Italienarens Besök, Valborg, Göteborgdagarna med Rotary, Middag hos Maria, Bastu Extrem, Rediculously Svensk Musik och Kvibergs Marknad

Well, yes, you're right...it's been quite some time since the last time I updated this sucker and by quite some time I mean nearly a month an a half, which, my friends, is highly unacceptable, I know. But, let's jump right in as quite a bit has happened!

Major thing #1: Our friends from Italy made their way up here to good 'ol Sweden. They came on a friday and left on a saturday, making their stay eight days in total. Sooo much went on during those days that there's no way I could write it all down. Safe to say we all had an amazing time, though were very tired by the last day.

One day we spent at the beach, so here's a pic of my friend Amanda and I playing some cards.

Here we are on the bus heading down to Denmark. On the Italian's last day in Sweden we took them to Denmark. First to Helsingör, then to Louisiana, a beautiful indoor/outdoor art museum and then finally we spent a few hours in Copenhagen.

Outside the Castle in Helsingör. This is the castle in which Shakespear's play Hamlet takes place.

One Swedish holiday that is pretty unknown, one that I hadn't really even heard of a few weeks before it happened is Valborg. Strange word because the two words: Val and Borg mean Whale and Castle or Fortress, two things that basically have nothing to do with the holiday at all, if you even want to call it a holiday in the first place. It happens the 30th of May and is just sort of an excuse for all the youth to get together and grill out by the coast (or in the forest if one's not lucky enough to live by the ocean) and just have a good time.

Here's Chloe and I beside the bonfire on Volborg.

Rotary had been semi-lacking in the amount of activities planned up until this point in this half of the year (this point being around the beginning of May), but they really got themselves together and planned some amazing weekends for us. The first happening up in Göteborg where the Rotary Club of Göteborg organized first a visit to Göteborgsposten, the second largest newspaper in Sweden. We went there pretty early in the morning and got a tour of the place, then were put to the test by playing a really high-tech game on who could put together the best front page. Sad to say but my team lost :(

Having fun on the Göteborgsposten tour :)

Following Göteborgsposten and a nice lunch we headed to Saab Space, which is the space technologies division of Saab (you know....the other car company from Sweden). They again showed us around the place and talked about all the things they're working on and what the future has in store, etcetera.

After all of this is where the real fun came in for the day, a trip to Liseberg! For those of you who don't remember or have just started reading my blog and havn't been with it from the beginning, Liseberg is Scandinavia's biggest theme park full of roller coasters and topsy-turvy thingys that are tons of fun! We all took a trip there back in September, though it was high time for another trip. So yeah, the Rotary club paid for us to get in and then basically just let us run wild, and boy let me tell you, we did. We tried to fit as many rides in as possible in the amount of time we had there and I think we succeeded pretty well.

Riding the swing ride at Liseberg. This really brought me back to the days of the Benton County Fair, though I never really remember getting so nauseous on that ride...

Stéph and her hot black bumper-car.

That evening, following Liseberg, Stéph, Hallie and I went to this all night festival thing that Stéph heard about through her school at the Världskulturmuseet (World's Culture Museum). The festival started about 7:00 in the evening, though we came late, not getting done at Liseberg until around 10:00. Luckily for us, this festival was an all-night thing with activities and concerts planned for the entire night. We ended up not making all the way through the night, though we stayed long enough ('til around 3:00 am) to hear two really great artists the first of which I can't remember her name, which is too bad, because I liked her a lot. She reminded me a lot of Tracy Chapman and I mean, who doesn't love Tracy? The next band was called Navid Modiri & Gudarna which was a Swedish band that sung in Swedish though the lead singer was from Iran. They were incredibly fun to watch and everyone was dancing by the end. I liked them so much I even bought a t-shirt, which is now a great memory of that night. I'd highly recommend checking them out, though I'm not exactly sure how easy it would be to find them in the States.

We love Navid Modiri!

The following day we all met up pretty early (not necessarily the best idea seeing as we got to sleep so late the night before), and all packed into two cars driven by Rotarians and headed to the island of Marstrand which lies a about a half hour north of Göteborg. Back in the day this island was an important place for the Swedish royalty, as on the island lies a fortress where they kept a good number of prisoners. We got a tour of the fortress by an amazing guide named Hugo and then ate lunch at a nice little café before taking the half hour drive back to the city.

Here's a picture of the island of Marstrand. We had to take a ferry over to it from the larger island of Koö, which is where I'm standing while taking this picture. You can see the fortress right on top in this picture.

Jill and I pretending to be cold prisoners sleeping on the multi-person bed in the cells.

