Well, Jesse and his family got in about 2am. I'd had about two hours sleep. Rested til 5am, and then I got up and walked around the wildlife preserve for an hour. Kept trying to take pictures with the ol' digital camera, but it would take ONE pic and then tell me the batteries were dead. Even after I replaced the batteries with new ones, it pulled this. Then I exchanged the batteries yet again and it finally let me take pictures.

Jesse and Anna and I went out to dinner, that first night. I had pizza with oxen and bernaise sauce. UnUSUal, but good. Alone, that night, I tried for half an hour to reheat the other half of the pizza in the oven. Anna has no cookie sheet, baking pan or even aluminum foil. I stuck the box in the oven and hoped that the metric dials on the oven wouldn't let the it get over Fahrenheit 451.

After my foray into photography, I explored Motala. I watched the fresh-faced Swedish school-children on their way to 'skolan'. Found a neat little bakery and bought three of everything that looked different and interesting. One pastry, a green cylinder with the ends dipped in chocolate, turned out to be alcoholic -- so not only was my brain swimming in sugar and white flour, but ALkeeHALL, too. I was almost toasted. Got a headache. ow.

Anna's Apartment Complex Sweden's slugs are HUGE.


Jesse and I drove to Jönköping to visit the John Bauer Museum. On the way, we stopped at Gränna, nestled on the coast of Lake Vättern, really lovely. There are numerous little touristy shops, where I bought some candy for my nieces and nephew.

Jönköping is a good-sized city, and we happened to get there around the time of the upper secondary school's graduation exercises. Dump-trucks and other large vehicles had been decorated with flowers and banners and were carting hundreds of graduating teenagers around. They hollared and waved and sang to us. I recognized one tune as "Camptown Races". It was really charming. The girls were dressed in white, and the boys wore white shirts and slacks and navy blazers. They all wore sailing caps. It looked like a lot more fun than the graduation exercises in the States.

Frankly, everything you've heard about Swedish gals being very pretty is true. I didn't see one unattractive girl in the bunch. The boys can be a bit funny-looking, but the nice-looking fellows are still in greater proportion than in the U.S. A lot of the younger teen boys and children have "bullet" hairstyles, which is rather amusing.

The Bauer exhibit at the museum was small but "cherse". Most of the pieces were small, owing to the fact that he was an illustrator and not a fine artist. A really lovely Asian Swede took us around the museum and told us about the collections in moderately decent English. I was enamoured. What a doll. ^_^

On the way back from Jönköping, we stopped at Per Brahe's burned out stone manor. The ferry in which John Bauer and his family perished was named for Brahe. The view from the hillside of the lake and farmlands below was astonishing and lovely.

I didn't take these pictures,
but I wanted you to see
how charming graduation day is in Sweden.


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