Our Farewell Party was AMAZING!!!!!

Tuesday, March 31 – What an AMAZING evening!!!! I enjoyed the afternoon sitting around with Anni, each of us “playing” on our laptops as I put the final touches on our slideshow for tonight. This is Anni and I with her husband Jan and 10 year old son John (I apologize if my spelling isn't accurate....)

We had a going away party at Kvibergs in Partille – all of our host families and others who were involved with our GSE visit were invited to attend.

It was so much fun to see many of the people who have touched our lives during our adventures here in Sweden. There have been so many people in so many communities that we have enjoyed getting to know and can’t WAIT to have them visit us in Minnesota or to return here to Sweden some day…. Bo, the District Governor, may be visiting in April for our District Conference; Erik from Alingsas is planning to visit in October of this year to learn more about farming and I’ve promised him a tour of RWSC; Vivianne from Alingsas has planned a trip in 2011 so we know that seeing us again will keep her young and energetic; and Jens & Jessica (my hosts in Uddevalla) with some friends are planning a motorcycle trip in 2014 --- so, we’ll be sure to mark our calendars!!! We appreciate all of the open invitations to return to Sweden and you never know when the opportunity may present itself!

During the past few weeks, we have taken THOUSANDS of pictures and enjoyed putting together a slideshow of photos from our stay to share with our new friends at the Farewell Party. We each also got an opportunity to say a few words about our stay and, honestly, it was really difficult to keep from becoming emotional.

I also have to mention Alison’s thoughtfulness and humor - - she bought us each a small Dala Horse to remember our trip by. Four of them were painted the same colors and mine was a bit different to commemorate my “love” of wearing our uniforms everyday!!

I also received another un-expected gift that really touched my heart - - Jens & Jessica brought me a copy of Stieg Larssons first book in English!!! I’ve been looking for it every since I heard about him early in our trip…he was a relatively young Swedish author who died in the middle of writing his fourth book. He trilogy has sold more than 5 million copies world-wide. Thanks again – that was SO THOUGHTFUL!!

Thanks again to everyone that has touched my life in some way during this trip - - I will NEVER forget you or my time here!!!!!

Last few visits in Molndal

Monday, March 30 - Today, we have two visits. One to a HUGE pharmecutical organization called AstraZeneca. Stefan (Alison's host) met with us and told us about the business - - it is a HUGE world-wide organization and their facility in Molndal is primarily an R & D site with about 2500 employees.

Our second visit was to IKEA - no, not just shopping! We met with the Social & Environmental Affairs coordinator who shared with us some of the things that IKEA has been doing from an Environmental, Social, etc. THEN, we had some time to shop!!!

Our last engagement of the day was coordinated by Anders from Partille. He managed to get us tickets to a musical event put on by the local university that pokes fun at a popular song contest program in Europe. The university version is known as SMASK and was VERY funny!!!! The winning group sung a song about "Amerika" and it was written by one of the students as well as being performed by the students (singers AND orchestra directed by a student).

So, after a somewhat late night.... I had a little packing to do before an early start on Tuesday.

Tuesday, March 31 - our last day in Molndal. I was up and ready for breakfast by 7:15 Am - - I have to ease back into my 6 AM start schedule because next week is going to be BRUTAL! It was difficult to say goodbye to Anita and Sven - - they have been TERRIFIC hosts and I've enjoyed staying out in the country for a few days.

We made a stop this morning at the Stadhuset of Molndal and met with a man about the structure of the local government / how things are funded / how the taxes are used / etc. On the first floor of the building, in addition to a little coffee shop with coffee, tea & treats, they had this really cool photographic layout of Molndal on the floor.....

See you all very soon!!! Thanks so much for all of your support during this adventure!

Molndal - getting to know the "Valley of the Mills"

Friday, March 27 – We wrapped up our visit to the Tanum area by doing a presentation for their Rotary club and enjoying some typically Swedish food called kåldolmar (which, if I understood correctly, is basically some minced meat wrapped in cabbage) – it was really good!!

After the meeting, we had a few minutes to do some shopping at a local store owned by one of our host families (Britt who hosted Alison) and we each found a few treasures to take home to our family and friends. I found a fun little serving tray that had a painting of the area that Britt herself had painted.

