March 31, 2011 All things Swedish

Well it has been a very busy few days full of all thing Swedish.  I have been enjoying looking at all the little things here both the same and different.  While Katie went to Swedish school on Tuesday I walked into the little town of Huddinge.  I spent a lot of time just wandering around the grocery store, reading the signs and looking at things.  I find all kinds of things interesting : why are the crackers so huge? Why are the cheese wheels so huge? Can you put the big cheese on the big crackers? It is interesting that the packaging for so many of the products is much less than at home.  More cardboard than plastics, and the things that are plastic, use much less plastic.

On Wednesday, I went into Stockholm for the first time on the commuter train.  I had invited myself to visit a professor at KTH, the Royal Technical University.  I am very good at simply inviting myself places. I have found that if you initiate contact, people are more than willing to accommodate you. In the past year I have invited myself to both Ireland and Sweden, so it is working out quite well.  Ireland was a particularly egrious example – “I approached a professor at a conference and asked him – “Do you have a seminar series at your university? Because I’d love to visit your campus and lecture sometime.” After he stopped laughing at me, he said that he couldn’t pay for a trip to come visit him and lecture for an hour, but he could put me on a list to perhaps serve as a PhD examination committee member, although it might take years for something to come up. I readily agreed, and two months later he was on the phone with me.  “Were you serious about wanting to come to Ireland?” And next thing I knew I had a trip to Ireland at his University’s expense.  Yes, I am shameless.

Upon deciding to visit Sweden, I looked through the faculty list at KTH and found the name of a professor whose work I have read and use in one of my classes. So I emailed him and introduced myself, which culminated in a very nice meeting and tour of the Energy department at KTH.  It was interesting to see all the different projects and laboratories. This was the Department of Energy Technology, which is housed in the industrial engineering department. I saw a lot of the same books that I use to teach on this professor’s bookshelf so I wondered if they teach their classes in English or Swedish.  It turns out that they teach their undergraduates in English but their graduate students in English.  This is mainly by necessity since most of their graduate students come from other countries and English is a common language for all.  It is the same as in the US where most of our graduate student are from other countries. It was a great opportunity to visit and learn. I was interested in all their industrial sponsored projects, in contrast to ours that are more likely to be government or military sponsored. 

Learning is a big aspect of this trip for me, I find myself asking questions of my friend constantly.

“What does that sign say?”  “We drive softly here”   

“What is that food?”   “Pea soup in a plastic package that looks like a sausage. “  

 “How does health care work?”  “Government single payer plan with co-pays at the time of service”

 “How does maternity leave work?”  “360 full salary days with guaranteed hold of your job for your return. The days can be split between mothers and fathers, each taking extended time off in turn.”

 “How about daycare?”   “Subsidized rates-about $100 per month”

“How about school districts?”  “Open enrollment - you can pick any school to attend for free, with free lunches included, but preference is given to the kids in that district and schools can fill up.”

 How about…… how about…….. how about??

I am asking so many questions that Katie walked away from me today, because she was shy of my questioningness. She claims she just wanted to look at a different sign.  We were at the Vasa museum today which is a unique museum which houses the Vasa ship. It sank in the Stockholm harbor in 1628 just 20 minutes into its maiden voyage. It seems they had issues with stability, ballast and too many cannons. They claim that if the ship was 1 m wider it would have had enough additional stability to sail – but some things are learned too late. At the lowest level of the museum there was a wire mesh separating a region of the floor from the display and there was a man behind the wire at a desk cleaning a bit of wood.  So I pressed my face up against the mesh as Katie wandered away quickly- “Hi, what is that piece of wood, what are you working on?” It turns out that he was an archeologist working to measure, characterize and catalog bits of wood that are from barrels from the Vasa. He was part of a team re-examining all the artifacts to learn more about them and eventually write several thick books with full chapters on things like barrels.  These barrels were about 10” in diameter and held personal effects like mittens and hats. How would I know that the sailors kept their mittens in small wooden barrels if I didn’t ask? Katie thought it was interesting in the end, but also thought that it would be very boring to be an archeologist. The lure of knowing more than anyone in the entire world about that particular barrel was not enough of a draw for her, but I do get the thrill of learning something new about an artifact that no one ever knew before. The other museums (Historiska and Nordiska) were a bit less interesting, but we did see a room full of gold, learned that Vikings did not wear hats with horns and saw a huge statue of King Gustav with an inscription that read “Be Swedish!”

