Posted in Swedish

My daughters and I attended a wonderful Scandinavian Christmas Fair on Saturday!  We all had a fabulous time, and it was so motivating for Mary's Swedish.

We got there right when it opened at 10 AM, and immediately started checking out all the items that were for sale.  Mary loves to color, so she was thrilled when she found a coloring book about Sweden.  It even has a page about ABBA - she loved that!  I told the girls we would look at everything before buying, and it was so exciting to see all the crafts and baked goods and books and everything!  I especially loved the hand-knit hats and scarves, and they were not too expensive, but I didn't buy any.

We were all hungry, so at 10:45 we got lunch - Swedish meatballs, potatoes, cold cucumber salad, and lingonberry sauce.  Yum!  We all agreed the meatballs were better than IKEA's, and we are going to try to make them over my Christmas break from school.  Then we watched the traditional dancing around the Christmas tree and did some more shopping.  I got Mary a Swedish Christmas CD that is wonderful because it has the lyrics in Swedish, but also an English translation.  She also got a book of Swedish recipes (with 12 different versions of meatballs!).

We then took a coffee and pastry break and tried some more sweets.  Then they officially opened the fair with the Swedish Men's Choir from Atlanta singing each Scandinavian country's national anthem while the flag was being presented.  Then they sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" and then the Swedish consul to Raleigh spoke.   I was very impressed with his message, which was basically to focus on living and the important things of life.  We had actually on the way there heard Tim McGraw's song "Live Like You Were Dying" (a song which I have issues with) and I had been thinking that it would be better to say, "Live Like You Were Living."

After that they did a fashion show, with about 30 different folk costumes from Scandinavia.  Gabrielle was especially thrilled with this and asked me to take pictures of just about every one.  Then the people wearing the costumes did about 30 minutes of folk dances, and both the girls LOVED that!  They are into dancing anyway, and they asked me if they could learn some folk dances.

The Men's Choir performed after that, and they were really very good.  Then came the highlight of the fair, the Saint Lucia procession.  They turned off the lights and the girls and boys processed through the building up onto the stage and sang Swedish Christmas songs for a while, then processed off the stage and around the building to the exit.  It was really beautiful.

At that point we were getting a bit tired, but we waited around for the end of the silent auction to see if we won the tray we had been bidding on and we did!  The girls were excited - they plan to use for Saint Lucia's feast day.  I asked someone from the organization that put on the fair about finding Mary a Swedish tutor, so we will see if anything comes out of that.  On the way home, Gabrielle asked if she could learn Swedish too!

Their comments for the day:

Gabrielle: This was the best Saturday of my entire life!

Mary: When we stepped through the doors, it was like stepping into Sweden!

It really was neat to hear people speaking Swedish all around us - it is a very interesting language.  I would love to learn more of it as well!