Our train ride back down to Göteborg started out uneventful but about 45 minutes into it, the train stopped in the middle of nowhere. Luckily, one woman figured out we were American and told us what the captain had announced. Apparently, the train’s compressor had overheated and needed to cool down before we could proceed. We actually arrived in Göteborg pretty much on time and (as has become the norm) meeting our new host families, saying goodbye to each other and getting our luggage loaded happened so quickly before we were on our way to the next adventure.

My hosts in Mölndal are Sven and Anita Hilmersson along with their cat (Mulan or something close to that – not real sure of the spelling). They live in the countryside and we enjoyed our evening getting to know one another by sharing stories and pictures.

Saturday, March 28 – this was a somewhat lazy morning as we really didn’t need to be anywhere until noon today. After being called to his son’s house last night to help with a plumbing problem and being up until 2:30 Am, I was surprised to see Sven surface relatively early to take me on a little shopping excursion to a local village called Kungsbaka. We walked around and stopped into a few stores - - I got a chance to buy Tyler some lingon berries to bring home to make pancakes with! We also had time to stop at another shopping mall and only bought some tulips for the dinner table before going to have a little fika treat and then meeting everyone else for the start of our day together.

Our only event as a group today was lunch and a tour based out of the Mölndal Museum. We had a guided tour of the area and I later found out that Mölndal means the “Valley of the Mills.” During our tour, we enjoyed seeing the water falls or rapids that ran from the mill area and wound its way through many of the buildings that used hydro-power at one time for their production. (A funny story - - this morning, I was thinking about the things I had wanted to see in Sweden that I hadn’t had a chance to and a waterfall was one of the things - - the rapids weren’t exactly what I had in mind, but they were a great supplement!)

Back home, we enjoyed a quiet evening and I got a chance to Skype with Kevin and talk to him again for about a half an hour – Tyler was gone at band practice but I found out that he had quite an interesting week. There has been some serious flooding in the Fargo North Dakota / Moorhead Minnesota area this week. His band director pulled together a bus trip for the band kids to go to that area and help with the sandbagging - - I think this was AWESOME and I’m very proud of them all!! The floods in Fargo even made the news in Sweden - - I actually watched more TV tonight than I have in the past four weeks!

Sunday, March 29 – Well, right away this morning, as soon as my alarm went off, I realized that I had forgotten to “spring ahead” last night and was late to breakfast! At least I wasn’t the only one, Sven had done the same….

We met everyone at a place called Gunnebo Slott – it is a manor that dates back to 1796 when it was completed. We were given a dramatic tour of the manor where characters from it original owners told us the story of the manor. It once belonged to the richest man in Sweden – it was said that he even borrowed money to the King! After the tour, we enjoyed lunch on the grounds - - I can only imagine how beautiful the gardens are later in the summer!

This evening, we were invited to Tottie’s house – she has been the GSE coordinator for our stay in Mölndal and was a team leader to India about a year ago. She lives on the sea and has a FANTASTIC view of the water!!! We also took a little walk and ended up climbing up some rocks to see even further out to sea!!! Of course, Alison and I typically have our heads down on, looking at the paths for cool rocks to bring home – if our luggage is overweight at the airport, we’ll have to blame the rocks!

Our "Northern"-most visit to Tanum & Stromstad

Tuesday, March 24 – Kara and I started out the day shopping with Lotta in Goteborg. We stopped by a little handicraft shop just of The Avenue near the Art Museum – we each found a couple of items to bring home AND Lotta was kind enough to buy us each a Dala horse towel for our kitchens.

After lunch, it was time to head to the train station to find the others and take a train ride two hours north of Goteborg to the Tanum / Strömstad kommuns. We found some seats and I enjoyed watching the countryside go by while listing to my mp3 player with music from home. Our tickets were purchased for the ride all the way up to Strömstad but I kept hearing everyone talk about Tanum too. So, there was a little confusion about where we were getting off…. The train stopped in Tanum and a few minutes later a group of people came walking into the car we were in with the woman from the train. Luckily, when they didn’t see any of us get off, they asked if there were any groups of Americans on the train and she remembered us. Alison, Jennifer and I got off while Kara and Rachel were going to Strömstad to meet their family.