Walking around Stockholm we were struck by the number of men walking together in twos or threes pushing baby carriages in the middle of the day (see maternity leave info above), which I have never seen in the US.  We also found the city to be very walkable, pretty and clean.  It reminded me in some ways of Vancouver, but with more water. The harbors and old buildings were just gorgeous.

We had a wonderful dinner of pea soup with mustard and Swedish pancakes with strawberry jam. One of many recent wonderful dinners, including Swedish pizza one night and thick delicious slices of bacon with potato pancakes and ligonberry sauce another night. YUM!

 

Friendship defies boundaries of geography and time

I think that is such a wonderful thing that friends can go years without seeing each other and still pick up exactly where they left off.  The things that made you friends in the first place exist regardless of location, time zone , culture or language. 

Katie and I arrived in Stockholm today, a bit jet lagged, and a bit out of sorts.  The arrival process was so much smoother than our entry to India last year, which has become family lore – if we can survive the mob scene at the airport and our four days of lost luggage in Delhi, than we can survive (fill in your choice of calamity here). The only delay here was the delightfully matronly woman in passport control that wanted to make sure that we knew we have to visit the VasaMuseet and Skansen (we do), and to admonish us to be sure to come back in summer because one week is not enough for Stockholm and we need to be able to go out on a boat tour (OK - we will).

In a wonderful move of friendship our Swedish friends ordered us a taxi that was waiting for us as we exited customs.  We could have taken the express train to downtown Stockholm and then the bus, but it was so delightfully easy to just follow the driver and ride in comfort to the house.  Stockholm reminds me a lot of my time in Minnesota, particularly from the air.  The approach into Stockholm looked so similar to the approach to the Twin Cities – frozen lakes, a dusting of snow and little development.  It is easy to see why the Scandinavian settlers picked the upper Midwest as their new American home – the resemblance is remarkable. The only difference being the type of tree- many extremely tall pines here that look like lodgepole pines, compared to the smaller trees, with a lot of birch in Minneapolis.

Our friends were at school and work when we arrived mid-morning and we took a nap before they came home at lunch to make sure we didn’t sleep too long. After rousting us awake, they were off again to finish up the school day returning for good between 1 and 2. Katie and I amused ourselves until they returned by trying to see if their dog now barks in Swedish instead of English (they claim that he does), and looking at their food and noting how exotic a bag of flour looks when it is written in Swedish.  They even had a two squeeze tubes of caviar in their fridge- now that is exotic!

 My friend and I instantly bonded as though there had been no gap in our friendship at all, despite the fact that we haven’t seen each other in two years.  Katie and her friend were a little more cautious with each other at first.  Two years is a lot more time when you move away at age nine, and reconnect at eleven/twelve.  However, as I type this they are sitting together shoulder to shoulder, head to head, playing “The Game of Life” on the iPod, peals of laughter ringing out from their room.

My friend and I discussed themes that seem to common to mothers everywhere  regardless of the country - whether the competitive sports our kids play are managed appropriately, how to find the right clothes for our pre-teen girls and how school is going for them.

We had a wonderful dinner of homemade “Swedish meatballs”, boiled potatoes and ligonberries, although they called them just “meatballs”.  Tomorrow and the next day Katie will go to school all day with her friend, at the same school where her mom, my friend, teaches.  It promises to be a very interesting two days as an “exchange student” for Katie, one few people get to experience. She is quite concerned about the language barrier but I am sure that she will manage fine.  After school she and her friend are going to swim practice together, so by tomorrow night Katie should be quite exhausted.  I know that I am exhausted and seriously jet lagged despite the three cup of strong coffee that  I have had today, so off to bed for me.

Well, here we go...

We leave for the Newark airport in about two hours.  I find that the concrete is much easier to deal with than the abstract any day.  Today I know what we need to do - drive to the airport, navigate security, and pass the time until the plane boards.  Today is one of the easier days. I don't need to think about the "what ifs" today. Today we just go with the flow. 

It seems inconceivable that the trip is actually upon us after two years of talking about it, and yet at the same time it feels perfectly natural.  We have traveled overseas before, in fact this is the third time in 14 months, so the drill is familiar.  The only difference is the duration.  I know that tomorrow I will be tired and disorientated, but I will be with old friends who will make the transition easier.

