Day 2 - Putting on a brave face

I would like to say today was amazing and I had some wonderful adventures, which I did, but I was sick. We can't work out if it was heat stroke (spent over an hour in the direct sun the day before) or something else. The first half of the day I was somewhat ok, with some good drugs on board, but then after the strawberry farm, I slept. I guess to put it in perspective, for those of you that know me, I couldn't even keep coffee down, nor did I want it. I kept telling mum, Eva and Fredrik, "this is weird, I am never sick". It must be my body finally being able to relax, and stopping for a moment, after months-years of being on the go with a whole range of things happening in life. This is what I am going to tell myself, but thankfully all I have now is a caffeine related headache (I hope), an issue to deal with in the future. Ok so enough of why this story isn't going to be overly long with an abundance of adventure...

After we got up and got ourselves ready, we went off to the strawberry farm! It was a beautiful place, in the middle of no where, where you could pick your own strawberries, and as you are picking them you can eat them. Mum and I got dropped off there first, because of the way the car is configured, and baby seats, we went first and waited there. When we arrived we saw there were rules to picking strawberries. This made me giggle. Who knew there were rules to picking strawberries!!? They had it in English and Swedish. Mum and I diligently read the rules of how to pick these delicious strawberries, then found a seat to chat. We had the most wonderful conversation around many things, including my upcoming meeting with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the Estonian Government, my time as Camp Leader at Sõrve Summer Camp and how it has grown and the work that has gone into it, and the fact it takes a whole community to build that kind of thing. We spoke about our travels in Estonia and things we needed to still sort out, including a cheeky spa day visit when we get to Saaremaa. This I am really looking forward to but it is over a month away! What I really liked about this time mum and I had, to wait for the others, is how we connected and how vulnerable in conversation we were with each other. Sure, there were moments of silence but what I did notice is how much we actually have in common and I can feel my bond with mum getting stronger from this. I adore it, it is needed, in a very big way.

Eva, Fredrik, Vincent and Viktoria arrived and Vincent was a bit shy at first, not knowing what was going on. A big open space with all these white long domes, I feel it would have been a little bit scary for a 2 year old. As we started walking towards the area were were allowed to pick the strawberries, mum offered her hand to him and he took it. She was so excited, I quickly snapped a picture and lucky I did at that moment, because straight after, he took Eva's hand instead. We walked down to where we were meant to pick strawberries (as you may have read the rules, it is VERY strict and they have people at the enterences of the long domes, to tell you which isle you can pick from. You had to stay in your lane.

When we were there picking, once Vincent realised what we were doing, he loved it! There was a moment I heard Fredrik say to him in English, and it made me giggle "You need to slow down your strawberry eating, I can't pick them faster than you eat them". It reminded me of how Lekso would be in this situation, just eating all the strawberries, without a care in the world. Vincent had the best time, I am told. I had to go back to the seats early and lay down. Bending down to get strawberries was not good for my nausea. Mum did continue to pick the strawberries though. I am glad she did and I am so grateful, for her, that she is now able to have these experiences, because I suspect about a year ago, this would not have been the case. 

Even to experience the joy in Vincent, being there with him would have been something abundantly majikal for her and I am grateful she got to have that experience. They ended up picking about 4kg worth of strawberries, with I think it being 140 Swedisk Krona/kg, so they were not cheap! But my gosh they were amazingly delicious. So abundantly sweet and juicy. I was glad I was able to eat a few, although, it did take me an hour to eat 4 of them, but never the less, it meant I had to eat them mindfully!

Once we headed back to Eva's I went straight to bed and slept for several hours. Mum and Eva went to a big "Mall" as Eva calls it and mum told me it was massive! They got a whole range of things for Midsummer and the following days, as everything is closed for 3 days in Sweden, around Midsummer. After I got up they were making dinner, ready for Jenifer and her partners son, Hank. We had a BBQ. Eva requested ABC chicken and Chinese salad. We were not sure we would find the ingredients for the Chinese salad BUT mum being creative in that space, managed to find all the ingredients and even taught Eva how to make the dressing!! Eva explained she had fond memories of having this often when she lived with us in Australia and was excited for Fredrik to try it.

They bought a BBQ recently and were very eager to learn some "Aussie meals" to cook on it. When Jen arrived she was excited to have something that was somewhat "Australian". During the time of dinner preparation, I was sitting on the couch watching Vincent and Viktoria. Vincent was driving the truck around with various animals in it. I was trying to teach him the world "Squirrel" and he was teaching it to me in Swedish. We got into a little heated debate as to what this animal was called, in a cheeky way. He was stomping his feet with a smile on his face, admit that it was called a "Ekorre". Eventually we stopped with that game and he continued to drive his cars around.

 was trying to get him to do it on my legs. For those of you that know me well, leg and feet rubs are absolutely so soothing for me, even a little bit with a child running his car up and down them, it was so sweet. Eva did comment when we were having our debate "You are teaching Vincent English and he is teaching you Swedish". This made me giggle and I suppose that is what is happening. Once dinner was ready, I went back to bed, I had some terrible stomach cramps and felt awful.

I had a very long sleep, thankfully. But I am told, dinner was a lot of fun and Jenifer and Eva took some great photos for me to use. After dinner they made a strawberry cake, traditional for midsummer, with the strawberries we picked (I think i may have picked about 4 of them before I tapped out). I am very much looking forward to seeing this cake. I was a bit sad that I was not able to be part of this process of making it, and having dinner with everyone, but I have learned to really listen to my body recently and really give it what it needs. As I am writing this post, mum is now telling me she feels terrible, and possibly has what I had, so it may not have been heat stroke after all, sadly.

I am really looking forward to the adventures of today, being midsummer and really experiencing it in a very different way to Estonia. I can't wait to share with you tomorrow the differences in tradition and how they celebrate it in Sweden, and I hope, not like the movie "Midsommer", that was terrifying but hey, you have to roll the dice!!
​Marissa xx