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.

The Meeting

On Wednesday all of the Stockholm exchange students got together here at Anna's house for a meeting on what we will do at the district conference next Saturday. It was quite an eventful evening. We were going to meet at 3:30, one person showed up on time... That's not a bother. Two more came a bit late, like an hour. It takes a bit to get to my house so I wasn't too surprised that people weren't on time. We did a bit of work, mainly looked at what one person did and had fun. The other three people were still on there way, but apparently one person knew how to get there... Apparently. Then they called and said the bus didn't exist... They were at a place I didn't tell them to go, but I didn't give them clear enough instructions because I told them the bus in one sms and like 2 sms's later I told them the location... They didn't get that. So instead of asking me and going to convenient way, they took the bus to Karlaplan... From the place they should have taken the bus to my house. Then they had to wait about a half hour for the bus. Then when I told them where to go from the bus stop they walked about ten minutes past my house, they turned when they weren't supposed to. That isn't their fault though, I told them to walk a kilometer but after that I gave them no further directions... They couldn't handle them I didn't think. So they finally arrived around quarter to six I think.
The meeting was productive though, we made new ideas and organized an anthem with bits of everyone's national anthem and the Swedish anthem at the end. So next weekend we will be doing skits on things we thought were strange or funny and the anthem as well.
This post pretty much just turned into a rant... I kind of thought that it might. That's all though, I feel much better now that it's off my chest. :)

Trying to keep up

I have been meaning to write about my weekend, but the little stool I am sitting on hurts my bum! So I don't like to sit here for too long.
So on Saturday I went to Uppsala, about 45 minutes north of Stockholm by train. It was a Rotaract organized event, and it was a lot of fun! All of us Stockholm exchangers took the train up together, and met up with some of the Rotaract members and the one exchange student in Uppsala, Anthony, an oldie from Australia. First we walked over to the student union and had fika/lunch, it was a really cool place fun by the students of Uppsala University. After lunch we went bowling, it was a lot of fun even though I wasn't very good (I never broke 100), and the bowling alley was really nice, very clean with only a few lanes. Then we had some time to walk around the city, so we walked to the center and had fika again. After that we met back up with Rotaract and went to dinner at a Chinese buffet. That was a really fun day, and makes me think how much I'm going to miss the exchange students going home soon! :-/
Sunday was a luncheon at Vivi-Ann's house, which is absolutely beautiful by the way! Vivi-Ann is our district chair, she is such a great lady, we all love her! All the Stockholm exchange students went, Anthony couldn't join because it was Farsdag and he was spending it with his host family.

*Oh Grattis på Farsdag Papa! :)*

While we were there Vivi-Ann gave us a tour of her yard, it was really nice, and there were viking stone carvings right next to her house!! We also told her how we were all doing, what we did over höstlov, that sort of thing. We had spaghetti for lunch, one thing you might not know is that Swedes put ketchup on their spaghetti.. I don't think it is very good at all. :-P After lunch we planned what we would do for the district conference that is in a week and a half. We are going to do skits about strange things that have happened to us or things we found strange in Sweden. Tomorrow we will practice and plan some more here at the house. It should be quite silly, at least to us! Oh Vivi-Ann has the cutest dog! It's a five year old boxer named Simba, he is so adorable and nice! I just love that dog!
Talking about dogs reminds me that Ralf is still missing, apparently people have seen him down by the water and on a tree stump by the house in front of ours. They have seen him up till Wednesday or Thursday that I know of and he has been missing since last Saturday! So he is close by, we are thinking someone is feeding him wet cat food or tuna so he is staying with someone else. It is weird that someone would do that though, he certainly never looked like he was starving he is quite a fat cat!! Well we have signs up and we are keeping our eyes peeled for him, maybe he will turn up.
Anna left for Singapore on Sunday just after I got back from the luncheon. She will be there for ten days! I wish I could have tagged along to Singapore... For 10 days! Annica is staying with me again, so it's all good in the hood.
Oh the paint and wallpaper in the kitchen is completed and it looks amazing! I hope the living room and foyer turn out as well!
That's all for now! :)

So I don't seem like a slacker!

