What The Fungus!?

Ok, to begin with, I just gotta say this is hard. Like I said in my last post, Linda has been kind enough to let me use her computer to write these posts, but using a European computer means having to deal with things like... ä where the ' symbol should be, a tiny shift button that constantly makes me type a bunch of <<< symbols before I realize I did not infact capitalize that last letter, and much more annoyances. But hey, part of the experience right? Jeez speaking of which, why do they put their question mark up over with the numbers::: (thats what you get instead of the question marks) No one might understand this except others currently using a European keyboard and seeing what I mean, so Iäm sorry to the rest of you. Yes I purposely did that last one too. Cause thatös how annoying this is.

Anywho...

Today was awesome. Today consisted of walking around in the woods for 5 hours collecting fungus. Yup. I kinda want to leave it at that. But fine I'll explain. First, I'll take a step back...

Linda Öhrn, one of the coolest people you could ever meet, lived with my family when I was 7 years old (Yes, I was wrong in my last post, I just asked Linda). She was our Au Pair, which if you don't know is like a nanny that lives with you for a year, often from countries around the world. This meant dressed me, fed me, washed me, potty trained me, etc. What I'm a slow learner! But really, she was a huge part of my life, as well as my brother's, and have had the good fortune to maintain friends over the years, to the point where she opened up her house for me for the next few days in my travels through Sweden. Ok, everyone caught up?

Anyways, her house is amazing. One of the coziest homes I have ever been in. To make it even better, it is deep in the country, with nothing behind the house but a couple apple trees, three rows of raspberry bushes, a chicken coop with sixteen chickens laying fresh eggs daily, and forest. Lots and lots of green, lush forest. Not the kind you find in the states that have bike paths and signs of people everywhere. And big spiders. Just green, mossy, beautiful woods. And today, we did one of her favorite hobbies- walking through the forest, finding and collecting mushrooms, or fungus as she calls it. Specifically "kantareller", also called "the gold of the forest", because of its beautiful golden color and of course, it sells for a fairly good price. And that's one of the other cool things - she spends hours at a time doing what she loves, walking through the woods collecting these and other types of fungus, and sells them at local markets. So not only was it a beautiful day of strolling through the woods with our necks bent down, searching for little bits of gold, but it was finding things that would one day soon be in some family's dinner down the road. Or better- in our dinner tonight! I don't even like mushrooms normally but the meat pie tonight would not have been the same without the fresh fungus inside- yes I know how that sounds.

Tomorrow, we head to an even bigger forest where we will search for the big suckers. Pictures soon to come...hopefully.