Sometimes, not often though, I think about the book I once started to write, over 2 years now since I began to write it.....I was asked about it just recently so I thought I would post the first little section of what its about....


Often enough Liz let her mind drift back to the memories. Back to a time when she thought she could do anything and felt invincible, and back to a time when she thought life, as she knew it was perfect. It was a place she would hold in her heart dear, along with the man who was once the love of her life. The man she would never forget and the impact he left on her. She was a woman who was in love with the father of her son whom had passed away ten years ago. Letting go was easier said then done when she had Richard to remind her everyday.
Until she met Leo, a widowed father who shared the same grief as her from losing a loved one. He would teach her how to put everything in the past to rest, look forward to the future, and love everything in the present, including him.

Bottoms up!

I was fixing Caro's hair last night...obviously...for her birthday party today..

...and she's holding the prized possession,VODKA....
She looks crazy..lol

Just a little video of our Tyson swimming,and him doing his tricks...dorky I know...but I love this little guy! A little bad quality, as i took one with my mobile phone and the other with my digital picture camera,bad lighting etc etc....

Oh my god!

We just got in...it's 10:21 pm and we had to take Tyson for a pee. It's dark out, but despite that I seen this little guy!! A hedgehog. My first live one and yep I am a dork. I crouched down saying in a dumb voice..oh my god look how cute it is!! It's tummy looks soft! I wish I could touch it. As much as Ty likes to pee on everything outdoors, he almost got his weiner poked by this thing. He only walked litterally 2 inches from it!!

Kinda hard to see, but I darkened the pic around it to make it easier.

His prickley back...I also found out that while I ran back to the house for my camera..I cannot run. I thought my chest would fall apart!

He is saying Hi!!

Maybe not with that face

OI!! Ugly shit isn't he?

We went for a little(ha!) walk again..killer!

Tomorrow we will go to Hagakyrkan to the viking tower thingy.
These are the only pix I have for today because, well...I'm just tired. Even Tyson barely made it back home. We walked too much today and my god it's HOT out!



The forest where we walked..




My brother once said he wondered how this particular place would look when the weather gets nicer. I took this mid-winter here. It's behind the house here....




Well today..it's the first day of spring, and what a difference!
You can actually see the walking path now.

Wait till summer hits and there are leaves on the trees.

Today was gorgeous!!! Tomorrow will be warmer...but anyways...
I took this pic of the sun directly on..it's ok I guess.



Ty and I were out the side of the house sitting in the grass when a female..a cute little female sniffed him up and down, he did nothing. Then when she walked away with her owner he gave this look..(Where ya goin'???)....for gods sake! He makes me laugh.

At one point though, when she got around to sniffing his side, all the way up to his face, she jumped back like....woah buddy your ugly!..lol...this next picture says it all....
Damn pinecones in his mouth,again...Must've freaked her out.


Either way,silly dog or not...LOOK! The flowers are blooming everywhere..woohoo! Spring is here !!!!!

So today...

School was ok, beautiful outside, and in fact I am about to take Tyson for a little walk. Spring is here thank god!!!!! I do have schoolwork to do, but I already finished it the other day. I skipped ahead and know that I should not, but I will just review it to make sure that I still understand the work.

Tomorrow we stop class at 11am and we will all go to the cafeteria to have coffee and cake. I don't know why, but ok....I can't have cake...I made a deal to knock off the cake, the junk, the soda etc etc...sigh. Well I am sticking with it. So far so good. I think I made it 3 days now?..lol

Anyways...I guess thats it. Oh I do have a pic of this guy in my class, Edson, and he is here because his wife is swedish etc etc.....He was a teacher in Brazil, he taught Capoeira. He is teaching it here in central Gothenburg and I asked him to email me the pictures he has of this from when he was living in Brazil...so here you go...

Edson on the far right, on the ground.

No idea which is him in this one.

freaking crazy!..ouch!

The rest of the pictures are in HERE

I agree with what Maja said....

I wrote my post saying I have nothing to blog about, then I read hers and realize it's not what it used to be. Blogging used to be the BEST. In fact if it weren't for blogger I would of never have met my husband. He found me right here....only he was half a world away, so I for one, will do my best to write, or try to write more often, even if it's about not much at all.

Nothing Special

I don't really have anything to blog about, so I will just post these pix I took with my mobile phone the other evening.

