Hej!

Hej! Tack! Hej dä!
Hello! Thanks! Goodbye!


This past Monday, I began taking Swedish language classes. The above is about all I learned - and I even had to look up goodbye in my text... Why take Swedish? Because I'm hopefully traveling there next summer (or maybe the summer after that) to work with a collaborator! There is a professor at KTH, the technical university in Stockholm, who is developing a system that I want to use and/or replicate. Well, and going to Sweden is cool and my advisor believes that each student should spend some time abroad, learning to work with scientists on a global level :)

KTH in the summer sunshine

Anyways, I'm sure that the students and professors at KTH will speak English with me, however I firmly believe that I'll get more out of my experience in a foreign country if I can understand some of the language. I didn't really want to take a course at my university, partially because it meets every day at 9:30am for an hour, but also because I don't need to take it at the university level to achieve my goals. Fortunately for me, Seattle has a large scandinavian population and we have a great Swedish Cultural Center! I found out that they offer inexpensive, low-key classes that meet one evening a week. Perfect for me and I'll be able to continue to take courses throughout the school year, hopefully gaining some basic conversational skills. So far the pronunciation hasn't been too tricky, but I've never tried a germanic language before (I've tried learning Spanish and French previously) so I know things will come up that I'll find difficult. The most interesting thing I learned in day one was that there are no verb endings! All verbs stay the same, regardless of case, and are differentiated by the pronouns that precede them. Which is only a bummer because when learning other languages, verb conjugations are my strongest point in the whole course, thanks to my Latin background - where all we basically did for 1.5 years was conjugate verbs! 

Isn't Stockholm colorful?! 

I'm also excited that Stockholm is a port city with many ferries to outlying islands. That's one thing I love about living in Seattle - the easy access to water and islands in the sound, San Juans, and Canada. I'm keeping my fingers tightly crossed that it all works out for me to travel to Sweden for the whole summer, goodness knows I will also check out as much of the rest of Europe as I can!