It's Always Snowy in Sweden

How Much Is Your Dollar Worth?

$1 = 8.7178 SEK

Hej all.  It's still snowy here in Sweden.  Then it's sunny.  Then it's snowy.  Then it's sunny. But it's always cold. 

Last week we celebrated our one year anniversary in Sweden.  We celebrated by enjoying a pancake breakfast at SLU.  We didn't have the traditional bean soup with it but the pancakes are always good, with the strawberries and cream.  Good stuff.  

In a related note, we had a party on Friday to celebrate our new apartment/one year in Sweden/Ragen's new job/farewell to us.  We had some friends over, made some tacos and refried beans and fresh black bean and corn salsa and guacamole.  It was good.  Put a couple pictures up for your amusement.
Here's a picture of some folks around the coffee table for chips and salsa and guacamole. The blurry girl is our friend Sanna who was bouncing on an exercise ball.  And the guy in the back is not using the corner as a bathroom but going to get a cold beverage from our extra large refrigerator/balcony.
Conversation at the dining room table.

This was our going away gift from our friends.  It's an Amerikakoffert.  These were used during the big Swedish emigrations to the US during the mid and late 19th century and into the early 20th.  We're not sure how old this one is but it was definitely used on some trip across and has someone's name on it even.  It's pretty cool.  It's made of wood with metal flashing and then some wood ribbing on the outside.  We were going to get one and then decided that we weren't sure how to bring it back with us and trying to save some money before we go so our friends bought it for us.  That was incredibly nice of them and cool.  We are actually making an arrangement with Ragen's new job to have some of our stuff shipped back to the US for us so it's perfect.  We now have our own Amerikakoffert for our journey back to the US. Somewhat poetic.

We have been househunting, talking to mortgage brokers, making temporary hotel arrangements, I'm sending out job apps, and we're trying to finish everything here.  Things are moving along towards us moving along.  We bought our plane tickets and now have our moving date of March 9. So we are down to a couple weeks.  Things are moving man.  Soon I guess we will have to start having our cultural facts about St. Joe, like CiS St. Joe cultural fact #11 - St. Joe is where the pony express started and Jesse James ended.  That's like some sort of marketing slogan or something.

Just for fun Ragen and I went to IKEA the other day to take some pictures of things we want to do in our house and found this "thing" below us.  So for a little contest let's see who can guess what it is.  Winner gets a shout-out, made fashionable by a woman who could've been VP during the VP debate (an embarassing moment in American politics from a season chock full of 'em). Lycka till!

Say hi to your mother for me.