Expat Jon takes on the world (well... Sweden)

I can't believe it.  Today marks nine years since that fateful night that Swedie and I met.  It wasn't supposed to happen.  It never is.  That was especially true in our case.  There is this thing called the Atlantic Ocean that sits between our countries.  How could it work?  How could we even meet? I was stationed in Turkey in 2005.  With my job at the control tower, I was unable to take the normal holiday trips that everyone went on when long weekends came up (Memorial Day, Independence Day, etc.).  We would end up taking trips together whenever the runway got it's annual work done on it.  Not as fun as going three buses deep to a party city in Turkey.  I would hear the crazy stories of the parties and European girls.  That's right.  EUROPEAN girls!  I got deployed to Iraq at the beginning of 2005.  I came back just before Memorial Day weekend.  When you come back you get two weeks of R&R.  This was perfect because it aligned with the crazy base trip to Alanya!

When I was high school age, one of my best friends in the world blew my mind in the grocery store.  She told me that what I had been putting on my "grilled cheese" sandwiches and "cheeseburgers" was not real  cheese.  I stopped in my tracks and promptly began arguing my case in the dairy aisle.       - Get outta here!  On the commercial they say it's cheese.  That's cheese! I continued my rant and she slowly, silently guided me over to the "cheese" section and picked up a package of my precious cheese.  There it was.  Cheese was right in front of my face.       - They don't even call it cheese themselves.  They call it cheese food.  Look. I investigated.  Dammit, I had been duped!  As an adult I realize the power of marketing.  They put the yellow product up and put it on a sandwich and a cute kid eats the sandwich and the viewer says that was cheese.  But on the commercial they were calling them "slices".  They never actually

When I first got here, I met a drunk Brit (what are the odds?) who commented on America being identified as a Christian country.  He had a theory that America was still religious because God hadn't broken our hearts enough yet.  Though funny, I thought he was onto something.  America is relatively young, and it would make sense to establish some values and guidelines through religion.  It's been almost 240 years and America is still pretty Christian in general.  If someone is not Christian, then they normally observe something.  Atheists/Non-believers/Agnostics aren't so common. I have yet to meet a Swede that openly states that they are Christian.  I do know one Muslim guy (originally from Ghana) that prays regularly.  But other than that… nothing.  I haven't seen one person here (except my mother when she came for the wedding) so much as pray over their food.  And she doesn't count!  Growing up, everybody prayed over their food.  People must be in trouble over

I think I've mentioned briefly on this blog that I have a habit of regularly reviewing embarrassing and awkward moments of my life.  Whenever I go through one of these flashbacks, I get that same embarrassed and awkward feeling again.  Sometimes I laugh and shake my head.  If there is embarrassing dialogue involved, I may repeat the dialogue in a silly, sarcastic voice.       - "I've driven with too much alcohol in the system..." I said this gem a few weeks ago when I was taking a driver safety course for my Swedish license when the instructor asked if anyone had experienced double-vision.  See what I mean!  It's like my brain finds the least acceptable thing to do/say in a social setting and then I DO IT.  I get awkward now just thinking about it.  What was I thinking? The place where I do most of my embarrassing life reflections happens to be in the shower.  Maybe it's a symbolic thing.  Part of the cleansing process.  I get those toxic feelings out of

In some aspects of our upbringing, Swedie and I couldn't be more different.  We have spoken about this a lot during the years.  We find some things out about how we were raised and are completely surprised.  My mom didn't let us eat candy until well after we had our permanent teeth (WHAT?!).  Swedie's dad stuck a piece of candy in her mouth when she was around six months old (WHAT?!)  Upon discovering some of these revelations, one of us may say:      - That's not happening with our kids. That was all okay when we were talking about a hypothetical child.  But now we have an actual breathing human being that we have to raise and it's time to make those compromises.  We're at the stage now where we're just feeling each other out.  It's round one and both fighters are just throwing jabs.  He's still too young for any disciplinary actions to take place, but we are already trying to get on the same page - rather write a page together - on this subject