#atozchallenge Theme Reveal!

2014 is my 4th challenge, and 3rd as co-host. In 2011 I didn't have a clue and didn't have a theme, but muddled through and had a great time.

2012 I decided on "Postcards from Sweden" where I shared a picture, taught a word of Swedish, and included a childhood story that went along with the word.  Had another great time, and a lot of people who read the whole series!  Yeah!

2013 I decided why mess with a good thing, so I did "Adventures in America" where I told stories (and shared more embarrassing childhood pictures) about my first year as an immigrant to America.  That proved to be popular as well.  I mean, how many of you have spent 4 months in a body cast at age 9? People were curious.

Which brings us to 2014.  I'm going Swedish again. Write what you know, they say! Besides, I'm proud of my heritage, and my homeland.  Without further ado, my theme is:

"It's very Swedish..."  I will be writing about cultural differences big and small.  I'll share some very Swedish things I miss very much, and also talk about differences in attitudes and beliefs.  It won't be all about kaviar och kaffee!  (That's coffee for those who didn't do the 2012 language lessons.  I figured you could figure out the caviar and "and").

Please join me in learning more about a unique culture.  Yes, Hilary, I'll talk about fierce viking chicks big and small, might throw in a Swedish word or two. One thing you can count on: embarrassing photos. After all, that's become an A-Z tradition.  No worries, Momarazzi took plenty of pictures...

I hope to see you around a lot in April!  Now off to check out your themes.

~Tina, Fierce Viking Chick (that means I'm bossy...ask my team...or my minions...)

V ~ Variety

These are the continuing adventures of a Swedish immigrant during her first year as an American. She boldly went where she'd never gone before...please come along on the Adventures in America!

Variety is the spice of life they say, and I wholeheartedly agree. However, the variety of ethnic and cultural differences I observed my first year as an American was quite the change for me.  My school had African-American kids, Asian kids, Hispanic kids, handicapped kids in wheel chairs, kids with behavioral and or mental disorders, speech impediments, anger issues, and some spoke NO English at all.

They joke that all Swedes are blond haired and blue eyed, but there's a reason for the joke. Most are, or at least were in 1974. Now Sweden is more of a melting pot, with lots of immigration, and adoption. 

I remember though when a friend of The Nutritionist  from nursing school was going to visit. Mom took me aside to say, “She has different color of skin. It's black, not white like ours. But she's just a normal person like us, with a different color on her skin.” Made perfect sense to me.

However, when I got to America, not everyone had that opinion. I heard plenty about how certain people with certain physical features were to be avoided because they all behaved in a certain way. That seemed very wrong to me. How could a different color of skin cause a behavior change? Different eye colors didn't make us act differently, so why would skin?

My elementary school was what I now, as a teacher, know to be a magnet school for ESL (English as a Second Language) students. I, the Swedish chick, who spoke English, was put in with two tables of kids from at least four different cultures, and it wasn't long before Mrs. Lonigan (not her name) moved me to a regular desk. “You'll be just fine.” I was.

However, to this day, as an adult, though I can better understand why some stereotypes of race/culture/origin exist, as a child, it made no sense, and I didn't understand why the other kids' parents hadn't explained about how the outside of a person doesn't change the inside.

(free multicultural images from google)

I think this is something some adults need to learn, too...each person is an individual and should be treated as such. We walk around in these “costumes” we've been given, but who we are is NOT the costume, it's the soul/spirit/heart WEARING the costume who is the real person.

C ~ Camponella Swim Party

These are the continuing adventures of a Swedish immigrant during her first year as an American. She boldly went where she'd never gone before...please come along on Adventures in America.

For this story to make sense, I think you need to know a bit about the neighborhood I used to live in, and the neighborhood we lived in our first year in America.

In Sweden, we lived on a dead end street, which was an off-shoot of another dead-end street. Kids lived everywhere. If you wanted to play with someone, you knocked on a door and asked. No arranged “play dates”.

The neighborhood we moved into used to be a “regular” neighborhood, but had now been zoned commercial, and there were very few kids around. In fact, appalling to me, we had parking meters IN FRONT OF OUR HOUSE.

However, we did manage to meet one family who lived diagonally from us. They were a large family, don't recall how many kids, but at least the two youngest still lived at home, and The Nutritionist made sure that we'd become friends. She invited them over to play.

It was a hot day, and we had one of those pools in the backyard that has the hard sides, and if you have a pesky little brother, all he has to do is push one of those sides down to drain the water. Of course, he had two older sisters who were equally pushy (Ok, I'd never call Swissie pushy, but you know me. PUSHY.) He did not get away with that more than once.

