 'trust/listen to the child' here that sounds mundane but in experience is quite extraordinary. I am curious how this intersects with a medical process whose first step (in the US) is a highly coercive manipulation of the patient into accepting both the medical definition of their situation as a 'problem' and the medical treatment for the situation which involves a period of dependency and external rule-making.

In crossing cultures, even if the language boundary is a comparatively minimal one, traditions are changed. While this happens in a wide context (Americans have never heard of St Nicholas or the Italian/Swedish tradition of Lucia), it also happens in a small, personal context, on a daily basis, while living - transplanted - in another culture.

I belong to the church of coffee. I belong to the church of a lot of things, actually, so my membership here isn't exclusive, but it's a daily ritual I invest a fair amount of time, effort, and enjoyment in practicing.


Like most traditions and customs as practiced in our own culture, my practice is invisible. I have no pictures of my coffee ritual, coffee maker, or favorite mug. Pictures do exist of the long process of roasting your own coffee, which I highly recommend - not as easy as opening a bag of pre-ground pre-roast, but enjoyable nonetheless.


So, in the spirit of continued documentation, I present to you pictures of my own mundane coffee ritual as transformed by the transplantation and adaption process.

Everything changes - from the text on the milk container (which I cannot read), to the orange cow patterning and blue and white daisy icon signifying brand, to the fineness and taste and strange smell of the brown sugar I use to flavor my coffee.





The coffee changes, but this is a predictable and expected change. The coffeemaker was a gift, quite thankfully, from my fadder, Maria. I have not seen much evidence of their popularity - apparently Swedes prefer to take their coffee at work and at school.

In addition to belonging to the Church of Coffee, I am also a staunch supporter of the Church of Breakfast. Like the Swedes, Breakfast is a significant meal, not to be missed. Breakfast is yougart in cerial, in this case musli. It's a popular Swedish choice, but not exclusively. I've had this breakfast at home. The difference is in the yougart - sweetened, flavored, thinned, and arriving in a cardboard 'milk' container or plastic juice-type jug.


Even with the variety of differences, the magic red button remains the same.

Yesterday we had a presentation by an American student who has been at Vaxjo University for a year so far and hopes to stay longer. She talked about Culture Shock in a way that I'd not realized was particularly American (blunt, short, clear, fast, almost brutally or rudely concise and colorful and dramatic in her descriptions). Her presentation covered useful information for me and reinforced things I was already doing (and warned me to watch out for other aspects of integration or disintegration).


She talked about the three phases of Culture Shock. The first is the honeymoon phase. This is when the experience is new and exciting and differences are viewed as positive and frustrations are minimized. Until yesterday evening, my honeymoon period was in full swing. I was in love with the country, the culture, the weather, and viewed all differences as 'cute' or exciting.

Then I got tired. It's exhausting to constantly adapt, to run translation filters for common words in a mother tongue (and I'm in awe of what the non-English students have to go through!), to wander blindly looking for bathrooms, coffee, or food, asking for help from strangers in all aspects of life (thankfully, Swedes as a group are SHOCKINGLY helpful and very willing to speak English to assist complete strangers). The second phase of culture shock is one of anxiety, fear, and withdrawing.


Cultural differences are viewed negatively, differences are frustrating and no longer exciting, a desire to leave may be expressed or simply a desire to spend time only with other students most like yourself (or other exchange students only). Irritability if the key characteristic I find myself expressing of this state (and lets me know that I've reached this second phase in my adjustment).

Like depression, the cure for this state is engagement. Refusing to spend time only with exchange students or North American students (there are several Canadians in addition to the American students from Chicago, North Carolina, New Mexico, and Kentucky) was something I did instinctively but will have to discipline myself about in the coming weeks. Consciously spending time and seeking out Swedish students or exchange students from other locations needs to be a forefront goal of my daily interactions.


To that end, I've found a riding stable on campus and am inquiring about employment there tomorrow (I suspect my lack of Swedish will hamper me *greatly* in this but I hope that perseverance and willingness to learn will make up for it). It is easy walking distance from my dorm, which excites me greatly.

In addition, my Swedish fadder Maria has been immensely helpful in smoothing my transition to Swedish life, answering stupid questions, obvious questions, and bringing to light some hints about unspoken Swedish cultural rules (never wearing shoes in the house is a cultural norm, but the unspoken reason for this is a national preoccupation with hygiene and cleanliness).

