’Tis the Season

We celebrated Saint Lucia Day at school on Tuesday, with a gathering in the morning that involved lots of real candles, small children, and flammable white outfits. Along with a few friends, I also attended a Lucia service the night before to watch one of my students play Lucia. It was so warm, so beautiful, so Swedish.

My mentor students had a holiday party on Wednesday evening, which was organized by the class parents. They rented out a historic house, decorated it, and served pizza, brownies, and Julmust. After dinner, they headed downstairs to a dance floor lit up with twinkle lights. One of my kids asked me what we used to do at dances when I was their age. And that… is how I found myself teaching a small crowd of young Swedes how to dance the Macarena.

It’s been cold and rainy here for the past several days. It’s also been a week full of marking and assigning final grades, which is my least favorite part of teaching. But there have been many bright spots—here are some things that are making me happy lately:

A decorated whiteboard.

Winter poetry board.

Christmas Eve tea, sent by my wonderful parents!

Decorating oranges with cloves and red ribbon at a Christmas fika.

Some Christmassy things around the apartment...

Comfy cowgirl boots, found at a secondhand store in Stockholm.

Watching a student play Saint Lucia at her church.

A little love from the students... (pretty sure they give all their teachers this compliment, but I'll take what I can get).

Excellent reading material (thanks, Kat!).

Listening to friends perform their music downtown.

Cutting out sugar cookies...

Baking them...

And turning the cookies into neon masterpieces.

Muppets and Molasses

The snow has finally arrived in Stockholm! More snow = more baking in Kristin-world, so bring on the frosted sugar cookies, gingerbread houses, mocha fudge, molasses cookies, peppermint bark, and maple truffles!

My students completed their unit exam this week, and as much as I’ve enjoyed teaching journalism, I’m excited to move on to the next unit after the holidays: we’re doing a novel and film study of “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.” There are so many fun things I can do with a novel study—and it will be good to act as more of an English literature teacher than as an ESL teacher for awhile.

It’s been such a gift that I have freedom with the English curriculum here. There is a set of national standards that the students must reach by the time they finish Year 6, but apart from that, there are very few guidelines regarding what is actually covered during lessons. So, while we learn verb tenses, literary devices, and the parts of speech, I get to incorporate things that I think are worthwhile and fun—including journalism, environmentalism, food culture, Sylvia Plath, and the classic film known as… “The Muppet Christmas Carol.” (What better way is there to introduce my kids to great British literature while simultaneously showing them an awesome American Christmas tradition and rewarding them for a semester full of hard work?)

Speaking of Charles Dickens, I spent this past weekend in London with my housemate, Katy. Some highlights from the trip:

·  Feeling the sun on my face and enjoying the 55-degree air.

·  Doing all sorts of touristy things: Seeing the Tower of London, the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, London Bridge, the Christmas markets, and Trafalgar Square with its decked-out tree.

·  Sitting in the front row to see “Wicked”… it was so good!

·  Not having to use a map—Katy knows London, which made life much easier.

·  Understanding signs, menus, and train announcements.

·  Remembering what it’s like to be a pedestrian in a place where vehicles WANT to run me over. After living in Stockholm for awhile, where drivers are ridiculously generous to pedestrians, I’ve been lulled into thinking that crosswalks are generally safe places.

 

 

I want to share a super-simple recipe for molasses cookies that turns out so well every time. I’ve made a few changes to it after using it as a delicious procrastination activity countless times throughout college. This recipe makes about 3 dozen cookies:

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup butter, melted
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup molasses
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground cloves
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1/2 cup white sugar for rolling

Directions

1. In a medium bowl, mix together the melted butter, 1 cup sugar, and egg until smooth. Stir in the molasses. Combine the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, cloves, and ginger; blend into the molasses mixture. Cover, and chill dough for 1 hour. (Make sure you chill the dough! I’ve tried skipping this step and the cookies turn out flat and weird.)
2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Roll dough into walnut sized balls, and roll them in the remaining white sugar. Place cookies 2 inches apart onto ungreased baking sheets.
3. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, until tops are cracked. Cool on wire racks.

Giving Thanks

I managed to consume two fantastic Thanksgiving dinners this week, despite living far away from the land of pumpkins, turkey, football, and Black Friday. I’m grateful for both “families” with whom I enjoyed an American Thanksgiving feast.

I am thankful that I’m heading to New York in less than a month. I can’t wait to see my family, my friends, and my perfect street with the glittering lampposts shining through the silently falling snow.

I am thankful that I live in a place that is within easy travel distance to lots of interesting places. This Friday, it’s London or bust!

I am thankful that the process of mixing and then heating butter, sugar, flour, and a few other ingredients can turn an average night into a cozy, warm, comforting evening.

I am thankful that my students may actually be learning something from me. Out of 150 students, about 90 of them earned perfect scores on their most recent quiz, in which I asked them to define words like “bias,” “column,” “plagiarism,” “source,” and “reliable.” Of course, I also have days when I wonder if they heard/understood anything I said during an entire lesson. So I hang on to these bright moments.

I am thankful for books such as The Thirteenth Tale that quickly and unexpectedly draw me into their plotline. (Thanks for the recommendation, Tiffany.)

I am thankful that hot water comes out of my shower (I am still a bit traumatized by the lack of hot water/electricity/internet in my apartment for my first few days in Stockholm).

I am thankful that my Monday and Wednesday evenings are spent with encouraging, uplifting, and insightful friends. And fika. Always fika.

And, of course, I am especially thankful for my mom, dad, and sister. Their love contributes to my sense of stability when everything else seems new and unknown.

