Sunday, August 21, 2011

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!

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Swimming, biking, fika, and more swimming

Well, I have survived the first five days of living in Sweden.  I arrived at Arlanda (the Stockholm airport that is actually 30 minutes outside of Stockholm but only about 15 minutes from my house here) with Jon, Kristi, and Marisa just after 7 in the morning.  My host mother and brother were there to pick me up.  I struggled to stay awake the first day as I only slept for about an hour on the plane.  Fortunately they had plenty of things for me to do that day, I unpacked, went swimming in lake Mälaren, and walked around Sigtuna.  
These other days have been equally busy, I have done many things and had to force myself tonight to write something down before everything mixed together in my head.  The second day here, my host mother Pernilla, brother Tobias, and sister Jessika went to Stockholm and went to a photography gallery, it was very interesting, and had a great location right along the waterway of Stockholm.  We then got a bite to eat and then walked through the touristy old town where a couple big churches are, as well as Swedish Parliament, and some other famous and beautiful buildings.  That night we had a family over that is good friends of my host family.  They have a son my age and a daughter a little younger and they couldn't be nicer people.  we had a very Swedish dinner that night of grilled salmon and potatoes and a delicious yogurt sauce to go with it.
So far in Sweden, I have swam A LOT, and we bike everywhere.  We'll bike downtown Sigtuna and jump into lake Mälaren and then walk downtown and then bike home or something like that.  It's so relaxing and nice, I've thouroughly been enjoying it.  There is also this thing called fika here that is a very Swedish thing to do.  It's basically a time where you sit and drink coffee with people and eat small cookies or bread or some sort of treats and then socialize.  My host father Tomas' parents came over for fika the other day which was quite nice.
I also went blueberry picking with Tomas, Tobias, and Jessika.  We drove just a couple minutes into the forest and picked with these hand-held blueberry pickers for an hour or so and got almost 8 liters. We then made blueberry jam with Pernilla and a delicious blueberry pie.
So far my favorite thing I have done is going to a small island on lake Mälaren to eat and hang out.  We went with the same family that we had dinner with a couple nights before.  They have a great boat that we took out wakeboarding and then we sat on this small island and grilled chicken and ate pasta salad, and also ate two small perch that was caught.  We stayed there until the sun went down and then boated back to Sigtuna, it was incredibly relaxing.
 I have so far been absolutely loving Sweden.  Check out my pictures for  more examples why.  Thats it for now!  http://www.flickr.com/photos/kynite/sets/72157627213886351/