A Tribute to "The Swedes"...

Now that the craziness of packing up and moving out is over, I want to take a minute to post a tribute to two very special people. This year, we had two girls from Sweden on the ASU soccer team. They were only here for one year, but I'm positive that they made a permanent impact of every person that they interacted with over the last year. They loved to ride in the bed of my truck... in the fall, before it started getting cold, they would stand outside of their dorm and wait for me to drive by to go to practice so they could ride back there. My favorite thing about them was the communication barrier. They both spoke good English, but it was muffled by their Swedish accents. Elin, the tall, blonde, more "graceful" of the two, did a better job of thinking through things before she attempted to say them in English. The thing that cracked me up about her was that she could not for the life of her grasp the concept of the letter j. To her, a joke was a yoke, jogging was yogging, and our trainer John was Yohn. I loved to give her a hard time about that. But she wasn't as bad as Sofia, or as most people called her, Fia. Fia is just this ball of happy energy. She doesn't walk, she bounces. And when she talks she's usually really excited, so nothing comes out right. Some of my favorite "Fia-isms"...

1. Me: Fia, what class are you going to?

Fia: um... retard English!

2. When she had a cold... "Krimm! I have so many sneezes in my nose!"

3. When I asked her if she was going to let me dye her hair... "Um... I will have a conversation with my brain, and I will get back to you!"

4. When she noticed I was having a bad day... "Krimm, why do you have a little sad in your eye?"

5. When we were playing the "vegetable game"... "I don't like this because I do not know any of the 'wegetables'"

...there are so many more that I can't think of right now. I wish I had written them all down all year.

The first time Fia and I bonded was in August when the team went to the lake. We were tubing together, and Fia was not exactly an expert in shifting her weight when the tube got thrown around, so I took it upon myself to keep us both on board. I would throw my leg up over her and pull us both in one direction, and the whole rest of the day the team made fun of me for violating Fia. From that day on, Fia and I had a special bond.

It was so hard to say goodbye to our sweet Swedes. I'll miss the gentle, kind spirit that Elin had about her. Conversations with her were always special, because she always had a genuine concern for how you were doing. I'll miss the way a room lights up when Fia walks in and says, "Hellooooo!" in her Swedish accent. She brightened my day every time I saw her. I'll miss all the strange cultural differences that made it so funny and interesting to be around them. They were such a blessing and joy to get to know this year, and as hard as it was to say goodbye, I'm so grateful for the friendships that I got to have with them for a year. Hopefully they will be back to visit us sometime... and someday when I have the money, I hope I'll get to go see them too. I can't believe how fast a year with them went by. I miss them tremendously already...