autumn adventures

Well, it appears that autumn is now in full swing here in Borås.  The leaves are changing colors, temperatures are rapidly declining, and teachers are gearing up for parent-teacher conferences.  Life in this slightly-larger-than-tiny town continues to go well.  A majority of my time is spent at school—planning lessons, grading papers (or at least trying to figure out how the Swedish grading system works), calling parents, and laughing with colleagues.  However, every now and again, I do find time to venture out for little adventures. 

This past week, one adventure landed me at a small sushi restaurant in the center of town.  One of my student’s parents owns this restaurant and offered to treat me.  All in all, it was a delightful evening.  I had the opportunity to sample some delicious sushi while learning about my student and hearing how the Japanese education system compares to the Swedish system.

Another adventure brought me to a small classroom on the edge of town.  It is in this classroom that I will likely be studying Swedish for the next long while.  The school I am working at arranged for all the new international teachers to attend Swedish language lessons so we can better communicate with the students.  Lessons began this week.  So far, we have learned the alphabet and a few basic words. “Skriv” means “write” and “bil” means “car.”

This evening, Julia and I went on one final adventure to finish off the week.  She showed me around the woods nearby her apartment.  After a short but steep climb up a hill, we were rewarded with a lovely view of the town below.  I may need to return to this overlook come wintertime to see the snow-laden landscape. 

To wrap up with this post, I will leave you with a photo of my favorite sight from this week.  As I was making my way home from church this morning, a woman biked past me with the baskets on her bike overflowing with flowers.  I think I might need to outfit Lena (my bike) with similar decor.  How classy.