Do re mi fa so la ti do

Today we were immersed in the Swedish language. We started out the evening with our first Swedish lesson from the missionaries. There are 7 of us total in the class. We learned how to conjugate verbs. It seems easy enough, just have to figure out which groups of words each verb belongs to, because each word is conjugated differently.

More interesting is our first choir practice. We are the only English speaking members of the university's acapella group, so the choir director as well as everyone else spoke only Swedish. The choir director translated her directions on two occasions when explaining an activity we were going to do. We LOVED the fact that it was totally in Swedish. We finally felt like we were adapting to Sweden and not Sweden adapting to us, which is how we like it. We both feel that it isn't right for the Swedes to have to adapt to us, the ones who are coming to their country. Our first activity was an icebreaker. We each went around and said our names. Then we lined up into two lines. The two choir leaders held up a blanket between us so the lines could not see each other. Then, the blanket dropped and we had to say the name of the person on the other side of the blanket. After each round, we scrambled up so our place in line could not be anticipated. It is hard enough to try and remember new names, but trying to remember new names that we have never heard of before (like Ida and Paulin - if I spelled that correctly) was nearly impossible! Out of three songs we sang, one was in Swedish while the others were just sounds (like Da Da Da and Na Na Na). Jen's favorite part was when we started singing a song, then all got out of our seats and walked around the room. It was a mixture of the parts and quite challenging. Can't wait for practice next week!