Today is my blog’s 1st anniversary and my 200th blog post! My first three posts were published on the 25th May 2007 – I was at home as I was sick and I guess a little bored 
The blog anniversary deserves some fireworks!
I started the blog in order to be able to tell family and friends about our impending move to Puerto Rico and our future adventures in the Caribbean. I began by writing a little about our everyday life in Brussels, as well as some of my / our travels in Europe. It was also a way for O to hear about my life back in old Europe since my move to the other side of the Atlantic was delayed for several months (phone calls were a challenge as he didn’t have a Puerto Rican phone number and the time difference did its fair share of complicating communication).
I have a feeling that quite a few of my friends are reading the blog, however it doesn’t happen very often that they leave comments… Instead it is other bloggers, especially Swedish expat women around the world (mostly the US) who comment regularly – it is great to be able to share experiences of living abroad! Little did I know when I started the blog that I would make new friends through the blog – I have so far met up with 7 fellow bloggers; here in Puerto Rico, New York City and California! It was great to meet up with everybody, it felt like we already knew each other! I am looking forward to future meetings IRL* with people I have gotten to know in the blog world.
A little blog statistics:
- Top 3 blog posts are: 30th April / Walpurgis night: the biggest student party of the year (30th April 2008), Semana Santa – Easter celebrations in Spain (19th March 2008 ) and The risks of having kids with a foreigner (13th November 2007).
- The most popular search terms deal with Spanish Easter celebrations, men’s eyebrows and American blueberries!!
- Some weird searches ending up on my blog: “billiga papiljotter” (cheap hair curlers), “vad är Sveriges zip code” (what is Sweden’s zip code? I guess the person meant the international access code for dialling!?) and “Öresund bridge + Obama” (the Öresund bridge is the one connecting Sweden and Denmark!).
- Top 3 countries of visitors: USA, Sweden and UK. Bottom 3: Barbados, US Virgin Islands, Malaysia (1 each)…
My parents left yesterday morning after two weeks with us, and since I am heading home to Sweden in less than a month it felt good to be able to say See you in a few weeks when I said goodbye to them at the airport! The rest of the weekend has been spent getting a new much needed hair colour (thanks to O’s hair colouring skills) and much shorter haircut (thanks to the Sears’ hair salon). And tonight I made my first sofrito y arroz con habichuelas** (well, I did swap them for garbanzos)!! My Spanish homework actually, my new Spanish teacher gave me the recipes to try out at home!!
*) IRL = In Real Life
**) Sofrito is a mix of peppers, coriander (cilantro / culantro??), onion and garlic which is used to flavour all kinds of dishes, such as beans, stews etc. I made rice (arroz) with chickpeas (garbanzos) instead of beans (habichuelas); a typical Puerto Rican dish, together with some lamb.
