Graduation Anniversary

 

Today is Graduation Day in our high schools / upper secondary schools here. Yesterday I noticed this lavishy decorated entrance at one of the buildings in my neighbourhood. (Decorations still up today.) Someone living there is celebrating "big"! :)

I have blogged about Swedish high school graduation traditions before. Today's local newspaper reminded us all that last years celebrations turned dramatic as a big fire broke out in the town centre - probably not caused by the celebrations as such, but it forced all the parading vehicles with celebrating (ex)students to take a different route than usual. (And the building where the fire was is still wrapped in plastic and undergoing major renovation.) You can read my blog post about that here. Last year the month of June was hot and dry. This year, so far, it's chilly and wet... Hopefully that means less risk of fires - but not so much fun for the students riding around town in open vehicles!

This year it's 50 years since my own high school graduation. Looking back through some more old graduation blog posts, I also found the collage below (photos from 7th June 1974; collage made in 2012). It was raining and rather chilly on my graduation day too.

I did not have a graduation party, as that same weekend I was leaving with my family for a three weeks holiday by car in the U.K. (Our last long trip together as a family.)

My photo album from that journey tells me that exactly 50 years ago today, 14 June 1974, I was at Devil's Bridge in Wales. (Link to a blog post of mine about that from 2021.)

...

Adding a link to Sepia Saturday 728

Celebrating 5 Years with Duolingo

 

I'm celebrating 5 years of daily Spanish lessons at Duolingo.com

(Spanish)

You who have followed me through these five years know that along the way, I have also dipped into several other languages - some for repetition (German, French), some because they were already somewhat familiar (Norwegian, Danish, Dutch); and some just as a challenge to see how the brain would cope with something totally different (Welsh, Turkish, Russian). My latest addition to the last group is Finnish, which was introduced on Duolingo last summer. (Although Finland is a neighbouring country, Finnish is of totally different structure/origin than Swedish.) While I'm unlikely to ever learn enough of any of those last four languages to be of much use in direct communication, I still feel it's taught me a fair bit about languages in general. And I do feel rather proud of myself for having kept up my "streak" of daily Spanish lessons (+ more) through five whole years now . I would not have dared guess that when I started!

Another Anniversary! - 4 Years of Duolingo

Having posted about my 7 years of Postcrossing yesterday, it struck me that it's also time to celebrate 4 years of language learning via Duolingo. 

I'm not sure if Duo too will be sending me a special reminder; but tomorrow my 'streak' on that app will be 1460 days = 4x365 = 4 years. Also confirmed by a blog post of mine from May 2016, On Learning Languages. 

How time flies when you're having fun! (...and especially in the company of an encouraging little green owl to flatter your ego every time you manage to get something right...)

As followers may remember, I have been reporting my progress and statistics on this blog every now and then over the years. As the app and courses keep developing along the way, I realize that progress is hard to measure and compare in figures, though. Some courses are a lot more comprehensive than others, and so on. And my own ambitions with the languages I've tried also vary a lot.

The first language I started learning on Duo was Spanish (pretty much from scratch). That's still my priority, so I still always start with that and do at least one Spanish lesson per day to keep up my streak. 

Besides that (when I feel like doing more) I'm still also working on some more languages. For one thing, I occasionally review a bit of German and French (which I did learn in school).  'New' languages other than Spanish that I've kept working on are Welsh, Turkish, Dutch and Russian. In Spanish I'm wrestling with keeping apart verb endings expressing past, future etc. And I still can't keep up with the spoken language (like on TV), they speak way too fast! With Dutch, I can understand the written language fairly well; but writing/speaking and listening is quite a different matter (and will probably remain so). With Welsh, Turkish and Russian - while I do feel I'm making progress, and slowly learning to recognize certain patterns (and words and phrases), each lesson is really still mostly "brain exercise" (like games or crosswords or puzzles). I'm satisfied with that, though - as I'm doing it for "fun", rather than aiming to reach a certain goal or level. 

The main reason I decided to try Duolingo four years ago was  really just to check if my brain could still cope with that kind of learning at all, at age 60+. Seen from that perspective, I think I have to be pleased even just with the fact that I've kept on trying!

7 Years of Postcrossing

This morning, I received a surprise email:

 

Er... no, I can't really say I remember... 

But seeing who sent the email is of course a clue in itself... ;)

Checking my Postcrossing account, I note that over those seven years, I have sent no less than 900 registered postcards to random strangers around the world - and received as many.