So here we are, the Camponella (names have been changed to protect those who prefer not to be nude in public) kids are over, it's summer, it's HOT. A kind of hot that Swedes rarely experience, and though we had glorious air-conditioning (oh my, what a wonderful invention) my mother liked for us to play outside.

I can't believe that when I went through the albums I found a picture of that exact afternoon. As you can see, my little brother had to be, um, edited for the sake of my PG rating...

The pool beckoned. I was going to loan a suit to the older daughter who was probably somewhere near the age of me and Swissie, but the little brother couldn't lend a suit because DataBoy was 2 at this time. So of course, as normal Swedish folks, we said, “You don't need a bathing suit, just take your clothes off.” In Sweden, kids don't really wear bathing suits until they're quite a bit older, as I recall, 6 or 7. (The Swede will probably correct me, but remember, these are MY recollections from over 38 years ago...) They were appalled. And went home.

I don't remember if we ever got to play with them again, but we probably did. I'm fairly certain The Nutritionist made amends with Mrs. Camponella and explained the cultural differences and all that stuff. However, I don't think they ever used our pool.

P.S After going through the photo albums, choosing pictures for my series, I found lots of pictures with the Camponellas, so we DID get to play with them again.  Inside.

A ~ Adventures in America

“Adventures in America” is my theme for this year's challenge. I'm an immigrant. Our family moved to the United States in 1974 when I was almost nine. It was a HUGE change culturally from my native Sweden, and the neighborhood we moved to couldn't have been more different than where we had been living.

I had to make a lot of changes in my thinking, expectations, actions, speech!, and in my over-all perception of who I was. I became a new person.

It was a very interesting first year, and not just because I spent four months of it in a body cast...

I think this series piggy-backs nicely on my theme from last year, which was “Postcards From Sweden.” In those posts I taught a Swedish word or two, included an appropriate picture, and a childhood memory.

This series will be similar, except you won't have to learn Swedish words! I know some of you enjoyed the childhood story part far more than the lesson...but I might throw them in to show you how imprecise English is, because I'm obnoxious that way. 

I hope you come back and read all my stories, and I'm not above a bribe. Last year I put all the comments from all the posts in order and had random number generator pick a winner. Andrea, who is now one of my Terrific Team of assistants won the $25 IKEA gift card. So visit daily! Haven't you ever wondered what it would be like if you had move across the ocean to another country in the middle of your perfect childhood?  It's an adventure...

Interested in the prelude?  How did we end up living in two countries?  The Swede, my Dad, wrote a three part series last week telling that story.  Check these out if you have time.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3


 P.S Today is Arlee Bird's birthday!  Founder of the A-Z Challenge, amazing leader and friend, here's a big shout out to THE ONE who is making all this fun happen.  Thanks, Arlee!  Now go visit him at Tossing It Out and leave him a greeting.  We hope to flood his blog, his inbox, his world with greetings from every A-Z participant!  If you're one of them - please don't forget to add something in your post about him today!

Plans Change ~ Part 3: The Swede and The Nutritionist

In preparation for my Challenge Series: Adventures in America, I've convinced The Swede, my Dad, to share the story of how he and my Mom, The Nutritionist, met, fell in love, moved to Sweden, then in the middle of our childhood, moved to America. It's great to have you here Dad. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with all of us.

Plans Change

by Leif Bilen

My American exchange adventure went by very quickly. On the way back across the Atlantic I reconnected with the other students, and we compared notes. Our dress code had changed among other things, and when I greeted my folks I had a new haircut: a crew cut.

The American “dishes” I brought home were actually not all that nutritious, but hamburgers, French fries and banana splits tasted awfully good. Please don’t tell the Nutritionist.

My American year was a wonderful experience, and although it put me a year behind in the rather stringent academic high school I came back to, I never regretted it. I had two more years before graduation, and then mandatory military service in Sweden, before starting my university studies.

“Will I see anyone in my American family ever again?” The answer to that question came rather quickly. Brother Bob came to visit over the summer of 1959, and we toured Europe together: two 19-year old fellows in a Volvo, where the seats reclined enough to be able to sleep in some semblance of comfort.

I introduced him to most of my friends, many of them girls, wouldn't you know? I am sure we exchanged a word or two about his sister Bonnie. Although I dated some Swedish girls, during high school and army days, I wasn't able to put his younger sister out of my mind.

I had a few months after being discharged from the army before the start of my first semester at the university. I decided to “visit my American family” as I described it to them in my letters. Bonnie’s father suspected there was more to it, and I admit he was right.

During that summer both Bonnie and I realized that we were not just foreign exchange brother and sister any more. There was a lot of mutual respect, but also some caution flags: How is this going to work; two continents, different cultures etc.

