My first visitor in Sweden

Hej hej!

As I mentioned on my last post, this weekend I am hosting my first visitor from home - my cousin Orit, who also happens to be one of my best friends. She arrived on Thursday afternoon and we've been having a wonderful time since then!
First of all, it's so different to be speaking Hebrew here... and there's something nice about knowing no one can understand you... :) you can have the most secretive conversation in a train packed with people. hehe.
Thursday we went to dinner at the Tapas place near the office and then headed to Odenplan to a place that I like. On Friday afternoon Orit (who went on village in 1992) and I met with one of the Swedish delegates from her village who lives in Stockholm now. It was very cool, and they hadn't seen eachother in nearly 18 (!) years. One of those great CISV moments.
Friday night we were invited to dinner at the Israeli embassador's house and it was very very nice. My first time in Östermalm and they had a very beautiful home. We also had a chance to meet some other israelis and some jewish Swedish people our age. Then we all went out together to Stureplan. It was my first time there so it was great and fun. You do have to pay a "price" for a party night though, because we got home so late, that yesterday we just could not bring ourselves to do anything... and we just stayed home and went to bed very early. But now we are heading to hopefully do some iceskating and H&Ming (we don't have it in Israel so we always go to H&M when we're in Europe) and tomorrow Orit is already going home... :(

But what a great weekend!

Post Impact

Hi! So here we are on the other side of the impact weekend (to my non-CISV Sweden readers, impact is the national training system/weekends of CISV Sweden).

The weekend was really fun. It was great to meet a whole bunch of CISVers (going to Seminar, Youth Meeting and JCs). I also am now officially an expert on snow driving as I had to drive back and forth to the bus station quite a few times...

To the readers who were at the impact: was great to meet all of you, to train you a bit, to hang out during free time and to see and hear people's opinions and views. I especially enjoyed the agree/disagree questions in the evening's human rights activity because I could tell on one hand you had so much to say, and on the other, were really open to thinking about it (as many of you switched a minute or two after the question was read). And I'm sorry we couldn't develop deeper conversations on these topics but I guess that was part of the activity....

Oh, and a big thanks to people from making the effort to talk english in many of the sessions and in meals/free time!

I did however began developing a cold during this weekend which I've been trying to fight off using Sterpsils and eating oranges. :) Hopefully it doesn't get worse...

AND now that the impact weekend is behind me, I can start focusing on my next adventure which is my first time being a host here in Sweden. Yes! I have my first visitor from abroad coming this Thursday, my dear cousin Orit and I am very excited about her coming to see my new, snowy life. I am sure having someone from outside here will make me finally feel like an "insider". Suddenly I'll notice how much I've learned in the last month, right?

Ok, I will now go finalize the templates for the Seminar Camp Staff trainings and I will write more later this week.

Heydå.

First Impact Weekend

Yesterday I was happy to attend a meeting about Mosquito Tactics that took place at the office. I know that sometimes it's easy to see flaws in the organization you are in, and there's always room for improvement, BUT coming from the outside I must say that CISV Sweden is a very impressive organization, that gives out a very professional feeling. Way to go, Sweden! :)

Other than that me and Louise are making our final preparations for the Impact weekend starting tomorrow. I'm very excited to experience an impact first hand, and to train the Swedish Seminar Camp participants (along with Sofia). The seminar camp program is dear to me so I am happy to meet a lot of the Swedish participants going abroad.

Also, I will be experiencing another "first time" tomorrow - my first time driving in Sweden. Though I've had my license for quite a while, I have never driven in snow before so I'm a little anxious. But I'll have Louise at my side so at least I won't get lost (no pressure, Louise).

See you on the other side of the weekend. Bye!

Welcome!

To those of you who don't know me allow me to introduce myself! I'm Einav and I'm from Israel (and to display the bit of Swedish that I've learned: Jag heter Einav och jag kommer från Israel). I've been a CISVer pretty much my entire life but I never imagined I'd be CISV'ing as my full time thing! And that's what I'm doing here in Sweden - working full time with CISV Sweden at the Stockholm office.

I came to Sweden 3 weeks ago and so far I'm liking it a lot. My body took a bit of a shock to the cold, at first, but with a big warm coat, thick socks and proper shoes - nothing can stop me! :)

I'm slowly (very slowly) begin to pick up some words in Swedish but Swedish people speak such excellent English that it's almost too easy to get around without Swedish. But I am taking classes so hopefully I can learn at least SOME Swedish before I leave.

In this blog I will keep you posted on my work at the office as well as my new life in Sweden.

Hope you enjoy!
E.