I finally started school yesterday. It was a very exciting morning, in that I'm so nervous I may puke in the bus kinda way. Husband had kindly taken the day off so he can take the bus with me to school and wait for me until I finished. Kept telling him as he made my breakfast that I didn't want to go to school. You know that whiney voice, complaining about nothing since nothing has happened yet.

Well, that was my voice yesterday morning. Was having that sickly feeling in the pit of my stomach and all the worst possible scenarios kept replaying i my sick little head. Husband kept comforting me saying, it never is as bad as you think it will be.

So there I was in a dark bus (it was a coach bus cos we accidentally took the express bus, so like most coaches on a long haul journey, all the lights are out), looking out at the gorgeous countryside passing me by as the rising sun slowly turns the sky pink then orange. That took some of the edge off me plus the fact that I was still really sleepy.

My class is very small with only 8 students including me. There is a German lady and 6 Iraqis, among whom there is just one guy. Some of the ladies can't speak English or much Swedish so there is ALWAYS a bunch of Arab flying across the room. The teacher is a man called Leif with a deep, quiet and rather soothing voice. I can tell just how patient he is and I certainly can see instances of when that patience serves him well. So he seems nice.

And with a lot of Swedish people who don't know me, the teacher was surprised to find out that I was Singaporean and not Thai. And we speak English in Singapore and technically there is no Singapore language. But I did learn a lot in my 2 days of Swedish classes. I also learnt that there are 4 levels in total before I graduate from this course of study. There is no specific length of time for each level. The teacher will just send you to the next level at his discretion and in general, he said that students take about 525 hours of classes to complete the entire 4 levels. But of cos some students can take up to 1000 hours or some as low as 350 hours. And since I am not a refugee, I only need to attend school Monday to Thursday, which is great for me.

Ok, so now I formulate a plan for myself. I want to do well enough in this class to move up to the next level in about 1.5 to 2 months. But since I don't really know what it takes to move on to the next level, all I can do is learn all I can from Leif and make sure I practice speakin Swedish, especially in class. I keep forgetting to do that! Ugh...I can kick myself sometimes.

Heh heh...is that me being too hard on myself again? That's what Mathias always says about me. Well, I just really want to be able to understand what people around me say. It's frustrating not to understand or be understood.