Here's our guide, Hugo, showing us the sword they used for decapitations.

Stéph, Jill and I being cozy on the couch in the café we ate lunch in on Marstrand.

The excitement for the weekend didn't end there however. Once returning to Göteborg, because it was such a beautiful day we decided to take some incredibly "Swedish" pictures, 'cuz you never know when they could come in handy.

Here's me being "Sweden-Man"!!

No...we're not nude in this picture....or, are we? ;)

The following day was the last of the adventures for that weekend. We took the train out to a town right outside of Göteborg called Lerum where the president of Lerum's Rotary club and his biker gang met us and took us on a few hour ride in the Swedish country-side. It was a beautiful day and it made me think back to the days of going for rides of my dad's motorcycle :)

Here's my motorcycle man that I rode with.

All of the exchange students in my town have a great time with our Swedish as a second language teacher, and she obviously enjoyed having us as well, because she invited us out to her house to have a nice dinner and sort of a good bye type thing. It was really nice and cool to see her house. It was a really, really old and old fashioned house out in the country and sort of showed what Swedish houses were like back in the day.

Here we all are in her kitchen. Chloe to the left, then Luise from Germany, our teacher Maria, Maglen from Venezuela and then me to the right.

The following weekend was yet another Rotary organized event, this time taking place out in the small town of Skene. With the bus, we arrived at the local school/aquatic center and met up with a man named Kjell (pronounced Shell) who is the Rotary president of Skene and also the owner and superviser of the aquatic center there. First thing on the agenda was to cook a bunch of Swedish food. We used the school's home-ec room to make a smörgåsbord (literally) of various Swedish dishes and we used recepes from a Swedish cook book he gave to each of us.

Hallie and Ashton making potatoe pancakes.

Here's our finished smörgåsbord of food. We didn't even manage to eat 1/4 of what was there.

Following the consumption of our rediculous amount of food, the best part of the evening began. We headed to the aquatic center about 9:00 in the evening and began one of the most memoriable experiences I think I've had this year, called Sauna Extreme. What it was is Kjell led us through a bunch of different sauna treatments. First we headed into the sauna and he had water scented like lavendar which he poured on the sauna stones. He then used a towel to whip the air in the room around so it sort of blasted against our bodies. He then took a big bowl of coffee grounds and ladeled a huge scoop out into each of our hands. We were then to rub the coffee all over our bodies as it's apparently a good exfolient and good for your skin. We then washed it off and headed in to swim for a while. In the mean-time he brought out fruit for us and began preparing the next treatment.

Hallie, Stéph and I with pink faces from the coffee rub.

We headed back into the sauna and this time he had cinnamon flavored water which sort of burned your skin when the steam hit you. He then took out a huge vat of honey and we were told to rub it all over and in our hair, etc. He said that honey is one of the best things for your skin and is full of vitamins which help it. Now, before rinsing the honey off, he told us to go down the water slide because it makes you go like five times as fast and let me tell you, he wasn't lying. It was amazing! Following the water sliding experience, Kjell brought out a bunch of body paints, so we took some time to have fun drawing stuff on eachother.

This is the creation that Siân came up with. I think it's rather fitting, don't you?

It was now time for the final round in the sauna. This time when we came in it was as hot as it had been thus far. He used the towel again to whip the air around and then brought out a container full of ice cubes. We then melted the ice on ourselves to apparently help with better circulation, etc. We then came back in and headed for a smaller, not so deep pool. In this pool he had a floating foamy mat thing that he had sodas and roasted sasuages on. We all got into this smaller pool and ate our sasuages and just reflected on how amazing this experience was, and let me tell you it was. It also brought us much closer together as a group and is definitely something that none of us are going to forget.

Hallie and I with our korvar (sasuages) or well majs (corn) korv in Hallie's case.

As the time is getting near to go home, we all decided that we had way too much stuff to take home with us, though we didn't really know how to get rid of it without throwing it away. Siân and Ashton however came up with the idea that we sell it. So, they found this flea market place in Göteborg where we could rent a stall for the day and try and sell all of our clothes, books, and just junk that we didn't really want any more though didn't really want to throw away. The idea worked great and we got rid of almost everything and each person even made some pocket money.

All of us peddling our goods. The things that didn't sell we just took to a used clothes store.

