International 4-H Youth Exchange

Hej (Hello in Swedish),

My next family is in Jönköpings Län in the south central part of Sweden. I live in Nye, which is about one hour south of Jönköping and one hour north of Växjö. I am living with Joakim Elmersson and Evalena Lindroth. Joakim is a dairy farmer milking about 30 cows in a rented barn. Evalena works at the Farm/Hardware store in Vetlanda. That store is kind of like Stockman's just south of Glenwood City, WI.

There was so much that happened while I was with this family I don't even know where to start. The time with this family went very fast even though I had an extra week with them, unexpected, because the 4H couldn't find a family for me to go to after this one. I guess a good place to start is moose and roe deer hunting. In Sweden you are allowed to hunt moose from the second Monday in October until some time in December. You are only allowed to hunt on your own land or with a group of people on a certain section of land, for example if your land is combined with two other neighbor's land that would be one section. The government then tells you how many moose you can take from your section. In Joakim's section we could only take 3 large and 3 small moose. If you see a moose and it is a cow or a bull and a calf you must take the calf first before you shoot the cow/bull. The only orange that they displayed while we were out hunting was on the hat. People in Sweden are very careful about using their guns. When they are done with a "drive" of the woods they always unload their gun and leave the bolt action open just to show others that it is empty. While I was with Joakim we got two small moose. That was all they needed to fill their permit. Everyone in the team carries a backpack that has a chair attached to it. In the backpack is coffee, for sure, and sandwiches of some kind for lunch. Each member of the party also carries two-way radios to communicate with. Finally, there is always one group who drives the woods. They are the ones who always want to drive the woods while others sit in tree stands waiting for the moose to come out. Roe deer is another animal that they commonly hunt here in Sweden. They use dogs and just let the dogs go in the woods to search for the smell. Once the dog has found the scent of the deer they will bark until they loose the deer scent. In this way the dog will push the deer through the woods and then it is our responsibility to stand in the right spot so that the deer will come to us. During one of the hunts we were standing in the right spot and managed to take down one roe deer. Roe deer are very small. Joakim, and everyone else, use shotguns with the pellet cartridge to shoot these roe deer.

Joakim also tried to get me into my kind of work, computers. So, one day we went into Vetlanda and stopped at J-V-A PC Center and asked if I could be there several days to learn about the Swedish IT Department and Computer Sales/Repair. It was hard to deal with the Swedish Windows 98 but I soon remembered how Windows worked and did most things from memory. When I did run into a problem that I couldn't figure out then I would have the words translated for me. I did get an English OS problem though. Someone from Finland came in and needed to get his Hewlett Packard CDRW working again. I had plenty of experience with that in college so I took on the task of fixing it. Joakim also decided it was time to buy himself a new computer because he had a non-Y2K compliant computer and was going to have to upgrade before the year's end. At first he wanted to go with a computer at a place called On-Off but they were like Best Buy. They wanted to get the product out the door but didn't want to support it. The place that I "worked" at had a little more expensive computer but also had great support if he had any questions. I finally convinced him that would be the best purchase, after we looked at three other stores besides J-V-A. My task then was to build his computer and get everything working correctly. It was really funny, one day Joakim calls the shop and wants to add a scanner to his new computer. I wasn't even sure if he really knew how to use it but, to my surprise, he knew the basic concept behind a scanner so I installed it for him. Internet access is also expensive in Sweden. Just for comparison, here in Sweden I am paying 83¢ per hour and at home in Wisconsin I pay 8.3¢ per hour for Internet. That is a big difference and that is during the cheep time of the day! A popular program that you would probably find on everyone's computer is SPCS Administration. This is accounting software that is widely used by almost, if not, everyone.

