Jag ber till Gud varje kväll

I've been the new kid in class a few times in my life. But never have I enjoyed it as much as I did yesterday. I finally started "Swedish for Immigrants" (SFI). It's a course to teach you the language but also prepares you to be a citizen of a new country and one day maybe join the work force.

During my interview a few weeks ago I was asked, "so what do you want to do in Sweden??"

I replied (in Swenglish of course), "I really just want to learn the language fluently so that my family can be bilingual at home, but we won't be here forever. We're missionaries."

"Okaaay, but now you're young and it's good to do that travel-stuff but ONE day you'll want to finally settle down..."

"No, we'll always do the traveling-stuff."

"Yea but eventually..."

"No, no, we're missionaries for life..."

... and so it went for a few minutes until finally we both agreed that I should just lean Swedish!

So I got to class and was surrounded by more immigrants! Not a single American besides myself though :) SFI is [mostly] for refugees from Middle Eastern/North African/South European countries. I sat between two girls from Iraq and Iran and spent most of my time talking to a girl from Kosovo (who didn't know any English or Swedish, so we mostly just did sign language). When I took my seat I was asked to share some things about myself..."Jag heter Gabrielle.... jag kommer från USA... Jag är en missionär...."

"Ahaaa" the teacher said, "Can you explain what a 'missionär' is for the class??" (Yay for new nouns)

"Yes, I go around to different countries and tell people about Jesus"

"Okaaay, so you are religious..."

Then she turns to the girl from Iran... " You are a missionary for Mohammed!".... turns to a girl from Thailand... "You are a missionary for Buddha!"

...and on and on the class went.

Later we came to the verb "be" which means to ask/pray and the teacher got all excited again pointing to me.... "You ber to Jesus every night!"... "You ber to Mohammed every night!"... "You ber to Buddha every night!".... just to make sure everyone felt included! I realized it wasn't the time for me to say, "No I pray all day long , the Holy Spirit lives in me!"..... maybe next week :) (Just kidding..) But seriously, maybe.

So I sat there mostly indulging in the presence of the nations. Eh, the Swedish will come eventually!

My goal for the weekend: memorizing the verb forms for present-past-simple irregular verbs. Fun.