The good life

Inga is sleeping and the sun is shining on the small snowflakes that slowly make their way down to the ground. There are hardly any "musts" to do today. Life is good.

Sunny, chilly Sunday

After only enjoying the beautiful weather from inside yesterday, today Inga and I took a walk in the sun. We followed the same route that I walked almost every day last summer (until it just got too hot even in the mornings) but it was quite different. In Rinnebäcksravinen the water level is low and at some points frozen to ice. The ponds by the sewage plant are covered with thin ice layers now and the thistles along the shores are only dry skeletons. But there are signs of the upcoming spring as well.

Time to evaluate

The past weeks I have been thinking a lot about friendship. Now, we only have about five weeks left here in Lund before we move north, to Knivsta. I have concluded that one and three quarters of a year really is a short time to make really good friends. At least under these conditions. During our two years in Switzerland it was much easier, being the "foreign" as well as meeting many others in the same situation as ourselves. Moving to Lund was different though, since we this time moved into already existing sets of acquaintances. Very different from moving to Switzerland as well as from moving to Uppsala ages ago to study.

This said, I feel privileged to have met and got to know so many wonderful persons here. It's surpassed my expectations. However, the closer we get to our move, the less meaningful it fells to further extend our circle of friends here since there simply isn't enough time left to spend socializing. Instead I want to concentrate on the friendships already existing.

When moving away (or having friends moving away for that matter) I think there are three ways to handle it. Firstly, we can let everything continue as normal, seeing each other just like before until the inevitable day of the move comes. Secondly, we can start to distance ourselves from each other since it's "no use" to spend time together with the move coming up. Lastly, we can try to make as much as possible of the time left, knowing that after the move it might be a long time until we meet again.

For me, the first and last approach are the natural ones, depending on how close the friends are. The second way really hasn't got anything with friendship to do according to me, but I can see that it might be some kind of self protection for people who doesn't want to get hurt.

I hope that these last five weeks here in Lund will be great and that when the day of our move comes I can look back at our time in Lund with a feeling of gratitude for all the friends I have.

Five minutes

Since Friday afternoon, Inga's been down with the gastric flu. Now she is recovering and to help her I have to give her five ml of fluid replacement every five minutes until about lunch. So I have prepared a tray for the morning with a cup filled with the fluid replacement, a syringe for measuring, a baby-cup for Inga to drink from and a timer to help hold us to the schedule. At the moment Inga is sleeping though, but as soon as she wakes up it all begins again.

Saukalt!

Ice cold wind outside. A perfect match for my mood at the moment. And a bit refreshing - the thoughts fly away just like the dry leaves from last fall...

What I miss

Today I miss

• my friends in Switzerland - always up to do fun things and never too busy to just hang out.
• a chef in my kitchen - I really don't feel like cooking and Matts is down with a cold.
• a few hours of sleep - when will I ever catch up?