My First Week in SFI

First, what is SFI?

It means svenska för invandare or Swedish for Immigrants. It is the grundskolan or elementary school level. It is also part of the adult education system. It is a grattis (free) school provided by the each kommun (municipality) basically means the city & country or township.

Next level is SAS which is gymnasiet (high school) level. From there you can attend högskolan eller universititet (college or university) for högre utbildning (higher education).

Taking SFI is not a law requirement but it's a must to learn the language so that you can get a better job than cleaning a toilet bowl or washing the dishes.

My school paraphernalias...

Now, my first week in SFI was FUN. I enjoyed every days of it. First, because I finally met new friends and secondly, after almost 5 months of boredness, I finally have something to do here in Sweden. Although I was kinda shocked and in panic during the first days coz I didn't expect that most of my classmates knows or speak lots of Swedish already. I was like wtf?! nosebleed! I don't understand what my teacher is talking about. I don't know what's going on at all. As in zero! My classmates obviously understands and responds to our teacher who speaks Swedish only for us to learn faster. Most of them is because they've been here in Sweden for like 2 years already or they've been here much longer than me. Some has a Swedish husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend or someone that helps them or lovingly teach them everyday. I felt like blaming my Norwegian husband coz he can't really teach me. Sometimes he tries his very best in helping me everytime I ask him but he doesn't really know much Swedish. I felt like I'm the one who knows less Swedish among our classmates, or maybe it's just my insecurity. hehe. I regret that I never prepared nor studied earlier for this. I should've at least tried advance reading Swedish books or watched Swedish tv shows or movies to help myself when I was still on my vacation. But bleh, it's too late for that now.

The next days, I was able to adjust already. Things are getting better everyday. I'm learning more and more each day and I realized that I know more than enough or much than the others. I'm starting to be more confident. It's not that hard than I thought. I'm enjoying every words that I'm learning. It's actually pretty similar to English. Though it feels like I'm back in kindergarten again. Weeeh? It really is! I'm back learning the ABCD, AEIOU, counting 123, time telling, pronunciation, grammar, blah blah. Only difference is that I'm an adult now, I should have my own initiative to learn and it should be so much easier. But I hate the pronunciation and listening part. I really suck at it.There are some words and letters that is really new to me. Well, I know it's just normal in learning a new language so let's just see my progress until the end of this course. :)

About my classmates, they are pretty cool. They're all from different parts of the world and all of them are very friendly. We are all funny. We all have this sense of humor which makes our class much more fun and inspiring place to learn. There's never a day that we don't laugh about something. For the past 5 days, we had a strong bonding already. Everyone is approachable. Most of us (girls) have the same reasons why we moved here: for our husband/boyfriend. :P We just laughed at each other everytime we talk about it. Another funny thing and somewhat flattering thing is that they're really impressed with my English. Yuhoo! They all think that I speak really good in English. Well, it's not really like unusual for me but I think it's just really interesting how the foreigners appreciate and praise my English while all I get from my fellow Filipinos back in Philippines was an insult and discrimination. Haha! :P That's just one of the reasons why I love being with foreigners. :)

Going back on our SFI class, on the first day, I thought I'm the only Filipina there. Although I suspected one that looks Filipina too but at the end of the day I convinced myself that she's a Thai or whatever. During the introduction of ourselves I didn't really hear what she said, if she came from Philippines or not. I thought that she's not a Filipina coz when I heard her talking, her accent sounds different. On our second day, she sat next to me. I was in doubt to ask her coz I really dont like approaching Filipinas, much more being friends with Filipinas here. Ya know, I dont wanna be snobbed at. Why? You ask yourself to whoever Filipina reading this and you should know why. :P But oh well, my friendliness prevailed! I was like, should I ask her in Tagalog or not? But I ended up asking her ''Hej, what's your nationality? (if you dont mind me asking) with a matching smile of course! And she was like, ''Yeah, both my parents are Filipina but I grew up in the US.'' Oh well, duuuudee, she's really slang! At first I don't know how I'm gonna react to her. Should I feel embarassed or what? I was confused how I'm gonna talk to her. So I tried asking her like, 'so nakakaintindi ka pa ng Tagalog?' Then she answered, 'Yeah, I can understand a bit but I can't really speak Tagalog anymore.'' So that's how our conversation started. She explained to me that her family moved in the US since she was 9 years old blah blah blah. It was really nice talking to her. I find her really cool and I forgot that she's still a Filipina. Growing up in the US made her act and think like a westerner. I mean, her openmindedness, the way she carries herself etc. She's a silent type person. Nasa loob ang kulo but in a positive sense of it. So far, it seems that we both like each other. We started hanging out and do things together. We even went out for a movie and got drunk in the middle of the day..hehe. She's also a best shopping buddy. One thing that made us closer to each other is that we have similar story. Like how we ended up being in Sweden and the stories about our personal lives. I'm giving it more time for us to get to know each other and I'm hoping that our friendship would last forever. :)

Here's a few pics with some of my 'United Nation' classmates in SFI.

Palestinian, Filipina, Indonesian, Syrian & Moroccan.

Busy effect.. hehe! :P

Ofc, the Philippine Mabuhay is in the hot seat! :P