Swedish Christmas

I am amazed that no matter where in the world I go, I can always find reason to want to be somewhere else, or worse still, I find someone else's life to envy. These past few weeks, I have increasingly nurtured the vice of jealousy by reading my friend Clara's blog, gazing at her pictures of the Swedish countryside and dreaming of all the wonders of a Christmas up north and everything it entails--family and friends, baking, fika, long walks in the snow, a frosted countryside, and candle-lit evenings indoors.

I myself have been too busy to pay much attention to anything--I just finished up my first semester teaching, my apartment is a mess in every sense of the word, I haven't put out my coffee table Christmas runner, and I am lying on my couch with a headache and a sore throat, feeling bad that I ate so much chocolate on Friday, that I haven't yet decorated, that I have done no grading thus far, and ultimately sorry for myself and wishing there was someone here to hear my groans of anguish. I tend towards the dramatic side when feeling under the weather.
 

Clara in her light and airy kitchen

I want to be there, as much as I generally dislike the cold, to see my family, to eat rice porridge with milk and cinnamon, to bake cookies (and not those bland I-taste-better-as-dough American sugar cookies) and boil toffee to spoon it hot into little wax paper cups. I want to make paper snowflakes and put out the best tablecloth for company and hang the Christmas curtains. I am only begrudging my Swedish friends because I am tired and sick and quite frankly feeling a little the worse for wear. I hope that come tomorrow I'll be feeling ever so much better about things, but until then, I ask that you bear with selfish desires. My fleshly nature comes so easily to me.

All photos taken from Underbara Clara's blog.