So this week was pretty boring, I tried to stay off my feet as much as possible because by the end of the day my ankle is always hurting! So that meant missing fika on Wednesday. I still went to Swedish classes, which are now over... How sad. I'll be starting Swedish in school now though! That means I don't have to pay for it. Hooray! It also means fewer lessons per week, unfortunately.
Today I sent my computer home to be fixed, I'm going to miss having it! But it will work better once I get a new motherboard. :)
Yeah... Like I said kind of a boring week. Tomorrow I am going to Uppsala with Rotary, there we will experience the university atmosphere of the town (a big university town), plus bowling and Chinese food. It's going to be a good time! Sunday will be a lunch at the district chair's house. That will be fun and nice too.
That's my week in a nut shell.

Badminton Battle Wounds

I twisted my ankle in badminton today... I was winning that game too! Sure I didn't win the first one but I was making my comeback, then *pop* and I landed on the side of my foot. Luckily it's not that bad, it just hurts a bit.
In a few days I'll be tiptop again! :)

A Little Update

Fika was fun, and afterward I went with Julia (Canadian Exchanger) back to her hotel and had dinner with her and her host sister. That was really cool.
After that I had to walk home from the last bus stop in the dark dark of Djurgården. Of course I chose the route with the least houses and it cut through a wooded area, but it was well lit and I made it home alive. :P
Ralf has been missing for more than 24 hours now, Anna got a phone call from a women who said she found Ralf playing around Rosendals Slott, which is right next to the house. Anna told her it was okay and that the cat lives there, but now Ralf hasn't come home yet. I hope the woman didn't take Ralf. :P
Yesterday I had fika with Annika (Anna's friend who is staying in the house with me) and her mother, it was really nice and we walked around a little. Last night I went to work with Annika at Göta Lejon, a theater in Södermalm (southern district of Stockholm?), she was selling and dealing with the ticket issues. People kept trying to ask me questions, I just looked at them wide eyed and dumb! :P At 10 we watched RAW comedy club perform, it was nice I actually got a few of the jokes and then there was a Canadian comedian as well so I got some English. It was a lot of fun, and I'm glad I went and tried. It's a lot different than going to school, because at school I will just zone out really fast because I have been doing that since the beginning, but with the comedy show I wanted to know what they were saying so I was really listening.
Now some words are starting to come without me translating them in my head, that is nice because now the words just mean what they mean and they don't mean the English meaning to me anymore. I don't know if that makes sense but it is strange learning a language but it was a nice realization when some words just flow... Not all, I still have a long way to go and I'm not even really speaking but it is getting a bit easier I think. I'm on the right track. :)
Tonight I have badminton, I'm excited, I haven't been in two weeks, because I was sick two weeks ago and then last week I got caught up baking cookies with Charlotte (my half American friend from school :P). It is really nice to have badminton, it's fun and I am getting better. Maybe after this is over I can try to join a club or something. This is only klubbträning, it's not an actual club. It goes on until 13 Dec. so maybe by the end of it I will be good enough for a real club. :P
School starts back up tomorrow, no more höstlov, what a shame. :P

Höstlov (Fall Break)

I cut my bangs today! I decided I couldn't live with them in my face... So I did it myself. They actually didn't turn out bad at all, other than being uneven in an unnoticeable way they look quite good. I'm so proud of myself... But no way will I do my whole head!
Oh I think I made a slight improvement in Swedish class today, I was able to reply with answers that weren't on the board, and it made sense! Of course it was very simple, but that is a step in the right direction and I am happy to see some improvement!
I have also been planning to send my computer home for a week now, I haven't had the chance to do it because Anna hasn't been home much, and neither have I. I don't know how to send it so I need her help to get it done... Looks like I will have to put it off until Monday or Tuesday when she gets back home. The sooner I do it, the sooner my computer will be fixed!! For real this time!!!

Today was really nice, it was a much more clear day than the past few days. It was lighter longer because of it, I even saw the moon as I was walking home to get my Swedish books. It made for a much cheerier day, and I actually did things today. I went to my councilor, Marie-Anne, to talk and pick up my rotary money. I then went shopping for a little while before running home to get my Swedish books. Oh and I wasn't late for Swedish class today!! Hooray! :P For the past four classes I have been late I think. Next week is my last two classes, how sad.
Now I am hoping I will be able to find a different program that is cheaper or something, I don't want to fork out two hundred some odd dollars for a course that was so short, five weeks.

Tomorrow Marian(Mexico) and I and anyone else who might be able to make it are meeting up with a Canadian girl named Julia who is staying up north in Sweden. She is visiting Stockholm for a couple days and I promised to organize fika with her. Most of the exchange students are out of town so it looks like it will be small.
Fika is like going for coffee, by the way, it's like coffee or tea with buns and cookies or what ever. It's nice... I don't know if I already explained fika or not. :P

Yeah.. That's all for now.

