Language barriers

We just finished doing our Swedish homework for the night and it's late now, but I wanted to post a quick update on the language lessons yesterday. No surprise, they didn't exactly go as planned. I showed up to my morning SFI course about 20 minutes early to check in, only to find out that the date on my letter said the 18th, which both Scott and I had managed to read as the eighth. I was told to come back next week, but at least I'll know where I'm going next time.

For the night class, Scott and I were running about five minutes late. Six flights of stairs later (the elevators were moving at the speed of turtles), when we finally found the classroom, we were a bit flustered. Two people in the class shifted seats so we could park in the corner of the room, and the teacher immediately started firing questions at us. In Swedish. I looked at Scott, who did a pretty darn good job of mustering his answers, and thought, is this teacher serious?? After a few embarrassing minutes, Scott had the good sense to confirm we were in an A2 class. A2 is not the beginner class. So we repacked our belongings and shuffled out of the room, muttering numerous apologies to the instructor, and headed back down the six flights of stairs. At this point Scott was obviously flustered. The guy at the front desk explained that he didn't have the authority to reassign us to another class at the A1 level, plus he said that everything looked full. Only once we packed our bags and put on our jackets did he say that we could go upstairs to a class that didn't appear to be full, but we would have to ask the instructor if we could sit in for the night. So, back up the stairs we go - three flights this time (which was great, compared to six...although I did feel bad for Scott, who had about 30 pounds of crap in his backpack). I knocked on the door and tried to explain to the instructor, Djina (sounds similar to Gina), why we were unexpectedly trying to join her class 20 minutes late, but she was pretty nice about the whole situation. A1 still reminded us of why language lessons aren't much fun, but the class went much more smoothly than my first two attempts at learning Swedish, and our new classmates seem really cool. But more about that later.

Clarification of the day: Jag = I. Ja = yes. That "g" is silent, and ja, they're both pronounced the same way.