No Annie, the sun WON'T come out tomorrow.

I have yet to wake up early enough to see exactly what time the sun rises in Ljungby – none of you should be surprised to learn, or re-learn, that I am NOT a morning person, or rather “morning pig” as they say here in Sweden. Today, Jo and I had set our alarms to wake us around 10am, hopefully allowing us enough time to eat breakfast and digest our food before we would go to TC for the day’s workout. We left the apartment a little after 10:30 to find that the sun seemed to still be rising. This seemed a bit strange, despite knowing that the farther we were into wintertime here in Sweden, the later the sun would be rising. We went into TC, did our workout and then came home to start the week’s laundry before heading over to meet Selma (one of the liberos) for lunch at a local Thai restaurant. The sun had not seemed to have moved in over 2 hours. It was then that I realized that yesterday, when I went to Astrandskolan (around 1:45pm) to play with Daniel’s kindergarten class that the sun was in the EXACT same location then that it was at 10:30 this morning!!! I know this because on my walk to the school, I was blinded by the sun, exactly the same as Jo and I had been this morning when walking in that same direction.

Where the sun is during the day in Ljungby, regardless of the time

So for you, my dear readers, I did a little research and found that today, November 16, the sun rose at 8:51am. Apparently, we are far enough north on the Earth, that the sun never rises past about 45º (my own personal guesstimation) in our sky, despite the time of day. Instead, the sun remains very low in the sky, rising southeast and setting southwest. 

For those of you who understand best via diagram

It’s very confusing for me, because when I wake up (usually around 10ish) and see the sun still “rising” I think to myself, wow—its still so early! Later (around 3ish), I can see that the sun is starting to “set”, I think that its so late. I’m not sure if I’ll ever get used to these minimal amounts of daylight.