Foreign Language Institute, Assimil, Before You Know It, Rosetta Stone, Audacity, mobile apps, Road Runner, TeachYourself, LingQ, Skype….

Sheesh!

While trying to sort everything out and deciding what I want to use, I got tossed into the world of sleep problems with Baby.  There was also an incident with a soft boiled egg a while ago, and as a result, my spacebar kind of doesn’t work the way it used to.  I really have to pound on the keyboard (even after cleaning it).  Being that my computer is in the room next to the crib, I have been avoiding the room entirely during naptime.

I might ditch all attempts to learn anything but French for a while.  There doesn’t seem to be enough time, and I have other hobbies I’d like to pursue.  One hobby, sewing, is kind of a necessity if I want to stop wearing clothes with holes in them. It’s taken me a while to realize that Baby is actually napping now.  Real naps! And I have real down time, too.  Of course, me having down time was not the reason I embarked on this little      sleep-scapade, but it is an unexpected bonus.  Most of what I use my downtime is to buy clothes for and to read about Baby, so maybe it isn’t really downtime.

As for the Swedish, I am a little confused how to proceed.  It is my country of residence, but I am nearly a recluse.  Apart from a little weekly playdate opportunity, I rarely interact with anyone.  It is simply not feasible or reasonable to expect any real improvement in my speech. It’s impossible to talk to someone (or a group of people) one day, then regard it as “trying to improve” when you don’t speak a word of it again for months.  Now that winter is coming, the chatty part of the year is over.  People are going to retreat back into their igloos.

Before these aforementioned sleep issues cropped up, I had a ton of books I wanted to read.  Some were English books translated to Swedish (Game of Thrones), and some were original works.  Those were:

• Livläkarens besök (The Visit of the Royal Physician by Per Olov Enquist)
• Händelser vid vatten (Blackwater by Kerstin Ekman)
• Nässlorna blomma (When Nettles Bloom by Harry Martinsson)
• A History of Sweden by Herman Lindqvist
• Den dagen kastanjerna slår ut är jag långt härifrån (When the Chestnut Trees Bloom I’ll Be Far From Here by Bodil Malmsten)
• Sandor slash Ida by Sara Kadefors
• Vävarnas barn (The Weaver’s Children by Per Anders Fogelström)

…and maybe Priset på vattnet i Finistère (The Price of Water in Finistère also by Bodil Malmsten)

Not to mention all the Liz Marklund’s Annika Bengtzon series.  Most of these books can be downloaded onto my e-reader from the library.  It takes me about a month to read a book.  It’s not going to be fun to entirely give up on Swedish when there are all these books I want to read.  So I’ll continue to improve my passive vocabulary and try to inject it into speaking (when it get the chance).  What’s on my reader is Liz Marlund’s En plats i solen (The Long Shadow).

As for the French, I am currently reading The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry using LingQ.