4th Year ticked off

In all the excitement which is my life, I almost forgot that last week was the 4 year anniversary of our arrival into Sweden. When I asked my wife who could have ever imagined that I would have lasted 4 years in Sweden, her reply  was "Not me". Not quite sure how to take that. Ok, I was possibly a TOUCH on the negative side on the odd occassion. Just for the first 2 or 3 years, mind. Oddly enough, while other people clearly thought that I was going to high tail it, it never actually occured to me to leave. In all honesty. I might have muttered something along those lines once or twice (a week) but I was never serious about it. I was frustrated, I was annoyed, I was angry, I was downright pissed off, but I never really comtemplated leaving. Maybe it was the simply matter of having nowhere else to go at the time. By the time I left, I had outgrown New Zealand, well and truely. That country has some serious waking up to do with it's morals and ethics. Australia, quite frankly, was just more of the same on a larger scale. In the things that were important to me. Those are the only 2 countries that I could go to without restriction, and I didn't want to be in either of them. So if I were to leave Sweden, where would I go ? Of course there was also the whole macho pride thing. I was so full of it, heading off on a great new adventure. Slinking back home with my tail between my legs, having to admit that I wasn't as good as I thought I was, that just wasn't an option. It's probably not all as simple as that, but I believe these things were contributing factors.

So what's been new under Year 4. Well, I've become a Swedish citizen. That's pretty cool and gives me a little more control in my life. Swedish law states that "only Swedish citizens have the absolute right to live in Sweden". The absolute right. Freedom of Movement agreements, Rights of Residence, they can always change. But when you're a citizen, they can never take that away. Not that any of those changes are likely to occur within my lifetime, but it's one more thing that I'm in charge of again. I can also work without restriction in Sweden. Some industries are nationally sensitive and work within those is restricted to Swedish citizens. Any military contracts and a lot of work within the mining industry. Again, it's about having the freedom to choose.

Of course, having gained citizenship, I just had to have a Swedish passport. That's kind of the last official act that says, "I belong here". I own a house in Sweden, I have a job in Sweden, I have a Swedish qualification (albeit one paper), I have a Swedish driving license, and I hold a Swedish passport. The matching set. That's about as Swedish as you can be without actually being born here. Having a Swedish passport gives me a little more security when moving around Europe. With the whole EU Freedom of Movement. I could still move around on my NZ passport for short periods, but I was forever having to explain about my Swedish Residency sticker to airport staff. And you do get treated a little differently, even if it's something as harmless as a NZ passport. Some days it's good just to be normal.

Workwise I think that I may have turned a corner. It's taken a while but I think I'm finally being accepted as being on the same level as my Swedish co-workers. I think. I even get people coming to me to ask for advice, that's a huge improvement. My Swedish language skills are still not great. Not having any more Swedish language classes to help me along, I'm realising exactly how slow it can be if you use the "pick it up as you go along" approach. My rate of learning and the clarity of my learning has certainly dropped away from that which it was when I was attending the Swedish language schools. I think that part of that is that you learn the basics quite quickly. But as things get more complicated, the pace slows down. I've learnt all the easy stuff already, the tricky and less common stuff is going to take longer.

Vocally I've finally noticed an improvement. Not in how I sound, as that always sounds the same to me, but in how people react to me when I speak. I'm always going to sound a bit weird, that's the way of life. I still get the startled look from people when they first meet me. The sound is not what they are expecting to hear. But, at the same time, they are usually able to grasp what I'm on about. I see them tune in to me and then we're right. It's not so often now that I shock someone so badly that I have to start over again. And that's a huge improvement from 12 months ago. I think it's made a difference in how I've learnt to speak. For the most part I try now not to speak like a New Zealander speaking Swedish. It's a big mistake to try and speak normally when you're not making normal sounds. I try to pronounce the letters right as best as I can, but it's not as a native Swedish speaker would say. So I've taught myself to slow down with my opening sentence, and to get the key words in the sentence correct. Ease them into the process. That way, people know straight away that I'm not a native Swedish speaker, but they become instantly more tolerant because they mostly understood what I said. As the conversation progresses, the listener has tuned in to my special quirks, and I find that the pace of the conversation can pick up to a more natural and comfortable level. So it's about avoiding that initial bump when you meet. I still have trouble getting the word order correct in Swedish. It's more natural now, but I do still slip back to English sentence structure rules at times. The funny part is that I immediately know it's wrong, the moment it falls out of my mouth. I don't know if everyone picks up on it but I'm so paranoid when I know it's wrong, that I usually will repeat the same sentence but with corrected grammar. Probably not helping my case as it most likely merely draws attention to my original mistake, but it's more for my benefit and to get used to saying things correctly. The flip side is that I find myself using Swedish sentence structures when writing in English. It just feels more logical and common sense.

So, that's Year Four ticked off. My wife spent 7 years living with me in New Zealand. My goal has always been to first balance the books. That gives me 3 years more. Then I can start gloating about who has made the most effort. Mind you, I'm pretty sure that she was easier to live with for 7 years than what I have been in 4 years.