It's sad but true that my year here in Sweden will soon be coming to an end. It's pretty hard to believe that in less than a month and a half I'll be back home in good 'ol Oregon seeing all my family and friends for the first time again in soo long. Before that happens however, there's a TON of things on my agenda...a visit to the opera, a trip to Stockholm, a big good bye party and we can't forget my family's trip to visit me! I actually have only 7 days in the month of June where I don't have something written into my calendar to do and because there's so much to do, I don't have a whole ton of time for school, thus meaning I have 5 whole days of it left spread out over the next two weeks. I'll try to keep this updated during that time, though I'm not exactly sure how well that'll go. I'm gonna guess that there'll be one major update left before I come home. And what date is that, you're wondering? Yes, get your calendars out because the 11th of July Connor's plane officially touches down in Portland, Oregon. Very weird to even think about...

As it had been such a long time since I last updated, this blog post came to be very, very long, though I hope you enjoyed reading it :) I love comments and e-mails!

Chloes Uppvisning, min Tredje Familj, London, Påsklov och Halmstad

In less than a month more than you can ever imagine has happened, making these last few weeks (and those that are coming up) one of the busiest times yet during my exchange. So, be ready for a long post.

My friend Chloe who lives here in Varberg is in the art program and takes dance at the school. Her dance class has been working incredibly hard since Christmas to get ready for a very big dance performance held at Varberg's theater. Hallie, Stéphanie and Ashton came down from Göteborg and we all went out to dinner before and then headed over to watch and be Chloe's "family" for the show. The show was great and you could definitely tell they all spent a good deal of time on it. That night they all stayed out at Chloe's house (she lives about 15 minutes outside of town in a much smaller town called Åskloster). The reason I didn't stay was the following day I was to move host families...

The group of us who went to watch Chloe's show: Stéph, Ashton, Hallie, me and Chloe.

Of which I have successfully done and am now on my third and final host family: Familjen Lindström. The Lindströms are made up of Eje (dad), Birgitta (mom), Ida (host sister 17), and Minna (host sister 15). The family's really nice and very similar to my previous host family, thus meaning I'm sure I'll get along with them pretty well. The best part, however, of this new family thing is where I live in the house, or well, out of the house. My "room" is actually the little "stuga" they have out in their garden. It's like a mini version of a house where I have a tiny kitchen, living room/bedroom with a few couches and my bed, then a very nice bathroom which they've just renovated. My friends and I like to refer to it as my bachelor pad (thanks for the name Mom ;)). It's really nice to have my own sort of private place out there and not have to worry about sharing a bathroom or anything with anyone. Another thing new about this family is (and Mom, you'll be happy about this) I have to do my own laundry, which is like a first in my life, but to be honest, I kinda like it and it's like so much easier than everyone makes it out to be.

This is the outside of the "stuga" that has become my bachelor pad.

The outside of the family's house.

The bedroom/living room part of the pad. The extra bed is there for my italian that's coming today (of which you'll read more about below).

Sitting area and some shelving.

The kitchenette complete with sink, cooktop and mini-fridge. The coffee table in front is there because I had no other place to put it with that extra bed being in it's place.

The day I moved to my new family I didn't actually stay there. In the late afternoon everyone that was down from Göteborg and I stayed out at Chloe's house and all made tacos together and stayed up talking and watching movies.

All of us around the dinner table eating the tacos we made with Chloe's host family.

The evening after staying at Chloe's, my art class all headed for the airport outside of Göteborg to catch our flight to London. The following three days were a whirlwind city adventure that went by faster than any of us liked. We arrived in London's airport about 10:30 at night on the first of April and after taking a train, then taxis we finally arrived at our hotel at about midnight where we all headed straight for our beds.

After having eaten a very early dinner before heading off for the flight, we all were incredibly hungry once arriving. Here's me with a chicken curry pasty bought from a little kiosk in Liverpool Station directly after arriving.

The view of the city from our hotel room.

The next day we got up around 8:00 or so and all boarded a bus (and no, not one of the cool red double-decker buses) for a guided tour of the city. The tour lasted around three to four hours and when we were finished I felt as if we covered most of the known parts of the city as well as places I'd never heard of, though were interesting all the same. We took two strech/pee breaks during the tour; one outside of Buckingham Palace and the other by the houses of Parliment (by Big Ben, the clock tower).

Part of my class and I outside of Buckingham Palace. You can't really see the palace in this picture, but it sure is a nice fence, isn't it?

A shot of Big Ben from the tour bus.

The tour bus let us out in one of the main shopping districts where we got some lunch (Subway! Oh how I miss it) and spent the rest of the afternoon shopping in the thousands of stores covering the city. That evening we thought it'd be fun to take a walk down to Piccadilly Circus which is really cool at night lit up by all of the neon signs on the buildings.