I think the first time I mentioned Postcrossing on my blog was 31st May, 2013. It was through one of my first friends in the Blogosphere (Scriptor Senex of Rambles from my Chair) that I first learned about the project; and a lot of inherited stamps from my dad made me decide to join. It just seemed more fun to me to put the stamps to use rather than sell them or just keep them.

With the increase in postal rates and so on, most of the inherited stamps have indeed been sent out into the world by now (except some of low value, the use of which would leave no room to write anything on the card!) In the meantime, I had somehow managed to overestimate how many cards I needed to buy... so now it was the cards begging me to be sent travelling... So I had to buy more stamps... and then more cards... and so it goes on!!!

PS. I also suspect that over these seven years I've probably exchanged about as many cards outside the Postcrossing system as within it. From storage point of view, it would no doubt have been wiser to just keep the stamps... But not half as much fun!

Two cards that dropped in this past week:

Quote card (with matching stamp on the back),

from him who first inspired me to join Postcrossing

Dandelion Flower Fairy
from my penpal Jarina in the Netherlands

Another Piece of Cake

Don't you agree birthdays seem to come round faster and faster with every year? And it seems to apply to official celebrations as well as personal anniversaries...

I think I have been blogging about my town's anniversary celebrations on 29th June almost every year - well, the last few anyway. Today it was time to appreciate that 396 years have now gone by since Borås first received its town charter back in 1621.

Besides free cake for the attending public, the ceremony in recent years has included announcing a new "ambassador" for the town for the year to come. Usually somebody already rather famous.

The person chosen this year might even be known to some of my readers here, as he has reached some international fame as a crime writer: Hans Rosenfeldt. Among other achievements, he is the creator behind the Swedish-Danish TV series The Bridge which has become quite a huge international success. (There have been two seasons so far and a third is coming. I know there have also been adaptations of the series made in the US and in Britain. I have only seen the Swedish original, though.) In Sweden Rosenfeldt is also very well known from various popular radio and TV shows. 

His connection to Borås is that he was born here. He doesn't still live here, though - and just now he isn't even in Sweden! So alas there was a little bit of a "Dylan moment" about his appointment as ambassador...

Hans Rosenfeldt
(Photo from Wikipedia)

He appeared only on a big TV screen on the stage to say hello from London; and sent his brother to attend the ceremony "live".

I heard a few mutterings among the audience ("why not choose someone actually living here") ... But then the real reason most of us were there was brought out - and we all got busy queuing and chewing instead. ;)

 

 

 

... and then the gulls discovered what was going on, and came noisily party-crashing...

Piece of Cake

Today was the 395th anniversary of the official founding of the city where I live (Borås), and, as has become a tradition, it was celebrated with free cake for everyone attending the ceremony in  the city centre at noon.  (This being lunchtime for many people working in the city usually means quite a good turnout.)

Speeches are kept short but the ceremony also involves announcing a new “ambassador” for the town every year. Last year it was a an elderly business man, a survivor of WWII concentration camps. This year a young girl, Shahrzad Kiavash. I never heard of her before, but learned a bit about her story now: She came here as a refugee from Iran at age 5. Four years ago she had a septic infection and had to have both her legs amputated. Not only did she survive - last year she managed to partake in a triathlon race!

This image from http://shahrzad.nu

 

 

Celebrating 5 Years of Blogging

5 years ago today, on 5th January, 2009, I started my first blog: The Island of the Voices.

“After some trial and error, it seems I have created a blog!

In choosing the title, I had in mind the Island of the Voices in C.S. Lewis's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where Lucy enters a Magician's House to find the Magician's Book, and within that book A Spell to make hidden things visible.

She read it through to make sure of all the hard words and then said it out loud. And she knew at once that it was working because as she spoke the colours came into the capital letters at the top of the page and the pictures began appearing in the margins. It was like when you hold to the fire something written in Invisible Ink and the writing gradually shows up...

I really have no clear idea yet what hidden things I want this blog to make visible. But maybe if I start writing, I will find out...“

3 years ago, for technical reasons, I had to move the blog to a new account, and in connection with that I also changed the name to Beyond the Lone Islands.

What I wrote then also still remains true:

“My very first blog post has remained kind of prophetic to me. I had little idea back then how hooked I would get on blogging, how much it would inspire me to keep up both writing and photography, and how many new friends I would be making around the world... And yet I obviously sensed the "magic" and the spirit of adventure involved already at the very beginning; or I would not have chosen the names that I did.”

