I've been meaning to record my adventures and occasional struggles for posterity and the entertainment of anyone who knows me or who might be interested in the practicalities of moving to another country and culture. I thought starting my SFI (Svensk för Invandre) ,or Swedish For Immigrants, as it's known in English would be a decent enough place to start. So this blog is really about my journey to absorb Swedish culture and feel at home here. As time goes by I hope I can even start to write some of this in Swedish.
Today marked the start of my full time SFI course, and I rose early to make sure I got to the Komvux education centre punctually. It was snowing moderately as I left to catch the bus into town. I was a little nervous about what to expect, I'd been put in the '3C' stream which meant I have some language skill already and suspected I'd be in over my head.
I'd been graded in this fashion after attending a test at the same centre back in early December. The test was a sheet of A4 paper that had about twenty words on it. The object of the test was to write a sentence in Swedish with each word. This combined with a short conversation with one of the Examiners would, apparently, determine at what point I would enter the SFI education. From what I later learned the streaming is determined by your level of education and if you speak a language that uses a western alphabet. After the test I was pleasantly surprised at how many of the words I not only knew, but could construct reasonable sentances with. It did however make me realize that my comprehension of Swedish is much better than my spoken and my active vocabulary.
After arriving at Komvux I walked with a guy, who turned out to be English (I'd heard him talking to the receptionist), over to the building where I'd been told to go in the acceptance letter. I talked to James, who was from London too and had moved with his Swedish partner. He seemed a nice guy, and it was with some regret I realized I was in the wrong room. The classroom I sat down in was for people with no Swedish language skills at all. I wished him good luck and found class room three at the end of the corridor.
I was greeted by a silver haired lady with a pugish nose, who introduced herself as Margareta Lindberg. I introduced myself with: "Hej, jag heter Adrian", and she scanned her class list to find me. I was also asked what my mother tongue was. As other students arrived I noted the class had a cosmopolitan mix of Polish, Thai, Tagalog, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, and Urdu as first languages.
Margareta then proceeded to outline the details of the course, we'd be attending four days a week: Tuesday through to Friday and from 0815 to 1215 each day. We also filled in a form so we could join the komvux library and were also made aware of what to do if we were sick and couldn't attend. I was surprised that I understood about 80% of what she actually said and only really needed to get the rest from the context. She then went on to mention how we could study and practise our language skills outside of the class hours. After this short session, just after 10:15 we were dismissed, as the course starts properly tomorrow at 0815. I spoke briefly to an Italian chap called Christiano who was introducing himself to everyone in the room in swedish. We had a very broken brief conversation about London:
C: Hej, Christano
A: Hej, Adrian
C: Jag kommer fran Italien
A: Jag Kommer fran London i Engleska (sic, I got mixed up here, what I should have said was: Jag Kommer fran England of course...)
C: London är and väkert stad
A: Ja, men London är and stor stad...(then I went on in English about it being bigger than Malmö)
A: Hej då. vi ses imorgon.
As I rode the bus home I felt good, and very positive, I wasn't just an unemployed ghost anymore, I had a purpose, I was a full time student again.
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