Jennifer and I are staying in a little fishing village called Grebbestad with Krister and Nina Jansson and their white cat named Champis (Sham-piece) right on the water. It didn’t take us long to figure out that Krister and Nina like to enjoy a few “adult beverages” – they had just gotten back from Germany with cases of beer, wine and other alcohols. We started dinner the first night with a few glasses of champagne and then some wine followed by a desert wine of some sort…

Wednesday, March 25 – Two stops today on our program. The first was the Eko Park in Strömstad which was located in a relatively new facility built in 2000. Here they have developed programs to provide environmental training and conferences for everyone from 4 years old and up. The building was funded jointly through the EU, Sweden, the District and the Kommun but is now run with funding only from the Strömstad Kommun. The building was erected to be almost self-sufficient based on the technology available at the time. The displays along with Margareta’s stories are very entertaining and would certainly appeal to the younger audiences to help them learn about recycling and taking care of the environment.

The Loven Center for Marine Sciences was our second stop of the day and was located on the coast in Tjärnö. It is part of the University of Göteborg and typically has an average of about 75 scientists and support staff on the premises with as many as 125 people on-site for educational classes or seminars. In addition to being an educational center, they conduct quite a bit of research here and also have an aquarium to show their visitors. The various tanks in the aquarium allow the visitors to see the various fish and other animals that live at the different depths off the coast of Sweden. In the middle of the room, they have a shallow pool with animals that can be touched or even picked up by the visitors. I almost forgot - - for fika today, we got to help celebrate Waffle Day in Sweden with some waffles, fruit and cream. Apparently, this day started as a religious celebration…

After Karl-Axel dropped us at home, I had some time to walk along the shore to enjoy the view and look for rocks to bring home (there is a lot of granite in this area and I found more quartz as well). I had my eyes to the ground picking up rocks when I heard this little honk-like noise RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME… I looked up and there was this HUGE swan about 5 feet away! Not sure if they are territorial animals or not… I slowly backed away.

Our evening plans included a boat ride out on the sea around Grebbestad with Krister & Nina’s friend Per. Their other friend, also Per, joined us and we left the harbor just after 6 PM so there wasn’t a lot of daylight left but just enough to sit on the front of the boat and soak it in for a few minutes before the sun set. As it was getting darker, we stopped by some rocks and caught a brief glimpse of two seals that were in the area. During the warmer months, there are quite a few of them hanging around. We enjoyed some snacks and slowly drove back to the dock. There, we enjoyed a bit more champagne and company before heading home for a BBQ. One of Krister’s patients had brought him some fresh crayfish this morning so they had those and made some burgers as well (for those of us, mainly ME who wouldn’t touch the crayfish!) It was a delightful evening spent with some of our new Swedish friends!

Thursday, March 26 - We’ve been looking forward to today! Almost an entire day spent outside – the weather was once again sunny but a little chilly. First, we were shown some rock carvings at a location known as Litsleby. In our minds, we all thought rock carvings would be on a wall but these were actually on the ground! They’ve been painted with red paint to make them more visible for the more than 160,000 tourists EACH YEAR that visit the area! Some date back to 1600 BC. We enjoyed lunch and more information about the rock carvings at a local museum that specializes in documenting and research on rock carvings.

