Sälen.. Seems so long ago.

I think I will keep this one brief.

*Is it weird that I giggled like an 8 year old when I wrote brief!?* :)

Anyway, from Garpenberg we headed straight to Sälen, this time it was just Anna, Nicolai, and me. We stayed in a nice condo type cabin, Anna's timeshare. We arrived on the 28th at night. The next day Nicolai and I rented skis for the week (Anna had her own), and that afternoon we hit the slopes. It was pretty nice skiing conditions, a bit icy on the popular slopes. It was quite cold the entire time we were there, probably -10 or -15C on average.. Plus there was a bit of wind some days. I wasn't 100% pleased with the skiing, but that was only because it was set up that you had to ski to a lift, you couldn't just ski to the bottom of a hill and have a lift. At one point I got stuck in an area with only three small anchor lifts that didn't lead anywhere or up the hill. So I had to cross the bottom of a couple slopes to get to the nearest lift that would take me up the mountain. I guess it was just different from back home, plus there were practically no trees so no skiing through the woods. Me being the silly girl I am, however, I attempted to ski in the small patches of trees between slopes, it happened to be quite icy that day.. So I went up this icy curve instead of following the turn it made and stopped myself with a tree... And my hip. :) But no real bruise to show for it. Oh, Sälen was the first place I ever road a anchor lift.. No calamities to tell about, however, there was one time when a guy was just hanging on to the bar and getting dragged up the hill on his stomach for a while. :P

On the 30th Bengt, Yulia, and their son Edwin came up to Sälen as well. It is great having them there, I love Yulia and Bengt they are wonderful. :)

New Years Eve was great! We all went to a nice restaurant in hotell Bügelhof. It was a wonderful three course meal, absolutely delicious! :) We made friends with the guys at the table next to us because Edvin hit one of them with the menu. :P They were very nice guys, living in Stockholm actually. The one Edwin hit just moved to Stockholm from Kalmar that week, he spent a year (or maybe a term) in Australia last year. After dinner we went to the night club upstairs and danced in the New Year, I had such a great time!

Okej, I'm kind of giving up on this post now.. I keep getting distracted.

So I saunaed a lot!! That was great! 90C so like 195F!! I love the Sauna. It's funny the first time I had a sauna in Sweden it was only like 40C, 100F and I thought that was very hot, now if I'm in a 65C, 150F sauna I think it is practically cold! :P 85C is a good temperature, you can sit in that for a long time. It is so relaxing.

We skied for a few days more and headed back to Stockholm on the 3rd (I think).

It was a wonderful beginning to this new year!! :)

More Pictures

Here are some more pictures... This time instead Garpenberg's hotel main building.

Spending Christmas here was absolutely wonderful! I could not have asked for a better way to spend Christmas in Sweden. :)

With all the Christmas food like sill... Oh so much sill! The julbord was great! We had salmon, reindeer, lots of korv (sausage), potatoes, and so on. And we ate this for many days, there was a lot! :P

I played piano in the blue room, which was nice entertainment, and the little kids liked it too. :) The blue room's wallpaper is actually from imperial China! (I think it was imperial China, my knowledge of history is going out the window I guess) Very old, and very beautiful.

On Christmas day we watched Kalle Anka (Donald Duck, but Kalle is the nickname for Karl), I thought we were going to watch episodes of Kalle Anka or Mickey Mouse, but it was really clips from many Disney movies.. It probably had a tad more Kalle Anka than other things. :)

All in all, my Christmas was wonderful and magical and I still didn't feel homesick, I guess I'm just lucky to have a great host family, in which I feel so comfortable and welcome. :)

... There all caught up on Christmas, now on to New Years.. but I don't have any pictures from New Years. :-X

Pictures from Garpenberg... and such.

Okay so I figure I should just go ahead and bombard you with pictures! It will really color up my blog. So here it goes...
Garpenberg: a winter wonderland!

In this picture you can see part of the house we stayed in, it is the far left (you might need to click on the picture so you can see it).