I am so glad that we decided to start by visiting friends for a week.  I know that we will have support this first week abroad and that we can work through the time change without having to navigate strange hotels and a strange language all at once.

Here we go .......

One foot in childhood, one in adolescence

The timing of this sabbatical has worked out extremely well.  It just seems fortuitous that Katie is the perfect age to travel with me.  If she were just two years older, it would have been so much more difficult to pull her out of school, but two years younger and she wouldn’t be so independent and able to appreciate it.  It seems like the stars just lined up for us and that 6^th grade is a perfect time to take her out of school.  Her teachers and the school could not have been more supportive of this experience.  In all my conversations with her guidance counselor and her teachers I never heard one word against the thought of pulling her out of school for an entire marking period.  I know that I have the right to pull her out of the public school, but I never really expected the school to be so enthusiastic about it.

Officially I will be homeschooling her. I’ve done all the paperwork with the district (there was shockingly little documentation required) although I did have to submit “educational goals and objectives” and I need to make sure that she regularly studies English/Reading, Math, Science, Social Studies,  Gym, Music, Art and Fire Safety.   But as long as I cover these topics, exactly what I cover and how I cover it is entirely up to me.  Katie is thrilled that she gets to leave school before her 6^th grade health class moves onto the dreaded “family life” section and “reproduction”.  She said that she knows her class is behind the others, which have already started this topic, and she keeps thinking to herself, “That’s OK Ms. E. , take as long as you need to finish the nervous system…”    I told Katie that we can cover the human reproduction system in our studies, but she told me “No thank you”.

This is such an interesting age.  In general, Katie and her friends are hitting their growth spurts and towering over the boys in their grade. They are maturing as well, and certainly don’t look like the little girls that they were just a couple of years ago.  Some of the girls are now interested in fashion and boys, but this has not really affected Katie and her friends.  They still have one foot in childhood and the other in adolescence.  A few girls came over last weekend, and while they were interested in playing with the ipod stereo system, mainly so they could set it to play Katy Perry’s “firework” over and over and over, they were equally as interested in batting around balloons and attacking each other with the play swords that Katie uses to play pirates when her cousins come to visit. Watching them play it was so clear that they are still very much little girls in bigger girl bodies.  I know they will mature into their bodies, but right now it is still wonderful to see that deep down they are the same girls that they have always been. I am so looking forward to sharing this experience with my big little girl.

How much planning can you do?

With two days to go before we leave, my stress levels are lower than they have been in months.  For weeks the large white board that I keep in my kitchen (yes, I know – but an engineer’s home décor has to include white boards) has listed task after task that needed to be completed before we left.  Now there are only three items left on it, all pretty small things, and I am confident that I have done all the planning, done all the preparation and am ready to go. I thought I’d be more stressed by now, but I think that as it becomes more real and concrete, the stress has gone away.

My planning for this trip has been extensive.  The planning has included not only the things I needed to do that were specifically related to the trip, but a lot of other things that needed to be taken care to keep this household running while I’m gone.  I am a planner by nature.  I LOVE planning things. I think that one of the reasons that I love traveling so much is that travel usually needs a lot of planning – at least the way I travel. I like to travel with schedules and itineraries and guidebooks and a daily plan of what to see and where to go.  I am known as the planner among my friends. I have one friend who waits until I plan all the summer camps for Katie and then picks many of the same camps for her daughter.  I have another friend with younger daughters who likes to pick my brain on activities and school so that she can use my experiences.  I LOVE this. I like being the planner, and I love that other people can use the work that I’ve put in.  So a big trip like this has been a lot of fun to plan, but also a big challenge. Where are we going to go, how are we going to get there, where are we going to stay, what are we going to see….

 And at the same time, I needed (that is wanted) to plan everything for the home front as well.  I know that Paul is perfectly capable of surviving without me, but still, I want to make it easy for him.  It’s the planner in me. Does he know how to pay the bills online?  Will he remember to get the cars inspected?  Can he go to the orthodontist to make the monthly payments on Katie’s braces? If not, will her braces be repossessed? Does he know where the vet is located? 

