My First Day

Hej,

I just finished my first day. Needless to say, I am completely exhausted. After my flight was essentially cancelled on Monday, I arrived in Stockholm on Wednesday. After 10 hours of flying, I had to take a train, two buses, and a boat to finally get to Vassaro. That took about another 6 hours or so. When I got to Vassaro, dinner had just begun. Also, I arrived just in time for preparations for Confirmation. For the past for weeks, a group of about 50 teenage Protestants have been here at Vassaro, preparing for their Confirmation. The next couple days are now devoted to preparing the island for the arrival of several hundred family members and the Confirmation dinner.

Today, I woke up around 7:30 and wondered around for a little bit and finally found the showers. At 8, the Fladan (meaning "shallow harbor") funk raised the Swedish flag to start the day. Since I am officially working at Fladan in a few days, I was told to shadow them for the next few days. Basically, fladan is the sailing and canoeing area. Groups can book trips from a few hours to a couple days in length. At 8:15, I had breakfast. Swedish meals are very good, but very different manners than that in the U.S. It seemed like a free for all, where everyone was reaching and grabbing for food spread across the table. Not much talking goes on, almost like everyone is rushing to finish. It was kind of weird, but I'm sure I'll get used to it.

It should be mentioned now, that when I woke up, the weather was absolutely terrible. It was raining buckets and the wind was somewhere between 15-20 m/s. Due to that, my "boss" Tobbe (pronounced Toe-beh) cancelled the bookings for this morning, I couldn't take any good photos and us staff basically sat around at the Fladan house talking about politics and such for a few hours until the rain cleared. At Fladan, I met the other American, Nathaniel, who I had contacted through email. He has been very helpful in guiding me, and although he does not speak Swedish, he has taught me. There is also another American, Matthew, who I met and he is from Texas.

Around 11:00, Tobbe took me and Nathaniel out on the Yxlo (Eeks-lah), which is a motor boat the Swedish use for fires. This was still while the storm was raging. So, we all put on our full rain gear (everyone on the Swedish staff seems to have professional sailing off-shore suits) and we got in the boat. I was told to sit in the front, and Nathaniel told Tobbe not to kill me. I thought this was kind of odd, as I thought he was referring to waves splashing over the bow. I was wrong. Instead, once we left Fladan, Tobbe floored it, and the bow of the boat reared back on about a 30 degree angle. Almost instantly, the boat hit one of the roller waves, and the bow drops about 5 feet onto the water behind the wave. Since I was sitting, this meant that my butt bore the grunt of the drop. And, to top it off, it was a metal seat without cushioning. This went on for about 5 minutes, with me taking an absolute beating from the water and the drops. Even though the whole ride was about 10 minutes, when I got back to shore, I could barely sit in my chair for lunch. I was told that I would pick up on the technique for saving yourself from the bruising, but for now, I don't want to go back on that boat for a while.

After lunch, Fladan began preparing for Confirmation. We cleaned up Fladan house (essentially a staff area with work benches and tools), the boat shed, and the life jacket shed. That took about a few hours. The sun finally came out for a few hours, which gave us enough time to bail water out of the few dozen boats there, a long and boring job even with a powered pump. After that was dinner, and we continued to prepare for Confirmation. Our job was to go back to the island, in the pouring rain, and pick up all the candles around the island. After a much calmer ride in Yxlo, we returned just in time for evening Fika (spelling?) Essentially it is a break involving food that is very important to Swedish culture. There are Fikas several times a day, and Swedish unions demand Fikas as part of their contracts. I ate some interesting snacks and played cards with the other staff.

So now I sit here, and it is 11:30 at night. Tomorrow, I'll probably put up a new post with all the observations about Sweden and their culture. It's too much an too late to add tonight. But for now, I am having a great time, even though the work I am doing is nothing that I will do for a while. A new group of Confirmation candidates come in on Sunday, so in four weeks time, I will be doing this again. Tomorrow, I will probably have to bail out the boats again since it has yet to stop raining, and I have to help set up the dining hall for the hundreds of people eating at Confirmation Dinner. I also promise to have some photos, if the weather gets better....

-Lukas