The Swedish Summer

As summer is coming to an end in most parts of the northern hemisphere, I think back on this summer and the time I spent in Sweden. Even though I grew up in Sweden, it had been over ten years since I experienced the Swedish summer. My sister’s wedding this June provided the perfect opportunity to experience it again-and to share it with my husband for the first time.

The Swedish summer to me is magical, it is a time when things truly slow down and most people are on vacation and out enjoying themselves. You see, most Swedes get four weeks of vacation, or more, every year. June through August is generally referred to as the “vacation period” and businesses run on a skeleton crew. The beaches are full of people of all ages, kids are playing outside, and there is a general sense of relaxation in the air. The summer staples are locally grown strawberries, new potatoes, and, in the case of our family, celebratory champagne. In the summertime, the evenings are long and one of my favorite things to do is linger outside long after dinner and enjoy the warm and still evening.

I think one thing that makes the Swedish summer so special is that it is not taken for granted. Most of the year it is dark and cold in Sweden, and therefore the relatively short summer is that much more appreciated. On the other hand, I currently live in Arizona, in the Valley of the Sun, and the sun is very much taken for granted. After all, it is sunny on average at least 211 days of the year and there are really only two noticeable seasons: the very hot summer, and the not-as-hot rest of the year. But as a Swede, I love the sun and the climate suits me well; it conjures memories of a worry-free vacation.

A Bookstore Tale

I had worked in the bookstore part-time for about 6 months before I graduated from AIU. After I graduated I started working there full-time while I was looking for my career job. Being in retail, the job offered a lot of interactions with all kinds of different people. When the doors opened in the morning, you never quite knew what to expect – it depended on who would come through those doors and what moods and attitudes they would bring with them. 

One thing you could always count on though was the regulars. My favorite regular was a short, kind, old man named Jack. He would come in almost every evening and stay for several hours. He always greeted me by saying: “Working hard?” and when I replied, like I always did, “Hardly working”, he responded with a big grin – the joke never got old to him. Jack would browse the books, eventually pick one out, and then read it for a few hours in our cafe until we closed, or until his son came and got him. He never bought anything. He would occasionally shoplift though. The first time I saw it, I mentioned it to my manager. We were standing right by the register on the first floor and he walked out the front doors with an obvious stash underneath his jacket. When I pointed it out to my manager she said: “There is no point in humiliating him, he his senile and he doesn’t know what he is doing. His son will bring the book back tomorrow.” At that moment I gained a lot of respect for her - it showed some real insight and compassion to let him do that; and she was right, the son did bring the book back. Other managers did stop him when they caught him, but they always did it in a quiet and respectful way. I found out later that the reason Jack came by the store all the time was because his wife had recently passed away and he couldn’t stand to be in the house alone.

There were several other regulars but nobody quite like Jack. I suppose my second favorite would be the guy who actually helped me do my job. For whatever reason (sadly I never found out) this guy – who we would refer to as the “Sci-Fi Guy” would come in about once a week and alphapetize the books in the Science Fiction section. He never bought anything, nor did he read anything while in the store, he would just obsessively make sure that all the books were in alpabetical order. It was of course ok with all of the book store employees because he wasn’t disturbing anyone, and he was really just providing a free service. It was fascinating to me though. I wondered if he did it because, like Jack, he was lonely, or, because he was obsessive about order when it came to his favorite genre. I guess I will never know.

I enjoyed working in the bookstore; as someone with a passion for books it was a great place to work. I worked with a wonderfully diverse group of people and the one thing we had in common was our interest in reading. Although the daily tasks didn’t vary much, each day was always a little different depending on who came into the store. Each day you would witness behavior that was bizarre, depressing, interesting, or just flat out hilarious. For those memories, I will always be thankful.

Getting a Job

I realized quickly that I needed to get a job. Student loans paid for tuition, but I needed money for food and books. I was lucky – during my second week of school I got a job on campus. The job didn’t pay much – and I could only work between classes – but it was a start. It felt great to have a paycheck and to have something to do outside of the classroom. As it turned out, the decision to get a job on campus would have a significant impact on my university experience. Eventually I would have multiple jobs simultaneously and spend a lot more time on campus than your average student. My friend Tianna did the same thing and we share many fond memories from this time in our lives.