Something I consider really amazing is that after five whole years, I’m still in touch with several bloggers that I came across very early on, back in 2009. A special thanks to you. I won’t name names, as time is far from the only factor in friendships. But please know that I’m really glad that you’re still here!

Happy New Blogging Year
to all old and new blogging friends

Monica / DawnTreader

PS. The photo was taken at an art exhibition I visited yesterday together with my aunt and uncle. There will be a few more photos from that occasion coming up in a separate post.

5th January, 4th Blogoversary

Counting: One, two, three, four… Yes. It’s four years today since I started my first blog (the predecesssor of this one) and wrote my very first blogpost.

It takes more advanced maths to tot up all my blog posts though … hmm… (whirring sound from my brain) … Well, just counting The Island of the Voices and this one (which are really the same blog, even if I changed the name in connection with switching account two years ago) – what-d’ya’know, the number of posts between them actually add up very nicely to exactly 1200, with this very post!

But then there’s also my Picture Book and Greetings from the Past, and a couple of others which have not been updated for a very long time… Well, let it be enough to say that A LOT more sprung from my first hesitating step into the unknown Blogworld than I could ever have guessed four years ago when in my first post I quoted the passage from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (by C.S. Lewis) where Lucy finds the Magician’s book with the “spell to make hidden things visible” (I still love the sense of prediction in this quote):

“She read it through to make sure of all the hard words and then said it out loud. And she knew at once that it was working because as she spoke the colours came into the capital letters at the top of the page and the pictures began appearing in the margins. It was like when you hold to the fire something written in Invisible Ink and the writing gradually shows up...”

I also want to say a special thanks to those of you who have been “following” me almost from start and are still doing so. (It’s the two-way communication part of blogging that keeps me going!) And again a special thanks also to my long-time penpal Rose-Anne in Australia who was the one to introduce me to blogging in the first place!

!!! … And the Winners Are … !!!

Who says Friday the 13th is unlucky? Possibly a handful of people who commented on my 3rd Blogoversary Post last week, and did not win my calendar…

… But three people did win, and here they are:

Pauline of The Paddock – New Zealand

Eva Ason of Eva Ason’s Art Corner – Ireland

Lady Fi – Sweden

One funny thing about how this came out is that one calendar goes to a Brit living in Sweden (Lady Fi), and one to a Swede living in Ireland (Eva)! But one also goes all the way to New Zealand.

Photo: The folded “lottery tickets” on the bottom of the big tin I used to shake them about in and then draw from. Interestingly, the reflections create an illusion of the tin spinning, although I could not do that while holding the camera.

♥ ♥ ♥ 3rd Blogoversary Celebration ♥ ♥ ♥

3 years ago, on 5th January, 2009, I created my first blog, The Island of the Voices (the forerunner of this one) and wrote my very first blog post: The Dawn of a New Year and a New Blog.

As blogging became a great boost for my photography interest, later the same year I also started DawnTreader’s Picture Book.

1 year ago, somewhat mysteriously having reached the limits of my free web album*, I started over in a new account and changed the name of my main blog to Beyond the Lone Islands; no longer feeling as lonely and invisible as when I first set sail to venture out into the Unknown. (As most of my regular readers know, my blog titles as well as my signature refer to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis – one of the seven Chronicles of Narnia.)

All-in-all, it’s been an exciting journey, making new friends far across the oceans, and learning a lot along the way!

 

♥ ♥ ♥ Celebration Giveaway ♥ ♥ ♥

Somehow (don’t ask why) I find myself with three spare photo calendars for 2012. So I’ve decided to do a giveaway (or three!) to celebrate my 3rd Blogoversary.

It’s a wall calendar size 20x30 cm, with one photo for each month. All photos by me. The calendar follows Swedish standard for holidays and name-days. The names of the months and days of the week etc. are in Swedish.

If you want a chance of winning one of the three calendars, just leave a comment on this post some time from now and one week forward (the last day = Thursday 12th January; Central European Time). Only one comment per person will be counted for the lottery.

Some time during the weekend after I will write down the names on separate pieces of paper, put them in a bowl or something, and draw three winners. I’ll let the winners know by email or blog comment, and of course also in a post here.

♥ ♥ ♥  Good Luck  ♥ ♥ ♥

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*About the Picasa web album, I seem to have managed to make better use of my allotted space with the new account. Now in one year I’ve only used 8% (which includes my Picture Book blog as well).

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The photo in this post is from last winter
and is my January picture in the photo calendar.