Monday, January 16, 2012

So much has happened, and its only begining

So I have been meaning to update this for quite some time, and am finally taking the time to sit down and do it.  A ton has happened since my last entry, but I'll try to go through the highlights in a sensible order.

I suppose the first big thing was Christmas time!  Shortly after getting back from Denmark I went to the Christmas market in Sigtuna, which is quite large actually, and someone famous, meaning lots from Stockholm come up and buy things like Christmas food, candles, and other decorations.  It was very nice and I have several pictures on my flickr from it.  It would have been much more picturesque if we had gotten snow, but for some reason the gods are mad this year and decided to give us the worst winter (snow wise) I have ever been through!  And from what I have heard, Minnesota is the same exact way.  What a bummer.  I can say we still don't even have enough snow on the ground to shovel, and it rained about a week ago in fact.  Anyways, this has been a somewhat bitter subject for me so I will try not to dwell on it much here.  Moving on...

Actual Christmas here was quite nice.  I have been with the same family the whole year (and will remain so) and this means that I felt very much a part of the family throughout the holidays.  Here in Sweden they celebrate not on the 25th, but the 24th, so that morning we opened gifts, then got ready and went over to my host dads parents house who, like I might have mentioned before, live just down the street from us.  We spend the day there with almost everyone on my host dads side of the family.  They all live relatively close so there was about 20 or so of us there.  While there we had a huge julbord which is basically a table filled full of traditional Swedish food such as pickled herring, meatballs, ham, salmon, potatoes, etc...  So much food, and all quite good in my opinion!  After dinner Santa came and gave presents to mostly the younger cousins.  That was quite fun to watch.  After this we all watched a very popular program on tv that I guess they watch every year while we at cookies and other Christmas treats and drank coffee and tea.  During this we opened up even more presents, yes there is a lot of gift exchanging.  After this we sat around and talked, played some board games, and went home somewhat late.  I thought it was a wonderful Christmas!  I felt just like a part of their family, and my Swedish has progressed enough that I wasn't always lost during conversation.

The week right after new years I went up north with my family to a ski resort near Norway called Lofsdalen.  I finally got to see some natural snow and had a nice 5 days of snowboarding!  The drive up was a nice 6 hour drive through the Swedish forests, and when we were about a half hour away, we had to stop to let three huge moose cross the road.  A truly swedish experience in my opinion.  The small cottage we stayed in is owned my my dads parents which they share with all the kids during the winter.  It's just a couple minutes from the lift.  While we were there we got a couple centimeters of snow, enough so that I didn't mind at all the fact that they had no park.  Instead, me and my brother lapped the top half and took runs through the trees where the fresh snow could be found.  It seemed to me like swedes weren't familier with the term "side country" they instead all seemed to stay right on the trail.  I sure didn't mind though!  They left all the fun snow for me.  I also tried cross country skiing for the first time in I think ten years.  Not exactly my cup of tea, but it was nice to be outside in the swedish wilderness.

Now school has started again and next week we start next term.  Last Friday our "oldies" from Australia left so that was quite sad, but we get new ones on Saturday.  We are all looking forward to meeting them because they are the ones we will share all the trips with like Åre and the euro tour.  Our oldies said they should be the ones we will be closest with.  We'll see I guess.  Also, I was very happy because one of the local ski places finally opened up called Väsjöbacken (try pronouncing that...) which is only about half hour by car, and longer by train but still doable.  I'm hoping to make it my regular spot on Thursdays since I won't have school on Thursdays during this next term.  I got to go there yesterday on sunday and made friends with a couple of guys on their park crew already so it should be a fun place to get to ride more often, even though its about the size of hyland hills....

Anyways, I think those are the main things I have done in the last month!  It's been fun and now I am about exactly half way done with my exchange.  Pretty unbelievable, and everyone says time flies after Christmas so I am hoping to make the most of it!

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