Opening doors and walking right through them

I can easily say that today was one of my more Swedish days here. It's only mid-afternoon, but I feel like I've already stretched myself further today than ever before in learning about and proving myself to the culture here. It started early this morning when myself, 10 other classmates and our teacher from our language class hopped on a bus and took the hour ride to Stockholm. There, we received a guided tour through the innards of Sweden's politcal paliament building, known as Riksdag.



We were led into the viewing room just as the elected representatives sat down to vote. We had no idea as to what they were voting on; there was no audio being piped into the viewing room. No matter, I'm usually lost when the politicians here talk anyways. For the next 10 minutes they flipped through papers, one woman got up and briefly talked, then it was over. It felt good to be in the presence of the political system at work. In September a new Prime Minister was chosen, this time from the Moderate Party, and changed the entire face of Sweden's political system. I highly recommend reading this if you're interested in seeing how things have changed here. For novelty's sake, the new Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt is only 41 years old, the Finance Minister sports a pony tail and earring, the Environment Minister is openly gay and living in a same-sex relationship and 349 elected Riksdag members, 164 (or 47%) are women.

After arriving back in Uppsala I headed back to my school for my scheduled oral exam, 1 of the 2 exams I'll be taking in order to test out of my language school and be let loose into society. It went really good. I sat facing two of the school's teachers and basically proved that I, in fact, could speak the language when asked to. I can't say I was nervous as getting by here is a daily series of tests that all begin with your ears and then your mouth as you pick words out of your brain and cast them into the listeners airspace. Language is the key to this society and I haven't had to kick through any doors lately.