Day 324: (Still) Gotta love those Swedes

Today is gray, gray, gray. Reminds me a lot of my first visit to Sweden in 1991. It was also April and the weather was chilly, overcast and damp, just like today. But I made lunch plans with a friend near her place of work and was determined to walk the 5.2 kilometer there, rain or shine.

Along the way, I passed a number of different daycare and school classes taking an excursion. It's the cutest sight. The really young kids are dressed in reflective vests and hold on to each other or the teacher or the stroller if there is one. They look something like this:

Today, for the first time, I noticed the very clever "walking rope" for children who are a bit older It functions to keep the kids together and connected to the teacher at the same time. It is a length of rope with evenly spaced handles. Each child grabs hold of a handle while the teacher grabs the front of the rope, and off they go. The advantage over holding hands is the contact between the kids and the adults (there are typically two, one at the head of the line and another at the end). Here is what it looks like in action:

Clever, no?