book of october: the bedwetter: stories of courage, redemption, and pee

You may want to sit down for this one. Sit down on the toilet that is. This much at least I have gathered from Sarah’s humerus opus, you can totally be on the toilet for the duration of her book. Though if that were to be the case you might want to get that checked out.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, listening to audiobooks of funny people is a great way to spend time. Provided their voice doesn’t drive you up the wall, as luckily is the case here.

Sarah Silverman is hilarious. I didn’t actually know this before listening to this audiobook. Complete disclosure: this isn’t the first time I listened to the audiobook. It was equally hilarious now as it was the first time around.

The same two things struck me the second time listening. First Sarah’s repeated recommendation to make things a treat. I’ll let her explain the finer details to you, but it was quite interesting to hear Sarah get almost serious with us listeners. I will certainly be making some things in my life more of a treat. Good advice, good advice.

Second, I know a lot of Jews. To clarify I know a lot of Jews for a non Jew. I’m sure many Jewish people know more Jewish people than I do. But I digress.

Sarah Silverman is Jewish, as she mentions a time or two in her book. Near the end she states that (as of 2010) 2.2% of the American population is Jewish. I had no idea. Maybe it’s just my small Massachusetts hometown skewing my world view again, but I totally expected that number to be higher. When I was a teenager I went to 20 bar/bat mitzvahs. And I didn’t even go to all of the ones I’d been invited to, sometimes there were scheduling conflicts. Didn’t think anything of it until I met people in college who had been to ZERO bat/bar mitzvahs. I had friends from high school who went to far more celebrations of adulthood than I! Who knew.

If you’re looking for a laugh (and shocking statistics about Judaism in America) give Silverman a listen.

five years in sweden

Five years and one month ago today I moved across the Atlantic to be with my beloved.

I sort of can’t believe it.

• There are full humans that have existed for a shorter period of time than I have lived in Sweden.
• I meet people today who I only ever speak Swedish with. Never English.
• I sing along with all the annoying jingles on the radio – in my second language.
• I fika regularly and don’t get hung up about it.
• I can name (and have visited) more than five cities in Sweden.

It’s madness. What once seemed unusual and extraordinary has become just a day in the life.

swedish as a second language

Once upon a time a girl moved to Sweden. In Sweden the spoken language is Swedish. The girl embarked on a language learning journey though Swedish as a Second Language classes, also known as SAS.

In May of last year I touched upon the completion of my Swedish 2 class. Really what I did was allude to the fact that my final was coming up, and use that as a partial excuse for not posting in ages. At this point I’ve even completed Swedish 3. Which concludes my academic Swedish learning.

Since moving to the city where we currently reside I’ve almost exclusively taken classes online. It’s definitely something to get used to, but now that I’ve been doing it for two years straight I’d say I’m starting to get the hang of it.

Swedish 2 concluded with an in person essay test. We had an assigned book that we were to have read and brought with us to the exam. We received three essay questions upon arrival and had something like four hours to write our essay.

I’m going to reiterate. Read a novel in a foreign language, then write about that novel for four hours. Looking back I’m pretty impressed with myself! To be honest it wasn’t as hard as I may be making it sound, I like to retain hyperbolization rights in my writing.

Swedish 3 was like Swedish 2 but more. More reading, more writing, a bigger and badder final exam. The final exam in Swedish 3 was a national exam. Think MCAS for those of you acquainted with the Massachusetts public school system, or Google MCAS for those of you unacquainted with the Massachusetts public school system. (I was going to make a common core reference, but I’m so not touching that.)

The moral of the story is that I’M DONE! Done with my Swedish book learning. All done in just enough time to forget all my Englishing.

This girl can speak Swedish now. Or at least fake it really really well.