One of the days with this family I spent in Vetlanda at the local ambulance and fire department. I work with the ambulance at home so I thought it would be interesting to see how they operate their ambulance here in Sweden. It is definitely different. Every ambulance service in Sweden is full time employed. There are no volunteers on the service. All of the EMTs are above the paramedic level (if I were to compare to our services). In fact most of them are close to being nurses. They also don't have first responders. When they receive a call the pager is set off and it tells them a priority level. The SOS center places a priority level on the run. Priority 1 was lights/sirens, priority 2 was let's go but no lights/sirens, and priority 3 was planned transport (after our "coffee" break). On any call they receive the location and incident on what they call mobiltext. It is a phone system in the ambulance kind of like a fax machine. This is also where they push the button to say they are "enroute to the scene", "enroute to the hospital", and "clear from the run". We had two runs that day; one was an epileptic patient (priority 1) and a drunken older gentleman (priority 2). When we were travelling to the epileptic patient we used the lights the entire time but the only time that sirens were used was when we would come up behind a vehicle. Now according to Wisconsin law that would be illegal. In Wisconsin we must run both lights and sirens whenever one is activated. I asked them about running only lights and they said that they don't feel like they are rushed as much if they don't have the sirens on and can concentrate better also. One of the questions that I had for them had to do with the longboard. Because their ambulances are Volvo cars with a van back they don't have room for the longboard. So, that evening I thought it would be interesting to see what they use in place of the long board. They used a scoop stretcher and then put me on the cot with a big balloon. When that balloon was blown up it was rock hard to form around my body. For me, I think I will stick with the traditional longboard. I think there is better cervical spine stabilization with our process. They do want to change it here in Sweden so that they can have the longboard but they have to figure out how they are going to carry it first. That will probably happen in the future. When the ambulance goes on a run, there is always a nurse with advanced skills enroute to the scene also in case they need some skills that the ambulance crew cannot provide. I would call it advanced life support. They call it "acute response". They showed up at our epilepsy patient but we didn't need her so she left. It was very interesting to note about how they find the addresses. In Wisconsin we have the fire numbers. In Sweden everything is labeled by a name and there are no fire numbers. Instead when the mobiltext prints the location it is a "zone" (example: 70-84). They look for that box on the map and get a general idea of where to go. From there they search for the name of the "area". I think I would have a really hard time finding a lot of the locations in the country. If you want more information let me know and I will explain it better.

Halloween came and went. Halloween isn't celebrated like it is in the USA so I thought it would be fun to carve pumpkins to "celebrate" Halloween. Joakim and Evalena enjoyed that. We would have gone out trick-or-treating but we didn't have any costumes and the neighbors probably would have thought we were crazy with the costumes on so we didn't do it. Halloween is getting more popular though. Wait a few years and they will probably be trick-or-treating.

There is much influence from USA. During this stay with this family we watched quite a bit of television with American shows. As a tradition we always had to watch Ally McBeal. I really enjoy that show. They also have quite a few other television sitcoms such as Friends, Party of Five, Oprah, Dawson's Creek, etc. Some of the movies that we saw included Broken Arrow, NetForce, Ronin, and Crocodile Dundee. There is one movie, we aren't sure of the title, but it is something like My Life as a Dog. That movie is actually Swedish. I am finding more and more things that are Swedish and I don't even know it. Volvo, who recently was purchased by Ford, is Swedish along with Ericsson cellular phone. Some people in the world history include Anders Celsius, invented the Celsius temperature scale and Carl Linnaeus, named, in Latin, all of the plants of the world.

We also visited a very interesting place for me. As many of you probably know many of our ancestors are from the Scandinavian countries. In Växjö there is a Swedish Emigration Institute and museum. There they talk about all of the history of why the Swedish people went to America and also there is a place where you can search for your ancestors. A friend of mine is in the process of looking up her ancestors so Joakim told me to call her on his cellular phone. He had $600 stocked up on it so he wanted me to use that time to get some information so that I could do a little looking for her. We didn't have much time so I didn't get much information but I did find it a very good place to do a search. I also got a chance to call my mom to wish her a Happy Birthday. I never thought my mom would be talking to my host family. It sounded like my mom was next door talking to us. It was very clear. We have such good technology these days.

There are several rules and regulations that farmers have. In a long stanchion must be at least 7.2 feet long and 3.9 feet wide. In a short stanchion it must be at least 5.6 feet long and 3.9 feet wide. In an open pen each animal must have 13 square feet for themselves. So if you have four animals there must be 52 square feet in the pen for them. One last rule is that for the winter the farmer must have 50% of the land covered by some kind of green so a lot of farmers plant a winter wheat in the fall. The next rule, has nothing to do with farms, is having to do with winter tires. As of this year all Swedish vehicles must have winter tires starting December 1st until February some time.

One of the last nights that I was with Joakim and Evalena I got an opportunity to ride with a Swedish milk hauler. That was very interesting. We had the night shift and started at 7pm. The Swedish milk hauling system is more advanced then what I have seen with our milk hauler at home. Each farmer is given a plastic card that the hauler uses when he takes the milk. On that card is all of the information about that farm including last time's amount of milk shipped. The computer that we insert this card into measures how much milk, in liters, is put into the truck and then after taking all of the milk it prints off a receipt for the farmer. There are not very many milk factories so when the truck was full we had to take it back to where the trailer was parked and dump it into the trailer and go back for more. Once all of our pick-ups were complete we headed off to the milk factory two and half hours away.

I had a fantastic time with Joakim and Evalena. They were a great family to be with. Tack så mycket (thanks a lot in Swedish) Joakim och (and) Evalena!

Jason Fouks