In answer to my dear friend's enquiries, yes, there are real life Iraqis in my class...as a matter of fact more 80% of the class comes from Iraq. And refugees attend Swedish classes 5 days a week. So I get Friday off but they still have to attend class. Yippee!!

So that actually makes Friday lunches and dinners even more special for Mathias and me. I would actually have the time to cook his lunch on day so it's fresher and warmer. Since I have school and only reach home at 1pm everyday, I don't have time to cook lunch for husband who usually has lunch at noon. Instead, in line with my wifely duties (heh heh), I prepare lunch the night before and put it in the fridge so he will come home and heat up his lunch. So far it's been working quite well.

It's only been 3 days since I started school but it feels like I've been going for some time. I dunno, maybe it's because the teacher is so nice and patient or that the people are not so scary. Well, not all of them anyway. Plus the fact that most of us can't speak each other's languages helps me to not feel so out of place since I don't understand them anyway. Heh heh...

It's quite interesting my day at school. Even though my day is barely 4 hours long starting from 8am to 11.45am, we are given a snack break. I call it recess time but instead of milk or mee rebus, it's a bunch of adults drinking coffee, eating buns and smoking out in the cold open air. They call it fika in Sweden. Fika, I realise is a very important component of the Swedish way of life. Fika is like teatime or snacktime where you sit down for coffee and a pastry or bun. And although in the textbooks, they identify fika as a night time coffee/snack, Swedes fika all through the day.

Swedes fika usually at about 9 or 10am if they are at work (I'm not so sure abt school tho recess is at 9am). This is very important to take note of especially if you intend on calling someone from the district office or town council. These people take fika very very seriously. Not hail nor state emergency will prevent them from taking their fika. And don't even bother trying to pull them away once they have started to fika. Let's just call that mission impossible.

So back to my day at school. We start our lesson at 8am and before I know it, recess time comes an hour later. I found out that it lasts 30 minutes.

30 whole minutes for FIKA?? wow...they DO take this whole fika thing seriously. I was so surprised to get such a long break so soon after the day starts. So we come back from recess at 9.30am and lessons continue. But I get another surprise today when I realise that we get another break at about 10.30am (you can Fika again if you really wish but that's too much even by Swedish standards) which lasts about 20 min.

My oh my! Such luxury...we can go to the bathroom, eat cookies, chit chat or go smoke and nobody cares. The teacher isn't even there cos he leaves the classroom every break time.

So let's recap... Class begins at 8am including the occasional late comer. An hour passes and we fika 30 minutes away. So at 9.30am, we start lessons again and come 10.30am someone will start whining for a break. If the teacher is actually in the middle of something, he will try to defer the break time for as long as he can but we certainly get it. Lesson will probably start again at about 11am or a little before and my day ends at 11.45am sharp or earlier. Has not been any later and everyone pretty much rushes out of the classroom, leaving me alone with the teacher to pack up slowly and put on my winter things. I tend to do this slower than usual cos I have half an hour before my bus comes. So what's the rush, right?

So you can call my mornings quite full...full of breaks and fika. But the half hour that I do have before my bus comes is quite appreciated since I use the time to walk to the main bus centre instead of te bus stop in front of the school. And I get to walk through the town and enjoy the sights of the small town that seems to have more things to see than tiny Askersund.

I kinda like my little walk through town and my bus ride home where I get to fall asleep if I want to. Maybe soon I may actually go walk through the small shopping mall in that town (town is called Hallsberg, by the way) and even sit down for a fika moment in the town konditori. A konditori is basically a bakery that provides seating or a cafe that bakes its own treats. A fika central! Doesn't that sound nice?

Swedish words of the day: Fika & Konditori