on weekends away and swedish families....
well, you know you're somewhere for a while , when you run away for the weekend and it's not off to the Berkshires or New England , but off to LISLIK to see your "new " swedish family that isn't even so new anymore!
I say that with all due respect ,they've seen me more than a few times ,too... and we all really do enjoy each other, whew!.....
but, god bless these people- they've put up with speaking english to me- as they reminded me for damn near two years now- and are just about to give up.
Entire dinners are now advertised to moi ( ?huh?) as:" this dinner will be entirely held in swedish".....
and after they haven't heard from me for 5 minutes except an occasional "ja"-or a grunt or a smile..... and my plate is empty because I can hardly ennunciate that I'd like some more LAMB ( uhh, what is THAT!?) someone good-naturedly breaks down and asks me a question in english - and quelle surprise! off I go!....
at any rate, i get encouraged to talk in swedish as much as possible, by just about everyone anymore, so I describe inanely simple stories of SFI horrors and other equally inane and MUNDANE stories.
However, I have worked up a "SCHWEDISH SCHTICK" on our mushroom picking episode this weekend which i will try to recount now-
ENTIRELY UNAIDED BY GOOGLE TRANSLATOR-
JUST SO YOU CAN ALL SEE HOW DAMN LOUSY MY SWEDISH IS.- AND I CAN PROVE OT ONCE AND FOR ALL!
Now mind you, I've practiced this several times now on every family member ( and been summarily corrected) and a couple of people at SFI, so you'd think I'd be good at it.
IN ADVANCE:
forgive the lack of dots here- I'm NOT going to GOOGLE TRANSLATOR remember?! -and my WORLD is a HAPPY DOTLESS WORLD!- so DEAL,OK!?!?
I hellan, Roy och Ilyssa och jag, gick till skogen och plockade svamp.Det var en bra dag for svamp plocker darfor det var reignar mycket och det var kalt ocksa! Sa BRA dag! Roy och Ilyssa tittade och plockade gul kanterelle. Jag vet jag musta titta for gul kanterelle, men jag ser inte.Ocksa, vi kan plockade host( FALL) kanterlle. De ar brun. Sa, jag plocade mycket/manga svampor av mycket olika sortir. Jag tittade en stor AREA( whatever!) av host /brun kanterllar sa jag plockade mycket manga av dem. Jag plokade svampor darfor dem ar snygg och jag tycker om dem! OKAY!?!? Jag hade stor pase om svampor. ROy och Ilyssa har inte sa manga av dem. De hade bara gul kantereller i deras pasor.
Vi tag alla tillbacka hemet och Ilyssa bakade mycket bra smorgas med gula kantereller.MUMS!!!!!
Jag liggade min svampor ut pa bricken. Jag maste hade 7 eller 8 typ /SORTIR?! De var so mycket snygg och sot- (with the dots,ok)! Jag lasa Min ForstaSvamp Boken som Alfie loanade mig! OBS! Jag hade en problem: maste av min svampor were GIFT. ! eller 2 var inte GIFT, men maste dem var! Sa,jag ta mycket manga bilder om de. De var so mycket snygg och gjorde min gladje. Sa dar!! Men,i sluttat, vi kastade alla min utta darfor alla dem var i pase tillsammans och det ar inte so bra!
SO THERE! that only took 15 minutes to write! SO EASY!
I must also ask you to forgive my rather repetitive use of the words "mycket manga"- You see, I could never remember which to use when, and am not so sure I even remember now unless I think on it really hard- but I have been saying "mycket manga" for over a year now ,so muchso , that even my hubbie uses it occassionally. It is a phrase I will undoubtedly always use in the future- so there!
To the ENGLISH SPEAKERS and to those of you that even read SWEDISH but i know without DOTS and the fact that the swedish is so bad you can't really read it anyway.....here in less than a MINUTE is what I said:
This weekend, Roy and Ilyssa and i went mushroom picking in the woods. It was raining a ton and very cold- so it was determined to be a perfect day for going out into the woods with all sorts of rain clothes on and pick mushrooms. ( for the record: it actually didn't suck, ok?) Now see, we were really just supposed to pick yellow chanterelles or the fall brown ones. There are a few other varieties one can pick, but those were not specified in advance, nor what we were after.....problem was, I quickly lost patience as I didn't see any yellow ones, so I picked anything I liked and especially anything that was CUTE- becau se many were absolutely adorable!
We took them home, Ilyssa made delicious OPEN-FACED SANDWICHES( no! I am sorry , but a sandwich has a TOP and a BOTTOM) and they were very YUMMY!
I put all of my 7-8 varieties of mushrooms out and proceeded to look in Alfie's Beginners guide to mushroom picking and discovered that while I had the brown chanterelles and maybe another good shroom or two, most of mine were poisonous. And since even the LEAST little bit of a POISON shroom can put you on kidney dialysis for the rest of your days- or KILL you straight away, we threw ALL of mine out, since the good ones had touched the bad ones. But I took many photographs of all my SUPER CUTE SHROOMS and had a very good if not VERY WET DAY! So there!!!
well , that's kinda what it said- or what I wanted it to kinda say!
Lesson for the soul today: when life gives you POISONOUS 'SHROOMS: You can either cook them really well,because some types are NOT poisonous AFTER they are cooked( right-y-o with THAT little tidbit of information!) OR you can take pictures, enjoy a pouring down rainy wet day in the woods anyway and PITCH your efforts in the trash, because sometimes it's just for the best!
swedish word for the day; Ok- I KNOW it by now- but it's been a bitch to learn through pounding it into my head at SFI and this experiment truly brought it home- JUST GET THIS ONE!
"GIFT" means two VERY DIFFERENT things here-
it either means POISONOUS - as in many of my too cute 'shrooms
or GET THIS: it means to be MARRIED ( to someone)! YEP!
that was , of course, how I first came to know the word- nthat being when I brolloped and got gifted ( mig) !!!,
so when someone told me about it also meaning POISONOUS, it was a bit much to deal with , really!
.....sometimes , with a word that you'd really better USE in the RIGHT context at the right time-it just leaves me to believe that COMPLETE COMPETENCY in the Swedish language is a LONG LONG way off! ( if not exampled very well above! HAHA!)
and once again, we have arrived at a "cultural note" here that just defies description.
or , am I just crazy- ah gain!?
