It's been a while again, but really just feels like longer than it has been. Winter has finally come to the stockholm area now for the past month or so and I feel like I have been non-stop snowboarding (finally). This has been great though! I went on a trip with my school for a day which was fun, and also to a place with some friends that was a bus ride away. Mostly I have been riding at a place called Väsjöbacken, and I absolutely LOVE it there. It's real small, smaller than buck if you can imagine, however they have an awesome park crew which I have become friends with, and it has been a ton of fun riding with those guys. I have no school on thursdays this term so I have been going then, as well as once on the weekend usually. There has also been quite a bit of snowboarding here in my town of Sigtuna that I have been doing. We have been setting up handrails that are in town and getting some cool pictures.
The best part about my snowboarding season is that it's about the get even better! We have sportlov (which is basically spring break) this next week and my family and I are going up north to a ski resort called Bydallen for a week. After this I have one more week of school and then go on the Rotary sponsored trip to Åre, which is Sweden's worldclass ski resort. That will be starting on my birthday! (I almost can't think of a better way to spend my birthday) and goes for about five days. We get back and spring riding will hopefully be in full swing, which is always my favorite time of the season. I only hope my board which I bought here can last that long since I have managed to give it some major core damage which means it won't be ridable for much longer. Hoping for the best anyways!
Aside from these snowboarding endevours, I have been doing a lot of hanging out with both swedish friends and exchange student ones. I think I have found a good balance between the two. I go to Stockholm and fika with the exchange students quite often, but also hang out often in Sigtuna, or Stockholm with my swedish pals.
Another quite exciting thing that has happened is getting the long-awaited information about our European bus tour in the summer. This is another Rotary sponsored event, and by far the most anticipated one. Getting the official information was exciting to say the least. It leaves Malmö in the very southern tip of Sweden and runs through Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Austria, Italy, France, and Belgium for 17 days. It is going to be an absolute blast, that is for sure. We get back to Sweden on the 14th of July and then I have booked my plane ticket for the 19th of July to fly back home to the USA!
I haven't said anything about my language progress in quite a while so I thought that would be interesting to mention. I am no where fluent yet, but speaking almost entirely swedish at home with my family. The only time we speak english is to clarify something, or sometimes when serious conversation breaks out. I still speak english with my classmates, which is bad, bit it's a tricky one to transition over to. Most of my Swedish friends also speak english with me, with the excpetion of one of my good friends here. She usually speaks swedish with me and that has been really helpful in learing. I would say I am still not where I would like to be, but that is fluent, so I should say I am happy with where I am at! I still have about five months left so we will see how far it gets!
As you can hopefully tell, things are going quite splendid here in Sverige. I am enjoying almost every second of it. Hope everything is well in the states!