I didn't take a better picture of the house, I was not thinking of the blog I guess. :P

The picture on the right, however, is the door to the house we stayed in. :)

These pictures are from walks we went on paths and what I believe to be logging roads.

This is one of my favorite pictures. I will tell you the story behind it too. :) Because I know you are dying to hear it... So on our walk, I stumbled upon these deer tracks they weren't very clear at first, kind of frantic. Then I noticed another set of tracks along with them. It was a chase. But the deer tracks seemed so graceful, the other tracks (dog, wolf, or possibly fox, I don't really know) were not as graceful. The deer seemed so in control of the situation by the tracks it made, weaving from the road into the woods then back out again. Going on forever down the road, probably a half mile, until they weaved off the path I was walking and I could no longer follow them.

On the right are more tracks, and now that you know the background you will probably be able to make out the tracks.

This water was so beautiful! It was so dark, which made it look even colder! I love the layers of ice on the sides, and that this has not frozen over because of the flow.

A walk in the other direction. The main building from behind.

On our walk we found a bowling alley, only it isn't called bowling (it's kägelbana). It is still similar to ten-pin but it is played with a smaller, wooden ball on a more narrow lane. The lane is a raised platform, which widens at the end near the pins. It is not an easy game, luckily with the snow it sort of paved a path so the ball didn't fall off the lane so much. It didn't help that the ball was a bit broken and therefore lopsided. :P

Okay, well this is all I will write for now. I will do more tonight, hopefully. Now I am off to fika in Gamla Stan with the other exchange students. Har det bra. :)

Where to start!!

Wow it has really been forever, I will try to make some of this more summarized so I can cover all the bases. I will start off saying Lund was fantastic.. Way back in the beginning of December! I had a great time and I absolutely love it down there, and it was really nice to get the chance to catch up with my friend Måns! I am hoping to get the chance to visit him again soon. While I was down there I saw my first Lucia concert, it was really nice, what was really great about it was I knew some of the people in the concert so that made it even more fun to watch (Måns was in it along with his friends). A few days after I got back from Lund, we went to Nicolai's youngest brother's baby shower (dop på svenska) to the reception, then to Anna's mom's for fika and so I could try glögg for the first time, and my was that strong glögg. After her mom's we stopped by a "glögg" party that a former boss of Anna's was hosting, though they were only serving champagne. Finally, after that Anna dropped me off with my friends and we went out to a club, and I got home in time to say goodbye to Anna, who was leaving for Copenhagen for the environmental conference.The next day was Lucia!! I went to a big, very big Lucia concert in the Globe arena with her now ex-boyfriend Henrik and his two daughters, it was really cool and there were so many kids singing in that show! It wasn't as personal as the other show but it was really amazing to see! I really loved seeing the Lucia concerts! Hmm that catches me up to the 13th of December. :P

Oh on the 16th of December I saw the play "A Christmas Carol," in the good-old Queen's English. It was really quite good, having only ever seen the movie it was a nice experience to see it on stage. The next day with the girls (plus Alex.. Andrea's boyfriend and minus Roza who was in L.A.), we all got together at Felicia's house for a game night, that marked the beginning of Christmas break. It was really a lot of fun... Except that when we played pictionary they kept having to take me out in the hall to tell me the word, because they are always so weird. :P We had a great time though!!

A few days before we went up to Garpenberg (I'll get to that), me and Anna went Christmas shopping to pick up a few last minute gifts. Also, to get me a pair of much needed winter boots!! Which, Anna, the wonderful angel that she is, bought for me as a Christmas present! She is just too good to me!!

