Midsommar Celebration!

Today is the big day that I came to Sweden for …the Midsummer Celebration of the longest day of the year, with the sun just barely setting at 11:30pm. We started the morning out with a breakfast and watching the fathers in the neighborhood fetch some sticks and flowers to construct a Midsommar Stång. It is a Christmas Tree looking structure with a cross and two circles hanging down. It looked strange to me, because it reminded me of the Blair Witch Project. We then headed for Ekeby Loge to watch the typical celebration around the Midsommar Stång. Around the Stång, children danced and sang typical children songs and played games. The weather was not the greatest in the morning, and it actually started to rain a little, so we headed back after watching the games. Once back to Rickard’s house in Haninge, we went to his neighbor’s house across the street to start a party. We started with a very traditional lunch of Herring, potatoes, cheeses, breads and all sorts of different flavors that I had never had before. It was very interesting, and the neighbors were really fun to talk to. Of course, like every other Swede in Sweden, everyone’s English is amazing. Sad thing is with that, I doubt I will learn as much Swedish as I had hoped. I am of course picking up phrases and am reading a lot of newspapers trying to decipher what is being said, so needless to say, I am learning. We stayed up the entire day playing games and having a competition with everyone… Rickard and I, out of 9 teams came in DEAD LAST. That was really disappointing given that we were playing against 50-year-olds in games like darts and such. Anyhow, the day carried on until the night where the subject of LINE DANCING came up. Rickard had joined me several times while in the states to Cotton Eyed Joe’s for Line Dancing, and all the neighbors wanted to try it. So, here I go out into the suburb streets of Stockholm teaching about 30 drunk Swedes to do the Tush Push. It was absolutely hilarious, and everyone had a good time. Rickard and I then finally went to bed about 2.00am and it still looked like dawn outside!