Christmas parties all month long

Christmas parties with school friends, Christmas parties at work and Christmas parties with best friends. That pretty much sums up the past few weeks for me. Swedes really live it up for all of December and I am happily joining in on the fun.

I met up with some of my "new" friends from school for dinner one night after work last week. We had decided we wanted to do something social outside of class since we had been having so much fun together during our breaks. It is a fun group because everyone is in the same boat. All of us immigrants, working during the day and studying Swedish at night, wondering how the heck we ended up in this freezing cold country. We ate a fantastic italian dinner, drank wine and went around the table telling our embarrassing "once I said this in Swedish but meant to say this" stories. There were some pretty great ones that made me feel better about all of my Swedish slip-ups.

The bank I work for was recently named number one Nordic Bank for financial analysis (the section of the bank I work for). They threw out all the stops for our Christmas party this year because of it. All 125 of us took a boat out to the archipelago, where we were greeted with a champagne toast by the head boss and a spectacular fireworks show! It was incredible, and was followed by an even more incredible three course dinner. We were entertained by a vocal group that also had some pretty funky dance moves, and then danced the night away ourselves to the DJ. It was pretty fun to see some of my ever-so-serious co-workers let loose.

Saturday night, Klas and I had some of our closest friends at our place for appetizers and a little Secret Santa exchange to keep the festivities going. Nothing fancy but we had a great time. I made pigs in a blanket, which were a big hit. Klas kept calling them pigs in a towel :) Christmas music and laughter filled the apartment all night long. Doesn't get much better than that.

Since our camera is still out of working function, I don't have any pictures to share from all this fun, but I hoping to get some from some of my friends (hint hint to those of you who were there...with a camera) and am hoping Santa brings me a camera for Christmas in the meantime (hint hint to my husband).