Monthly Archives: March 2014

Looking for the silver

Personal

Well, this sucks.
I have been insanely tired the whole day and sad and Ola being in Brazil doesn’t help. My feet are cold and FaceBook’s feed from friends in Sweden is just filled with the blooming racism in Sweden and media’s lack of courage to report it for what it is. It’s terror. It’s seeping into our home and hearts and it’s so scary so we shy away from it and call it xenophobia. But it’s not. It’s racism and nazism and fascism and it should be given no room.

Self medicating with hot water with lemon and honey, sitting and browse old lost friends on FB. Heartache and nostalgia galore. Doesn’t do much for the mood.

What I should do is clean the toilets. I am currently trying to find a eco friendly soap and detergent, and it’s not going well.
I would like something equivalent to the Swedish which was historically made from animal fat (pork rinds) or hemp oil, but todays it’s made from Scots pine oil. I’m now using and the package screams ecological, but basically the only ingredient that’s mentioned is palm oil and that’s pretty .
My search goes on. I’m planning to ask around about which detergents my friends’ grandmothers used. Maybe I’ll have some luck.

Slug

Uncategorized

It’s bad news week.

First, I won’t be able to study on distance to Sweden. Because if you want to study any higher education (which you can do on distance) you need certain grades and points which I don’t have since I’m a drop out. To read up these points I need to go to Komvuxm which is completely financed by tax money, i.e. I need to be paying tax in Sweden=I need to be written as living in Sweden. I can study on my own, but to do the written exams I need to be written in Sweden. No way around it. Except this test, högskoleprovet, which you can take, in Sweden, (and a few places in Europe) one day in the spring and one day in the fall. Very specific dates, you have to sign up for it months ahead and it costs around 300SEK. If I score enough, I can get in on that score instead of the grades. But that means I’ll have to time a trip to Sweden and that’s not cheap.

Second, my nephew has been sick and ended up at the ER with respiratory problems. He’s better now, but now, third, my grandma is at the ER instead, probably with a stroke.

And tomorrow, or on Saturday, I don’t even know, Ola’s off to Brazil for 10 days.

I feel uninspired to even get dressed today.

Settling

Moving

Last Saturday we had our huasipichai, the Quechuan word for house-warming party. We did have one in December, but that was before ewe had any furniture, so it was time to have a proper one, now that we have an actual home and just not an apartment.
Unfortunately not so many as we had hoped showed up from the offs, but the guests we had were awesome. One ended up in the kitchen, making sure every cup had whiskey in it. Occasionally people chanted “fondo, fondo, fondo” (bottom up) and as a result everybody was pretty drunk. Of course people put on salsa and danced, I have so far not been to a house party where this haven’t happened. But then The Macarena came on and that was new and I honestly never EVER thought I’d dance to that again. But what do you know, I apparently have no dignity when I’m drunk.
Unfortunately, one of the guests decided to drive home. I found out about it on the Monday and I feel so shitty about it. I know, it is another culture here, and one beer or two doesn’t mean you can not drive. But we had been drinking whiskey, neat, and he was drunk enough so another guest tried to take his keys, but without success. Even tough I had no idea, I do feel responsible. I have decided that for the next parties, if people drive, the will have to hand over the car keys when they arrive. Hopefully I’ll be able to stand by this decision when it matters. It’ll be hard, but I think it’ll be easier to grab the keys when people are still sober than to argue with them when they’re drunk.

Good things: We got some pictures up on the walls! Me and Ola are -really- shitty when it comes to that, and it took years before we got up our wedding pictures on the wall. But now some frames are up! Including our wedding pictures. However, we still haven’t got our coffee table, but Leslie says we can go and get it on Monday. And we finally went to the plays Diana recommended for bean bags, at Av. Amazonas/Rio Coca! I am hoping for bean bags with floral pattern and humming birds! And I have to friends who said they’ll help us (me) to get up a which I’m stupidly excited about.