Reconnecting

A beautiful August afternoon in Central Park

 It's been a long summer, over here it is still going on with temperatures still in the high thirties... Can't wait for it to cool down a little bit.

But I should not complain, I got to spend a couple of lovely weeks in Finland and a few brilliant weeks in Canada and the US. The latter was for my husband's annual leave and for the first time in years I felt like he was actually off from work. It was a great break for both young and old :)

I decided to take a bit of a break from my online life. No Facebook, no Instagram and also no updates on the blog. Instead I took the time to concentrate on family life. Trying to stop a two-year-old from killing herself in her wonderful adventures in life is quite enough of work on some days.

Now that she is back in day care, it's time to try to reconnect online. At least to a certain extent, I think Facebook will have to remain on the back burner for a while. It just ends up taking too much time, time that I would like to spend doing other things.

Time to pick up the young one, have a lovely weekend everyone!

Finnish child labour

These friends are quite possibly the best house guests ever, here we have their 7-year-old doing the dishes!

I wish they could stay longer...

Dethär gänget är nog världens bästa husgäster, sjuåringen erbjöd sig att diska. Tyvärr e de dags för dom att faa hem senare idag...

Some summer

Glorious and warm one day, misty and grey the next.

Fleeting is the Finish summer, we are enjoying it to the fullest!

Kyoto, Japan

Here are some more photos from our japan trip in May last year. The next stop on our itinerary was Kyoto. Our daughter was unwell by this time, so we tried to relax a fair bit and not run around too much.

We visited Kinkaku-ji, the pavilion for the Golden Temple and the gardens surrounding the temple. One thing that we enjoyed the most during our Japan visit was definitely all the greenery and the large parks.

We also visited the Imperial Palace in Kyoto and we had quite high expectations from this visit, seeing that the process of visiting was not a straightforward one as you had to sign up for the visit at least 24 hours in advance. But the guided visit only took us through the gardens and we did not enter any of the buildings so for me that was a bit of a let down.

Miyajima, Japan

Sigh... I know... Its been an awful long time between drinks. We've been traveling (again) or just busy in general. But lets go back in time 12 months or so, to our Japan trip.

these photos where taken on the island of Miyajima that is just about an hour from Hiroshima, just a tram and a boat ride away. We didnt even know about this place until they lady at the Horshima tourist information suggested we pay the island a visit.

The island is home to a stupendous amount of shrines and some rather nosy deer a well.

Words of the month (or two)

A while back I wrote about our daughter's progress, or sometimes lack thereof, with regards to talking. Well, it seems that everything has really taken off in the last month or so. I do believe the fact that there are more people in the house to visit (my in-laws are visiting) has encouraged her to speak more. She is also showing huge advances in her father's language, Urdu. I am very happy about this as she gets very little exposure to this language as its normally just me speaking to her in Swedish or other people speaking to her in English. I do believe that her advances in Urdu are helping her with her overall language development, even her Swedish.

Here are some gems from the last few days and weeks.

ballo - balloon. Not to boe confused with 'babb' (bubbles) or 'baall' (ball)
kutta - urdu for dog
mjk - mjölk, which is Swedish for milk, if she is not served milk promptly she will try 'dooood' instead which is the Urdu equivalent :)

She is also working away on different commands, most common are sit, come and 'mann', the last meaning close or closed (the correct Urdu word being 'band').

She also has a new favourite song, which is Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. Or as she sings 'winku, winku, li- mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, how I wo- mmmmmmmmmmm...'

Hiroshima, Japan

It's early in the afternoon when our bullet train arrives in Hiroshima. I spot a record number of Marimekko bags on our way to our hotel. It is raining and somehow the weather fits my mood as we visit the site of one of the worlds worst war time atrocities.

The A-bomb dome, one of the few buildings that was left standing after the atomic bomb hit the city. Since then the building has been left untouched and it is now part of the UNESCO World Heritage List, to remind people of the horrors of the atomic bomb and as a symbol of world peace. The scaffolding in place in these pictures is only temporary as some work was being carried out to ensure that the ruins remain structurally safe and sound.

The Hiroshima Peace Memoarial Museum, in the foreground the Peace Flame. The flame has been burning continuously since it was lit in the mid sixties and it will continue to burn until all nuclear weapons in the world have been destroyed.

A model showing the destruction of buildings after the bomb blast.

Letters from the mayors of Hiroshima written to the leaders of countries every time they carry out a nuclear test. There were letters addressed to Bill Clinton, Vladimir Putin among others and as you can see plenty of letters had been sent over the years since the atomic bomb was dropped.

