More happenings in Sverige

School is now well under way and I have started to get into a rhythm from week to week here.  School during the week, and Stockholm on the weekends.  During the week I go to school, sometimes very short days, sometimes very long like I said in my last post, and when I get home I usually watch Family guy or 2 1/2 men on one of the four channels my family has with my host brother.  Swedes love family guy and 2 1/2 men, the latter of which I had never watched until I came here, but I now find it quite entertaining.  Reading the subtitles of these shows while listening to the english has proven to be very helpful for learning swedish as well.  I've also been on my computer quite a lot, mostly watching snowboarding videos as the winter now approaches.  On mondays I have also been playing whats called innebandy here in sweden.  It's basically like indoor floor hockey thats played with these short sticks and wiffle balls.  I play with mostly older men whom are about 40 or so, but it's been a lot of fun because they are quite casual about it.  On the weekends, I have been going to stockholm.  I have become pretty good friends with some other american exchange students that live down there, as well as some australians.  It's not hard to find something to do in stockholm, even if we don't plan on anything we always end up finding something.  For example, yesterday I went down for a Veronica Maggio concert.  She is one of the most famous swedish musicians right now, and quite good if you ask me!  Her concert was packed and a ton of fun.

Sweden is starting to get very dark and cold.  When I arrived, I remember being outside at 10 with a tshirt and having fika after dinner with the sun just hiding behind the trees.  Now even on sunny days I have been wearing sweatshirts to school and the sun is down by 8 or so.  This however makes me very excited because it means winter is coming!  I am incredibly excited for winter this year.  My host family and I will be going to northern sweden for a ski trip they make every year.  There is also a trip up to Åre, swedens biggest and best super resort, with rotary that I am planning on, as well as a trip with my school to a closer resort.  I'm also hoping to take a bus at least a couple times to a place called Kungsberget which is about two hours away but it looks really fun, they have a fantastic park.  There is at least a few others I have met in my town that are ski or snowboard enthusiasts so I'm thinking I will have pretty good opportunities to get out.

Thats all for now, hope everything is well back home!

School and a little more awesomeness

I'm trying to remember where I left off last time, but I know I said I would talk about school.  I have now been to two weeks of school but it still seems like we have just begun.  The first week was pretty much a joke.  We spent pretty much a whole day organizing a game called brännball which is a simplified swedish version of baseball.  We then took the next day to play it and be outside not doing much.  This last week has been a little more typical though.  Here are some of the main differences between swedish school and high school.  The biggest is that we have a different schedule each day, and start and end at different times every day.  For example, on monday I start at 8:15 and don't end until 5:00 (which I think I will change though) but I have a two and a half hour break in there.  Then on Tuesday I don't start until 12:40, pretty nice.  There are also no bells, the teachers decide when class ends, and it usually doesnt stay the same each day (so far).  The gaps in between classes are typically quite long as well, not uncommon to have an hour between classes.  I am also with the same general students for every class.  This is good and bad as I get to know them quite well, but loose the opportunity to easily meet more kids.  Also, lunch has so far been quite good, and you don't pay for it, and its free to take as much as you want.  There are also typically several choices which is nice.  As for the students, they typically seem to be pretty engaged when class has started, but if not much is happening then most will just start chatting amongst themselves.  We have also all recieved computers from the school, so I now have a nice swedish keyboard which I can easily type the å, ä, ö letters we don't have.  So school has been pretty good so far, my classmates are really friendly and have taken me in pretty well.  I met them in stockholm last week to play pool at a really cool place downtown.  Then we went to a foodcourt in the city and had a "cheap" meal which cost 100 SEK (about $16, cheap for that city).

That has been another nice thing about school starting, my SL card.  The SL network is the transportation system in the stockholm area, and since I live more than 6 km away from school, my school gave me a bus pass, which my host family very generously upgraded to work at night and on weekends, so I am free to go to stockholm as much as I please.  That has been fantastic, and I have already made good use of it.

That is just part of the awesomeness, I also went to the stockholm archipelago last weekend.  I went with two another exchanges student and one of their families.  We took a two hour fairy ride out to an island called ingmasö I believe.  They have a small house there, which we had to ride on a four wheeler to get to since there are no cars on the island. It was a very relaxing weekend, and quite beautiful.  See my pictures on flickr for proof.

Another fun thing I got to do just yesterday was wakeboarding at a cable park.  For those of you who don't know exactly what it is, it's a series of cables that are strung fairly high above the water in a loop and have these ropes attached to them and you hold on to these as you would a rope from a boat and it takes you around to the various water features they have set up.  This is probably a subpar description so see my pictures instead.  Jon Groom (who lives here in Täby very close to me, and also comes from minnesota) and I went with Jon's host parents.  Quite a fun day!

Thats it for now!  but keep checking out my flickr, I update that much more than I do this blog.  I'll also try to start doing more captions on there so you know what you are looking at.