Our First Books

Last week, Ross and I biked back to his work after running intervals to join his coworkers for beer club. In a little nook at the end of the hallway outside their labs and office, a handful of people were sitting around eating and drinking. Next to them was a large cart of beer with a variety of selections. It's 100kr ($15) to join beer club and then 20kr ($3) for a beer. And you sit around at night after work drinking... in the workplace. It's awesome, but I'm trying to imagine this flying at home :) It was fun to meet his coworkers and chat with people... and drink beer for a normal price :)

It was here that a coworker lent Ross and I our first two books:

Ross typed almost all of Biltvätt in Google translate and now can recite most of the book from memory. Pelle Svanslös is from Uppsala so everyone here has read this story and it has a special place in their hearts from childhood.

Ross's favorite sayings are now "Rulla ut och rulla på!" and "Akta svansen Buffa!" (Ha, I feel like I'm blogging about a baby's first words). The amusing thing about reading children's books is that they are not always written to make perfect sense. Sometimes sentences are added because they sound good or they rhyme. "Rulla ut and rulla på!" doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it sounds good!

Look! It's the Uppsala cathedral

We have only made it through the first two paragraphs of Pelle Svanslös. I read the story aloud and Ross typed what he thought I was saying into Google translate. This was good practice, but it resulted in me having to spell out many of the words. It was a slow process. We did learn about elakaste Måns, and elakaste is another new favorite word. The sentence "När Pelle sedan kom till stan, blev han väldigt retad av de andra katterna" was accidentally typed in as "När Pelle sedan kom till stan, blev han väldigt retard av de andra katterna" which, although not terribly PC, had us rolling on the floor laughing.