The night before we left for Garpenberg (still not there yet), I went with Anna out to dinner with Carolyn who had been staying with us for a few days because she went to the Environmental Conference as well and was planning to come to Garpenberg too, Mike who just arrived to our house that day and was going up to Garpenberg with us, Anders who I don't know much about other than he is well-known and in a band of some sort.. He is a really nice guy, and Johan Nilsson who is an explorer, climbed the seven summits and stuff like that. It was a really great dinner, I had table grilled tuna "Tepanyaki" along with a fried roll (cheese not sushi.. I can't remember what that is called), it was an absolutely delicious meal and the restaurant was really cool. The restaurant was split into sections and every section had its own theme, some of it seemed a little over crowded but it was just so cool! http://www.grill.se/

The next morning (that's right I'm still not to Garpenberg yet!), anyway the next morning we had breakfast at the Grand Hotel! It was really nice, a beautiful view!! I should ask if Anna has any pictures on her phone from that day. I had a big bowl of fresh fruit, it was really great and so refreshing! After breakfast Anna and I went back to the house and packed, while Johan took Mike and Carolyn to see Kungsholmen or Djursholm I'm not sure which only that it was an upscale area, and both of those places happen to be upscale. Carolyn decided she would take a trip to Tallinn instead of coming up to Garpenberg for Christmas. When we finished packing and loading the car... Which was quite a hefty task! We picked up Nicolai at his dad's and headed on our way to Garpenberg.

And my was it beautiful in Garpenberg!! I think the best way to express just how beautiful it was is through pictures.. At last you can rest your little readers and take a peek and this pic!

And mind you, I have been living in a winter wonderland for nearly a month at this point.. And it goes on even now!

This is the main building at Garpenberg, it is like dining and lounge, mainly. We stayed in a smaller house, which was separated into individual rooms. It is very nice!

Okay, I am tired of typing and setting up all this, it was strangely difficult to place the picture anywhere but the top of my post! I'm sorry I didn't post more pictures along the way, Garpenberg is one of the only big things that I took pictures of. I will finish talking about at least Garpenberg and Sälen tomorrow and post more pictures too! Promise. Until then, har det bra! :)

Soon to be back on track...

Hello Everyone! Sorry I haven't written in a long, long, long time! It keeps getting away from me, but this weekend I plan on getting back on track and even uploading pictures because now I have the cable for Scott's camera! :) Anyway I have a lot to fill you in on! It has been around 3 months since I have last written. I will step it up! :P

