Why I Will Never Have Children

 I will never have children. BECAUSE
they are way too much work.
As you have noticed I've had no time to blog. I love these two little girls but, I am very excited that I am almost finished now.
 
С наступающим Новым Годом !!

Red Fox

Saturday night me and a friend Beth, who is a Canadian spending her junior year of undergrad here, went out to a little jazz place called the Red Fox Jazz Cafe. It's pretty small but not in the cramped claustrophobic way, it was more warm and cozy. Which is nice since it's been rainy and freezing all weekend and it looks like all next week will be too. We both has some Столичная (Stolichnaya) and just relaxed and listened to two brothers play, one with a very sultry voice might I add. 
Apparently Beth comes here all the time because everyone seemed to know her. I met her when I was at a store the other day and had no idea how to say "return", i just completely forgot. She figured out I was a native English speaker and helped me out. Her Russian completely kicks ass, it's leagues better than mine. I don't even think she has an accent. But she's majoring in Russian language so devotes most of her time to it. 
Anyways I liked that it was dimly lit and kind of conducive for good conversation. We had an interesting chat with a guy around our age about how Canada is a less racist country than America and the like..


Валерий: But the biggest problem with America is that it thinks it is the center of the universe but it's not, you know

Beth: I agree, Валерий
Me: (getting defensive) we'll... 
Beth: I mean, no offense but really, who invited you all to the middle east anyways (reinforcing earlier point)
Me: (slower song begins two play) hmm, why don't you two go dance


and so an excerpt from the last bit of our conversation, which fizzled out miserably
But they did go dance, for quite some time.. I think we'll be seeing more of Валерий in the future.


Валерий = Valery (which is actually a pretty common boys name here)

Me The Swede

Being Swedish.
What is it like to be Swedish?
Well firstly, whatever you've heard about most Swedish people being blonde is true. In my opinion, it has the largest percent of blondes in the world. Much blonder than Germany.
I have been many places around the world and never seen a blonde-fest like this one.



The hardest part about being Swedish, is no one actually believing that you're Swedish. At least until I open my mouth.
You see, I speak it the best out of my three siblings but I also am the least swedish looking as well. I have brown curly hair, brown skin, and brown eyes. 
The twins are fraternal but they both have blue eyes. Aria has dark brown hair like mine except hers is less curly and she has much lighter skin. Ana has dark blonde hair that is just  as curly as mine and her skin is the same shade as mine (I would say I have about the same skin shade as Vanessa Williams). My dear little Atticus is the most "Swedish-looking" of all of us. Blonde hair (slightly curly) and blue eyes, he has my dads prominent nose and is tall like him too. 


My mom never spoke any Swedish until she met my dad. Now, she can speak it pretty much fluently but she has an absolutely terrible American accent. I mean sometimes she is speaking Swedish and I just have to cringe, language skills are not her forté.


That was a little digression, anyways that was my first "Me The Swede" post and there will be much more to come.
Honestly I wanted to say more but I have hardly any time these days.

My Age?

Hello All!
This child raising thing is quite difficult/frustrating. I told Tobias that I refuse to have children until I am well into my thirties. That gives me more than ten years because...I am only twenty. 
*audience gasps*
Yes, I am twenty. Am I young? Certainly 
I feel really scared sometimes of course.. I don't know what I have gotten myself into. But I do know that I have been with my fiancé for four years and there are many people who have married and had previously known each other for less time than that.
I have his help, he is older than me and has been doing this whole "adult thing" for quite some time now. 


Next year I will be going to university (again), somewhere in Germany, and I need to know my career path immediately. I'm not so sure about this. Every since high school I thought I wanted a career in international relations. I know Swedish and English by birth and I have learned and can now speak Russian and German fluently. International relations sounds like the perfect career path and is still what I feel passionate about. I made good grades all through high school and my one year at Georgetown but I always focused on the humanities. 
Recently I have been doing lots of reading on the profession of gynaecology, it is so random.
I have always hated the sciences, but I really feel strongly about this and could see myself having a more rewarding life by helping women in this way. 
Reasons?
I have always known these facts but the statistics still alarmed me when I read this article .

Also, I know from personal experience the contraceptive access in American for teenage girls is extremely restricted in comparison to many European countries... and there are a lot reasons for this which I could go into but probably wont.


In short, this is something I am seriously considering. Tobias who is also going into the health field was really excited when I told him. Luckily I have (sort of) a year to think about it. 
Hopefully some older and wiser folks can give me their opinion?

Long Post Soon

I really would like to make a long post soon but Ekaterina and Izhora are such handfuls.
If anyone has any specific questions about life in Russia (or Germany), feel free to ask!