Vättlefjäll

It was actually nice today so we went for a walk at the lake with Tyson. The wind was blowing, which made it cold like crazy, but it was so pretty there.


Welcome to Vättlefjäll Nature Reserve



Self timers sitting on a crooked rock doesn't always work.



My honey and Tyson!


Me and Mr Pissy Pants. He was SO wound up he kept walking all over the place, or I should say running everywhere. It was like he was high on sugar. Funny thing was, he was afraid of the water for some reason when he actually LOVES the lake...lol



Tyson of course, with 5 little pinecones in his mouth.



In the car, STILL with pinecones shoved in his chompers.
He's so retarded sometimes. He refuses to give them up.



This was taking from high up, it's next to the lake. Wonder how many moose are in there?



Again, taken from way above the lake...



I love the color of the water.


Taken from above, before we went down to the lake.




Anyways, there are a few I didn't put on this blog, but I have them all in HERE if you want to see the rest.

How cute are these two?


My babies!!!!!! Well not anymore but, you know.....

Easyyyyyyyyyyyy!

Today was an easy day in school. We even left early! by 30 minutes. I was so pleased, BUT some students had to stay till normal time because they are not up to speed with the rest of us. The reason for that is because the class they were supposed to be in didn't have any more room, so they got put in a faster class, our class, and we are more advanced then them. So Richard, our teacher, decided to try and help them today while the rest of us got to leave.

Four of us decided to take the spårvagn to Haganskyrka and look for a nice cafe to have tea or coffee. It was a pretty place and I have to say we enjoyed ourselves getting to talk some more. The 4 of us stick together a lot in school so it was nice to be together out of school too. Haganskyrkan has pretty pebble sidewalks and little cafes and shops everywhere. I loved it!
There is a spot back there though where you see this tower, I think it was built by the vikings, and it sits up on top of a hill, many many stairs leading up to it. Would deffinately take some time to get to the top, but I want my husband to go there with me, to walk back in there in the shops, up the stairs to this place. It would be so nice to do this with him. A little romantic you know? I'm going to mention this when he wakes up. My poor honey is sick.

For now though I am going to show my pictures the girls and I took today in Haganskyrkan and then go do my homework. No school tomorrow..woohoo!!


Left to right...
Bernadette...... Eliana......Faye
(Switzerland) (Jordan) (Phillipines)



Them again...



Left to right...Bernadette, Eliana & Me


This is Hagakyrkan...this part of the city
is named after this church 'Haga Church'

My class trip

Today for school or as we know it here SFI, svenska för invandrare, Swedish for Immigrants, we had to not go to class. Instead we got to go later in the morning and meet in Central. Not everyone was there, about 5 or 6 people didn't show up. We took a little tour on the way to the Library, which was our main stop. The teacher explained things to us in Swedish, which I only caught half of it because it was noisy outside and the wind was blowing etc etc...
I am on the far right, the second one in-back row, and the girl to the right, the Arabian, is Eliana, my best friend. The class consists of people from all over the world, which I had mentioned once before. I love it because I get to know everyone and hear about life in their part of the world. Sometimes though there are things maybe you wish you haven't heard at all.

There is this one student I might have mentioned before, Anmal. he is from Iraq. We had a little talk with each other in the library and it was a sad one for the two of us...probably more so for him. I sort of figured he was a refugee here but I was not 100% sure. I had asked him if he would go to visit his family in the summer when we have a break for school. He told me no because he has no family, or home. It started to sink in with me what he was saying.
I know he is from Baghdad. That was enough for me to figure it out on my own. He told me he has no home, his whole family was killed, and to top it off, he still has a bullet in him that they cannot take out because it is lodged somewhere and that if they did take it out, it would have dire consequences. He got hit with a bullet from an american soldier. My heart sank.
I said to him I was sorry, so sorry. Anmal said ' No it is ok, it was not you that did this to me, it's alright.' But I could see he was sad now and he went to sit down on one of the benches behind everyone. Eliana asked me what was wrong and I whispered in her ear what was said, and repeating this caused me to have a few tears. I felt so sad.

After I got out of the line I went to sit next to him on the bench and he was himself again and was laughing and of course I laughed with him. He ran from his country because it was taken from him. I don't know what else to say right now about it, but I am not happy that there are good people in that country who get affected by this war and killed and injured and loose everything they have ever known. Innocent people die because Bush decided he wanted to just take over. I don't even like Bush to begin with, and now, I hate him even more.
I never in my life thought I would come across someone who was affected by this war in Iraq. Not someone who is on the other side of the fence. This guy is a good guy. He is always happy and smiling and is friendly with everyone. Anmal is only 21 and I wish he and other people from his country who want a normal peaceful life didn't have to go through this.

