Apparently foolish

In answering my last blog post, it was foolish.

I went back to school this week.  And by school I mean swedish language class through Komvux (adult ed courtesy of the swedish government...and tax payers).  I pulled like 15 kg of crap out of my backpack for class. All my workbooks, insanely heavy dictionary, notebooks, reading books, etc.  Well my teacher happened to view upon Stieg Larsson's first book in the millenium series...in swedish.  Immediately afterwards she pointed out that the book was still too advanced for me, and would take far too long to read.  So it has gone on the back burner.

In the meantime, she gave me another book to read and listen to on tape.  And when I say tape, I really mean tape.  When she showed me the cassette tapes I had to stop and think if we had any equipment in the home to actually play a tape.  Sure enough my sambo still has a boombox from 15 years ago that has a tape deck.  The book is called Den Röda Vargen by Liza Marklund.  That translates to The Red Wolf.  My boyfriend says that she is one Sweden's most popular writers and has won awards so I have high hopes for the book.

So Stieg out, Liz in!

Optimistic or foolish?

As many of you may know I am an American now living in Sweden.  I have been here for almost 2 years, and have struggled miserably with the language.  Nothing against the swedish language, I've struggled with all languages.  I was even in the slower reading group in primary school in America (but thankfully I've overcome those shortcomings).

So I had this ingenious idea, thanks to my boyfriend's mom.  I figured I'll work on my comprehension and vocabulary by reading a swedish novel.  I mean, I did the kids book thing, and my swedish teacher at Komvux (long story, will explain later) gave me a book to practice reading with.  Wasn't really for real young children, and yet not for adults, nor was it a novel, but rather like short stories.  So a few weeks ago my boyfriends mom gave me some books she said were must reads!  All in swedish of course!  So what does she give me?  Stieg Larsson's millenium trilogy.  You know The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and the other 2 books.

Random FYI:  In case you didn't know this already, the author is swedish, and they have already made the books into swedish movies.  Which have been quite popular here.  And I hear now they are intending to turn them into american movies.  And I hear that Stellan Skarsgård (Alexsander Skarsgård's father....he plays Eric in the True Blood series), is in the running for a role in the american trilogy.  So there's a bit of swedish entertainment facts and speculation.

Now, bare in mind that I watch tv english tv here with swedish subtitles and I can sometimes read the newspaper and easily navigate swedish websites.  So I figured a novel couldn't be too much harder.  Hahahaha.  So tonight I started reading the first book The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  Well, needless to say, I couldn't get very far without my handy dandy swedish-english dictionary nearby.  I didn't need to look up every other word, but anywhere from 1-3 words per sentence.  So I guess that's not too bad.

I mean, I'm really not that good with the language.  I can't speak it to save my life.  I sound like a blathering idiot.  And my vocabulary when listening and speaking seems to be quite basic.  Yet when reading I can generally understand or figure out what the word is, and then what the sentence is talking about.

I'm hoping that by this time next year I'll be finished with the 3 books.  If they were in english, I could probably get through them in a month or so.  But it took me 20 mins to read one page tonight.  lol.  I don't have the highest of hopes.

But I do hope the book lives up to all the hype.