glad påsk!

happy easter! we celebrated it on saturday, actually. it's very different from easter in the states: they do decorate eggs, but they also decorate branches with feathers... not sure what that's called or what it signifies... maybe i oughtta ask, haha. we did that friday night, the whole family- at least the ones who live here in kumla. (sara and her family, inger and her guy, and her ex also- it'd be like having a party with julie and mom... not a big, scandalous deal!) we didn't hunt for easter eggs on saturday, but i think that's probably because the kids are all too old or too young :) instead of plastic eggs here, they use cardboard ones that open in half, and are filled with godis! (goodies, candy) the eggs come in all sizes, i thought about buying one as a souvenir... but they look like something you'd find at the dollar store, and i could probably just nick one from the kids if they decide to throw them away. but here's a picture of the nice one louise got, and the big one for the whole family!

another thing that is very different is that little kids.. i think only girls, but maybe boys too (i just didn't see any boys dressed up), but they do a thing similar to trick-or-treating- except that they seem to trade little easter masterpieces drawn by them for more godis! and just like halloween, you can also 'trick-or-treat' at grocery stores: i even saw some kids dressed up at ICA Maxi the other day. oh, and the reason i figure it's just girls doing this is that they dress up as little 'witches'... where they have a scarf around their heads (like a peasant) and little patterned aprons or skirts.

that night, we had our påsk dinner, where we had first a piece of toast with orange caviar, a slice of cucumber, and an egg made out of salmon as an appetizer. for the main course we had a mix of root vegetables (carrots and potato-type things.. but no actual potatoes) and lamb (which is still my second-favorite meat behind brisket- sorry little lambies... you're just too tasty for your own good!) to drink, there was wine or a soda called påskmust, which tastes like cola and black licorice. kinda different. actually, wait! this is a reference most of you won't get, but it tastes like a dandelion soda i had in england!

and now for my nerdy fascinating fact: the word 'påsk' comes from 'passover' (and most languages, like spanish, have names for easter that come from that word, as opposed to 'eostre' in english. for more history on easter, head over to sue's blog- there should be a link to the left!) this also seems to explain why it's celebrated on saturday instead of sunday... here's my theory: dad figures 'lördag' is a cognate of 'lord's day', and that corresponds to 'sabbath' (similar to 'sabado')... and yeah. that's as far as my thoughts have gotten on that. i'm still working it out, since it's a bit hard to find conclusive stuff on swedish>english etymology! (and you all know how much i love languages- i'm even listening to a podcast on itunes of old english from oxford university as i write this!)

as for the rest of this past week, i'd say the highlight was on thursday after i watched max (who cried when i left- a good sign!) i took the bus with my faulty bus pass into kumla from sannahed, where i walked around a bit and most importantly, found a book/stationary store, where i purchased some post-its, an ever-important swedish-english dictionary, a sweeeet deal on a book (in english!) of my favorite artist edvard munch, and book one of my new plan: to read all of the harry potter books again, this time- the british versions!! so that means i did indeed buy 'the philosopher's stone', not 'the sorcerer's stone'. anyways, hope you all have a glad påsk as well! x