It's been a while

Sorry I haven't posted anything in quite some time. I guess I have been busy lately.
Okay to start... The district conference. The skit went great everyone loved it, and laughed quite a bit too! After everything I was thinking about the national anthem part, I finally gathered enough courage to do it, and then we ended up just skipping it. :P All that for nothing! That's okay though, we left it on a high note, or well I guess we didn't. ;)
Let's see... After the district conference we meet with a girl from France who is staying in northern Sweden, we hung out in the city for a while then went to Joáo's house for dinner. I made chicken pesto pasta... Without much chicken, but it was good. :) We had on and off problems with Marian that day, but finally got her to stay in the city and hang out with us. (She thought Louise was mad at her... For no reason)
The next night I spent the night at Louise's house because Anna was in Geneva, that was fun. We also went to the movies with her Swedish friends from school... We saw Paranormal Activity... It was crazy! The last scene everyone in the theater screamed!
The next night I stayed at Anna's mom's (Barbro). It was nice, I tried speaking some Swedish with her. It is easier for me to speak with her because she doesn't speak much English.
Hmm what else has happened lately... I'm trying to work my way up to the present, but I keep thinking of things more recent. The school week, as far as I remember, was pretty normal.
On Friday, some of the exchange students came up for the Stockholm weekend a day early because they live quite far away. So I had two exchange students stay with me, Josh from Australia and Minh from Texas. :P Friday night a bunch of exchange students came over for dinner... Lasagna. Then we watch a movie, Forty Days and Forty Nights. The people who came over were Louise, Yasmin (from Australia), Miriam (ex-exchange student to the states), Chad (from Idaho), and the two who were staying with me. It was a nice night, and a lot of fun.
Saturday all the exchange students and rotex (ex-exchange students) met at central station. We went to Gamla Stan from there and walked around, we had a bit of free time so we walked pretty much in a big huge group all about. We were going to go up this big elevator in Slussen, which has a great view but it was 20 kronor and no one really felt like paying. :P Then we met back up with the chaperons and took a ferry over to Djurgården, we were going to go ice skating but the ice had all melted. So we walked along Strandvägen and to a restaurant, where we ate lunch. After lunch we went bowling... Not to boast but I won. :P We had around two hours of free time before dinner so we walked across town... Probably the longest way possible to walk. :P We met some other exchange students who were in a different group and staying in a different hostel across town. We went for fika, it was a really nice time! I got to meet a lot of great oldies, that I always hear about. They are all such great fun! I wish we would have had more time with them! After fika we parted ways and went to dinner... By train this time! :P I had some pork and potatoes, but wasn't very hungry so I barely ate anything (weird for me) :P We hung out in the lobby of the hostel for a while, played a game to see how much we knew about Sweden and cultural history... Not much. :-X Then we listened to the oldie exchange students tell us stories and things they learned from the year and the Rotex kids talked about what they got from their year aboard. After that we just had a lot of time to hang out, one girl played her guitar and sang... It was a fun night! Everyone was playing Spotify in their rooms... The televisions had the internet hooked up to them so we could use them as computers as well. It was a lot of fun!
We had some more big problems with Marian... I don't think she was ready for this year, at all!!
On Sunday we went to Skansen for the Julmarknad (Christmas market), we walked around Skansen and saw the animals. We saw owls and this guy talked to us forever about the different owls they have at Skansen... And so on. It was quite cool, he just talked for a long time but he was interesting. :P We also danced around the Christmas tree, that was a lot of fun!! I'm really glad I danced. They were very silly dances, one we were doing chores and heading to town, church, then home again. :P Or they may have been two different songs. It was good fun! After we danced we went for lunch, we had pankakor, I wasn't very hungry again though... I only ate one. After Skansen we said our goodbyes and parted ways. Josh, Chad, Phil (from Michigan), and Anthony (from Australia) came back to my house and we napped for a while then met back up with some of the other oldies that were at the other hostel. We went for fika in Gamla Stan, we hung out there for quite a while, said goodbye to some and went off to Burger King with some others. After Burger King we said goodbye and Josh, Chad, Phil, and I went back to my house. Phil's train wasn't until 23:20 or something, so we watched a movie and hung out until it was time for him to go. After he left we went off to bed.
Monday I went to school and the guys walked around town until I got out. Then we met up and I had lunch at Kungshallen, which has a lot of different kinds of food. Then we met up with Anthony at central station, he just came back down from Uppsala. He got a burger and we headed back to my house again.
All day we were having problems with Copenhagen.. We were supposed to go to Copenhagen on Tuesday, the next day! It was going to be Louise, Anthony, Brenton (Aussie), and me, going from the first of December to the forth. We got all the okays we needed to go, and we had contacts there as well. Louise's councilor told us it was alright to stay in a hostel and when we asked Vivi-Ann if we could she said yes, she probably just had a lot on her mind and didn't think about what was asked. She later said there was no way she would ever say yes to us staying in a hostel. She was asked during the Stockholm weekend and she was one of the two chaperons. I got what I thought was an okay for Marie-Ann, my councilor. She emailed Anna Monday morning saying I couldn't stay in a hostel. So we were working all day to either convince her or find a place for me to stay. We worked on it until around 10 or 11 at night! Copenhagen turned into a no-go. Anthony stayed over anyway, the next day we saw Josh and Chad off to the Party Cruise to Finland, where they were going to stay in Nokia, Finland until this coming Sunday! Lucky them. :P
After we said goodbye to them we met up with Louise for fika at this cute place downtown. We decided we should have a movie night at my house and just eat a lot of junk food! Anna made a good dinner and her friend Brigitta was over. She was telling us about her old job as a hotel critic, Lou and Anthony wanted her job! :P She got to stay in 5 star hotels and judge whether they were up to 5 star standards and things like that! Very cool job!! We talked to her until 10 and then we organized comforters and pillows, candy, chips and dip, popcorn... Of course I made cinnamon popcorn! Oh and we drank Julmust.. A magically drink, I don't know how to discribe the flavor... Anna told me it was sort of like root beer when I first tried it... mainly just so I wouldn't expect it to be cola, which is what I originally thought. I guess it is a mix between cola and root beer with some extra sweet almost fruity flavor added. :P It was a good night! We cuddled on the couch and watch Snatch and then Anchorman, we watched movies until 3 in the morning! It was a lot of fun, and my tummy was hurting after all that junk food! :P
We slept in quite late, or I woke up early and then got up at 10:30 or 11 and then went back to bed and we just hung out in bed until like 1 in the afternoon! We made leftovers on toast and I ate so much! :P Then we decided we didn't feel like doing anything so we watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. At around 4 we headed into the city and parted ways.. Louise went home to Täby, Anthony to Uppsala, and I went to talk to Marie-Ann and get my rotary money for the month of November.
Finally I made it up to today!!! I've only been writing for around an hour!!
I haven't really done anything yet today... Just some laundry, packing and unpacking, and the dishes. Soon I will go to central station and buy my ticket to Lund, I decided even though we couldn't go to Copenhagen and I am down like 80 or 90 bucks, which I may or may not get back from rotary after that whole fiasco! I am still going to Lund tomorrow! I am sure to have a great time and the ticket is only 311 kronor, slow train hurray! After I buy the ticket I am going to meet Anna and Nicolai at Kungsträdgården for dinner, then we are going to the Opera House to watch the Nutcracker!! I can't wait! It is going to be set to the theme of a series of children books by Elsa Beskow. It sounds really cool. I haven't been to the nutcracker since me and dad used to go together when I was little.
Oh we have had frost on the ground for two days now! It is really cool, the sun was shining yesterday and the sky was clear and still it never went over 0°C! It is really cool, the ground is just kind of white and the windows don't really have frost so you can see out clearly. It is really pretty. Last night when I was walking home the moon was shining so bright and the sky was so clear, it was just so beautiful and the ground was not muddy like it was just two days ago! It's amazing that the ground frozen pretty much over night, and it's no long muddy out... Hurray for now! :)
Well that's my past two weeks in a rather large nutshell! :)
Too bad there aren't any pretty pictures to spice up the reading. :P