Next, was a walking tour of a small fishing village called Fjällbacka on the west coast of Sweden. This sleepy little town has about 1,000 residents in the winter months but comes alive in the summer with the visiting boats and people. Hans, our tour guide, told us the story of this town. It became part of Sweden from Denmark without much fanfare as Denmark thought it was a dying town but shortly after becoming part of Sweden, there was a “run of herring” that lasted 27 years and brought much wealth to the community…it was a quaint little town with a lot of character and a huge rock “mountain” that we got to climb to the top of and look over the city and towards the sea. Once we caught our breath from the climb up, the view was breath-taking!!! The descent was just as much fun as we wandered down a path through a part in the rocks.
Jennifer and I ended the day by having dinner with Krister and Per at the Nautic Restaurang. We all enjoyed a glass of Sweden-produced beer called Falcon and I tried a pizza known as Tjurpannan Pizzor. It was made of köttfärs (pronounced shurts-far and is ground beef with kind of a taco seasoning), bacon (no Swedish name for this ingredient), champinjoner (mushrooms) and I added some vitlök (garlic). It was really good but it’s been haunting me all evening! After dinner, while we waited for Nina’s movie to get done, we played Virtual Bowling…. It’s the same concept as Mark Lynch’s golf simulator where you actually throw a ball down a lane that ends about 15 feet from the line and then the ball continues down a tv screen and shows it hitting the pins. Our scores were horrible but we enjoyed it!

After a Rotary meeting this afternoon, we will take the train back down to Goteborg and be met by our new host families. Sorry that it took so long to update this week, we've been extremely busy from morning til night. Take care!

Friday, March 27 - As I stumbled into the bathroom this morning half-awake, I realized something looked a little strange out the window - - it was snowing!! What a beautiful thing to see on the Swedish coast!

March 23 - Vi ses Goteborg - - We'll be back soon!

Monday, March 23 – We woke up to a BEAUTIFUL sunny day on the island and throughout Göteborg!! After getting through the first week and a half of rainy, cloudy weather with a little snow - - it has been wonderful throughout Sweden!

We started our day a little later than normal at about 11 AM with an organization called Ekocentrum. They are a non-profit foundation that specializes in helping businesses train their entire staff about environmentally friendly behaviors and practices. They were the first to promote the use of urine separating toilets which are flushed with rain water collected from the roof of the building. We received some very interesting brochures from this visit that we can’t wait to read!

After lunch in a sleepy little café with really good (but the typical American) hamburgers, we had a few minutes to spare and were driven up to a lookout point called Ramberget (I hope I spelled it correctly) and enjoyed the panoramic view of Göteborg while capturing it on our cameras.

Later, we met with two gentlemen who have been working on an exciting recycling project – one has dedicated the past 15 years to making it work. Their venture is called Enviro System and they have created equipment to recycle rubber tires which is unique and really interesting. Their special equipment converts the rubber tire pieces into gas (which is used to power the unit), carbon black (which is completely 100% returned to its original state), heavy oil, light oil and some metal scraps. Every one of these by-products can be reutilized in another process. They are in the process of building the first production plant just north of Vanersborg and it should be operational later this year.

After a few minutes to relax at Christina and Lars’ house, it was off to another Rotary meeting. Towards the end of dinner, we were able to witness one of the incredible sunsets that we had heard so much about. Tonight is our last night in Göteborg with our current host families. We will be back here in about a week but will be staying with different families - - so, once again, it is time to pack up our things and move on. Tomorrow is a train ride north to Tanum.

By the way, to my "Bat Girls" team mates - - I had to look back BUT I HAVE worn the allusive pink blouse ONLY ONCE during this entire trip!!!

Here it is... back a week or so ago in Uddevalla with precious little Tilda.... she was so blasted cute!!!

Take care all!!! I'll be back before you know it!

Love,

Steph

March 20, 21 & 22 - First few days in Goteborg

Friday, March 20 – We “moved” to the Göteborg Rotary Club today. We really didn’t leave the area that we’ve been in but we moved to a new host family. But, the first thing on the program in Göteborg is a Rotary meeting and a very nice restaurant by the water - - once again, we met a ton of wonderful people and even saw a couple of familiar faces (Per from the Port and Peter from the bed and breakfast near Borås on our first night in Sweden).

Kara and I will be staying together for the next four nights with Lennart and Lotta Källfelt on a small island near Göteborg. One of the strangest things to me about this area is how narrow the roads are… in many cases, two cars cannot pass one another yet it really doesn’t seem to be an issue, even in a metropolitan area like this. Anyway, their house was built in 1880 and has a fantastic view from EVERY window of the water – there are only 21 houses on the island and we can’t wait to explore it a bit more!