Sleepless Nights

Lately I have really been having a lot of trouble sleeping. Maybe it's the fact that the woman I'm staying with isn't very friendly, and her husband is just the opposite. (the children are sweet though)
I worry about the two little girls I watch, they have so much energy and trouble making curiosity. I'm afraid they will hurt themselves somehow, yes it's silly I know. 
It's definitely partly because I am feeling regretful about leaving Georgetown. 
Part of me feels like i've grown up too fast. Two years ago I was eighteen finishing high school, now I'm twenty.. an au pair of all things, engaged and no longer enrolled in university. 
I guess the biggest thing that keeps me up at night is how much I love Tobias. Being away from him right now isn't nearly as bad as when I first had to leave him to come back to the states.  
My parents hated him. He was too old for me, in their opinion.  
Luckily we were still able to see each other through some trips to Miami he made on the down low. Paid for by his parents, who happen to love me.  
Zum Schluss 
I toss and turn, I can't keep my eyes close for more than a few hours, I always feel miserable and my heart aches.
My parents were furious when they found out me and Tobias were engaged, they said I was too young to be in love. I used to wonder if maybe they were right.
Today, I have no doubts.. we have no doubts. We've made it these past four difficult years, over coming distance, age (truly a minor problem, we are only four years apart), and my parents (and maybe a few others) who really didn't want us to be together.


As much as I'm so pleased at how much better my Russian has gotten, I can't wait to get the hell out of here. Then I can get married to the man that I love, surrounded by the people that love and support us. 
Maybe my parents will let Atticus, Aria, and Anna come to the wedding. Maybe we will have reconciled by then, seems unlikely.
My grandma from Sweden is definitely invited... Who will walk me down the aisle? Atticus can't, he's only twelve.
Blargh, I'll stop before I go off on another path.



On a lighter note I got an industrial piercing . No worries my neighbor did it, as the department of state suggests not getting any piercings in Russia on the possibility of a greater chance of infection here...

How I met my Schatz

When I was on my first exchange to Germany at age sixteen, I lived right outside of Stuttgart. Maybe twenty or thirty minutes to the Hauptbahnhof from my train stop. I was going to school at a private gymnasium. The girl who's family I was living with was Katharina, she was an only child and had a really outgoing and fun personality. The first time I met, her she assured me that she would show me how "the Germans make the party." At the time she was eighteen and I was sixteen. I generally spent most of the time with her friends (all the the 12th grade) and a lot of the students in the 13th grade.

The first four months in Germany I was dating a really "typical german" guy named Dominik. He was tall and blond and spoke the area dialect Schwäbisch. At the end of four months we broke up for some reason that wasn't really important, i guess we just stopped liking each other. Throughout the whole year at some of the parties I had been to there was a guy named Tobias who used to go to my school but had just finished his military requirements and was now in university.  I had never really noticed him before or even talked to him except for once when were introduced. Over the winter holidays, some of the thirteenth graders had a "week of celebration" and every night everyone ended up at this really great mexican bar called Cantina on Schellingstrasse. On the last night I felt like I was getting on Katharina's nerves a little bit so I sat on the other side of the bar with a hysterical (and also very German) guy named Max who had also already graduated. We we're talking for a little while and Tobias arrived with a few other guys and sat next to me. I didn't actually recognize him, but he knew me. He said "You're Abritta, right?" 

(of course all of these conversations take place in German)

I was so surprised he knew my name, I turned to him and looked at him as though I was seeing him for the first time. The kindest green eyes, that crinkled at the corners from his smile, looked back at me. I took one look at his dark brown hair that was in a mild "david beckham" spike (he doesn't do that anymore, fortunately) and grinned back at him. Immediately I was drawn to him and he tells me he felt the same. We went into our own little world and kind of zoned out everyone else. At some point his friends girlfriend told us that we should get married. We're definitely following her advice.

So it all started at Cantina, and we still eat there whenever we're in Stuttgart together. 

This Young Life

Why this young life?
Because I am so young but I can say confidently that I have been living my life to the fullest since age sixteen. That was the year I would be forever changed, blessed by God to receive a prestigious scholarship to spend a year abroad in Germany. There I would meet my future fiancé, whom I love so fully that words could not possibly express my ardor.
My very conservative parents, by some stroke of chance, allowed me to go and I am forever grateful for that. In recent years our relationship is less than pleasant, they don't understand my "abnormal life path." These days they mostly are focusing on getting my younger sisters Anna and Aria, twins runs in our family, into college.
My dads name is Anders. Are you noticing a name pattern?
The less attention on me, probably the better.
I guess a big inspiration for my blog is that I have been reading expat blogs of a lot of other American women in Europe who have received a lot of positive feedback. This year I am living* with a wealthy-ish Russian family St.Petersburg, I guess i thought it would be an interesting experience since I also studied Russian in high school. It's certainly proving to be interesting. I guess mostly here (in the blog) i'll talk about the events that led me to be here. Those experiences were certainly different than most.

*living with them aka being an au pair

about my last name
Bjorklund is not German (americans often ask me if my last name is german, gah!). My dad is from Sweden, blonde hair, blue eyes and everything. My mother is just extremely American from Sacramento. I can best describe her as chocolate brown and petite, and kind of boring 

p.s. who can guess my age?