one year and a signed contract.

one year ago today i moved to this lovely country known as sweden. i can hardly believe it’s been a year! time has gone so fast, and the year has been wonderful!

my brain was full of creative things to do with this post, and i so badly want to do them; but the hour is late, we have hardly been home for 3 days, and we have worked like crazy this weekend. so, i am exhausted and my sleep is a little more important right now. but, i couldn’t let the day pass without a tiny little post marking this occasion.

as i said, it has been an unbelievable year. my love & i flew (with our cat!) to sweden on this day last year. we stressed about jobs and swedish classes, but everything worked out… slowly, at first, but worth every bit of stress & fear of the unknown. soon after we arrived we moved into our cozy apartment and have celebrate a year’s worth of holidays here. lina has found an amazing job, i’ve started and completed swedish classes (meeting an eclectic & fun group of women along the way), and i’ve had an internship. but, that’s just all the things on the outside. there are so many little things that have been new & amazing for me.

i walk everywhere. all the time. i do my grocery shopping in a lovely square. i live in the middle of downtown, near a river. snow covered the streets and fields of sweden for about  months. i lit candles for about 6-7 hours every day in the middle of the dark, cozy winter. i kept walking everywhere. i ate a home a lot. i listened to people walking in the streets at night. i mastered doing the laundry in foreign, swedish washers & dryers. i answered the phone in swedish. i decorated my first home with my love. i cleaned to make a little money on the side. i read. i began writing again. i had a few meltdowns. i rode the tram like a swede. i took a lot of pictures. i didn’t travel every much. i hardly did any shopping (except for food). i now have a “usual” at our neighborhood pizza restaurant. i had cozy sunday night movies with my love. i found my favorite pub. i tried to keep in touch with people in the states. i skyped. i was a housewife. i got excited about the first days of wearing sunglasses in the spring. i can now attend church and understand what’s being said.  i have eaten a lot of bread. i am the queen of making good coffee. i can speak swedish…

and today… i signed the contract for my job as a youth minister. yes, i’ returning to working in the church and it feels wonderful. today, as i sat at the table and talked with the chairperson of the church administrative council, i was about to burst! on september 1st i report to the church for my first day! it may only be a part-time job, but it feels so right. and the time that i am not working with the church will be filled up with writing my book, studying some more swedish, and hanging out at my internship (but not as an intern after the middle of september).

i cannot even imagine what this next year in sweden will bring, but this past year has been amazing! i am so thankful, so blessed, and the luckiest girl in the world. i could have never made it through this year without the support & comfort that my love showed me, and the snuggly-ness of our cutie cat. my little family is the best and this year has been fantastic! as i look ahead i’m only thinking one thing: time flies, so we better do all we can to soak up every single moment, keep dreaming big, find the courage to take a risk, and never give up hope. who knows where we’ll all be in one year and what we will all have been through. but, i do know that it will be one amazing, helluva journey!

and i’m starting right now!

peace.