Our Life in Sweden

The weather has cooled down significantly in Amman this past week. It feels like it’s suddenly gone from Summer to Winter in the space of just a few days.

Yesterday it started raining heavily. So heavily in fact that the city received almost 10% of it’s annual rainfall in just 45 minutes.

The ground is very dry, and largely concrete and tarmac, so flash flooding ensued.

4 people died in the flooding, including two children who were trapped in their basement apartment.

Here’s one of the rescues that took place:

As part of our language and culture learning we go and visit peoples homes. Many of the families we’ve gotten to know are refugees from Palestine, Syria and Iraq. I took this photo the other day when we visited a family who recently fled one of the ongoing wars. It’s an amazing privilege learning language this way, through hearing stories from these peoples life. Stories of loss, trauma but also of great courage and faith.

Due to language learning and settling into life here we haven’t really shared any pictures from the trips we’ve done. So here are some pics from when we stayed over night in Wadi Rum (desert area in Jordan) in September to celebrate my 30th Birthday. We rode camels, met shepherd boys on donkeys, ate tasty bedouin food that was cooked under the sand, listen to our two bedouin hosts playing arabic songs next to the fire, under a starlit sky. All in all a magical experience!

Här är några foton från en utflykt vi gjorde i September för att fira min 30 årsdag. Vi övernattade i Wadi Rum, ett ökenområde i Jordanien, ca 4 timmar från Amman. Vi åkte sandjeep, red kamel, åt traditionell beduin mat som kokats i sanden, satt under stjärnklar himmel bredvid en eld och lyssnade på våra guider som sjöng arabiska sånger, allt mitt ute i djupaste öknen. En magisk och oförglömlig upplevelse.

Last week All NAtions put on a self care workshop that both Jon and I attended together with the whole Baby Safe team. As part of the workshop we were asked to complete a self care chart* that listed questions about the various areas of our lives that needs self care. One of the questions were ‘did I do some fun things this week?’ then we had to grade each question from between 0-10. When Jon and I later compared our answers it turned out both of us had marked this one 0! We realized we’d just been working and had had Zero fun this week and want to DO MORE OF WHAT MAKES US HAPPY!

I guess it’s obvious but we just understood that when we do things we enjoy regularly, then all other areas of our lives will most likely improve as well. We needed to just do things that completely disconnects us from work and to do lists, but to merely enjoy. This is the first step as part of the action plan:

Förra veckan anordnade All Nations en workshop i egenvård. Både jag och Jon bestämde oss för att deltaga tillsammans med hela Baby Safe teamet. En av aktiviteterna vi gjorde var att fylla i ett frågeformulär* där vi svarade på frågor om egenvård i vårt eget liv, där varje fråga kunde besvaras från 0-10. Efteråt när vi satt och jämförde våra svar såg vi att vi båda svarat 0 på frågan ‘gjorde du något kul i veckan’! Noll kul i veckan! Detta fick oss att inse att vi ständigt jobbar och att vi behöver göra fler saker för att verkligen koppla av, fram för allt mentalt – att inte tänka på jobb så fort vi är lediga. Vi bestämde oss helt enkelt för att göra fler saker som gör oss lyckliga och att aktivt leta efter sådana aktiviteter. Här ovan har ni ett exempel på detta 🙂

• We have the self care chart available for anyone who’s interested. Let us know and we can email it to you 🙂