My first job on campus was at the Front Desk answering the phones. It was an easy job and a great way to get to meet a lot of people – while I worked I got to know students, faculty and staff whom I would probably never have met otherwise. I also got to meet a few interesting characters, such as the Russian Security Guard. He had very little to do and a lot of time to chat. I probably understood half of what he said – the words came out of his mouth at a rapid pace coated in a thick Russian accent. He provided a sense of security even though there was never a security issue of any kind – and it was nice to have some company on those slow Saturdays when the phone didn’t ring much. My Russian friend became Facility Manager when the university moved to a bigger campus, and a new Security Guard took over. The new guy seemed to have even less to do, even more time to chat, and he seemed to drink more coffee than humanly possible. Over the years Tianna and I spent a lot of time chatting with him, and he started referring to us as Ebony and Ivory, which caught on for a while among the university staff. He said: if you see one of you, you know the other one isn’t far behind. He was usually right.

(At the Westwood Campus)

(At the Playa Vista Campus)

Within weeks of starting the Front Desk job, I was asked if I wanted to pick up some hours working in the Admissions Department. I thought: why not, I need the money and it could be a great learning experience. It was. Maybe not so much for the job itself but for the relationships and friendships that was the result. I ended up working at the Front Desk and in Admissions until I graduated. In addition to that, I was also the tutor for the English Department for a while, and during my last year at AIU I worked evenings at Barnes & Noble.

My dad always told me not to let the studies interfere with my education. By that he meant that there is so much to learn that you can’t learn from books. I think I accomplished that and I think working while studying was a big part of it. I learned to manage my time and money, I learned to work with people from different backgrounds and in different positions, and I learned that you can always do more than you think. It wasn’t always easy to juggle everything, but I wouldn’t change it if I had to do it all over again.

Los Angeles by Foot

I realized almost immediately that taking the bus to school wasn’t going to work for me. Quite frankly, the bus system in Los Angeles was a bit of a culture shock. First of all there was no schedule posted by the bus stop so I wasn’t sure when, or even if, the bus was supposed to arrive. As a person with a constant fear of being late, that was an issue. I also learned the hard way on my first ride that the bus driver doesn’t carry any change.  This – and the fact that the people who were on the bus made this big-city newcomer a bit uncomfortable – made me decide to start walking to school instead. Yes, walking. In Los Angeles.

Maybe the decision to walk was less about the issues with the bus and more about feeling the need to be in control of something when bigger decisions, such as who I lived with, were largely out of my control. Either way, I really enjoyed those walks, and within a few days Tianna decided to join me. It was such a great way to start the day, and a great way to get to know each other. Instead of a stressful bus ride, we enjoyed a leasurly hour-long walk that gave us a real opportunity to talk.

Our walk took us through three distinctly different areas of West Los Angeles; we started on the very busy Sepulveda Blvd – which is the longest street in the City and County of Los Angeles – walked though a quiet residential neighborhood with beautiful trees lining the streets, and ended up in Westwood which features a multitude of restaurants and a variety of stores.

We sometimes made a couple of stops on our way to and from school. In the morning, we might stop at the Coffee Bean to get a deliciously cool Ice-Blended Mocha and in the afternoon we might stop by Trader Joe’s and pick up a snack or spend a couple of hours at Barnes & Noble. As broke college students, these little things felt like major splurges.

About a year or so into our studies,  Tianna and I upgraded from walking to riding bikes; we had gone to Target and bought the least expensive bikes we could find with money we had earned working on campus. It wasn’t exactly a great bike, but that didn’t matter to me – I had a bike with two wheels and a seat and I felt like I could go anywhere. The beach, the movie theater, and the park were now within our reach without relying on anybody else with a car to take us.

Eventually we were both able to buy a car, but our walks and our bike rides will always be a fond memory. It was something we did together, it gave us a sense of freedom, and we had a lot of fun in the process.

Finding a Friend

First day of school is always a bit nerve-wracking. Especially when you find yourself in a new country, speaking a different language, and with absolutely no familiar faces around you. But during orientation that very first day at American InterContinental University, I found a friend who played a big part not only in my decison to stay, but also in my overall university experience.

