Day 09 - Something you’re proud of in the past few days

Oh, I don’t know… had this been the assignment for day 12 or so instead I might have been able to say I’m proud of my GRE scores. But I don’t know about that yet.

I don’t have kids to be proud of and I’m certainly not proud of my cat who tore down the Christmas tree today and broke two ornaments and the top star.

Am I proud of the fact that I make it out of bed every morning and to work on time? Nah, not really… I feel like you have to have problems keeping your tongue in your mouth and ride a different bus to be able to take pride in such things.

It’s also very un-Swedish to say that you are proud of things. Out loud, I mean. I don’t think we’re actually more modest, we just act like it.
We don’t like to talk about things we are good at, take pride in, won awards for and so on.

I’m telling you, interviewing for a job is a lot different depending on what country you’re in.

Another thing we don’t really say out loud a whole lot is “I love you.” We obviously don’t love any less than Americans. But we use the word differently, and a lot more sparsely. I have never, to my recollection, said “I love you” to my parents, siblings, grandparents, or really anyone but Dylan.
That doesn’t mean I don’t love my family, I do love them, a lot. But when I speak to them we’ll say things like “I miss you, we’re thinking about you, kisses and hugs, your in my heart, etc”

To me it’s just the same and I was never even aware of this difference before moving here. But it is a little weird to me when people here tell me “I love you”, all casually. I mean like friends or people in Dylan’s family. I don’t want to be rude and not say it back, but at the same time it feels really strange to say “love you” to somebody I’ve known for three months when I’ve never said it to my own brother. So it always turns a little awkward and I’m sure I come across as the cold Swede.

When my younger brother left for Australia two years ago he actually told my parents that he loved them when they dropped him off at the airport. He said things got super weird; mom got all teary and dad coughed for a long while before finally saying “Ahem, well…yes of course we do. So…off you go!!”
Haha, we don’t like to state the obvious, I guess.