GOTT NYTT ÅR!

We wish you all happiness and joy. Happy New Year!

Boxing Day in Småland

On Boxing Day Maria's siblings with families came to her parents' house and we celebrated Christmas together. Traditional Christmas dinner again, but now with a Finnish touch, as well as a few more presents. Three days of Christmas is a good Swedish tradition, which means you don't have to travel so often, but instead have time to be whole days with the families.
The picture features one of the meadows outside Maria's parents seen through a frozen window.

On Monday we picked up Maria's sister-kids from "fritids" (after school child care). Several different games were played during the evening, even if the nephew liked the car racing game on the computer most.

Tuesday evening we enjoyed together with Maria's brother with family. Sledge downhill and some rink skating before the kids went to bed.

The next day it was time to end the time in Småland and fill the car to go to Olle's parents again.

GOD JUL!

Merry Christmas to all brave ones that follows this blog!

Early Christmas and an active rest

On Saturday we drove south to Olle's parents. During a few hours we had the sun shining into our eyes, not a bad idea to bring the sunglasses. It felt as joining a light therapy when so active noticing the day light, compared to other days sitting in an office most of the daylight hours. We noticed most of Sweden seems to have winter with snow, but the roads weren't so bad anyway. About two hours south of Umeå we passed the Ångermanälven river on the High Coast Bridge, which has a total length of about 1.9 km.

Already Sunday we celebrated Christmas, since this was the day Olle's both siblings could join. All the families (except one nephew) and grandfather were there. After a traditional dinner, we shared our Christmas presents. As usual it's the smaller kids who are most excited.

In the beginning of this week we shoveled the ice on the nearby lake, on Wednesday that meant several cm of snow. We arranged so we had a round trip of 400-500 m on the lake where we could enjoy skating. We hoped for some sun to melt the surface and get a nice glassy surface, but this wasn't the case. Finally you could question if it was worth the efforts, since we used almost more time to remove snow than to skate. Anyway it felt good to do some exercise.

On Wednesday evening we enjoyed sauna with refreshing dip in the hole in the ice. You have to be clean for Christmas :-)

Christmas Eve was a relaxed day, except some more skating.
On Christmas Day we went to an old friend of Olle, before driving to Maria's parents.

Short winter days

Olle took a walk to Nydalasjön today. The sun does not rise that much above the horizon this time of the year.
The pictures are taken about 11:30.

Group meeting of the year

Today all of Maria's research group went to Baggböle Herrgård. There everyone had a 15-min presentation about the research plans for the coming year. Interesting to hear about all the persons' work, even if in a short version, including the directions for our bosses (our group meetings are combined for two research groups).
For lunch we had a Christmas plate, that showed up to be a three-meal-course with inspirations from traditional Christmas food.


We could notice it was a nice sunny day outside, much more daylight than normal. Good thing that the daylight time is longer than the time the sun rises above the tree line. At 10.30 am we enjoyed the "sunrise" and at lunch time 1 pm it was gone again.


In the afternoon back at work again, we learned more about ribosomes and antibiotics listening to the Nobelprize winner Ada Yonath.

Education also need recovery

During two days UPSC (Maria's workplace) has been to Kronlund outside Vindeln. A lot of seminars from younger scientists at the departments were interesting, as well as to hear more about the new big plant project here in Umeå; sequencing of Norway spruce, the plant of biggest economical importance in Sweden.
Thursday evening we relaxed in the sauna for a while and had nice relaxing chats. When some people had had enough there finally were space in the hot tubs. Maria ended up drinking a few beers and not leaving the hot tub until 1.30 am. Why leave earlier? You can sleep some other time, and breakfast wasn't until 8 am next morning.

For Friday lunch we had traditional Swedish Christmas smorgasbord (=smörgåsbord, "julbord"). There were a lot of different fishes for the first plate/meal. As usual you eat until your stomach is overfull. No need for more food this day.

Before taking the bus back, we had time for a short walk. We were surprised to find Vindelälven frozen, but it wasn't that much more snow over all than in Umeå.

Christmas concert and potluck

1:30 pm the last rehearsal with Olle's choir before the real Christmas concert began downtown at "Kafé Station". At 3 pm the guests arrived, including Maria and Olle's uncle with wife.
The performance took about 75 minutes, 21 songs including talks in between.
The audience seemed to enjoy it, and the choir too. It is always much more fun to perform in front of an audience than just practicing. Olle had only had about three weeks to practice the different songs (the main part of the choir have performed most of the songs earlier years), but taking that into the account, it went quite good. A couple of songs were harder to sing, during these he leaned back a bit on the more experienced tenors.

Half past six it was time for the annual Christmas potluck for the choir. Most of the members showed up, some of them with their partners. We brought home baked bread. Even though it was a Christmas potluck, there were not that many typical Christmas dishes. Olle had some interesting discussions about choir life with one of the conductors.

Dissertation Dinner

An Australian guy had been pursuing his PhD for six years in the lab.
Today it was time for his dissertation, which he managed with great success during the morning.
In the evening there was a dinner with the title "Wild meats and great southern wines". The title was revealed as kangaroo and moose with roasted potatoes and chanterelle sauce. It was the first time we tried Kangaroo, it reminded us of rabbit/hare.
There was also a wine tasting with three different red wines from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
During the evening a spex (=amateur comedy theatre) about the life of the PhD student was performed. Maria was one of the actors.
We went back home about 1.45 am, but the party was far from over at that time.