I have reached and passed the well known three month mark. I remember thinking before I left that the first three months would be the hardest, and so far I would say I was correct. While the first month was a lot of fun, the last two have been full of frustrating progress on the language, and not really fitting in and knowing what to do. But I would say all of that is starting to change. I switched into a better swedish class at school, one where I get one on one time with a really great teacher who has been extremely helpful and nice while teaching me. This has helped me to step over a sort of plateau I was at with my language. I feel again that it is moving along pretty well now. I'm understanding more and more, to the point where if I listen hard enough, I can usually understand whats going on in a conversation, as long as it's not about neuroscience or something. I'm also starting to speak more, especially at home. My host brother has actually been great at getting me to speak swedish with him. I'm really hoping that by Christmas I will be speaking almost only swedish at home, but we'll see. I've also been making a lot more friends who are actually swedish. My exchange student friends are getting quite annoyed that I'm not hanging out with them, but that's okay in my mind since I'm with swedes. Actually, one of my friends is originally from Los Angeles but he moved here about 5 or 6 years ago, so speaks fluent swedish.
For my three month anniversary of sorts, I made fajitas for my host family. they turned out really well and tasted like the real thing from home. my family also really enjoys it when I cook for them so I thought it was a good way of saying thanks for the first three months of my year with them.
Another thing that has been great here is the upcoming snowboarding season. I had my first opportunity to ride about a week and a half ago now at a ski/snowboarding competition in Uppsala. It was a ton of fun and I almost didn't compete but couldn't stand watching others ride so I did. It ended up being a good choice because I wound up the only snowboarder in the finals, and had a chance to win a trip to Austria, but fell on both of my last runs... Bummer. Two days later I found a board in Stockholm cheap and bought it. I've now gotten to use it twice, both times again in Uppsala at a HUGE outdoor ice rink where they have big piles of snow which riders have turned into a preseason rail setup. I took video from my last trip and will put it up as soon as I can find some software to edit it with. Unfortunately I still have about a month until the real slopes open up. Luckily I have found a couple buddies that are big time riders like myself that I should be taking many trips with to go boarding. So this season is shaping up to be another good one!
In other news, school is about the same old same old, I don't do much other than listen and play cards, but I still don't mind going much. We just finished fall break which was a great week off. Went to a halloween party, and that was about it. The break was uneventful for the most part but that was just fine in my book. It is also getting quite dark here, the sun now goes down around 4:00 maybe? and I'm not sure when it gets up, but the sunsets are amazing.
The next couple weekends will be fairly busy actually which is nice. This weekend there is a ski/snowboard gear convention in Stockholm, and next weekend is a huge ski/snowboard event called stadium winter jam, where they set up a huge jump in a stadium that pro riders compete on. there is also some rails that anyone can ride. afterwards there is a photography convention as well. The weekend after that is a Rotary weekend in Stockholm in which I have heard about 65 exchange students will be in town for tradition advent/Christmas traditions, so that will be fun. Then the first weekend in December I am visiting my good ol Danish brother Niko in Copenhagen! It's his birthday so I am helping him celebrate and plus I get to see Copenhagen which I am really excited for! So I have a busy next couple of weeks, which will be a lot of fun.
Hoppas allt är bra i USA!
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