Tonight, we were treated to a night at the Concert Hall for a little Mozart & Bruckner classical music and then a late dinner for Jennifer, Kara and I at Christina and Lar’s house. Christina is the GSE Coordinator in Sweden for District 2360 that we are visiting. She made a fantastic meal but the thing I like most was desert - - sliced up kiwi, bananas and strawberries with small pieces of white chocolate baked in the oven for a few minutes and served with ice cream!!! (That is ONE desert that I will DEFINITELY be making at home!)

Then, once we returned home, tired and ready for bed - - a minor tragedy (at least in my eyes). I was obviously so tired that, when I went to plug in my trusty little travel fan of about the last two years, I forgot to use the adapter AND the converter and FRIED IT BIG TIME!! Well, if nothing else, I have a little bit more room in my suitcase as a result!!

Saturday, March 21 – Today is District Conference Day and supposedly a REALLY big presentation day. I was really excited because we are scheduled to meet with the Outbound Swedish Team who will be visiting Minnesota in April. After listening to a presentation from a gentleman from Uganda Rotary and hearing the India’s team presentation, it was our turn and, once again, everything went very smoothly. No one asked any questions – probably because it was right before lunch…. We got to sit with the Sweden team during lunch; followed by a short visit to the Museum of World Culture and then it was off to Christina’s house for fika (coffee break) and some more chatting. We enjoyed talking with them and helping them get a better understanding of what to expect from their upcoming trip and how they could be more prepared than we were. That’s one thing we all sort of wished we’d have had more of an opportunity to do before we left for Sweden.

Oh, my…. I almost forgot the best part of the day! Kara and I had a bit of time so we decided to go for a walk around the island. Lennart’s neighbor gave us some pointers for finding our way and off we went down the road for about a block or two before it ended (I thought it went the whole way around – boy, was I wrong!) and we followed a small path down to the water. There we could see another harbor and some ferry boats taking passengers to destinations unknown to us. To the right, we could see rocks and boulders of all sizes – we suddenly figured out why Lennart had told Kara she couldn’t go jogging on the island. We took some AWESOME pictures, stopped occasionally just to look and found some quartz crystals as well as shells before finding our way up the boulders to the flagpole we were told to find. There we found another small path down to the road that would return us home. As we were sitting by the water, enjoying the scenery, we saw a car with a ski rack cross the narrow bridge and thought that it might be Lennart’s wife Lotta returning home after a week of skiing. So, we went up and introduced ourselves and helped her unpack the car before we had to quickly change for our evening on the town.

We rounded out the evening with the District Conference Dinner back at Kviberg’s Kantin. For those of you who are use to attending Elks Conventions with me it was VERY similar to our banquet only smaller (60 people or so) but we didn’t have any John Miller-like comedians. They had a band that played for awhile and after they got through the first 4 or 5 slow songs, they finally picked up the pace so we could dance together and relax for awhile - - I think that might have been the release that we all needed to get through the rest of the trip….

Sunday, March 22 – Last day of the District Conference. After a brief intro at a local hotel, we all walked up to an old church on a hillside by the water for a gospel choir concert. The man who directs the choir was one of the members of the band from last night. He turned out to be an incredible piano player and we’ve been told that he’s pretty famous in Sweden. The choir was terrific to listen to and the time went by very quickly.

After finding a small little café for lunch, we went to the Univer seum which is near the Museum of World Culture and is intended to show the environment from the North to the South of Sweden as well as the rest of the world. The largest portion of the museum was a rainforest. When we arrived and looked through the glass, we saw some monkeys roaming freely but, when we got there, it was one of the “rain periods” and we found out that the monkeys do not like the rain. It was fun and interesting - - I mostly enjoyed watching the kids reactions to many of the exhibits. At the very end, we were taken into a little room where they have a couple of animals for us to hold. The only thing we could hold or pet today was a little bearded dragon named Oliver. He was very calm and just looked at us like we were insane for being so interested in him.

We were a little late getting out of the Universeum so we didn’t have much time before we walked back out the door for dinner at the Royal Sailing Club near our “home” for the week. Dinner was really relaxing and the food was, once again, amazing. The meat that I had nearly melted in my mouth… we nearly blew away on the walk back but the stars were awesome to look at. Back at home, we sat and watched tv for really the first time in about three weeks. We caught a little bit of BNN before switching over to the golf channel and chatting with Lotta for nearly an hour. Well, I’m hoping to catch Kevin and Tyler on Skype before turning in for the night but it’s not looking very good.