My visit to Hiroshima will stay with me forever, I urge anyone that travels to Japan to make their way there. I feel we owe it to the people who have lost their lives in the past and to those who are suffering daily in the wars and conflicts that are going on today.

Tokyo, Japan

It has been nearly a year since we traveled to Japan and I never posted ay pictures from our trip because soon after our trip my laptop came down with a virus.

I took well over a thousand photos, here are some of snapshots from our days in Tokyo. We got to catch up with my husband's friend from university as well as her family and at the end of our trip we all celebrated our daughter's first birthday together.

We had a wonderful time in Japan and we would love to go back to see more!

I quickly decided which Tokyo high rise is my favourite - the cocoon building that you can see
the top bit of in this photo

Our little girl leaving her baby year behind her way too soon...

For such a densely populated city, Tokyo has some really lovely green areas

Tsukuji Fish Market. We did not get here until lunch time, there were a few of these fellas still hanging around.
Rejected perhaps?

Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, Gold Coast

Our recent trip to Australia consisted of a lot of car riding, up the hill, down the hill. Me telling my husband to go left, him turning right - and so on...

We revisited one of our favourite spots on the Gold Coast - Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary. After all, one cannot visit Australia and not have a photo taken with a koala bear, and some kangaroos, oh and my husband wanted our daughter to touch a snake too. As you can see, she was not quite in agreement with his plan.

She was not so impressed by the feeding of the kangaroos. We teied to explain that we were giving some "nam, nam" to the kangaroos. She put the food in her own mouth...

Little girl, big day

We are back on Saudi soil and the day/night rhythm is slowly creeping back to normal. So it's time to get back in to the swing of things!

Yesterday was a big day for our little girl, it was her first day at day care! A day that I was sort of looking forward to, because the past few weeks were quite intense. Imaan was increasingly seeking my attention and presence during almost everyone minute of the day. I know it's part of her development, but coupled with shocking night sleep and day time naps that sometimes lasted about seven minutes, I was left exhausted

and needed a bit of a breather.

But suddenly at the door of the day care center my eyes were welling up. My little baby, all of a sudden she seemed so big and so independent. I guess the fact that she did not even look back to say bye made the separation harder for me :) 

She had a very good first day, although when I went to pick her up she started bawling the moment she saw me. Apparently that is to be expected. I'm hoping almost goes well for day 3 tomorrow!

That loving feeling

It's day two of our Australian (ad)venture. It means that the jet lag is weighing heavily on my shoulders but I am happy!

 

It feels great to have brought our daughter to her home country, she does have dual citizenship but for some reason I primarily think of her as Australian, don't know why. I obviously (try to) raise her with my Scandinavian values in mind, but I also wan to incorporate with that all that I love about Australia and it's people. Because to me Australians are friendly, open, easygoing and warm. Australia is a country that is accepting and encouraging to people of all sorts of background. I'm sure it's not perfect, I doubt any place is. It may not be my home country, but it very well could be. It's a country that I have been in love with since I was 12 and that feeling is still there :)

The mission for today is to get over this jet lag somehow (I feel like I have gone through a mincer) and most importantly, teach our daughter to say "G'day".

Happy Sunday everyone! If you have that loving feeling, share it with those around you!

 

Posted with Blogsy

Leaving on a jet plane

In transit at the moment, can't wait to reach our destination (as usual), but it's a 14 hour flight to get us there. Oh, and there's the fact that the flight is delayed... And not by a cute 10-15 minutes, rife flight is expected to leave an hour and a half late! So I am spending my time people watching and eating chocolate croissants...

Happy Valentines Day everyone!

Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Here are some photos from our Jeddah visit in December. These are all taken with my iPhone so don't expect anything of awesome quality.

Some of the traditional buildings in the historical district of Jeddah, the oldest dating back to the seventh century. Many buildings have fallen into disrepair and is sad to see how little the Saudi government is doing to restore the area. To the right in this picture is a building that has gotten a facelift, at least on the outside.

Walking through the historical district I felt lucky that I was not hit by an air conditioning unit, sattelite dish or other random object falling down from one of the half rotten wooden balconies.

My brother insisted on me taking a photo showing the price of the fuel. Not sure if I have posted one of these before. A litre of fuel costs 45 halalas, that's less than half a riyal. One riyal equals approximately 20 euro cents! Cheap as chips, cheaper than chips actually.