ChizBiz: Friends from America

The Shivers are wonderful friends that we made during our time in North Carolina while I was studying at Duke. Molly was my supervisor when I did an internship at the small rural church she pastored. Mikael helped them take care of their son and we both enjoyed housesitting for them and taking care of their Labradoodle puppy. Their family has such grace and we are so glad they adopted us during what was a pretty rough time. We celebrated holidays together with their family and were always encouraged when we got to spend time with them. When we left for Sweden, we talked about the possibility of them coming for a visit in Sweden. A year later, true to their word, they arrived at Arlanda airport to spend time with us and tour Sweden for a week. With so many fun things to do and places to visit, the week went by fast. It was so fun to have them here. I was truly able to relax and just enjoy feeling like it was a vacation. I can't remember the last time I felt like that. What a blessing and joy. Thank you so much, Shivers family!

Here we are having a picnic on Djäkneberget.

We took a day to bicycle through the beautiful countryside.

We liked to stop by old churches and look inside. It was especially nice being able to do it with Molly because she studied art history and had all sorts of perspicacious and highly interesting insights into the architecture and art pieces we saw. It was also nice having Forrest because he studies Latin at school and could help with some of the inscriptions.

Here we had taught the ancient viking art of plundering. There is a lot of plundering to be done in Swedish candy stores!

Checking up on the news from America.

Buddies!

One day we took a ferry to an island - Birka - which was once the headquarters for Viking trade. It is a world heritage site and has a great museum and tours. It was really a remarkable place. Here is a picture of our tour guide in viking attire. Vikings were surprisingly technologically advanced as you can see from the accessory on her belt.

Finally, we went to Stockholm and spent 2 days sightseeing. Besides seeing the city, eating great food, and getting very sore feet, we happened to be staying at an uber chik hotel during Stockholm fashion week. Diane Pernet herself was staying there, for which we were glad because otherwise our guests would have not had the celebrity sighting we guaranteed them.