Sköldpaddan och jordgubben

I hadn't planned to write another blog this soon... but hey, conditions are changing quite quickly as everyone knows. The US Government issued a Level 4 Do Not Travel advisory yesterday: calling U.S. citizens home or advising people to plan to shelter in place for the foreseeable future. Penn State's Office of Global Programs asked faculty to come home or plan to shelter in place as well. At least they gave us a choice- not sure what we'd do if someone demanded we return. Our short answer is for now, we're continuing to plan to shelter in place in Sweden. Why? No secret but that Chris has been struggling with some lung-related illness - no official diagnosis but bronchitis. It's been a long walk to get down the block and back. His lungs are finally starting to feel better, but exposing him to others (and others to him) seems like a bad idea. Our house in State College remains rented to our Spanish renters- who are seeing how things are playing out in Spain ...

It is sunny, stunningly spectacular here in Stockholm today. People walk down the path in small groups. People ride their horses into the woods nearby. I've read enough science fiction to know that it's a common idea to have split and parallel worlds. Along with feeling like I'm about to go off a waterfall, I feel that split keenly now. Yesterday, we started the day with tasty homemade kardemummalängd made by Elizabeth. Shape the night before, bake and eat for breakfast.      Two pretty loaves well braided by Elizabeth- one with cardamom, one with almond paste & cardamom. Stephen likes cardamom paste, but not flour on his hands. Guess we know who the baker is in the family.   Day 3 of homeschooling went fine, though it turns out trying to help oversee essay writing and figure out taxes is not a good combination. Lesson learned. In the evening, we went out with the kids to throw the frisbee in a nearby big empty field- social distance made easy. I h...

It rained today. The sun came out. It rained some more. A rainbow came out while I took Elizabeth to run around at a nearby park. Enjoy.

Day 2 of keeping our kids home from school. Quite amazingly, the kids' school is still open, though high school and colleges are being closed as of tomorrow. The Swedish government is leaving it up to each principal to decide, and so far, the CEO of the kids' private school has left things open. Chris still has trouble breathing much (bronchitis? more?): a walk down the block can be too much for him. So we're not sure if we're exposing others, or if others are exposing us- either way, we're in family quarantine with occasional forays to the park or to the store. This post isn't quite linear in time, nor is time being linear right now... so be it. On Monday morning (yesterday?), we talked with the kids about their schedules, and drew up our own schedule. Can't say we've been keeping to it quite on time, but it's helpful to have guidance for the day. Elizabeth creatively rewrote their bedtime to be 10:30 PM (it's been more like 10 PM, give or t...

We're in a weird mix of normal and not normal, much like I'm sure many people are. I put the English first- I keep being surprised when I walk outside and the world is speaking Swedish. Nothing like existing in a virtual world. For those who may be new to this blog, our family is living in Sweden for the year- we arrived in Aug. 2019 and were planning to depart sometime in July 2020... but who knows when now. This blog starts with C3: standing for my 3rd post about the coronavirus. If you want to see the others, they are online at  https://skoldpaddan.csfowler.com/ . Onto the blog: The sun set yesterday after a gorgeous day in Stockholm... cold but clear and sunny. Amazing to wake up at 8:30 AM to buckets of sunshine outside (we've had a lot of gray). It's Sunday now and again fairly sunny- cold and windy. It's a good day to hang out, listen to music, read books, blog or whatever. Friday the 13th was Chris' 45th birthday. We celebrated with a nice dinner (...

After we came back from France, Chris continued to feel like he had something sitting on his chest. No fever, no cough, no other symptoms. By the end of last week, he felt like he needed to do something other than hope he didn't have the coronavirus. The spoiler on this post was an eventual diagnosis of bronchitis (but we still can't rule out a mild version of what my spell check insists on calling coronations or carnivorous).   The longer version. We've been told repeatedly if you have a medical issue, call the nationwide healthcare number 1177 and they will help you. Chris called sometime on Thursday (call #1). The recorded message allowed for an English option- phew. A recording in Swedish is utterly incomprehensible to us. Said if you wanted to leave your call back #, they'd call back in two hours. Chris did. As the hours came and went, he started to wonder if he'd left the right number. Call #2, Friday. Left a slightly different number (our Swedish ...

Over the weekend, the clocks moved forward one hour in the U.S. However, the clocks did not change in Sweden- our time doesn't change until 29 March. This happened in the fall- Swedish time changed about a week after the U.S. We can't tell you how often this messed up our calendar for a bit. We're used to being 6 hours ahead of the east coast and 9 for the west coast, and now we're 5 and 8 (but just for a few weeks). I have colleagues on a project in Arizona- no idea what time it is there. Last year, the EU voted to scrap the seasonal time change in 2021. Two-thirds of Swedes are apparently in favor of scrapping daylight savings, though the news report says that it is unclear whether they'd pick "winter" time or "summer." I have a guess. Swedish dissatisfaction may be bolstered by a recent study indicating a 6.7% increase in the risk of heart attack for Swedes in the 3 days following the time change. We will note that the days are already...