One in a Million

Last night I had an experience that I think has the same degree of suprise-feeling you have when you win the lottery. I'm still trying to calculate what the odds are that this could happen.

This is the story:

In July 2006 I travelled the east coast of Australia. For a couple of weeks I travelled with a girl from Canada called Kate. Kate and I have kept in touch since then and recently she told me she was coming to Europe in July this year to do some travelling. We decided to catch up since she was going be in Sweden for 5 days.

Note: Her mum just got married to a Swedish guy in Canada so she was going to stay with her Swedish step brother that apparently lives outside Stockholm somewhere.

Last night when I got back from work I found a note on my door: (In Swedish) "I have an important message for you. Good News. Come by as soon as you see this. /Your neighbour next door".

I rang the door bell. Camera flashes. Laughter. KATE! I couldn't believe how she had found my address and came to surprise me! Had she gone to my neighbour and waited there just to surprise me?

No.

This is where she was staying! My neighbour is her step brother!

No what are the odds of that?
9,127058 million people in Sweden
1,925924 million peoiple in Stockholm
(Statistiska Centralbyrån Sverige)

Midsummer Madness

This midsummer can't really be explained in words.
To understand, I need to show photos. so I'll update shortly.

Midsummer in my family has always been celebrated in the traditional Swedish way. Every year we go out to the summer house in the archipelago. We eat tons of foods like herring, salmon and meatballs. We drink beer and schnapps. And when we where kids we even did the frog dance around the maypole!

As we got older, the frog dance just got sillier and sillier, so four years ago we started a new trend: The Runmarö Games. This is a competition between the three families (my mom and her two brothers + families). This year there were 9 parts of the competition:

- Potato Peeling (Longest solid peel wins)

- Frog Spitting (Spit the Jelly frog as far as you can)

- Mummy's (Fastest team to turn one team member into a mummy with toliet paper)

- Balloon Popping (Balloon on a string attached to your foot and try to pop the other teams' balloons.

- Bisquit Whisteling (First team to whistle the theme of Hemglass after eating 3 bisquits).

- Hammering (First team to get the nail into the log)
- Passing the Match box (pass the match box cover, with your nose...)
- Suit case (Open suit case, put clothes on, run, take clothes off).
- Quiz (a regular quiz, with extremely hard questions by my mum..)

At dinner time the winner was announced. My family didn't win. But everyone got prizes :)

It wasn't over yet.

When we were having dinner, we were asked to look under our plates, where we found a song with the same line on the entire page: "Jag är så glad!" (I'm so happy!").
We got one plastic bag each, filled with things that we were suppose to put on during the song. This was madness! Shot glasses on our eyes, paper teeth, plates with holes for our ears, and weird hats. You realise I need photos to describe this...

Laughed until my stomach hurt.
Yes, Swedes are crazy, at least my family! :)

Summer

Wild strawberries from mum and dad's garden