Friday 31 August 2012

Jag älskar Sverige!



Yes, as the name suggests, I love Sweden!! In my previous post I mentioned my trip to Gothenburg and I thought I'd elaborate a little more on it now!

I was asked by a work colleague if I would like to accompany her and her family to Sweden for a wedding, and I'd look after the children in the evening while the adults were at the party. So I was gone from Friday to Sunday! We set off driving on Friday afternoon and reached Gothenburg at about 7-8 in the evening.

Its a really nice, relaxed city. It was warm and sunny when I was there so it just seemed that everybody was happy and friendly and like I said, relaxed. People weren't rushing around talking on their mobile phones, they were laying on the grass, enjoying the sun and the moment :) And it didn't seem like there were that many people at all actually. It wasn't packed full of people and there weren't huge crowds. It was just right :)

Since I was looking after the kids I didn't really have any time to myself to explore the city properly so I don't have that much to say about the whole trip other than that it was really nice and I'd love to go back with Lars Erik and get to experience it a bit more thoroughly. I'm glad I finally got to go to Sweden in a more 'formal' way, instead of just going over the border to shop :P (though I did that too on the way back from Gothenburg!)




Sunday 12 August 2012

Just quickly..

I actually have to leave for work soon but I thought I'd squeeze in a tiny blog post since I haven't been writing so much lately. Late yesterday evening I got back from a weekend trip to Gothenburg in Sweden (more on that later) where I was looking after the kids of a colleague from work. The children were a girl, 9 and a boy, 7. On our long car journey (yes, we drove) we talked a lot and I learned that the girl (who is 9 remember) had already had sex education at school... I thought 9 was a bit young to be learning about all of that stuff, and it wasn't an edited, basic, child-version of sex education, it was everything in detail.. I asked the parents if they had got a letter home from the school beforehand to ask for their permission to include their child in that class (this is standard practice in Ireland, or it was when I was in school) and they said no, and that they thought it was a bit early too but 'oh well'... I have to admit (maybe because I was brought up Catholic) that this shocked me quite a bit.
This is quite a difficult topic to discuss since kids are growing up faster and faster these days and maybe in some cases there is a need already at 9 to talk about sex.. But in most cases the girls are still playing with dolls and teddy bears and haven't even thought about that kind of stuff yet. I hope so at least..

Have a nice Monday everybody :)