If you have not yet heard 10-year old Jackie Evancho, who performed at the Lightening of the National Christmas Tree Concert, listen to this. After performing at America’s Got Talent last fall, she became famous all over the U.S. And she really has the most beautiful voice! This clip is from the from the Lightning of the National Christmas Tree, but there are a lot of other videos of her singing on youtube. Listen and enjoy!
As I indicated in my last blogpost, I have been more or less buried in studies for the past couple of weeks. I have however taken the time to enjoy some holiday festivities. I spent Thanksgiving with P’s family this year, and tried for the first time in my life macaroni and cheese, along with delicious turkey, sweet potatoes, and everything else that belongs to Thanksgiving. It was a really nice evening!
After that, St Lucia season started. I didn’t have time to participate in more than a couple of processions, but it was still great to get to sing the songs and I really enjoy performing with choirs, so I am happy I took the time to do this. (Though I am a bit old to be dressed in a white nightgown in front of an audience…) I also performed for what I think is the largest audience I have ever sang for, at the Swedish Christmas bazaar at House of Sweden, with about 2,000 people. I also brought P and A and they were delighted to support Swedish-American cultural relations!
One of the most memorable evening was however the lightning of the National Christmas Tree, down at the Ellipse behind the White House. A had managed to get tickets to the event, and besides lightening the tree, there were performances by artists like B. B. King and little Jackie Evancho. Best of all was however that the First Family was there, and that President Obama spoke. Michelle Obama also read a Christmas story which was very sweet and which everyone except I seemed to know from their childhoods. In short, it was a lovely evening!
The holiday season also included a couple of mulled wine-evenings (of which I organized one at my place), a specially arranged Christmas dinner at IKEA, and lots of indulgence in holiday food and sweets.
Sorry for poor updates recently! (Or rather, no updates!) I have had 2 exams in the past week, and I have an assignment for my MSc program that is due on Monday. So I have been kind of buried in articles about European and world food policy, and in Romanian texts and vocabulary. However, today I had my second Romanian exam this week, and believe it or not all my Moldovan friends, but I actually got top grades on both the exams! So perhaps there is still some hope for me to one day learn this immensely complicated language!
Anyway, I should get back to my assignment…. I just wanted to let you know that I haven’t disappeared, gotten kidnapped, or taken off to some SIDS* with lovely beaches, nice food, but poor infrastructure. (Although the latter is quite tempting right now.) I just haven’t had time to blog lately. I hope to post more updates next week!
Spent the morning at the Java House, studying Romanian history, culture, and politics. And yes, I have stolen most my pens from various hotels around Eastern Europe!
* SIDS = Small Island Developing State, an actual category of developing countries with a a very specific set of challenges. You can read more about it here.
I just saw a list over the best and the worst airports in the U.S. according to a customer survey. And no surprise there: Dulles International Airport (which I passed through at least 10 times last year) was ranked as number 6 from the bottom! So if you come to visit me, I suggest you try to fly in to Reagan National Airport here in DC instead. It was ranked the 8th best airport in the country.
Tuesday, I did something that for me is very American. I went around in nursing homes, delivering turkeys and other Thanksgiving food to seniors with little means to buy holiday food for themselves. There is no season like holiday season for charities in the U.S., and I am asked for donations to various organizations almost daily. I enjoyed volunteering of course (though I have my views on charity-dirven assistance vs. government-run programs – guess I am not entirely American yet!), but I felt a little like being on the Thanksgiving episode of Felicity or some other all American TV-series. Now I am on my way to P’s family for Thanksgiving dinner, so at least I am not celebrating Thanksgiving only with friends, as they always end up doing in these college series.
