The Scream

So it has been a little dark here lately.

There are still two weeks left until the winter solstice.

That means we are still losing light (albeit more slowly) for two more weeks.

This also means that in four weeks it will still be as dark as it now.

The thought of still a month of this darkness ahead of me made me want to go out to the Ume Älv and reenact a very famous painting by a very famous Scandinavian (Norwegian) artist.

Instead, however, I joined the local gym. To call it a gym is a bit of an understatement…It is not just a gym, it is IKSU. The biggest training facility in Europe, I think. (Look it up if you don't believe). Even to a non-athlete type person like myself it has a mind-boggling assortment of things to do. Ping pong, floor hockey, swimming, yoga, afro-dance funk, golf, aquasize… In order to promote health and wellness, my work subsidizes (of course! this IS Sweden after all!) my membership, so I get my gym membership for about $10 CAD a month.

I attended my first class there tonight. It was a yoga class…in Swedish of course! It wasn’t so difficult to follow, because “trigonasana” in Swedish is still “trigonasana”. I’m excited because it feels good to be doing Sun Salutations again. I’m also excited because going to these classes are also going to help me learn some more Swedish as well.

I’ve already learned “andra sidan” means “other side”.

Another thing I learned the hard way:

“herr omkladning” means men’s changeroom.

In doing so, I kind of reenacted that painting anyway.

oops.