Don’t worry, I will avoid being so sappy in future posts. Promise!

Stockholm Sun

Drinking my Earl Grey in the sunshine this morning, I thought to myself how lucky I am to be in a place where I can crawl out of bed, pop out the door still wearing my pajamas, and enjoy the crisp autumn air this late in November. We still haven’t gotten snow here, and while the sun is low and has taken on a very pale yellow color, it manages to show its welcome face for at least an hour almost every day. I’m usually inside teaching in the late morning when that happens, but today is a glorious lazy Saturday, and I couldn’t help but sit on a piece of granite and soak up that pale yellow light this morning. (Never mind that I was seen in my pajamas by two familiar fourth graders… ah, the joys of living so close to school.)

I’m teaching at a new school just west of Stockholm. The building itself isn’t new (in fact, it’s an uninspiring 70s-era gray structure with very heavy doors and frustrating window latches), but the entire staff was just hired this past spring and we all met over the summer. With 35 teachers from all over the world, the school has a remarkable and motivating atmosphere that’s unlike anything I’ve been involved with before.

Our little multi-cultural staff is having an American Thanksgiving gathering tomorrow afternoon (sans turkey, gravy, and stuffing), which will be a hodgepodge of delectable dishes, I’m sure. I’m bringing roasted garlic mashed potatoes and some sort of apple-raspberry-blackberry concoction involving brown sugar, butter, and oatmeal. Can’t go wrong there, as long as I add enough cinnamon, right?

Returning to a bit of background: I teach about 150 sixth grade students in five classes of 30. Most of the time, I try to avoid sounding like a naïve and blindly optimistic first-year teacher (although that’s exactly what I am). But let me just say that my kids surprise me and challenge me and inspire me on a daily basis. They are awesome. For most of my students, English is a second, third, or even fourth language, which makes me feel pretty deficient in my mono-fluency. We’re currently exploring journalism—reliability of sources, how to conduct a successful interview, how their personalities have developed in relation to social media—and I find myself shaking my head when I think back to how I thought it was necessary to teach them the days of the week at the beginning of the year. These kiddos are capable.

…They are also curious. I’m living in an apartment next to the school along with another teacher, and we have NO privacy. Out sick without a voice one day, I realized the full extent of how curious our students are about who really lives in this mysterious apartment. Kids on the front steps, kids at the windows, kids leaning against my door. Yikes. The location is convenient, yes, but I can say with certainty that I will not be living here next year!

Today as I ambled along the beach with a friend (who hails from Finland but teaches French to Swedish students in English), we squinted in the low afternoon sunlight and listened to the cobalt water lapping against the rocky shoreline. As the sun began to set (at a prompt 2:50 pm), we walked home, and had some tea, and I felt—once again—very, very lucky.

A Swedish Education

There are about ten channels on the TV in my apartment. After coming home from a long Friday of teaching my lively sixth graders, I flopped onto my Ikea couch, turned on the TV for the first time in awhile, and found myself watching Öppna Kanalen (which means open channel—public television). No matter what country you’re living in, you never know what you’re going to get with public television. I am watching what is essentially a filmstrip featuring mediocre photographs of birds and flowers with their names written on each slide in Comic Sans font. Sweden is weird. And wonderful. And beautiful, and surprising, and, at the moment, pretty devoid of sunlight.

Four months ago, I moved to Stockholm to teach. But I’m learning a whole lot more than I’m teaching, I think. Even as I become comfortable with the public transportation system, the winding streets in the city, some common bits of Swedish conversation, and the unpredictable seaside weather, I realize how many things I have yet to learn about this place.

However, here are a few pieces of information I’ve assembled so far:

1.) “Fika” is a vital part of any work meeting or general gathering. Before, after, and/or halfway through a meeting, everyone drops their work, stops talking “shop,” pours a strong cup of coffee, and eats some sort of delicious baked good. I have never eaten so many cakes, cookies, brownies, sweets, pies, tarts, muffins, pastries, crumbles, and candies in my life. (My subsequent gym membership now has me using an elliptical while doing my best to pick up new Swedish vocabulary as I eavesdrop on others’ workout gossip sessions.)

2.) Schools are chock-full of germs. As a first-year teacher, I rarely feel like I'm NOT coming down with a cold.

3.) In my experience, Swedes are welcoming and open. Before I arrived, and throughout my time here, I’ve been continually advised that Swedish people may seem closed off and disinterested in making friends right off the bat. But I am amazed by the warmth of the culture that I’ve experienced while living in Stockholm. I realize I’m making some sweeping generalizations here, but I’m just calling it like I see it. It helps that the majority of the population speaks excellent English (this allows me to have conversations on public transportation about topics such as Nicolas Sarkozy and wild strawberries).

4.) “Allemansrätten” is a customary law that allows people to share the land. Earlier this autumn, I took a walk with a friend into a forested area so that he could show me the array of edible mushrooms that grow this time of year. I asked whose land we were on and he looked at me like I was crazy, shrugged, and bounded over a felled tree to point out a particularly bright (and non-edible) mushroom. Also, I can make applesauce using the apples that I picked during my walk home from the beach without worrying about being accused of stealing fruit from someone’s property.

5.) Stinging nettle… really stings. Kneeling down one afternoon to investigate a particularly fuzzy-looking plant that grows all over my front yard, I gave myself a quick and unexpected hands-on botany lesson. One of these days, I’m going to face that stinging nettle head-on and make some tea out of it, but for the time being, I’ll just eye it irritably every time I walk past.