Thank you for voting for Efren!

(CNN) -- Efren Peñaflorida, who started a "pushcart classroom" in the Philippines to bring education to poor children as an alternative to gang membership, has been named the 2009 CNN Hero of the Year.
Peñaflorida, who will receive $100,000 to continue his work with the Dynamic Teen Company, was selected after seven weeks of online voting at CNN.com. More than 2.75 million votes were cast.

This was his words when he had recived the price:

"Our planet is filled with heroes, young and old, rich and poor, man, woman of different colors, shapes and sizes. We are one great tapestry," Peñaflorida said upon accepting the honor. "Each person has a hidden hero within, you just have to look inside you and search it in your heart, and be the hero to the next one in need.
So to each and every person inside this theater and for those who are watching at home, the hero in you is waiting to be unleashed. Serve, serve well, serve others above yourself and be happy to serve. As I always tell to my co-volunteers ... you are the change that you dream, as I am the change that I dream, and collectively we are the change that this world needs to be."

Cousins

Elin visited her cousin for the first time! We wish we could have been there!

Nils

Now Nils is home!

Hubbly Bubbly

When I first I saw Hubbly Bubbly mentioned in the Menu at a restaurant I thought it was some kind of sparkling wine.
But it’s not, it’s “sheesha”, the water pipe!

The flower man

This man is selling something. Coffee or water och something else?

New grandson

A new baby is born in Malmö. Fredrik and Linda got a son today! We are all very happy!

Petra

This is the most photographed item in Jordan, the Treasury in Petra. When you enter the big area in front of the monumental “building” it’s breathtaking. It was carved in the 1 st century BC as a tomb of an important Nabataean king. The façade is 30 m wide and 43 m high.

Wadi Rum

We just came back from a two days trip down to Petra and Wadi Rum. It was absolutely fantastic in many ways. Yesterday evening we looked at the sunset from a cliff in Wadi Rum while we had a beer.

This is the tent we “slept” in. We had the best sleeping bags, but still it was hard to fall asleep.

Baking two cakes in one day

Today I baked one carott cake and one banana cake and prepared mini pizzas for the evening! That is what ordenary house wifes do in one hour, but for me it took all afternoon!

The sun sets very early now when we have winter time too. At five o'clock it is dark.

Tonight my cousin Annika and her husband Lasse will come and visit us. Tomorrow we are driving down to Petra and Wadi Rum.

Vote for Efren Penaflorida

When Julie came today she was exited and told me about “a friend to a friend” of her son in the Philippines that had been elected to one of ten heroes CNN has been chosen among lots of people around the world.
What this young man is doing is touching my old teacher heart. His outreach work with teaching children who are too poor to go to school is very moving.

"For the past 12 years, Peñaflorida and his team of teen volunteers have taught basic reading and writing to children living on the streets. Their main tool: A pushcart classroom.
Stocked with books, pens, tables and chairs, his Dynamic Teen Company recreates a school setting in unconventional locations such as the cemetery and municipal trash dump.
Peñaflorida knows firsthand the adversity faced by these children. Born into a poor family, he lived in a shanty near the city dump site. But he says he refused to allow his circumstances to define his future.
"Instead of being discouraged, I promised myself that I would pursue education," he recalls. "I will strive hard; I will do my best."

Please read more about this "hero" and vote for him you too! Please tell your friends to vote too, you can vote as many times as you want.

Read more and vote here: www.cnn.com/heros

I get so tired ......

Yes, I know that I shouldn't’t complain.... I live the best of lives …. but…shopping in this country, getting proper consumer information… oh my God!
Today I went to the big mall to by two sleeping bags; we are spending the night in Wadi Rum during the weekend.
I found the items I wanted, but the prize on the shelf was surprisingly cheap, 32 JD (320 SEK or about 40 dollars) so I wanted to check.
I went and looked for someone to ask. I found a young man who didn’t understand me, so he went off to find someone else to ask.
I explained to the new man, who looked like a supervisor on that department, what I wanted and he gave the sleeping bag box to the first young man and told him to go and look for the prize on the bag. Then he disappeared!!!
The young man came back and said: fifteen. Fifteen, I answered a bit surprised, do you mean one, five? He said yes, and disappeared.
Well, 15 JD (150 SEK or about 22 dollars) is very cheap for a sleeping bag that you can use up to – 17 ºC and made by a famous Swiss brand.
So I went, a bit suspicious, to the cashier. And he said: 100 JD for the two sleeping bags, madam!

Gift wrapping

Today I have wrapped the gifts we bought yesterday. Found some left over paper from last year. I admire people who make every single gift with different decorations and with personal tags.
No we have one gift to each person in the family! I think it's so hard to buy gifts, how do you know what other people likes?
I remember one Christmas when we bought them in Cairo. I thought I picked some nice T-shirts to Peter. When he never used them I wondered why? Mom, I used to have T-shirts like that when I was in eight grade, he answered!
For me that was not so long ago, but it was about ten years. So maybe I was a bit out of fashion!

Another strange day

After breakfast this morning (and before the shower) we realised that we had a power cut. Not unusual for the last week, we have had one almost every day.
We waited for some minutes but after almost one hour we realised that this should be for a long time. What to do? You can't take a warm shower, no computer, no TV, no washing machine no nothing.
So we decided to go Christmas shopping!
Five o'clock in the afternoon the power came back!

The picture is from last week when Elin used our bath tub.

A lazy day

Today we had a really lazy day. We had a late breakfast and then we spent many hours in front of the telly looking at Beck films and eating cheese cake.
Then we went to City Mall to by some salmon for dinner. I had Bo to walk up a couple of stairs so I could take a photo in the mall before we went back home. Sometimes it’s really hard to find something to tell and show in a blog!

Baptism site

Now our guests are gone and we miss them very much!
One of the last days of their visit we went down to the Baptism Site. It’s an interesting tour but the guide could have showed a bigger interest in his work. He reeled off his information in very bad English. I mean you could present this information in a much more exiting way. Cause it’s a good story!

Elin loves water and she would not have said no to a second baptism!

Wadi Rum

After the day in Petra we went to Wadi Rum, a fantastic desert. Elin was happy when she could try to take a walk in the sand!

The bedouin of the day

This was the most popular Bedouin in Petra yesterday. Everyone wanted to kiss her and take a picture of her! After a while she became a bit blasé and bored!