Christmas Parties!!!

With the idea of hosting the first ever Christmas Party of this year, on Dec 9th, my flatmate Irina (from Romania again!) and myself hosted a collective cooking, intensive drinking and massive dancing party at our place. Trainees were cooking food from different countries all the way from 6pm till 10pm. We emptied all the cans and bottles in the apartment. With the limited amount of dancing music I had, I became the DJ of the night. I had to be very careful not to play any AIESEC dancing music to ruine the party mood. Olga had her Indian-ess revived (she was CC of IC India) became the a star of Indian music, completely outshined the Indians. The latinos were a bit frustrated because our laptops (given by the company of course) couldn't play the CDs they brought with them. So no arse shaking! Sigh... Still the party ended up so high that most of the people went to a good club downtown.

I didn't join (Devrim will say that I am a retard!) because: 1) I was tired. 2) I was broke. 3) I cannot dance, especially seeing people dancing in my apartment. I need way more alcohol to loose a bit.

Friday (Dec 15th), I went to the Christmas dinner hosted by the LCs here in Stockholm. It ended up as my favorite party of the year because I DANCED!!! Guess I was drunk enough after glögg, white wine and 2 ciders. Also because Aron and me are equally 'good' dancers. We put up our thick skin and 'danced' like nobody was watching in the middle of the floor.

I met 2 interesting guys at the party. One called Robin who is very cute but having dinner alone at his table then I joined him. He has been to Thailand and Malaysia and took Chinese courses in university. He studies change management (how AIESEC is this!). So we had a lot to chat about.

The other one I cannot remember his name (hehe...I actually never remember anybody's name but always their faces. I have a 'picture memory'.) has lived in Beijing for 2 years and just came back from a 2 months stay in Shanghai. I was living in Beijing when he was there also though he didn't have time to contact AIESEC, despite that he was studying in one of our LCs - PKU. We spoke about Wu Dao Kou, Hou Hai, Sculpting in Time Cafe and Propaganda club, etc. All those typical international students hanging out place. Gosh, he made me miss Beijing! He said I am the first Shanghainese he met who prefers Beijing! Da!

17th I went to Aron's uncle (Dad's older brother)'s 60th birthday/Christmas dinner party. People tried to speak English with me, talking about China or Asia which was very sweet. I hate to be in the centre of attention especially when the rest have no clue of the topic though. The most interesting part of the dinner was taking a look at the family's horse collection. They have more than 10 huge horses. (I think the horses are huge because Chinese race horses are smaller.) The names of the horses were more than expressive: furious, cha cha, etc. Some of the horses looked funny because they were in winter jackets. Their hair were cut because they sweat and got cold with long hair. So I got a bit of horse lecture as well.

Christmas is by all means a commercialized festival. However, I can still find some real human touch within because gift shopping is by no means an easy task. It is a very sweet thing to find the best gift for someone. I totally enjoy the process and receiving gifts and cards! Sometimes people expect to spend some time together instead of anything material as a gift which is an even nicer thing to do. Aron and me have already planned to cook a Chinese dinner for his entire family. God bless I don't burn anything or hurt myself this time.

Lucia!

Daylight is still getting short until Dec 21st. Here it is called Tomas Day which is a religious date. In the Chinese Lunar Calendar, we mark somewhere around Dec 21st (differs each year) as the date winter comes. (Btw, the Chinese New Year is also the 1st day Spring comes according to our Lunar Calendar. So the Chinese years start from Spring!) Some of my friends have warned me about the depressing short daylight time in Scandinavia before I came here. Yet it is different when I really experience it. Subconsciously, I believe it is depressing. I believe this is why Swedes appear very cold to me: e.g. People will not smile back at you if you have an eye contact and you smile at them. Meanwhile, this makes me treasure daytime and sunshine so much more. There is always an urge to take a 20 min outdoor walk if it happens to be sunny during lunch breaks.

From last Sunday, the temperature finally dropped below zero. Meanwhile, it became a lot more sunnier and the frost on the roads and roofs almost look like snow under the sun shine. This adds a lot of light to the city. Stockholm is stunning at any point of time. I love it with and without lights, just the same. So what I have done in the last few days in this most beautiful city I have ever lived?

1. Lucia Concert at Berwaldhallen:
Lucia is a Italian saint. Sweden was a Catholic country until 1500s. Regardless, a festival about lights and brightness at the darkest time of a year is doomed to be kept till today. Apparently the Swedes gives the biggest celebration of Lucia each year, compared to any other country who celebrates Saint Lucia Day.

