How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons

We walked through Vitabergsparken yesterday with the priest, the policeman and their daughter Signe, putting our ears up to a birch to better hear a woodpecker yammering away inside the hollow tree. We uprooted tiny maple saplings for the priest to take home and try to turn into bonzais.

"Have you ever flown Cambodian Airlines?" the priest asked us. Amazingly, none of us had.

"The seats aren't bolted to the floor," she said. "That's so they can move them for the sheep. There were a lot of sheep on the flight I took."

We're leaving in a couple of hours, off to Birds Island until Sunday. We are not taking Cambodian Airlines to get there.

The Swedish word for the day is träsmak. It literally means taste of wood, and is used to describe how one's butt feels after sitting on a hard surface, as in I can't sit on this hard Cambodian Airline seat anymore, my butt's getting a really good taste of wood.

- by Francis S.