This week flew by!

The other day when I was walking home from school, I think it was Tuesday but maybe Monday I don't even remember right now. Anyway back to the point, it was so beautiful! The fog was everywhere and the lights across the canal shined through hazily with the nearby trees sharply silhouetted, it was amazing. I took some pictures but I don't have the USB cord to Scott's camera so I can't upload the and share with you the beauty just yet. I hope my description did the scene justice, I doubt the pictures will.. It was just amazing though.
My week really went by so fast, I can't believe tomorrow is already Friday!!
In my design class we had to make something out of something else or make something different... It's hard to explain.. It was called recycling, but I didn't really stick to the recycling aspect. I made a necklace and I used tatting as the design... Tatting I just discovered last week, it's kind of like crochet and friendship bracelets mixed into one. The sort of thing you can find at the hem of slips, table clothes, and doilies. :P It is really pretty, of course I don't think it is good enough... It wasn't perfect. My teacher really liked it, so that is good. Everyone thought it was must be really hard because its a bunch of circles connected and then I outlined it with a "chain" just more tatting knots. :P I finished that yesterday, and sadly I overslept and missed the class today... I was really looking forward to that class too! :-/
On Wednesday the Stockholm exchange students met up at Marian's house to rehearse our skit for the district conference. I'm not looking forward to it, I think I might just have to read the lines as I do it, I don't think I will remember my lines in such a short period of time. Also, I'm not looking forward to singing the Star Spangled Banner in front of everyone... Alone... First. I am looking forward to singing the Swedish anthem... Hopefully it goes well. :)
Today we met up again and had dinner at a Mexican restaurant for Marian's birthday, it was really fun and good food. I was starving!! I thought my stomach was going to cave in on itself before we ate! :P I mean I was so hungry I couldn't decide what to order... I was holding everyone up, I told them just to order me what ever... So they ordered me the same as everyone else. It was good too!
So that's my week so far, I'll be sure to tell you all about the district conference! :§ <- that's my unsure face.