Here's a group of us eating our glorious Subway down by some river. The weather the first day was absolutly wonderful, as you can see from this pic.

The classic London red phone booths. I just had to take a picture.

Piccadilly Circus at night. It's absolutly amazing there with all the neon signs lighting up the square.

The following day we started off taking the Underground to two different art museums, the Tate Britain and Tate Modern. We spent a longer time at Tate Britain which is composed of classic works by many famous British artists, whereas Tate Modern is, as the name suggests, made up of mostly modern artists' works, such as Picasso, Monet and Salvador Dalí. We had the remainder of this day to do as we pleased so we all headed for the most famous shopping street in London, Oxford Street. We shopped some, ate a combination lunch/dinner and shopped up until the stores all closed between eight and nine in the evening.

On the Underground on our way to Tate Britain.

On a little canal boat that connects Tate Britain with Tate Modern.

That entire time I had been craving ice cream for some reason and my wish was finally answered by the one (or well...two) and only Ben and Jerry's! Phish Phood and some chunky brownie something or other :) Mmm..mmm...

The following day, Wednesday, was the last day of our time spent in London. We got up rather early and headed for Madamé Toussaud's wax museum. If you've never heard of Maddamé Toussaud's, it's a wax museum where they've set up a bunch of exhibits that they've placed a number of wax copies of celebrities throughout and so you can go up to them and take pictures with them. It's incredibly cool in there and a bunch of fun to "meet" the world's celebrities. Directly after Madamé Toussauds and eating a quick lunch we headed back for the airport and home.
Me with the Royal family. We're close friends...didn't you know?

One of my favorite pictures taken on the Madamé Toussauds excursion...take that Hitler!

I couldn't leave London without experiencing the joy that is Starbucks seeing as we don't have it up here in Sweden. My wish was granted in the airport before leaving.

Easter is a pretty big holiday here in Sweden giving us a week off from school as well as everyone being free from work on Good Friday and the monday after Easter day. One thing that is interesting though is the time that Eater or "Påsk" is celebrated here, that being the day before Easter Sunday, so I guess you could say Easter Saturday... Apparently every year my family has a little easter present hunt in which I recieved a new t-shirt (which incidentally was the wrong size and I have since exchanged it for 2 t-shirts which equaled the same price). That evening we headed over to my host family's good friends the Bergs who are the host family for my friend Luise who is an exchange student in Varberg from Germany with another program.

Here's part of the "Påskbord" or Easter-Table. Basically the spread of food layed out before we all dug in. The food eaten during Christmas, Easter and Midsommar is apparently all about the same with a bunch of fish and meat and potatoes...and not a whole lot more, though they use a lot of eggs for Easter as well.

Here's the typical Easter decoration that almost every family has in their house. As you can see it's like a bunch of twigs with feathers and little orniments hung on them. A very strange idea I think, but it's tradition I guess.

During the week off for Easter (Påsklov) I spent a lot of time up in Göteborg and Ljungskile visiting my exchange student friends. We didn't really do anything super special during the time, just kinda hung out. One night Ashton, Siân and I headed up to Ljungskile and went to a club in Uddevalla (which is a bigger town up north where Jill attends school). Another night we were at Stéphanie's house where she made us a French dinner of omelette and coconut flan for dessert.

All of us on the walk back to Jill's house.

After Stéph's dinner we headed out into Göteborg to see if we could come up with anything exciting to do, plus it was a beautiful night and it's fun to see the city come alive with it's night life.

The wednesday following Påsklov my host dad, sister and I headed south for the town of Halmstad to watch an apparently influential handball match. Halmstad is the capital of Halland, which is the Län or county/state that Varberg resides in. We drove down after school (it's about an hour drive), picked up our tickets at the arena, then headed for the center of town to find somewhere to eat dinner, which ended up being this combination Greek and Italian place where we all got some sort of pasta, which was delicious.

As we were walking around town I took some pictures just to show you what some other Swedish towns look like and Halmstad is a classic example. Here we have the town square with city church.

This building just looked very Swedish.

Here's the handball arena. I think of handball as kind of a combination of basketball and soccer, if put in really simple terms.

Another arena shot. Handball is probably one of the most played sports in Sweden, on par with the popularity of soccer, which is incredibly high.

That now wraps up the latest happenings here in the wonderful land of Sweden. There's quite a few things coming up which you all will here much more about soon, including the class from Italy's trip up to Sweden and various dinner parties being put into the works by us exchange students.

Thank you guys so much for following along with me on this adventure. I'll be seeing you all very, very soon!

I do love comments and e-mails :)