This morning, the sunrise was at 7:58 and the sunset will be at 3:09. In one week, we lost 24 minutes in our days. And, we woke up to snow. Again. And, it’s been snowing pretty steadily all day. Oh, and it’s so cold. 32F right now, with a ten day forecast looking pretty grim too, with temperatures in the 20s many of the days this week. Last year, we went a few months with no days above 0 Celsius, which is frankly pretty depressing to see a negative number everyday on the thermometer. Day after day after day; and here we go again. Already. It’s feels much too early for real winter to be here. But, there’s no denying it: winter is here.
I had a thought which started as an optimistic thought: only one month until the worst, and then we’re heading in the right direction again. Then I realized, January 22 is pretty similar in daylight hours to today, November 22, so we have basically two more months until we get back to the point we’re currently at. Way to go logical-fact-based part of my brain to throw a huge downer on my emotional-based part of my mind.
But, everything is ok so far. We have our annual trip to Germany in a few weeks to look forward to. As much as we love the Christmas markets in Stockholm, they just have nothing on the markets in Germany. These alone rank on my lists of reasons to stay in Europe. Then, there’s my birthday before Christmas and a party I’m having in a couple weeks for that. We have our annual international assignment St. Lucia julbord from Bryan’s work, which is just a highlight for our family, maybe not in the ways they intend—it’s just so dang Swedish it’s funny (same choir with the same enthusiasm and over the top animated facial expressions, exactly the same sill and potatoes, a verbatim speech for all the expats about Swedish etiquette, same expats that ignore said speech and do such atrocities as mix warm and cold food on the same plate. The only mystery each year is which choir member will be St. Lucia that year.) And, we also have Christmas.
I guess I kind of have mixed feelings about Christmas, but all in all it’s something to look forward to. That is one hard part of living abroad: being alone at Christmas. Unfortunately, with all of our unknowns, it seems like we will be here this year. I only mean unfortunately in the sense that we won’t be around our families and normal traditions, but Sweden is a lovely place to be at Christmas time. We had hoped to travel and get to somewhere a bit warmer and sunnier during the break, but again, without knowing anything at the moment, that is just something we can’t do. So, it will be the four of us, which will be fine. I have a feeling it will be very cozy.
In other news, we went to Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday night with a bunch of other Americans, so that was very refreshing. I still don’t know if we’ll do anything with our family, but if we do, it will be this weekend, so I guess no real Thanksgiving this year, which again, is fine. I think since we’ve been here we’ve tried harder to adopt Swedish traditions into our lives instead of a high priority of maintaining American ones. I wonder if we’ll continue with the Swedish ones if/when we move back with more success than we did the American ones.
But, the most exciting news is that Bryan needs to go to China in January, and I am really hoping I can manage a way to go along. I’m not really sure what Shanghai is like in January, but I’m guessing it beats Sweden, so it feels like a hope I can maybe have a brief reprieve from winter. Maybe. All I know is that I had an opportunity to go along to India and decided it was too much right after getting back from a visit in the states, and now I really regret it. So, I will do what I can to go along. So, maybe in two months time, when the light is the same as today and most likely there will be more snow than today, I can be in Asia.
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