March 16 & 17 - Adventures in Partille

Monday, March 16 – Today, we move again to our fifth host family and make the drive from Trollhattan to Partille, which is a suburb of Göteborg. For the drive, I rode with a gentleman named Stig-göran. He and Bengt were challenged with trying to fit all of our luggage into their two relatively small vehicles. Somehow, they managed.

Stig-göran is a retired product development engineer from SAAB. He had some fun stories to tell us during our drive about his work.

Anyway, we arrived in Partille thanks to Rachel’s navigating and were dropped off at the Kvibergs Kantin for a Rotary Meeting right away. The Kantin is located in an old military establishment of some sort and is now used as a gymnasium (our high school) that focuses on sports. Anders Wattström is the GSE coordinator for our visit AND he cooks the meals for the Rotary Meetings (He has his own catering service located out of the kitchen in the same building) - - he was very excited for our visit because, apparently, this was the first GSE team they’ve had stay with their club.

After the meeting, we were taken to visit the local Bibliotek (library) and hear about their state-of-the-art facility. We walked around town a bit and stopped by a very old church & graveyard for a few minutes before returning to the Kantin for our host families to pick us up.

AnnaCarin Wårdh along with her husband, Tomas, and her two sons – Daniel (18) and Andreas (15) are my host family for this week and live in Lerum. Anna Carin is a Human Resources Manager for a Logistics company called SwissLog . Tomas works for Volvo in their IT department. Daniel is in his last year at the gymnasium (his specializes in skateboarding and he rides a train for 50 minutes one-way to get to his school in Goteborg) and he will be going to California for a year to study at a university. Andreas is interested in soccer and has just gotten his license to drive a mo-ped (however, the one he helped buy is currently in the shop.) Since Jens and Jessica’s daughter Hanna was a similar age and we had discussed driving laws in Sweden, it was interesting to me to learn how different they are from the United States. (By the way, when I was talking to Kevin and Tyler this weekend, Kevin told me that he had signed Ty up for drivers ed classroom and he’ll start it before I get home) Anyway, in Sweden, kids can take a class and get a license to drive a mo-ped at age 15. At age 16, they can get a permit and start training for their license BUT the parents must attend some training with the child AND the kids can not actually get a drivers license until they are age 18.

After dinner, I went with AnnaCarin to her gospel choir practice and was surprised to find out that they sing all of their songs in English. They seemed like a very fun group and a good mixture of younger singers with those a bit older…. When we got home, we looked at some pictures of my family and theirs. AnnaCarin and I got into a discussion about scrapbooking and I showed her a little demo u-tube movie about the Cricut machine and talked about my long weekends away with my girlfriends - - Scrapbooking is getting more popular in Sweden but she had never heard of such things.

Tuesday, March 17 – Our first official stop for the day was the Queen Silvia Children’s hospital – they are the largest children’s hospital in the EU with about 1900 employees and their emergency room has about 40,000 visits per year (I hope I got all of my "facts" written down correctly). In Sweden, health care is totally free for children up to age 18 and, according to Daniel our tour guide and a Rotary member, it doesn’t often get abused (people bringing their children in to see a doctor unnecessarily). When children are admitted to the hospital, parents or some relative are required to stay with them. It is also a law in Sweden that every child has the right to participate in play therapy when visiting a hospital. So we were shown the play therapy area and were very impressed with how hard they work to be able to provide enjoyable and educational surroundings for children of all ages (from infant to age 18) and even give the children some dolls that are provided by a Kiwanis program. They also employ some clowns that are in the hospital 4 days a week and visit patients to help cheer them up – we got to meet and talk to two of them for a few minutes and hear about their experiences.

Our afternoon was spent at the Goteborg Opera House. The building itself was INCREDIBLE and is located down on the waterfront. This facility not only does opera but ballet and musicals as well. They have a set construction area, seamstresses and even a shoemaker on staff.

At about 3 PM most days is a break that Swedish call Fika. At this time, many will visit a local coffee shop for coffee or tea and something sweat to eat. Today, with my water (sorry, have tried it here but still cannot drink coffee) I tried a Passion Fruit mousse desert - - it was AMAZING!!!! Then we wandered the streets of Goteborg – Anders took me to a small shoe store named Lester. They sold Red Wing boots – they had a couple of our heritage products and the manager said that during the winter time, he carries up to 12 of our styles and sells the most Red Wings in Sweden. He is a small niche market store that tries to carry shoe styles that the local chain stores do not provide. Our final stop was an indoor marketplace - - they had a little bit of everything mostly food related from fresh meats to fruit & vegetables to cheese & breads and even a little “shop” that makes their own chocolates.

Quiet night tonight at “home,” catching up on my writing and now my blog plus this entry in our group blog. I still have quite a few pictures to sift through.

Good night! Steph