Party Animals

We had the oppostunity to sit down for a few hours on Saturday night and enjoy the company of our fellow apartment building dwellers. That's not strictly fair, we've had previous opportunities. But, being one of the few occupants who haven't reached retirement age, our leisure and social times aren't as plentiful as for others.

 

We have a small group in the house who have been tasked with being the "entertainment committee". It's a bit more than that, as they look after the common areas in the building such as our gym, library, guest apartment, and sauna. They also organise small parties during the year to celebrate things like Mid Summer or Christmas. They do a pretty good job. On Saturday they organised a group outing to a hotel/restaurant out in the country, followed by a dinner back at our building complex. We didn't really have the time to be away all day on Saturday, what with the horse and everything, but happily invited ourselves to the evening dinner. As it was a fine evening, we ate outside in the courtyard garden and enjoyed a few liquid refreshments.

 

We see our neighbours at various stages during the week, but we're usually in a rush to or from somewhere. We don't often get the chance to just relax and be neighbourly. Which made the evening a bit more special. Having only lived in the building for about 4 years, we're still the "new kids", and we are certainly a few years younger than most. But I got the feeling on Saturday night that we might just about have been accepted into the inner circle. We most likely got accepted more as the evening went on and the refreshments became more liquid, but I'll take it any way. They are nice normal people who are both interesting and are interested. As the resident immigrant I'm still a bit of a curiosity, but I'm pretty sure that the fear factor isn't there any more. Fear is probabaly a bit too strong, more an uncertainty amongst the slightly elder residents. A couple of them still aren't all that comfortable conversing with me but I could see that they were very interested in listening to me. I'm going to take that to mean that I'm slightly more understandable these days. Either that or I'm still a novelty like the parrot who can whistle tunes from The Sound Of Music. Being new I'm also someone who can be given advice which people who have grown up in the region already know about. Most of the stuff I already knew (thanks to previous  similar "advice sessions") but I still enjoy hearing it all again. I see the enjoyment that our elder residents get when they feel they are being useful or have a purpose. I'm happy to nurture that feeling by sitting and listening for a few hours. It helps me with my Swedish listening skills so I get something out of it as well.

 

It was slightly ironic that we youngsters were the first to excuse ourselves and retire for the evening. Northern Swedes seem to have it in their genes to continue on for hours on end and I don't think I'll ever be able to keep up with them. We left them to it, safe in the knowledge that a party of 70+ year olds would probably not be requiring us to call the police on them later in the evening. Not much of a sign from ay of them on Sunday so I'm gathering that it all went pretty well.