sweden bits 3: fejan

in sweden they now call facebook fejan (pronounced fay-ahn), fay is short for face and the an at the end is the article the. so fejan means the face in swedish, though the actual swedish word for face is ansikte. 

anyhow, occasionally i appreciate fejan. on this trip, because of re-connections made through FB, i stayed for several days in stockholm in inger's fantastic apartment. i hadn't seen inger in about 12 years. (somehow i did not take a photo of her and her beautiful kids, but here is some cool wallpaper in her apartment and us 12 years ago.) i also met up with ola, a friend i hadn't seen in 21 years. 

i met both inger and ola at a folkhögskola (similar to a trade school/community college) that i attended for a year after graduating from high school. because of sweden's generous education funding, it was basically free to attend and live at/be fed by (numerous times a day) the school. at that school, i shared a large dorm room with amelie, and we, with inger and 12 other women, attended weaving and cooking classes. 

amelie and i have kept in contact over the years, but we hadn't seen ola (our dorm room neighbor and friend), since we left school. ola, who studied music at the school, had saved, and shared with us, some incriminating evidence of the gentle torment/somewhat desperate affection amelie and i inflicted upon him. this psychedelic heart was just one piece in a series of strange communications from us to ola. 

ola, inger, amelie, and i agreed that the school we attended was like a year-long summer camp, and we reflected on how lucky/privileged we were to have had such an experience—a year to put off decisions about college/work and just make friends, engage in shenanigans, and learn (about ourselves mostly). pretty unreal.