Nasty experience!

When I was riding the subway to Tasnim's house a drunk man got on the train, he was rocking wet pants! The drunk had pissed his pants!
I was so scared he would try and talk to me or something when the one other person who was standing by the doors was preparing to leave on the next stop (everyone else was sitting). Lucky for me the drunk slowly stumbled off on the next stop too!
I had a great time at Tasnim's and great food to though, so that makes up for the creepy drunkard. :)

Just a Rambling of Today

This morning Anna left for Adu Dhabi until Monday. Her friend is going to stay in the house with me this time so I don't have to leave. Tonight I'm hanging out with my girl friends again, we are all meeting up at Tasnim's house and she is going to make us dinner. It is going to be fun, I can't wait!
Last night I had Swedish class, we had a substitute teacher. :P She was quite good, and we learned some very essential things, like how to pronounce the vowels, which I think we were doing a lot in class yesterday. I only have a week and a half left of this Swedish class, and if I want to go on I obviously have to pay more... I'm thinking about looking into whether or not I can get rotary or my school to pay for it, or at least some of the price. By law I guess my school is supposed to offer a Swedish course but they do not, so since my needs aren't being met they should be the ones who are put out by them. :P
Oh sounds like the painter is here doing the kitchen, apparently they aren't going to take down the wallpaper before painting. Instead she is just sanding the seams and painting over and wallpapering one wall. I think the kitchen will look nice. It is going to be a coral color with the focal wall a wallpaper with large print of flowers and parrots and a brown background. Anna is also having them paint the living room red, and she is having black and white striped wallpaper put up in the hall. The black and white could be really cool, or it could be a total disaster, I'm still on the fence about it.
I still have yet to find nice winter shoes that I can walk in, I have found many nice shoes but they just don't give much support at all. I now bought insoles so I have been using them in the crappier shoes I already have. I am thinking about going out to look today, but it would be nicer if I could get to the outlets just outside the city. I'll have to look for a bus there or something. Otherwise I will be buying my shoes at city prices.

The Darkness

Quarter to five and it's already pitch black! But I still love it!

It's a start.

Okay, I decided after already being in Sweden for almost 3 months that I would start blogging about my experiences. I guess it is always nice to share, and it will maybe help me remember some of the great times I have had and will have while I am here.

I will start out by saying my Swedish is awful! I am trying to find new ways to improve it, I think I partly wanted to start blogging so I would have a place to write a word of the day or something. Maybe I should just write a few statements in Swedish instead, because my reading and listening are not the issues, it's my speaking that I have absolutely no grasp of!

A little about my year so far, I am living in Stockholm, on an island in the inner city call Djurgården, which translates to animal garden. I live in a very nice area, on the island, which is maybe 2 km long, there are 2 museums, an amusement park, restaurants, a place called Skansen that is part zoo part old fashion recreation of houses and life back in the day. Also, I live right next to a small palace, called Rosendals Slott. Just up the road there is a beautiful garden called Rosendals Trägård (trägård means garden but if directly translated it's tree garden). I live in an area with a lot of big houses, my house is not one of those really big houses but it is absolutely beautiful, the house used to be part of the palace, maids chambers or the kitchen, something like that. My host mom is really great and she is very welcoming, I have felt at home since I arrived.

I attend gymnasium (high school) at Östra Real, which I can never pronounce correctly I don't know why. The school is really big and very old and my locker is on the forth floor, while most of my classes are on the second floor. It's quite the workout. I have made great friends at school, they accepted me immediately, I am very lucky to have them!

I also spend a lot of time with the other rotary foreign exchange students, we usually hang out once a week, it's nice to have people who are going through the exchange together. I am one of the oldest exchange students in Stockholm, there is only one kid who is older than me. One girl, Marian from Mexico, is only 15 years old I don't know how she does it, at 15 I certainly wasn't ready for an experience like this, I'm sure she will grow a lot from this year though.

It is strange how similar the culture here is to that of home, I feel like I am home here because it is just so similar. The one big difference is that I am living in a city and not a town like Elmira, there is more shopping here, obviously, and more places to hang out, like coffee shops. I think the atmosphere of the café's are different here, not enough to really know it but still different. Also there is a night life here, I have gone out dancing with my friends 3 times now, each time to a different club. It's a lot of fun, and definitely nice to be 18 here, otherwise I wouldn't get to go out like that.

Well, I think that catches me up for now, I will do my best to keep in touch.