The honeymoon stage

I have just returned from our "language camp" that I attended near Göteborg.  I say that in parenthesis because I did not learn a bit of Swedish that I didn't already know.  They started at the bare basics such as "my name is..." etc.  As it turns out though, almost everyone there didn't speak a bit of Swedish before the camp, and a lot still couldn't really say anything by the end.  Even with this being true, the camp was a blast.  51 exchange students, 26 from the US alone, and many from Canada and France and a few from Japan, Brasil and Taiwan made it a very good time.  I did manage to learn that certain Canadians and French people are actually really awesome.  I became pretty good friends with a few of them.
At camp, we had a long talk about culture shock from a Swede who lived in Japan for some years.  He took us through the stages of our exchange year, and the first for most is this "honeymoon" stage as he called it.  It pretty much described exactly how I'm feeling right now,  I have so far thoroughly enjoyed almost everyone I have met, love the town I am living in, and just having a general amazing time.  I found this especially true when I went into Stockholm for the day yesterday to meet exchange friends I met at camp, and ended up also meeting a few oldies as they are called (because they have been here for half a year) from Australia and Brazil.  All of us walked around Stockholm all day and got food, had fika, watched some live music, and just talked and soaked up being an exchange student.  I realized how lucky I was to be in the place I was and can't explain how awesome that is to feel.  If only this stage in exchange could last forever...
Tomorrow marks what will be an extreme change in my year.  School.  So far while I have been here, I have been doing things with my host family, mostly my brother Tobias and his friends, who have all been awesome to me and incredibly welcoming.  Now I will go to school off on my own and be thrown in with more people I have never met before, but I am very excited actually.  There are many upsides to this, I will finally get to meet some Swedes that are my age, and hopefully develop some friendships on my own, and I will also now get some regularity in my life, which I suppose can be a good thing once in a while.  I will write again about school once I have a week or two under my belt.
There is so much I could write about, but I'm going to leave at this for now.  I'll also try to do another upload to flickr but I have yet to upload pictures from my recent activities.  That will come soon though I think.  Also, I have a feeling a few people are getting annoyed with me ignoring them on facebook and I promise once that month is up I will get back to you all.  Talk to you all soon!