My first class

On Monday I went to my first day of SAS, the Swedish course that I was assigned to that I was so afraid of. It was just an introductory meeting, not an actual class, so I didn't get a sense of the level of Swedish of the other students. But there were two teachers, and I could understand everything they said, which was encouraging. Looking around, it seemed that I was the only non-refugee in the class.

To take these government classes, you have to be living in Sweden legally, not as a tourist, of course. And there are three types of people who would be living in Sweden legally: people here on student visas to study at the universities here, who would already speak Swedish or have university Swedish classes. Then there are the so-called love-immigrants, and I fall into that category -- we're here on "family ties" visas. Then there are the refugees. Sweden has one of the best records in the world for granting asylum to the politically persecuted and war refugees.

Clearly the refugees are much greater in number than the love immigrants, so it's not really surprising that my class seems to have few of the former. I don't know the nationalities of all the people in my class yet, though. I'll give you an update later. The only person I know for sure is the guy who sat next to me. He's Congolese. He's been living in Sweden for five years. He said he went to Paris for a while and lived there, but came back to Sweden because here in Sweden, everything is paid for by the government. Hmmm...

Anyway, with him I had my first naturally occuring Swedish conversation. It wasn't somebody humoring me, it was a real live conversation. So that was nice. Altogether I'll be spending fifteen hours a week in class, which is pretty much. I'll let you know how it goes.