It felt good to come home to my husband today and tell him about this. I wouldn't know what to do without Paul. I love him like crazy.

Of course I am also sad for our people, the americans who die in this war too. It hurts me that there has to be so much hate and so many people dying, but there is nothing that I can do. It's life. Anyways i will shut up about it now. I have to say that I have learned so much more in my life here in Sweden then I ever have living in America.

The day at 'school' did come to a nice end though. Eliana and I went to a cafe to have coffee and cake, and we sat and gossiped while it poured and rained outside after we were free to go. It was so nice to do that, and then comming home to Paul and the cutest puppy in the world made it even better.

This is cute little Rose-Marie and she just turned 4 years old the other day. She doesn't look to thrilled about her birthday party does she? She's so cute!!!

Learning

Well I learned some new things today at school and it wasn't all about Swedish. Some of things were about myself. Paul said that he thinks I grew as a person in the past 3 months that I have been here. I will try to explain this as best as I can. First of all I go to school to learn Swedish as we all know. Of course there are others in the class so it's natural that I will make friends. There is a woman there, Eliana and she is from Jordan, and she speaks Arabic and English. Before I knew anything about her I had a stupid stereotypical view of what her life might be like because she wears a burka, only on her head, not her whole body.
I took notice that she would follow me when I was going to lunch etc etc in school. She was just trying to make a friend with me I guess. On the spårvagn going home she also would be right there too. It worked because her and I are very good friends now in this first week of getting to know one another. She has already invited me to her house for lunch one day after school. I like her so much and I cannot remember the last time I had such a good friend. I learned things about people from the middle east that I thought I would never learn. She is one of the coolest people I know.

Eliana and I were of course together going to break at school today. She started talking to a guy in our class in the hallway and I asked her if they understood each other because apparently not all middle-easterners speak the same language. She said yes. Also I was curious about this person and the other middle-easterners in my class. So I said to this guy, Marzin, ' How are you? Do you like this class, is it easy for you to learn?' Eliana translated for me because he really didn't know english. He answered and she told me what he said then he asked where I was from. of course I said America and he smiled nicely. So I didn't know exactly where he was from and I asked him the same. He said Iraq. Naturally I did my best to keep a smile, according to Eliana, my eyes went a little big. I didn't try to, honest. But I smiled back at him and I said nice to meet you and I held out my hand and we shook hands.

Marzin seems like a nice person. I talked to him, looked right at him and spoke even though he couldn't understand me and she translated everything. I asked questions and tried to get a feel for who he is and to make a point to him and myself. The point to him is to show that not all Americans are a¤¤holes, I don't know, he could like Americans already, I can only assume things because of the war and so on.
So anyways, The point to myself is that just because he is from a country that the USA is at war with doesn't mean he could hate me for being where I am from and also to show myself that Iraqi's are people too and not all of them are gung-ho deadset on being mean and wanting to kill people. he was a nice person and smiled and I could tell he wasn't putting on a front. I was happy to make friends with him.

At breaktime after this confrontation with Marzin, I went to the cafeteria and I sat at the table with Eliana and Bernadette. I looked up to see Nima walking around, so I called out for him to come sit with us girls. He sat next to me and I asked him if he liked Sweden. He said not too much. I asked where he was from and he said Tehran,Iran. We all talked and through his rough english I got to know him better too. He too was another nice person from the middle-east. I thought to myself ...'I am on a roll here.' He said to me that if he were to go back to Iran where his father is, he would kill him...and he laughed about it so I know he was joking. All of us walked back up to the room afterwards and I thought to myself, lets just finish this.
I walked over to Anmal, said hi, asked where he was from, he says Iraq, then said to me..'You are from America?'..I said yes and he smiled. He's a young 21 year old who seems like a happy guy. I was pleased with myself to do this because I feel like I proved to myself that no matter where you are from, no matter what war is going on and who it involves, there are still good people who come from those places. I would of talked to Achmed, or however you spell it, but he was not there today.

I feel better, much better knowing I can be an American saying...There are some really nice Iraqis and Iranians and Jordanians out there!
I can hear my family now saying 'what??????'