I know perfectly well that he CAN do all these things, but I feel the need to make sure.  Luckily he is patient with me.  Plus it turns out he didn’t know where the vet’s office is. I’ve even bought all the birthday cards for the next three months, got gift cards for my nieces and nephews and stamped and addressed all the envelopes.  He has a list of when all the birthdays are and just needs to drop them in the mailbox.  I think this says much more about me than about him, and he is probably ready for me to go ahead and leave.

And yet with my strong need to plan, I am not a worrier.  I do have some world class worriers in my family, but worring has never been part of my nature. 
 Jump off the jungle gym into a snow pile while wearing snowshoes – sounds great! Give it a try! Take my ten year old to India – no problem!  It’ll be fun!
Move to Europe for two months – why not?  
I am an external optimist and have a strong sense that everything will work out.  So now that I’ve put in the advance work, I am sure that the logistics I’ve laid out will be fine and that things will run as smoothly as possible. I’ve done what I can.

So does anything about this trip actually  worry me? 
Well….only all the unstructured time that I have put in.  When we travel through Sweden, Germany, Switzerland and Italy our time in those locations is limited. I can plan activities and sightseeing to fill the few days we will be in each place. Our time there will be structured, like it normally is, both while traveling and at home.  But our time in Paris is wide open.  We have seven weeks in Paris and I’ve done NO planning for it.  Yes, I know that we want to see the Eiffel tower, the world class museums and the historical sites. But how many days can that fill?  I want us to have a relaxed schedule, to enjoy living in Paris and not be rushed. To buy our food at the market, and to picnic in the park.  But at the same time this unstructured time terrifies me.  Will we end up just staring at each other with nothing to do?

What does a planner do when you deliberately chose NOT to plan???

Well, for now at least I can check off the three remaining tasks on my white board:  Wash the dog, trim all the Guinea Pig's nails and finish the laundry.

Writing

I am really looking forward to the opportunity to write regularly in this blog. I hope to make it a regular part of my day. I know that there will be days when will be difficult to find the time, and I know that there will be days when I don’t want to, but overall I hope to find it a positive experience.  I have always enjoyed writing and this opportunity to write for myself and not for work will be a joy. 

As an engineer and an educator I battle a persistent misconception that engineers are not good communicators.  In fact I actually find the opposite to be true. My students are well spoken and have strong writing abilities. These are increasingly important skills in a global economy, and engineers that function well in teams, can handle presentations with ease and can express themselves clearly in reports have a real advantage over others.  In fact, much of our engineering education focuses on group dynamics and written and oral communication skills.

I have always enjoyed writing, and grew up in a family that really valued both reading and writing as a way of life.  My father worked in the newspaper industry and is a talented writer himself. I feel that writing is a part of my inherent DNA.  My mother is an extremely talented communicator, a person that has the ability to connect with people on a very personal basis and make every person she interacts with feel valued and important. I feel that I have taken something from each of them have developed my own strengths in written and oral communication.  It is interesting how much I draw on these skills in my career.  Obviously as a teacher I need to draw on strengths in oral communication, and the lessons that I have learned from my mother in interacting with people really make a difference in how I connect with my students.  But I also draw extensively on my writing skills.  I have published more than 50 peer-reviewed technical articles and submitted almost 60 different grant proposals. That’s a lot of writing just 12 years into this career. I have spent the past three months of my sabbatical doing nothing but writing, and hope to add 10 more papers to my list of publications as an outcome of this “time off”.

I have always been a writer. I remember writing collaborative books with my middle school friends during the lazy days of unstructured summers in rural Ohio.  I edited and wrote for my high school newspaper, even when it was apparent that no one beyond the editorial staff cared or even seemed to know that it existed.  I wrote for my college newspaper for all four years, rising to head editor of the sports section and devoting up to 15-20 hours a week to it on top of my busy engineering courseload. Why sports?  Mainly because my freshman orientation counselor was the sports editor at the time and I thought he was a wise, worldy, cute college guy who thought it was great that I was a writer. So I went to write for his staff.  It turned out he wasn’t wise or worldly, and wasn’t really that cute either, but I had found a home on the newspaper staff.  I’ve even written for local newspapers as a sports stringer, reporting on local girls’ high school basketball games and other interesting local events.