As a Chinese, I naturally pay more attention to what you drink and eat according to traditions:
- Pepparkakor: ginger bread. Interestingly that every single Swede thinks that ginger bread is originated in Sweden and remains unique here. Hello? I thought only Chinese people eat rice! :P
- Lussebullar: Just click the link and it explains all. As a matter of fact, I think it is tasteless.
- Glögg: I love glögg especially when there is nuts and raisins in it. It is a speical red wine preserved by putting a lot of spices in it. And you always drink it warm. Swedes drink it around Christmas time.
- Julmust: speaking of glögg, I cannot miss talking about Julmust. It is a special taste soft drink people only drink during Christmas time. The same drink available durin Easter has another name! :) Jul means Christmas in Swedish. Merry Christmas is 'God Jul' here. (Good July? I thought they desperately wanted a summer Christmas!) I loved Julmust because I love any soft drinks sold exclusively inside the country. Like L&P in New Zealand!

Another tradition nowadays is that kids dress up like Lucia (white dress, red waist ribbon, candles on the head) and sing in a choir in the morning. I missed that in my office because it was 7am. I also always worry if girl's hair will get burnt by the candle fire or hurt by the hot wax. My boss's son wants to be a Lucia every year. It seems that kids cannot distinguish genders. There has been controversy if Lucia has to be a caucasion. As much politcally correct the Swedes want to be, of course Lucia doesn't have to be a caucasion! I wonder who raised this topic. Must be some myopic immigrants. :P

So instead I went for a Lucia concert by the famous Swedish Radio Orchestra at Berwaldhallen. The conductor was extremely expressive who I doubt is a Swede, at least lived abroad long enough. The opera singer seemed very funny because he always improvised in the middle of his singing by starting to crack a few jokes. Unfortunately the jokes were in Swedish. The 5 of us: Aron, Emanuel, Linn, Maria and me were the only young people in the entire concert hall. Those around us were 3 times older and couldn't help falling asleep all the time. The music was either peaceful or full of joy! So we sang along as well as shake our body! It was full of fun!

To be continued...

40 days struggle of being an expat

I started to feel better and figured out how to have a life here in Sweden. It might sound funny to you because I have been to 27 countries and lived in Holland for 14 months. However, living abroad without being part of AIESEC is much harder. There have been quite a few things I am struggling with:

My own social network:
Seeing so many trainee network in different countries, living in Rotterdam as foreigner last year, one thing most of the expatriates are challenged by is to form a social network with the locals. For me it is even more challenging when I spend most of my time with Aron, when Swedish are not particularly open and friendly to foreigners (oops!), when cold and grey winter is getting on everybody’s nerve.

Just like what Devrim pointed out, spoiled by AIESEC, the snobbish me only wanted to make friends with inspiring and interesting people. It turned out that I was the one separating myself to the rest. After an extremely eventful weekend with the trainees here, I found myself having great fun socializing with people with less judgments and more openness.

Since my goal is to make more friends with Swedish people, the next round of challenges will be: join our department fika (a conversation over a tea/coffee between friends) and talk to those 20 years older than me; find out more parties without @ers or trainees but Swedish young people who I don’t know. For me personally, these things are much harder to do than how they sound. Non AIESEC networks are usually not as open and friendly. And Swedish are not the warmest people in the world, at least not superficially. I would like to increase more insight to locals and observe how I truly live in this environment.

Activities attended so far:
- A Mozart concert in the church at Gamla Stan (Old Town) - to complete the oldness, everyone else is twice my age! Both Aron and me fell asleep - too relaxing!
- The History Museum - enjoyed those ‘learning circle’ style exhibitions by picking out the favorite and most disliked pictures and talk about the reasons which is very personal connection to love, power, hope and fear inside us.
- The National Museum of Fine Arts - enjoyed the modern Scandinavian design and the great company of Linn!
- Christmas Choir in a university at Flemingsberg - full of joy and festival atmosphere!
- Jazz club Stampen at Gamla Stan again - everyone else is twice my age again! Where are the young people in this country?
- Cultural dinner organized by the LC - first time meeting all the trainees in town and luckily everybody liked the stirfried noodles
- Hosted a Christmas party in my apartment - first time had great fun with the trainees and had good conversations
- Visited Skansen (a huge outdoor museum demonstrating Swedish life and culture) - the Christmas market there was very big. Will go again with Aron for some lectures on Swedish culture.
- Shared my @XP at LC’s induction seminar - woke up my sweet AIESEC memories. Once again I felt that this organization is incredible!

A lot more to experience: having a Swedish Christmas, moving to Maria Johansson’s apartment (living with a Swedish, yah!), watching the musical ‘singing in the rain’ in Swedish, traveling to Egypt after IPM. Stay tuned, my friend!