March 19 - Partille (Dentistry, Shopping, Art & Swedish Culture)

Not much time to write this morning but I wanted to fill you in on yesterday's adventures. Our morning started out at a Dental Office run by Mina - the Rotarian that Alison and Rachel are staying with. Their practice is very different from ours in the US because they actually go into the schools and visit the children on site in RV's like this one....

After lunch, we had a little time for shopping.

Jennifer had heard about a yarn shop which we found and bought some yarn to bring home.

Our last official visit of the day was at the Art Museum of Goteborg. The exhibits were very interesting and the view from the top stairs in front of the building into the city was pretty awesome as well - - I LOVE the old architecture in this area!

Our final evening was spent at Anders house with his family for dinner. Kara was the desert chef preparing her special Apple Crisp for everyone.

We enjoyed spending time together, listening to stories, learning to sing some Swedish songs and skol-ing to some Ackavit. The picture in the middle is of me and my host for this week, AnnaCarin. I have enjoyed getting to know her and her family (Tomas, Daniel and Andreas) and look forward to keeping in touch with her. The other two pictures from above are of our dinner at Anders house. He was the GSE Coordinator in Partille.

Gotta run - my ride should be here soon!

Port of Goteborg, Botanical Gardens and SKF Industries

Wednesday, March 18 - the SECOND sunny day IN A ROW!!!!!!! Woo-hoo! We're excited that maybe spring is finally closing in on us after a dreary couple of weeks (weather-wise).

Today, our adventures led us to the Port of Goteborg - we got a tour of one of the facilities that unloads big cargo ships. There were containers EVERYWHERE! It was really colorful and the large cranes were fun to watch in operation. They unload containers in several different ways and A LOT OF THEM each year. They also transport cars and their numbers are down dramatically this year over last for the same time period.

Then we had some time before our next scheduled visit so we stopped by a botanical garden for about an hour - - it was really nice to be able to wander around and find a park bench to just "chill" on for a few minutes.

Our last stop of the day was a manufacturing location called SKF - they manufacture ball bearings. Like many of the places we've been, they are a global company and are set up really well to handle tours. Their processes were very interesting but somewhat difficult to see - -many of the operations are done with robotics.

This is Anders - he's been our GSE host here in Partille and, at times, we bomb-barded him with cameras but he always has a smile on his face. He's doing a GREAT job considering this is the first time Partille has hosted a GSE team!!!

Before dinner tonight, AnnaCarin and I took a nice walk through her neighborhood and out into the countryside, we "hopped" through an electric fence and went by some bubbling streams - - it was really nice.

March 16 & 17 - Adventures in Partille

Monday, March 16 – Today, we move again to our fifth host family and make the drive from Trollhattan to Partille, which is a suburb of Göteborg. For the drive, I rode with a gentleman named Stig-göran. He and Bengt were challenged with trying to fit all of our luggage into their two relatively small vehicles. Somehow, they managed.

Stig-göran is a retired product development engineer from SAAB. He had some fun stories to tell us during our drive about his work - - He was a project manager and had to present his team’s car concepts to SAAB’s management team. They had just come up with a fun new design but were “sent back to the drawing board” because they had forgotten to was no room for a cup holder – after discussing it a few days and figuring out they had a space about 1/4 inch wide by about 4 inches tall, they figured out how to make a storable cup holder that was very cool looking and clever.

Anyway, we arrived in Partille thanks to Rachel’s navigating and were dropped off at the Kvibergs Kantin for a Rotary Meeting right away. The Kantin is located in an old military establishment of some sort and is now used as a gymnasium (our high school) that focuses on sports. Anders Wattström is the GSE coordinator for our visit AND he cooks the meals for the Rotary Meetings (He has his own catering service located out of the kitchen in the same building) - - he was very excited for our visit because, apparently, this was the first GSE team they’ve had stay with their club.

