Our Swedish experiment has begun!

My wife AS and I have been talking about moving to Sweden for a while. She was born here (in Sweden), and I've been here to visit 8 or 9 times over the past dozen years since we started dating. Moving to Sweden always seemed like something nice that we might do in the future; I would learn the Swedish language and culture first hand, and she would get to experience living in her homeland as an adult. We would say, "Maybe in a couple years we'll move to Sweden. Wouldn't that be exciting?" But we had school, and new jobs, so it could wait until later.

View from the deck of "the summer house" in Dalarna,with the barn, root cellar, a shed, and the lake in the background (obscured by fog).

Then we realized that those "couple years" had already gone by. AS had finished her masters degree, I had already been at my job for 3 years, and the clock was still ticking. We were getting more and more settled into life in the Washington, DC area and it wouldn't get any easier to leave. Besides, someday we're hoping to have little Swedelings running around the house, and it wouldn't get any easier to move after that. (And besides, wouldn't it be nice for those hypothetical little Swedelings to also have their choice of countries to live in someday?)

The kicker was when we visited SwedeLife and family. They had followed their instincts and moved to Sweden about a year prior. Her husband (my brother-in-law) was originally from Sweden, but she was a home-grown American like myself. We had such a good time visiting them (and my sister-in-law's family down the street!), and we could see how well they had settled in life in Sweden. There was just no question that they had made the right move.

As AS and I were getting ready to head back to the States after that trip, we said to each other, "Do we have to go home?" The answer, of course, was yes, but that was the turning point we started planning to actually make the move ourselves.

Here we are a few months later! I'm at "the summer house" in Dalarna, and AS arrives in a few days. It feels good to be here; the air is fresh, the lake is beautiful, and spring is just starting to arrive. Our Swedish Experiment has begun!



PS: I had to come up with some kind of pun or joke for the name of the blog. It's not as good as the "Swede Life" (and a lot nerdier) but its kind of funny to me.

PPS: I'll pretty up the site and put up photos and stuff later.