Thoughts about cars

I never had a driver’s license when I lived in Sweden. That might seem odd when you live in the US but the Stockholm area has great public transportation with buses, trams, a subway system, and local trains. Now, I am used to having my own car and it is also needed when you live in a rural area.

When I am now in Sweden I will not rent a car as I do not know all the Swedish traffic signs and regulations so I would most likely be somewhat of a traffic hazard on the roads. ;) Also, most Swedish cars have manual transmission which I have almost forgotten how to use. Michael and I had two cars and one had manual transmission so I did learn how to drive that car at least somewhat decent. However, the car I have had for the past 10 years has automatic transmission which has made my manual transmission skills almost non-existent.

Tomorrow I will be leaving for about 8 days to go to two different parts of Sweden, Värmland and Dalarna, to visit friends and I am taking buses and trains. That feels much safer and I can relax and enjoy the scenery.

When I visited Sweden several years ago I noticed that the cars were quite a bit smaller than the cars in the US. Now I have noticed that people seem to drive cars that are significantly bigger. It must be a trend most likely. Many Swedes love US-related things so maybe the sizes of cars are influenced by the US "standard" size. I saw this pickup truck the other day and immediately felt more at home. :) Pickup trucks are very common in California but fairly uncommon in most parts of Sweden.

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.