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