The following summer Bonnie visited Sweden and the land of the Vikings didn't scare her too much. As she went back to New York to finish nursing school, we had agreed to stay in touch, but there was no restriction on dating others. If it was God’s plan for us to spend our lives together, it would surely become clear to us.

The only way to stay in touch was via airmail letters, and there were lots of them. After finishing half of my university credits, I had had enough of letter writing and decided to take some time off and move to New York for a while and leave the rest to the Lord.

Eight months later we were married. I had a job at Chase Manhattan Bank, while she finished her B.S. in nursing. We moved to Sweden for me to finish school, and I promised: “If you don’t like it, we can move back to the States.

We stayed for ten years and I had a promising teaching career in the public school system as well as some work at the local teacher institute. I also had the privilege of working with my teaching mentor publishing several books for kids to learn English.

In 1974 I took a sabbatical so that our family, which now included three kids, could spend a year in America. That didn't work out as planned; we are still here, and I eventually became a U.S. citizen. After all, grandpa shouldn't be the only foreigner in the family.

None of this was planned in 1974, and I have found out that one’s life’s path is full of small course adjustments. When we stay close to God and listen to his voice, he directs our path and sometimes these adjustments eventually lead to major changes. In my case it was a change from teaching to a corporate career with Volvo, which turned out to be a nice ride (pun intended). 

People wonder these days what happened to that handsome young Swedish foreign exchange student Bonnie married, and so do I at times. I am an elderly U.S. senior living with my prairie home companion at the foot of the Rockies.

The two of us are very different, and that has in some ways contributed to success in our marriage. Neither of us is perfect, but we are perfect for each other fitting together like two pieces in a puzzle.  

About the Author:
Leif Bilen is the author of numerous books, including text books for Swedish students and adults to learn English.  His latest book, "They Put me in Charge... and Told Me I Didn't Have a Clue: Learning to Lead by Listening to Bosses, Co-workers, and Subordinates" is about leadership and his Volvo career.  It's available at Amazon, and local bookstores if you happen to live in Colorado.

Please come back Monday, April 1st when The biggest blog-hop of the year begins.  My theme for the A-Z Challenge is "Adventures in America" and picks up with how the oldest of the children of The Swede and The Nutritionist (that would be me, Tina, the head-strong, type A, bossy one) coped with moving across the world when she was about to turn 9.  Can't wait to see you and read YOUR challenge posts.

P.S If you missed Part 1 and Part 2, just click and you'll get 'em.

Part 1 of The Swede and The Nutritionist:

In preparation for my Challenge Series: Adventures in America, I've convinced The Swede, my Dad, to share the story of how he and my Mom, The Nutritionist, met, fell in love, moved to Sweden, then in the middle of our childhood, moved to America. It's great to have you here Dad. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with all of us.

THE SWEDE AND THE NUTRITIONIST

by Leif Bilen

“Do you have indoor plumbing in Sweden?” “What sort of clothes do you wear over there?” “Are there many polar bears where you live?” Those were some of the questions I got from my fellow students at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland, as they tried to get to know their new exchange student.

This was during Eisenhower’s second term about half a year before the Soviets launched the first Sputnik. The internet and social media had not yet transformed communications to give us a better awareness of what goes on in other countries around the world. I probably had similar illusions about this country.

I had read The Last of the Mohicans, and I had tasted that curious soft drink called Coca Cola. Then in school I learned a bit more about the Big Country in the West and the more I learned the more interested I became.

When the opportunity for a year’s scholarship to an American high school presented itself, there was hardly any hesitation. I applied, and after a few months a letter advised me I was one of the fortunate ones. I was told I would be going to Silver Spring, Maryland. “Man, this is going to be great. How can I be blessed?”

I soon found out that my family had four children and a maid living with them. The father in the family was an eye doctor. “How am I going to fit in over there?” I was an only child and my dad was a cop, who had to do a lot of moonlighting to make ends meet.

Later, I learned that this was a back-up plan, because the first host, a pastor’s family in the same town had backed out at the last minute. Now, I realize how different my life would have been, if this change had not taken place.

I was both excited and nervous when I prepared to leave my familiar surroundings. As I started to receive letters from members of my new family, I began to calm down. They seemed so nice and genuine. I would be hanging out with a “brother” my age and his letters were very reassuring.

One letter from his 15 year old little sister, Bonnie, puzzled me though. She told me it would be nice, if I could bring along some Swedish dishes. I didn’t quite panic, but I started to wonder. “How are they going to fit in my suitcase? What if they break in transit?” After consulting a dictionary or two, I eventually figured out that she was talking about Swedish recipes, and had I known then what I know today, I would have made sure they didn’t lack nutrition. 

Part 2
Part 3