Gems like this give me some structure on which to hang my understanding and observations of Swedish culture.


It is my hope that in time I will reach the third stage of cultural adjustment: integration. In this stage and appreciation of cultural differences does not mean native culture is rejected and present cultural environment is accepted wholeheartedly, but that differences are noted, examined critically and accepted without value judgment. It is my (private) hope also that a greater appreciation of my own culture will be possible through this experience. Uniformly, the Swedes that I've spoken with talk positively about American culture, with the exception of politics, while also retaining an appreciation for their own culture - and it is my hope to emulate this.

I've arrived.

I flew from Detroit to Frankfurt, Germany, then to Stockholm, Sweden and then onto Vaxjo, Sweden. It was more or less 24 hours spent in airports or in the air.

My favorite or most interesting thing about the airports were the variety of toilets I encountered. American toilets are porcelain pedestal with a rectangular porcelain box on the back with a lever attached to the side. Pushing down on the lever flushes the toilet. My favorite (or least favorite, depending on my frustration level) toilet was the one I found in the German airport.

It was a regular pedestal (small details made it obviously foreign but the most basic features were the same) but mounted on the wall. There was no rectangular box full of water and no levers to press. There was a small black sensor thing that I placed my hand in front of several times to no avail (perhaps it was an automatic model with no need for levers?). The only other detail on the wall was a large plastic slightly raised box (a huge flat light switch?) that I surmised had something to do with maintenance, storage of seat covers, or perhaps feminine product disposal. After examination of every aspect of the toilet (including the bottom of the bowl and the floor and the off chance that the flushing mechanism was a button of some sort), which took perhaps 30 seconds, I started fumbling with the plastic box on the wall.

The toilet flushed. The large flat plastic switch was the flushing mechanism. I felt both stupid and very smart, something I'm finding is characteristic of my experience abroad so far.

Awake, worried.

Mostly about money but also mundane stuff like fitting in, getting around, adjusting, and a lot of anxiety about social foot-in-mouth as a result of being a Dumb American. Great fear, that one, that of being a dumb American and also knowing that I'm being relied upon to represent our country (the people of which I don't actually believe are all as sucky as the politicians, corporations, and marketing departments have lead me to believe).

There's a social event in roughly a month I think where I'm expected to present... a song and dance and speech sort of affair. I don't have anything to wear and am petrified about presenting. What to say? What to wear (and should I go shopping now, where it'll be cheaper, but require fitting into the limited space of my luggage)?

So how could I possibly represent 'us'? (America, the United States, the slavering consumerist masses that constitute the non-Canadian part of North America). What right do I, social and political malcontent, have to represent the whole country at some university event (Yes, it's a big deal, they specifically emailed me and said to pack something formal and start planning now)?

“We aren't as dumb as we look. Really.”

Despite our skyrocketing health care costs, and astounding costs of prescription drugs, we've allowed our drug companies to market to uninformed consumers. Consumers now self-diagnose invented illnesses and ask their not-very-trusted doctors for the solution to their life's problems by name (after watching a 60 second TV commercial consisting mostly of a soothing jingle and pandering to our need to believe in a magic bullet cure for our lifestyle-induced chronic illnesses).

Our political system is a sham. Politicians compete for votes by competing with commercial donors for campaign contributions so they can buy more TV 'spots' in influential districts. By some accounts the present leader of our country wasn't even elected, instead seizing power through a shady voting scam involving his governor cousin. Half the countries' voters are holding their breath until the new presidential elections and hoping the political system holds out long enough to keep Bush from nuking anyone or declaring martial law.

Despite record unemployment (and underemployment, and 'restructuring'), we've eliminated almost all of our social welfare programs, along with our subsidies for college education, unemployment insurance, and most terrifying; the accelerated financial atrophy of the educational system. We're instead funding the slaughter of increasingly unprepared and unqualified solders fighting a 'war' that is both unethical and unwinable.

I'm so exhausted just thinking about those items that I can't even talk about the damage we willfully inflict on the environment (not even in the name of progress, this is political head-burying long after the dragon's turned around to claim it's tail).

Really, I want to say our people are better than that. We're better than the astronomical personal debt, lack of investments in our future, our environment, and our own health, not to mention any sort of securing of those resources for our kid's futures. But I'm not quite sure how.

We have to be better than that.