Swedish Class

“It was a good class tonight” Grant said to me, and I agreed, as we made our way along the street after tonight’s Swedish class.

Being an inherently lazy person, the one thing I hate about Swedish class are the repetitive grammar exercises.

On the other hand, I LOVE the conversation, I LOVE reading out loud, and I LOVE doing creative exercises.

One of the bits of homework, this week, for example, was to write a short piece about relatives. So I wrote a paragraph about my great-grandmother, Ellen Laing. Interestingly, the exact translation of great-grandmother is “mother’s mother’s mother”. With the way many ways in which Swedes name their relatives, you could also have something like “mother’s father’s mother” or even “father’s mother’s brother”. Etc. etc. etc.

Anyway, this is what I wrote

Jag ar intresserad av släktforskning. Sedan många år, har jag avslutat mina studier. Min mormors mor heter Ellen Laing. Hon bodde i Towamba, en småstad nära Eden i New South Wales. Historien om Ellen var sorglig. Hon hade fyra barn. Alla var illegitima. Två hade pappa, William Rixon, och två hade en obekant pappa. William Rixon var egentligen Ellens kusin. Ellen bodde och arbetade i Bombala många år. Hon var inte gift. Hon bodde en och avled på en utfattig vårdanstalt kvinnor

…which basically means that I am interested in family history and have studied it for many years. My great-grandmother, Ellen Laing lived in Towamba, a small town near Eden. Her story was very sad. She had four children, all were illegitimate. Two mentioned her cousin William Rixon as the father, whereas two listed father unknown. William had a family of his own, whereas Ellen didn’t and she lived for many years alone in Bombala. She lived and died in an destitute women’s asylum.

It’s a great story, eh?

But anyway, that’s the stuff I really love doing. And tonight was a good combination between the creative stuff which I love, and some of the rote learning stuff I know I need to put more effort into.