Svenska and 'merican Football

Let me say right off the bat that Swedish (svenska) is a surprisingly pleasant language, it's not in the class of say French or Italian in terms of beauty when spoken, but since I was expecting the it to sound something like German I was pleasantly surprised by how nice it sounded.  However, attempting to learn a language in a lecture class of over 150 people near impossible... I haven't started studying for the test yet but after 3 classes the only phrase that I've managed to add to my repertoire is "my name is Olivia" (Mitt namn är Olivia).  On the bright side I don't have to learn a completely different alphabet like I did with Hindi (42 letters plus 6 vowels.... they gave me nightmares) nor do I have to worry about a ridiculous number of accents (I'm looking at you French!) and pronunciation, though not intuitive, has consistent rules.  So maybe after some severe cramming for the exam I might just be able to order a kaffe without embarrassing myself.

Fun anachronisms about swedish:
         -The swedish word for married is the same as the word for poison (gift) hmmm...... not sure what this says about the swedish view of the institution.
        - It is completely legitimate as an american to tell someone that you speak americanska (american) in swedish, its also acceptable to say you speak englseska (english) as well.


Now on to, the Superbowl.  The game was surprisingly televised on Swedish TV using the feed from NBC which meant that my viewing experience was nearly identical to what it would have been in the states... aside from the fact that the commercial breaks were filled with swedish game analysis (none of the million dollar commercials were broadcast here) and I spent a decent portion of the game explaining various rules to the Europeans in attendance.  And there were a surprising number of europeans willing to watch the game.... especially given that they only had a vague idea of what was going on and the game started at 12:30 in the morning (there were only 4 americans in attendance and we lost 2 of them at half time, compared with some 10-15 europeans most of whom stayed through all 3 and half hours of the game).

Given the fact that the few of us who did understand what was happening had to serve as interpreters (I can't tell you how many times I explained what a first down was and how the scoring system worked) I was thankful that the game ended up being relatively straight forward with blessedly few challenges.   However, the Giants' safety at the beginning of the game was a pain to explain.  Not only, because it hardly ever happens and is an inherently weird way to score; but also because it was due, not to a tackle in the Giants' endzone, but to a penalty in their endzone involving intentional grounding (which in turn required us to explain the concept of "the pocket" and how it relates to what the quarterback can and can't do).... all of which is generally information not needed to have a basic understanding of football (thanks for that Giants).  But I guess I should be happy that an explanation of something like "the tuck rule" wasn't required, that would have been tricky.

What I really got out of this experience is that Americans really have no excuse for not understanding the offside rule in soccer.... we have rules up the wazoo for all of our sports, not just football but also baseball (fair/foul along the baseline) and basketball.  And yet, we can't manage to master the only rule in soccer that is even remotely complex.... frankly we're just not trying.

Also madonna's half-time show was excruciating to watch... it caused all the americans to hang our heads in shame and everyone else to scratch their heads in confusion, we gotta pick it up for next year.


My idiot moment of the week:
Going to get my residency permit biometrics done then realizing once we got there that I had neither my paperwork nor my passport with me... Woops, I'll be making a return trip friday.