Yesterday was a really good day for us. We finally got round to buying sim cards, and I had the whole conversation, which was obviously a bit more complicated than "Hej", "Nej", and "Tack", completely in Swedish, for both myself and Kai. It's only one thing but I was pleased afterwards that I'd managed it with no problems at all. I also feel more settled now that I have a working Swedish number and am no longer being charged large amounts of money to use my phone by my UK network.
Then in the evening we went out to a bar to meet a group of ex-pats from all over the world living in Stockholm. We looked at the Meet Up website - which I knew of but had never used before, and as one group I was interested in were meeting that evening we thought we would seize the day and go along. My thought was that in the worst case scenario we might not meet our new best friends, but at least it gets us out of the house, visiting a new bar, and socialising with others.
As it was, the other people there were very friendly and welcoming, and we've been invited to a similar meeting this Friday. We met a lot of nice people, and there were also a few Swedish people there too. I'm an open minded person with friends from all over the world, but here I'm particularly interested to meet Swedish people and make some friends from this country. However, it's also really good to meet others who have moved here, and in most cases have more experience than we do of being here. I really enjoyed talking to people from lots of different backgrounds, who all ended up here in different ways.
Even though Kai is here with me, I miss having friends around. When you live somewhere for a long time you do take for granted the fact that you have friends there and know your way around the place, here we're really starting from scratch again. I think having friends and a social life is really important, so hopefully this is the start of us integrating more.
After this experience I definitely intend to go to more meetings like this, and have joined some other groups on the website. One group I joined is a women's art group, who will be meeting to see the Louise Bourgeois exhibition at Moderna Museet. Obviously I'm keen to see that, and the people in the group have been really welcoming so far.
However, I joined a language exchange group that frankly is not very appealing because their meetings seem so strict and structured - I was looking at an event for Swedish and English, and it didn't seem very friendly at all. Going into a group of people you don't know can be nervewracking, and I'm not keen to join an event that seems a bit hostile! My Swedish ability is a lot more advanced than Kai's, and reading the description of the event made me feel like they'd chuck him out or something if I took him with me. Maybe it's only the person running that specific event who takes such a seemingly harsh attitude - hopefully I can find something similar that seems to have a more welcoming atmosphere. Any kind of social event should surely be fun, not making you feel like a schoolchild.
Thankfully the group of people we met last night were all great, and even if we only see those people regularly in the context of that group it still means we've met some new people and are visiting more places in Stockholm. I'm looking forward to going out on Friday, hopefully that experience will be just as enjoyable.
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