Annoyances

1. The fact that the sun never sets here. It rather messes with the old circadian rhythms when the sun "sets" at 130 am and rises at 2 am. The birds don't like it either, and  begin chirping round about midnight to protest this unnatural order of things.

2. The fact that in January, when I converted all my USD to SEK, the exchange rate was 1 USD:7 SEK and now it is about 1 USD: 8 SEK. And because this whole "Moving to Sweden" idea was obviously meant to be a financial investment (as opposed to a cultural, lingual, and living-on-my-ownal experience), this makes my gap year an obvious bum failure.*

*In case my internet-sarcasm didn't come through, I jest

3. How monolingual I am. Don't get me wrong, I've learned enough Swedish to follow a recipe or read a newspaper, but compared to the polygluttonous wunderkinder* around me, I am woefully... American in my linguistic capacity. Please allow me to list a brief lingual profile of the people I consider friends here, in no particular order:

*Does that count as German?

Swede #1: Swedish, English, Russian fluently, plus some German

German # 1: German and English fluently, plus a lot of Swedish

Dutchie # 1: Dutch and English fluently, plus some Swedish

Chinese # 1: Mandarin, Cantonese, English fluently, plus a lot of Swedish

Canadians # 1 & 2: English, German, Swedish fluently

Malawian # 1: English, Chichewa fluently

Swede # 2: Swedish, English fluently

American # 1: English fluently, little bit of Swedish.

American #2: English fluently, little bit of Swedish.

Katie Roe: English almost fluently, little bit of Swedish and French

Hmm, what do the three Americans on this list have in common...
4. The fact that I am leaving in 10 days and cannot bring everyone I love in Sweden home with me. (But I can try. I'll keep you posted on those efforts)

5. Kids who write entire blog entries about things that annoy them.
UmWhat?