The sun rises at 5am and sets around 9pm right now so the days are long. It was so bright so early thought I overslept today as I needed to get up at 6:30am to help with Michael's children. Michael is in Belgium for work for a couple of days; Andrea is at an in-town retreat. I am thrilled that I can help them and spend alone time with my niece and nephew. Michael has always spoken English to his children so they are fluent, though shy to speak with me. Without Michael and Andrea as translators, however, they have had to speak English to get what they need. They have cute accents.
Michael and Andrea live 22km south of Gothenburg in a small community called Kullavik. While the city of Gothenburg is dense, a short drive south becomes a rural community, dotted with homes and small farmsteads. Most homes are white, yellow or red, often with stone walls surrounding them. Groves of trees line the hills with large grass fields in between. While visiting Gothenburg yesterday, I went into two churches that had cafes in the back--not in the foyer but actually in the church sanctuary. When I came across the second one, I had to ask why (thinking perhaps the churches were no longer used as churches). I was wrong. The cafe provides a community space for those who come to the church as the Swedish believe church is about community. There is no way to talk during the service, but the cafe keeps people engaged afterwards, especially if they live in rural outlying cities. Because of the cold and rainy weather, they often cannot sit outside.
I spent most of the day working on a presentation for a conference next week. Two papers were submitted in February and will be published in the conference proceedings. Both are in the pedagogy or teaching theory track. "Teaching Scenarios of New Normals: Grounding Innovative Landscape Architectural Design in Futures Studies," is not as academic and boring as it sounds. This presentation is on a new class I taught in the fall in which I used Futures Studies methodology, or an envisioning process based on innovative design and ideas, to stimulate innovation in landscape architecture. It was a transdisciplinary study, meaning it looked at patterns and change across disciplines, to look for solutions in landscape architecture. I had never seen it done before and thought it would be interesting, so my presentation will be on the course organization and results.
A couple things of note. Swedish kronas are like pesos or lira where you need a lot of them to add up to a small amount. The exchange right now is 7 kronas to the dollar, so my boat ride yesterday was 140 krona, but only $20. I also like the signs around here as it reminds of my favorite store: IKEA. Somehow they look familiar because of my shopping trips.
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