After the meeting, we were taken to visit the local Bibliotek (library) and hear about their state-of-the-art facility. We walked around town a bit and stopped by a very old church & graveyard for a few minutes before returning to the Kantin for our host families to pick us up.

AnnaCarin Wårdh along with her husband, Tomas, and her two sons – Daniel (18) and Andreas (15) are my host family for this week and live in Lerum. Anna Carin is a Human Resources Manager for a Logistics company called SwissLog . Tomas works for Volvo in their IT department. Daniel is in his last year at the gymnasium (his specializes in skateboarding and he rides a train for 50 minutes one-way to get to his school in Goteborg) and he will be going to California for a year to study at a university. Andreas is interested in soccer and has just gotten his license to drive a mo-ped (however, the one he helped buy is currently in the shop.) Since Jens and Jessica’s daughter Hanna was a similar age and we had discussed driving laws in Sweden, it was interesting to me to learn how different they are from the United States. (By the way, when I was talking to Kevin and Tyler this weekend, Kevin told me that he had signed Ty up for drivers ed classroom and he’ll start it before I get home) Anyway, in Sweden, kids can take a class and get a license to drive a mo-ped at age 15. At age 16, they can get a permit and start training for their license BUT the parents must attend some training with the child AND the kids can not actually get a drivers license until they are age 18.

After dinner, I went with AnnaCarin to her gospel choir practice and was surprised to find out that they sing all of their songs in English. They seemed like a very fun group and a good mixture of younger singers with those a bit older…. When we got home, we looked at some pictures of my family and theirs. AnnaCarin and I got into a discussion about scrapbooking and I showed her a little demo u-tube movie about the Cricut machine and talked about my long weekends away with my girlfriends - - Scrapbooking is getting more popular in Sweden but she had never heard of such things.

Tuesday, March 17 – AnnaCarin and I stopped for a few minutes at her work on the way to the Kantin. Her company has offices in several different countries and provides automated or semi-automated warehousing solutions for other companies including some fairly well-known businesses like IKEA, Target and even Wal-mart. We’ve also talked a bit about human resources (she has helped to develop the performance appraisal system her company uses) and have talked about differences in unions between Sweden and the US.

Our first official stop for the day was the Queen Silvia Children’s hospital – they are the largest children’s hospital in the EU with about 1900 employees and their emergency room has about 40,000 visits per year. In Sweden, health care is totally free for children up to age 18 and, according to Daniel our tour guide and a Rotary member, it doesn’t often get abused (people bringing their children in to see a doctor unnecessarily). When children are admitted to the hospital, parents or some relative are required to stay with them. It is also a law in Sweden that every child has the right to participate in play therapy when visiting a hospital. So we were shown the play therapy area and were very impressed with how hard they work to be able to provide enjoyable and educational surroundings for children of all ages (from infant to age 18) and even give the children some dolls that are provided by a Kiwanis program. They also employ some clowns that are in the hospital 4 days a week and visit patients to help cheer them up – we got to meet and talk to two of them for a few minutes and hear about their experiences.

Our afternoon was spent at the Goteborg Opera House. The building itself was INCREDIBLE and is located down on the waterfront. This facility not only does opera but ballet and musicals as well. They have a set construction area, seamstresses and even a shoemaker on staff.

At about 3 PM most days is a break that Swedish call Fika. At this time, many will visit a local coffee shop for coffee or tea and something sweat to eat. Today, with my water (sorry, have tried it here but still cannot drink coffee) I tried a Passion Fruit mousse desert - - it was AMAZING!!!! Then we wandered the streets of Goteborg – Anders took me to a small shoe store named Lester. They sold Red Wing boots – they had a couple of our heritage products and the manager said that during the winter time, he carries up to 12 of our styles and sells the most Red Wings in Sweden. He is a small niche market store that tries to carry shoe styles that the local chain stores do not provide. Our final stop was an indoor marketplace - - they had a little bit of everything mostly food related from fresh meats to fruit & vegetables to cheese & breads and even a little “shop” that makes their own chocolates.

Quiet night tonight at “home,” caught up on my writing and now my blog. I still have quite a few pictures to sift through. Good night!