Dreaming of Freedom

Week two of SFI passed uneventfully. It continues to be excellent although we can’t help but sit there letting about 70% of it wash over us as incompressible. It seems that usually someone or other understands what the teacher is saying and that manages to carry the class forward. It’s very interesting trying to learn a new language. I think I’m still in awe of myself trying and can’t quite believe I ever will. But nothing ventured, nothing gained…
Although it feels like a mountain to climb, it is an excellent excuse for reading kids books and last night I branched out into film and tried to watch Pippi Långstrump (Pippi Longstocking). Perhaps not surprisingly I could really only make out a couple of words!

It’s now turned icy cold here which is a relief after all that horrid rain. Braving the cold on Thursday night I took the ferry across to Lindholmen and met up with K and friends to watch Manufacturing Consent - a film all about Chomsky and seeing as it’s his 80th birthday coming up, we ate cake to celebrate. Although he is one of the leading intellectuals of the day and certainly has some of the best politics, I don’t think there is much in the way of films about him. I think this one is a good attempt to introduce people to ‘Chomsky the political activist’. Chomsky himself if somewhat ambivalent about the film, in part because he feels the medium of film is prone to heroizing. He says he regularly receives letters asking how people can ‘join his movement’, which is of course frustrating when he is just one person in a whole diverse sea of people working towards a better world. I think the fact that he is a professor at MIT, articulate, white and male gives him a certain credibility to begin with but also he is extremely hardworking and in the public eye and that in itself is going to lead to a certain amount of admiration. So while he isn’t the figurehead of any movement he is certainly able to analysis, collate and present evidence that is used to support anarchist interpretations of theories of power, propaganda and control - which is something that makes anyone read his work feel less isolated in their own interpretation of the world and more empowered to try and change it for the better.

On Friday after work I met up with Karin at Botaniska and walked around the wooded laked area behind it. It was cold but beautiful and the pearly white deposits of frozen water sparkled on the trees and the heather and the frozen ice shapes on the lakes and puddles made the world seem calmer and stiller. There was hardly anyone there and we spent a couple of hours wandering around and stiffening up in the cold before coming back to the flat for a well earned fika.

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What a week - the rain seems to have been nonstop and I’ve spent very damp mornings in my SFI classes. I’ve also spent an unhappy amount of time on trams and buses after getting a puncture mid week. Despite classes starting at 8am I have spent a very happy week at SFI learning Swedish - but it’s early days still and I’m still trotting out the sentence: ‘jag förstår inte svenska’ (I don’t understand Swedish) whenever I have to talk somewhere that isn’t class.

I’ve been spending the rest of the time meeting up with Karin and Cheri and of course going to the bookclub where we discussed The Sea by John Banville at length (well in between the cups of tea and life stories!). There really is nothing like sitting in a warm room with a cup of tea and a whole bunch of woman.

On Wednesday night I went to see When We Dead Awaken by Ibsen at the Pustervik Theatre in Järntorget which I thought was very well done. I hadn’t seen that Ibsen play before so it was great to stuff it into my mind along with his others and where better to see it than in a Nordic country in the depths of a rainy November.

Today I introduced Jin Sook from my SFI class to the delights of the Stadsbibliotek (City Library) and she treated me to lunch in the lovely little restaurant opposite where for about 79ske (£6.60) you get a very hearty lunch. I finished off today by going to the Arbetsförmedling (unemployment office) to see if they could help me to find a job. I’m not sure they can but still it was probably worth a try. They suggested that I come back when I have learnt Swedish and in the meantime contact my embassy to ask what companies there were here that employ English speakers!

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I woke up early very excited because today was the very first day of my Swedish lessons with SFI. I bundled myself up protectively against the cold and wet only to get half way down the hill and fall off my bike. Soaking wet and very shaken I had to limp home to get changed and start the journey all over again. Eventually I got to class, very late but happily in time for fika with kanelbullar!

All my studying has paid off so far and there wasn’t much I didn’t understand. The teacher is very kind and speaks slowly. The class seems very nice, altogether we will have three teachers so I guess that will help us with not becoming dependent on one teacher’s accent. And there is an interesting mix of students from all over the world. It was really nice to be sitting cozily in a classroom again and chanting after the teacher - it was happily reminiscent of primary school.

So now I will try to write some of this in Swedish as well! Bear with me as it’s probably going to be hideously wrong!!

Idag jag ha mitt första Svenska lärdom med SFI och det var bra. Alla mitt studiera hjälpa och det jag förstå mycket. Läraren är mycket vänlig och talar långsamt.

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I went to my first Swedish lesson today. If you’re in Sweden for long enough to get yourself a personal number then you can apply for Swedish lessons from the government. Known as SFI which stands for Svenska för invandrare (Swedish for immigrants), these are provided free of charge and are really quite intensive. There are two courses - C and D and everyone starts on C. Course C runs for three hours a day, five days a week for anything up to six or seven months and D anything up to four months. The first half of course C gets you up and talking and then during the second part of the course you get to do a sort of work experience called ‘pracktik’ so that you have the opportunity to speak Swedish in the work place.

I don’t actually start until next Monday but I’m looking forward (albeit apprehensively) to actually learning with other people. I hoping I’ve put down a good base with the time I’ve spent with Lingaphone (borrowed from the well stocked library here). I get to spend about 20 minutes talking with a teacher before the course starts on Monday so I expect I’ll find out lots more details then. At the moment I’m still a bit in shock that my course runs from 8am to 11.15 every day.

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So I’m really in the website mood and I’ve finally updated my own website struggling with photoshop in the process and I like to think succeeding to some small degree. I’ve also refreshed my Gothenburg and Norwich pages and the whole bundle of pages and sites is starting to feel a little more ‘mine’.

The weather here in Gothenburg is starting to get cold and sandals and sunglasses have been pushed aside in my attempt to shut windows and snuggle into jumpers. I’ve been steadily working my way through the Linguaphone course material I borrowed from the library and I have to say it’s good solid stuff. No wonder it’s so expensive to buy. Horrary for libraries!!

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