100 fun facts of my life!

Some fun fact about me. Those things I have done are highlighted in bold. Found it at Pastor Peter's.



1. Started my own blog

2. Slept under the stars

3. Played in a band

4. Visited Hawaii

5. Watched a meteor shower

6. Given more than I can afford to charity

7. Been to Disneyland/world

8. Climbed a mountain

9. Held a praying mantis

10. Sung a solo

11. Bungee jumped

12. Visited Paris

13. Watched lightning at sea

14. Taught myself an art from scratch

15. Adopted a child

16. Had food poisoning

17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty

18. Grown my own vegetables

19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France

20. Slept on an overnight train

21. Had a pillow fight

22. Hitchhiked

23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill

24. Built a snow fort

25. Held a lamb

26. Gone skinny dipping

27. Run a Marathon

28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice

29. Seen a total eclipse

30. Watched a sunrise or sunset

31. Hit a home run

32. Been on a cruise

33. Seen Niagara Falls in person

34. Visited the birthplace of my ancestors

35. Seen an Amish community

36. Taught myself a new language

37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied

40. Seen Michelangelo’s David

41. Sung karaoke

42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt

43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant

44. Visited Africa

45. Walked on a beach by moonlight

46. Been transported in an ambulance

47. Had my portrait painted

48. Gone deep sea fishing

49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person

50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris

51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling

52. Kissed in the rain

53. Played in the mud

54. Gone to a drive-in theater

55. Been in a movie

56. Visited the Great Wall of China

57. Started a business

58. Taken a martial arts class

59. Visited Russia

60. Served at a soup kitchen

61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies

62. Gone whale watching

63. Got flowers for no reason

64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma

65. Gone sky diving

66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp

67. Bounced a check

68. Flown in a helicopter

69. Saved a favorite childhood toy

70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial

71. Eaten Caviar

72. Pieced a quilt

73. Stood in Times Square

74. Toured the Everglades

75. Been fired from a job

76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London

77. Broken a bone

78. Been on a speeding motorcycle

79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person

80. Published a book

81. Visited the Vatican

82. Bought a brand new car

83. Walked in Jerusalem

84. Had my picture in the newspaper

85. Read the entire Bible I might have skipped through some of the names in the OT, or been less attentive through the laws...

86. Visited the White House

87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating

88. Had chickenpox

89. Saved someone’s life -not that I know of, but who knows really? (humble me!)

90. Sat on a jury

91. Met someone famous

92. Joined a book club

93. Lost a loved one

94. Had a baby

95. Seen the Alamo in person

96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake

97. Been involved in a law suit

98. Owned a cell phone

99. Been stung by a bee

100. Ridden an elephant

What if Starbucks marketed like the Church?

And in my quest to internatinalize my blog even more something more for my english speaking friends. The Swedes have probably already found it because Brygubben and Emanuel wrote about it...

Challenge about first times...

I have been challenged by Jonatan about first times. I just decided to go international, so here it is in english!

The first time I...

1. ate Tacos (mind you Tacos was imported to Sweden quite late compared to pizza and hamburgers) was in 1990 in Roscommon, Michigan where I just had landed to spend a year as an exchange student.

2. drove a car was when I was 17 ½ and made my only attemp ever to get a drivers license (in Sweden you have to be 18 to get it, and at the time you could start drivers ed 6 months before that).

3. slept in a tent was... forgotten. I really don't remember. My siblings and I used to sleep in our sail boat when we were little -not out boating but just at the dock, just for fun. The only time I really remember in a tent I froze my butt off at Nattkampen (a nightly adventure competition that Church of Sweden Youth in a few dioceses arrange every year) with parts of the national board of Church of Sweden Youth. It must have been in the end of the 1990s.

4. drank alcohol I was too young. And stupid. Enough said.

5. got a job I was 15. I worked in the kitchen at a confimation camp. After that I was stuck in church. I've done lots of volonteering too of course, but also actually worked before I was ordained.

6. was on stage was in school. I think it was 2nd grade and we acted out what ever play bravely.

7. fainted was in church as Mikaelskyrkan in Uppsala was re-consecrated after a renovation. I read a verse from the Bible and everything started spinning and got black.

8. answered a silly questionnaire was probably in school.

I challenge some great YCW friends: Alex, Suzanne and Ann.

Making work easier

I never have to plan a confirmation class ever again. Nor write a sermon. I am always ready for who ever I meet. I have found the ultimate pastor's friend. Yes. In the castle store, at Stjärnholm where we took our confirmation group, it suddenly appeared before my eyes. Salvation is close. Let me present to you: The EvangeCube.

And yes, Maria, you will get your own for Christmas.

Confirmands

You can't live with them. You can't live without them.

And in some mysterious way they increase every time we meet.

What have you read?

Pastor Peters posted about something called 'The Big Read', from the NEA, designed to encourage community reading initiatives in the States. They came up with a list of their top 100 books and they estimate that the average adult has only read 6 of these books.

The list would no doubt look different in Sweden (a member of our parliament actually made a list of books she thought everyone should read in school, maybe that's a list to use?)

The ones I've read are in bold. Not that many, but lots more than six... how many have you read? And which ones do you think should be on a list of books that one "should" read during ones life?

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas'
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Gratitude

I was challenged a few days ago, but I'm terribly slow... (and yes I did promise, several months ago, to write in english every once in a while, so here it is! )

Things that I´m deeply thankful (to God) for:

1. My beautiful, funny, wise, annoying, loving children Elias and Ester.
2. My dito husband.
3. My dito friends.
4. My dito family, including extended one.
5. My calling and job.
6. Tough experiences that, even though I didn't see it back then, has made me a better person.
7. Internet that has given me so many friends, good thoughts and knowledge about loads of things.
8. That I don't have to lie in bed worrying about money for food and clothes, housing or other essentials.
9. Calamata olives, sun dried tomatoes and dried ham. Yummy!
10. That I will be able to go to DC this summer!