The Thousand Islands

I've read an interesting article in the Washington Post about the "Thousand Islands" in the St. Lawrence river.

There are actually over 1800 islands in the archipelago on the US-Canada border, some of which are huge, and some of which are very, very small.

Pictured here is the aptly-named "Just Room Enough" Island.

The Canadian side of the archipelago is a national park, and the area is also a world-renown biodiversity site. Amusing Planet has lots of beautiful photos of the area. It certainly reminds me of our own archipelago!

Back for a quick visit

Sooz and I have carved out a 4-day weekend and we will be back at our stuga next week. We'll close things up for the winter as usual.

We are hoping to use our new luftpump to enable weekend visits over the winter as well. I'd like to take more winter pictures like this one!

Stay tuned for another bunch of reports from our visit.

Learning Swedish

Sooz is continuing her language studies at the University of Westminster. She is well into the intermediate courses and has been a diligent student.

Unlike all of her classmates, she doesn't have a Swedish partner (at least not yet!). Her opportunities to practice her Swedish at home are therefore limited.

We have a Sonos speaker in the kitchen these days and have programmed Swedish radio for listening practice. Sooz also gets Swedish news alerts on her iPad.

I found recently that Swedish state radio operates a service for beginning Swedish speakers. A website and daily podcast is in simpler Swedish, and it also focuses on topics of interest to new Swedes.

Sooz gives it a listen from time to time and it is very well done. If you're learning or practicing your Swedish, it is an excellent resource.

Back to School!

I blogged recently about Swedish life in London. The things that most excited me were filmjölk and Scandinavian restaurants.

Sooz, however, had a much better idea. She decided to take advantage of the educational (as opposed to culinary) opportunities and study Swedish.

She has started a course at the University of Westminster to brush up her language skills. She's skipped the beginners courses and is an intermediate learner. She now has a student ID, which I think is really cool. I can now brag that I'm married to a college girl!

Who knows? I may sign up myself one day. I would, of course, have to start at the very bottom, but I'd love to be able to have even the simplest conversation in Swedish with my neighbours.

I will try to get Sooz to blog here about her experience. Stay tuned over the coming months.

UPDATE 16 Feb: Sooz has left behind a Swedish note in the comments!

Learning Swedish

I've been reading about a company that is offering a 'new way' to learn a foreign language. Voxy takes advantage of internet connectivity to connect its students to a more dynamic and real-time type of language learning and practice.

They published an interesting infographic about the difficulties of learning various languages. Swedish is in the 'easy' category. According to them, six months of study at about 25 hours a week would allow proficiency.

I would really love to do this. I know it would make a big difference to my life in Aspö. If I stay retired, I may just give it a try.

The problem I have is that, living here in Texas, I don't ever have a chance to practice speaking Swedish. I can listen a bit on the radio and TV, and goodness knows there's lots of Swedish to read online. I never have a chance to speak it in the Lone Star state.

But that's a little bit of an excuse. I have Swedish friends here, and I should probably work a lot harder at speaking with them on a regular basis when/if I start studying in earnest.

The Word Cloud II

Google provides us blog authors a range of stats. I like to look at all the different information provided. For example, it's no surprise the United States provides the most visitors (over 37,000), with the UK second (9300), and Sweden third (8200).

But who's fourth? It's our neighbors up north. Nearly 5000 Canadians have visited, with 4300 Russians an inexplicably close fifth.

Another interesting fact is the ranking of the most popular posts. I'll talk about the top two most popular posts later, but I was quite surprised to see the post that ranked #3: the Word Cloud on August 6, 2010.

I can't figure out why that might be so. I assume a google search brought people there, but I couldn't find anything specific as to why. However, it's always good to give the readership what they want, so I visited Wordle again to make a brand new word cloud.

"Aspö" is the big winner, obviously. It's nice to see that people's names figure so prominently. Our friends out here were a big part of our recent long stay.

I'll start making word clouds more regularly from now on. It's fun to do, and it's obviously popular!

Learning Swedish

Let’s face it, I’d love to be able to speak Swedish. Whenever I talk with my fellow Aspö residents, I'm aware they all have to accommodate me, which is pretty un-neighborly in my book. After all, if I’m going to be living on a Swedsh island, I should speak the language!

What makes it worse is that my friends are multi-lingual. I think Margaret speaks Swedish better than most Swedes, and everyone in Marcia & Rutger's household is perfectly fluent in Swedish, English and Dutch. Sooz has a degree in Italian (besides remembering an impressive amount of her Swedish from her time there), and Grant is taking advanced placement French in university. So I’m embarrassingly mono-lingual both in public and at home.

I found myself evening Swedish classes at a local college; the UK does a great job of adult education, it’s much more common here than in the US. I also looked into Rosetta Stone software, which many people rave about. (UPDATE: Note Dawn's lengthy comment about Rosetta Stone, perhaps I might try a 30-day trial?)

The technology to learn languages is always changing. Recently, the New York Times ran an interesting story about the web bringing native speakers together to improve language skills. I even looked into other alternatives to get myself some Swedish exposure.

After a lot of investigation, however, it doesn’t seem practical for me to study Swedish, at least for now. With my daily life in London, I wouldn’t be able to practice in any significant way. And without that daily exposure, it’s not realistic to think I could master another language.

If and when the time comes that we spend significant time on Aspö, then I think I could make a good effort in learning the language. But for now, living in the most Anglophone country of all, and without regular contact with Swedish, it doesn’t seem possible. I’ll just have to get used to my guilty feelings when everyone switches to English for my benefit!

They're home!

Sooz, Grant, and Ollie all arrived safely around 11:00. The photo shows the exact moment of arrival. The car was filled mostly with dirty laundry and booze!

Sooz is cleaning the kitchen now (apparently, I didn't do well enough), Grant started playing Halo about 5 minutes after walking in the door, and Ollie is in the shade with his favourite tennis ball.

A couple new photos are now in the midsommar gallery to end up our 5 week advanture!

Swedish News

Margaret told me about a great English-language website, The Local. It is an entertaining read and I notice CNN has started to link to it, too.

Radio Sweden has a good daily podcast that you can listen to from their website, or subscribe to through iTunes.

Swedish Lessons

A local college was offering Swedish lessons starting in just a couple of weeks, and it seemed perfect at first. But the total cost for both of us to attend was pretty high ($750), and the time commitment was also high, 30 weeks' worth, which we felt was too much.

Sooz is still looking for something not quite so intensive. We'll let you know....

Swedish

I've referred obliquely to my struggles with Swedish in previous posts. In some ways, it's not a big problem, because everyone I speak with has an excellent command of English. And I have friends in Sweden (especially Janne on the construction side and Rutger on the administration) to help with getting things done.

Where it does cause a problem is with documents or websites, like the Cinderella user's guide or the Värmdö planning application. Plus we do intend to spend a lot of time in Sweden, so it's only fair we try to speak the language!

Sooz is looking into Swedish lessons in London and she has found a couple of good possibilities. Stay tuned for developments...