Arrival, our cottage, Jasper and the plumber!

Arriving in Sweden!

To some it came fast and to some it came slow, but here we are. We have arrived in Sweden and are well into our first week. One of the nicest Swedes I have met so far told me, "it takes you a week to feel like yourself again," and I think he was absolutely right.  Thankfully we have almost 3 months to adjust. We arrived on Friday, February 8th after a long journey. Jasper explained our trip to the plumber today (he was fixing our shower (the plumber, not Jasper)), like this: "We took two planes, one was for sleeping and one was not. I slept but then I watched shows all night. We took a train and went to Sweden." That is almost exactly how it went. We took two planes and flew for 12 hours. We all should have slept on the plane because we were going to land in Copenhagen, Denmark and 7:15am (which would be 1:15am in Minnesota). However, nobody could sleep except for Jasper and he only slept 4 hours, at most. We intended to stay up all day when we arrived so we could go to bed at night instead of morning. I have to say, Jasper has never gotten less sleep in his life before and I thought we were going to be in for a very crabby child the next day. As well as crabby parents from not sleeping at all. However, parents and children surprise each other sometimes.

We had a really good day and ended up falling asleep at 5pm (10am MN time), thinking we would sleep all night until morning because we were so tired.....but that didn't happen. We spent two nights of waking up at 1am, having a midnight snack, breakfast, supper (we didn't know what to call it) and then went back to sleep at 4am.

It is now the 13th of February and we have accomplished a lot, Adam has worked 2 full days at the Italienska Palatset, while Jasper and I have found some fun near and far adventures. We have found nearby forests to explore and have imaginary adventures and bus rides to the library. There are many children here and a place for them everywhere. The importance of taking your children outside to play has shown brightly already and there has been a play place for children every place we have went since we arrived at the airport in Denmark.

Our neighbors Ulla and Calle (who own this property and have rented us this cottage are Grandma and Grandpa to three small boys who live on the same property/peninsula as we do). We spent a whole day sledding, playing at the park and walking by a canal together. They are such lovely people! :)


Below is the cottage we are staying in. It is in the neighborhood called Öjaby. It is not far from downtown, about a 15 minute bike ride.

The cottage we live in is an historic Swedish army, log structure. Refurbished just this year, we are the first people to stay in it since it has been moved and refinished.

 

This Photo is of our cottage from behind. You can see a small bay of lake Helgasjön, the largest lake of Växjö. Växjö is a medium size town with 80,000 people, surrounded by 5 lakes.  The yellow house on the right is the home of the owners of the property and our cottage.

It has snowed everyday we have been here and it has been around 0 degrees Celsius plus or minus every day. Some of the Swedes think that it is very cold but I am thankful to get away from the biting cold of Duluth this year.

With that said, we miss all our friends and family already but know that our return home will be too soon.   More thoughts, memories and pictures to come! Tack så mycket!