I got feedback on my first assignment on my MSc Program this week. Apart from one stupid mistake that I had made in terms of the writing format, the feedback was quite good. However, the evaluation form didn’t give me more than a 68% score, and I was quite depressed for a few days. I kind of assumed that it was similar to the U.S. grading, where the top grades are around 80 and 90%. I had told myself while writing the assignment that this was our first and that I should allow myself time to learn the academic style and more research oriented approach, which was part of the reason why I decided to go back to University in the first place. But I was still a little disappointed of not having performed above mediocracy. Yesterday, however, I double checked the grade system in our Program Handbook, and it turned out that 60-69% counts as “With Merit” and 70% and above is the highest grade, “With Distinction”. The grade on the Diploma is then given based on the average of the four course modules and the dissertation. So 68% on the first assignment wasn’t that bad; I am quite pleased, and I will do my best to improve over the rest of the Program! Even though for me, what I learn in a course has always been much more important than the grade I get, I have some semi-plans for what I want to do after these two years and my grades from this program will certainly play a role in this. So back to my studies! I should start writing on my second assignment this weekend….
We are now in the middle of what is referred to here as the Holiday Season – basically the time between Halloween and New Years, and tomorrow, it is Thanksgiving. I love this period! Indulging in holiday spirit and seasonal food is the best way to enjoy fall, which for me normally is kind of gloomy. My sister Jessica, who is very knowledgeable in ethnology, has told me that most cultures (at least those rooted in Europe) have over the year traditions in approximately the same period: around the two solstices, the two equinoxes, and once in between each of these periods. Many of them are today related to Christianity, but they were all there before Christianity was introduced. These festivities had an important function in showing how the year passed, and I think this is even more important now when many of us are so detached from nature, and time and life easily just passes if we don’t stop and reflect. Thus, I try to acknowledge the seasons and the holidays. For Thanksgiving, I have gotten some seasonal decorations, spicy cinnamon tea, and today, I am making a pumpkin pie.
As I wrote in my previous post, the countries that I travel to are quite familiar in terms of culture, food, history, languages, and so on. By being a business traveler and always staying at business hotels instead of B&Bs and small inns, which at least I tend to do when on vacation, things can sometimes seem even more similar from place to place. But just like Samuel L. Jackson pointed out in Pulp Fiction, there are always these small differences between countries. On the airport in Skopje (F.Y.R. Macedonia), I found for example the smallest muffin I have ever seen:
A lot of things in the Western Balkan is very familiar for me as a European: culture, history, food, religion, architecture – the list can be made long. Yet, there are some things that are a little different from what I am used to in Sweden, France, and Italy…
On entering a municipal building for a meeting…
I am back in DC since yesterday, after an overnight stop in Vienna. When I learned that I had to stay a night in Vienna between flights, my plan was to see a performance at the Vienna Opera, because it has always been a dream of mine. But unfortunately, I got there too late and the opera had already started. Next time hopefully! Instead, I had time to get Heindl marzipan, which is one of my favorite sweets!
But I am happy to be back in DC. I was quite worried that there might be a problem to get back into the country now that I changed contracts. Even though I got a multi-year visa prior to my relocation to the U.S., it is subject to my contracts, and the dates of my first contract was spelled out on the visa. So when I changed contract status last year, I had a small incident in immigration because I didn’t have any papers with me to confirm that I still was employed with my organization. It might sound like I was a complete idiot to not check this properly, but it was a bit more complicated than that. I thought I did follow up with the right authority, but U.S. Government Departments seems to have less communication between them than I assumed. (I think it has to do with the American Freedom and the restriction on Government vs. individual freedoms, but I am not entirely sure.) Anyway, as a result of my ignorance, I ended up in a back-office with a man dressed in uniform yelling at me. A few hours later, a quick phone call to my employer sorted things out though, but the experience has stayed with me and I always feel a little uneasy going through the passport control at Dulles International Airport. Therefore, I was sure it would be repeated now that I again changed contracts, so I brought all the necessary papers, but things went smoothly. Even though I knew that everything was in order, I never felt so relived exiting the airport. (This part is definitely the drawback of being an immigrant – you know that you never that the right to be here, though fortunately for me, being forced to go back to my home country is not has problematic as for many others here.)
And I came back to a sunny Washington with temperatures close to 20 centigrades, and with leaves shifting in yellow, orange, and brown. It is beautiful and it is a perfect day for a walk. But first, I am going to see if anyone is up for brunch! (I will post pictures from Montenegro later today.)