Being a tourist in your own country

Nowadays when I go to Sweden I actually feel like a tourist. It is an odd feeling to not understand how everything is done and having to ask people sometimes. But 18 years in the US is a long time and the country that I left is no longer there and many things have changed.

I had such an experience when I went shopping the day after I arrived. There is a big grocery store close to my friend's apartment in Akersberga - one of Stockholm's suburbs - and I went there to do some shopping to have my "base food" covered. One thing that I noticed was that many people in the store had a scanner and they were scanning the bar codes. As I had never seen this before I asked the young guy in the cash register what this was and he let me know that some people like to scan their food items and then pay for them without going through a regular cash register. This was completely new to me and we do not have these kinds of "novelties" in the small town of Weed where I live. Some of my blog readers who read my other blog in Swedish said that they had seen these scanners primarily on the east coast of the US.

Also, in a big city like Stockholm, there is quite a bit of theft and vandalism so many grocery stores have decided to keep the carts locked and chained. My friend (who I am staying with to start with at least) had given me a small "device" in plastic that she said she was using to unlock a cart. That was easy, but when I came back to return the cart after I was done shopping, it was not quite so easy to understand how to get the "device" out of the cart. An older, grumpy lady said "are you going to be done soon?" without offering any help. I apologized and said that I did not live in Sweden and was unclear how to do this. As I couldn't quite figure out what to do, I asked a younger, very nice woman who gave me the instructions I needed. I felt kind of silly but decided to take it with a grain of salt and some humor. At least, now I know what to do. :)

Also, I have just purchased my very first cell phone in Sweden! When I lived in Sweden cell phones had just started being sold but very few people owned one and they were huge compared to today's phones. The Swedish company Ericsson was the main company for a long time in the cell phone market. Nowadays, there are lots of different companies that sell phones in Sweden.
We'll see if I will manage to set up my phone without issues. ;) I bought a fairly simple phone as I am not planning on using it for being online but mainly for being able to make and receive phone calls and send and receive text messages. But again, I felt out of place in the store where I bought the phone as things work a little bit differently in Sweden than in the US when it comes to prepaid phones which this is. I could not even sign up for a phone with a contract as I do not have any credit history at this point in Sweden.

I am noticing how much has changed in Sweden during these years that I have lived in the US and that my knowledge of Sweden is very old at this point. When you do not live in a country you lose touch with the day-to-day activities and it definitely takes some time to get up to speed.

One thing that sometimes makes me chuckle is how narrow Swedish streets are. The street that is outside my apartment in Weed is probably 3-4 times as wide as many roads are in Sweden. This one is a road that many, many cars use every day and it is still very narrow. These differences are pretty interesting and sometimes amusing.

Welcome!

About 18 years ago I took a leap of faith by coming to the United States. I had connected and met with an American man who lived just outside of Mt Shasta in the very northernmost part of California (Siskiyou County). My road to becoming established here has had its ups and downs but I went from coming here as a tourist to an international student at a college, then after marrying I got my green card, and finally I became a US citizen.

Now, I am again faced with another leap of faith as I recently left my job at the college (where I was a student) and have now just gone back to Sweden for an extended period of time to find out if I could see myself living in Sweden again.

I'll go into more details for doing this in later posts, but it has a lot to do with following my gut feeling, heart, and intuition. Those are the same reasons I had for coming to Mt Shasta 18 years ago. This time it also has to do with practical matters that involve being a dual citizen and how complicated it has become in the past year or so.

When I came to the US I was 35 and taking another leap of faith while being older has its challenges. But daring to jump is part of evolving as a human and spiritual being and that is what I am about to do. At the bottom of the blog it says "Sometimes your only available transportation is a leap of faith" and that feels very true right now. As I do not have any real ties to the Mt Shasta area it is a bit easier to dare to jump. My husband passed away some years ago, I do not have any children, and I have left my job. Leaving my job was not easy as I liked working at the college.

Hope you will enjoy this journey!

I live right next to the volcano Mt Shasta and I will for sure miss this majestic mountain while I am gone. Mt Shasta was considered a holy mountain by the Native American tribes that lived here. The mountain is also called Úytaahkoo in Karuk or White Mountain. Due to the severe drought in California, Mt Shasta has not had much snow the last couple of winters so I will share a picture when the mountain looked more like it "should." :) This was taken almost exactly 5 years ago and this is the view I have when I step out from my apartment.