Now I have the opportunity to write for myself. This trip should provide a lot of interesting material, as we travel through Europe and experience different people, different cultures and different approaches to life.  I have felt for a while that I would like the opportunity to have the time to write recreationally, not just as part of my job, and this will give me the opportunity and time to do so.  Like so many other people, I feel that I have a book inside me ready to come out, and I hope that finding the time to write regularly will allow me to determine if that’s truly the case.

Why?

The most common question that I am getting about this trip is “why are you going?”  It’s a reasonable question to ask, but I don’t really have an answer.  It’s not really a work trip, although it does seem to satisfy people when I mention that I am visiting some European research labs. But those visits are really more of a consequence of the trip and not the reason.  I’m going to be there anyway, so why not stop in and meet with some people?

So it’s not a work trip, and yet it’s so much more than just a vacation.  I am going to visit some very dear  friends in Sweden, Germany and Italy, but again, the trip is not really just to visit them, although I am REALLY looking forward to doing so.  This trip is just so hard to classify, not really for work, not really for vacation, not really to visit friends. 

I think in my mind this trip is more of an exploration.  Not an exploration of a country or a city, but an exploration of myself.  It’s an opportunity to get away from my normal everyday life and learn something about myself in the process.  It’s a time to reflect on who I am and what I want from the rest of my life. It’s a time to acknowledge what I have accomplished and consider what I hope to accomplish in the future.  I think your forties are an interesting time period, at this point most of us have set a direction in life and have spent years following this path, career, family, relationships… and our day to day life is so busy with the career, with the kids and with life in general that we rarely get the opportunity to slow down, catch our breath, take a look around and ask ourselves, what else do I want?  Is my life on the right track or do I need to make changes? Am I satisfied or am I missing something? What new challenges would I like to explore?  What can I learn from other cultures and other ways of approaching life?

 Now don’t get me wrong, I am satisfied in life. I have been truly blessed. I have a loving supporting husband whom I adore, and who didn’t bat an eyelid when I said I wanted to take our daughter and go to Europe for several months.  He is my best friend, my biggest supporter and the rock that supports me.  I have a terrific daughter from whom I learn so much.  I struggled to have her and it was all so worth it.  She opens my eyes to the world around me, showing me a different perspective on life.  I have a career that I enjoy, that I am good at, and that gives me the freedom to pursue my own interests, including this trip. 

I just think that all of us can benefit from periodic reflections on ourselves and by asking ourselves if we are doing our best, challenging ourselves, learning new things, and using our talents.    I think by opening my eyes wider to the world around me, and by removing the day to day commitments that crowd out the opportunity for reflection, this time of travel will provide an inner exploration as well as an outer exploration.

Additionally, I am really looking at this as a very precious opportunity to spend time with Katie, just the two of us, strengthening our relationship as she heads into the rocky seas of adolescence and young adulthood.  I feel that we have a strong bond already, and that perhaps this trip will draw us even closer together. I know that I am going to take a backseat in her life in the near future as her friends and her own interests take a bigger role, and I totally support that.  The separation from your parents is an important and necessary step of growth. She needs the freedom to set her own path, learn her own lessons and make her own mistakes.  But I want her to be able to do this from a position of strength, knowing that she has the support of her mother and father, that she has that stable bedrock of our relationship as she learns how to build strong relationships outside the family.

So the “why” of this trip is so much bigger than just the trip itself.  It’s the framework and the catalyst for an exploration of our world, its history and cultures, but also for an exploration of ourselves and our relationships.  It’s going to be a lot fun, but I expect there are going to be a lot of challenges along the way too, both physical and emotional.  But no matter what I am happy for the opportunity and look forward to challenge.

Are we ready to go?

Well the big trip is just one week away. We leave next Sunday for our first country - Sweden. We will be visiting some friends of ours who returned home to Stockholm after living here in in Wayne for four years.  Most of our packing is done, we just have to do the last loads of laundry and pick out the clothes to bring. We have everything else already packed - stuff like all kinds of OTC meds (just in case), a hundred books (on the kindle of course) and all kinds of electronics and games.  The clothes are the hardest because the climate will range from Stockholm in march (4 inches of snow yesterday) to Paris in spring ( definitely need the rain jackets) to Rome in June (but no basketball shorts at the Vatican!).  of course we don't want the bags to be too big or too heavy, so it is a challenge!