I remember vividly sitting on a very uncomfortable chair in the small room, looking at the unfamiliar faces around me and trying to read them. Where were they from? What had brought them here? What did I have in common with them? Suddenly a girl sat down next to me and introduced herself. She said her name was Tianna. Before I knew it I was in the middle of an interesting conversation and forgot all about my anxieties. That was the beginning of a great friendship.

On the surface we didn’t have much in common, but in many ways we were like two peas in a pod. During those first few weeks at AIU when I was having a hard time adjusting to life in the dorms and living with strangers, Tianna helped me see it from a different perspective. If it wasn’t for her, I am not sure I would have decided to stay.

Over the next couple of years there were few things we didn’t do together; we walked or rode our bikes to school, we both got jobs on campus, and for a while we even lived together. We inspired each other and encouraged each other to do more.

During my time at AIU, I met many people from different countries, cultures, and backgrounds who became, and still are, close friends. Looking back, that was was an education just as important as the studies themselves.

Winning the Lottery

I didn’t even see the ad in the paper. My friend Maria called me and told me about it. We had never heard of a Green Card lottery before but we quickly decided that we would both buy a $20 ticket. Why not? At this point in our lives we were both obsessed about the States in a way that only teenagers can be obsessed with something. We had been to California twice; once on a group trip to learn English while staying with host families, and once on our own to visit those wonderful families again. So we each bought a lottery ticket – without really thinking too much about what that meant – and quickly forgot about the whole thing. Little did I know how that phone call from Maria would change my life.

Six months later I got a letter saying that I had won. Of course, the first thing I did was call Maria to find out if she had gotten a letter too. She had not.

At this point I really had no idea what an impact that letter would have on my life. I suppose I didn’t let myself think about it too much because it was such a life-changing thing. The process of actually getting the Green Card though made it easy for me not to over-think it. Although I had officially won the lottery, it would take another full year to actually get the Green Card. There was a long list of things I needed to do first, including: getting certifications from doctors stating that I didn’t have diseases such as tuberculoses and HIV, provide proof that I would be able to support myself, prove that I could communicate in English, and pass an in-person interview at the American Embassy in Stockholm. So, I just took it one step at a time and figured that even if I actually got the Green Card, it wouldn’t actually mean that I had to do anything. I had no idea how fortunate I was to have the opportunity to get a Green Card – I didn’t know that there were thousands of people desperately wanting one.

Even though I had won the lottery, I could never have gotten the Green Card if it wasn’t for the help of my friends during the qualification process. My wonderful host family in California helped me by providing a letter saying that I would be able to work for them in their retail store, and thereby support myself. Maria went with me to Stockholm when I had to do the in-person interview at the American Embassy. It turned out to be a great trip; we stayed with her relatives there and spent a lot of time exploring the capital city. Stockholm is definitely a city worth visiting, and I can’t wait to re-visit it again someday.

About a year and a half after I received the letter stating that I had won the lottery, I was on may way back to California – with my green card and lung x-rays in tow. Yes, I was actually carrying my lung x-rays with me; it was a requirement, to this day I still don’t understand how the immigration staff at the airport was supposed to be able to interpret it, but a rule is a rule as silly as it felt. The Green Card at this point was not actually a card, it was a sealed letter size envelope filled with paperwork. After about two hours in the immigration area at Los Angeles International Airport, I entered the United States of America as a permanent resident and Green Card holder.

I spent five weeks that summer in California looking at universities and colleges. When I returned to Sweden after those five weeks I was completely torn. I wasn’t sure what to do with my life and where to do it. Doing what I always do when facing a big decision, I broke it down into parts. I decided that I would go to American InterContinental University in Los Angeles for one semester to see what it was like. That semester turned into a year. The year turned into three and suddenly I was graduating as the class Valedictorian with a Bachelors Degree in Business Administration and International Business.

I often think back on this chain of events and about how fortunate I was to have such options and opportunities – and to have friends and family who were nothing but supportive whatever choice I made. As for my friend Maria, I believe things happen for a reason and that she is perfectly happy with the path life took her on.