A birthday, an evening in the city, och bara Svenska

It has been quite a time since I have last updated this here blog and I believe the only reason for that is that nothing too exciting has really happened these last few days, except for a few items.

I think school would be a good place to start, seeing as that's were I left off on last post. I have to say, that I never really know exactly what's going on (be it during a lesson or otherwise). I just kind of follow the crowd, never really sure where we're headed. Yes I do have a schedule, but it's the craziest and hardest to read thing you have ever seen in your life. Example: Today I had to arrive at school at 8:50 at which point I had a 45 minute "Svensk som andraspråk" (Swedish as a 2nd language) class with the three other exchange students at Peder Skrivares (one from Venezuela, one from Germany and then Chloe and I). After that, it was off to chemistry at 10:10 (which lasts for 50 minutes) and then we have a 40 minute window to catch lunch and change for PE. Following PE, it's an hour and 20 minutes of math (one of my favorite classes, seeing as I actually know what's going on) and then History 'til 4. I decided to take a photography class with Pontus, Amanda, Julia and Frida (a very nice girl in my class who actually lives not far from me) so once History is over we head over to the art school for an hour and a half of Photography (we didn't do anything but go over expectations and technical stuff today; next class we'll actually start working with the cameras and the darkroom). Also realize that the classes are never in the same class room; it depends on what day it is as to which class is where. So I have math in room (made up room number, but looks authentic :)) 5:112 on Monday, but it'll be in 5:103 on Thursday. Half the time no one really knows where we're going....but that just adds some fun to the whole equation.

Last Saturday was Oscar's birthday so we woke up early and went into his room with breakfast and presents, waking him up by singing the Swedish birthday song (which I can't remember the words to, but I'll find 'em out and post 'em up here). He then had to eat his breakfast (it was just cereal, we ate a bigger breakfast a few hours later with scones and eggs, etc.) before he could open his presents. Rickard and I gave him a 100 kronor gift certificate to Videomix (a store where you can rent movies as well as buy movies and CDs) and a new house key with pictures of Bart Simpson on it. I then also gave him my little gimmicky Benny the Beaver golf tee and ball. He got a new bike and running shoes from Lena and Morten.

That evening a bunch of family came over for a very nice dinner party. Oscar made it very clear that he DID NOT want his mom to invite any of his friends for the party, because apparantly at his age (he turned 13) it's very uncool to have your friends come to your birthday because it seems childish. Kids my age, however, think that having friends is a good thing and cool, so long as you have your party without parents. I don't really get it...I think friends are good no matter what and parents aren't that bad, but oh well.

Sunday evening chloe and I rode the train up to Göteborg to meet with the other exchangers where we fika(ed) (a term used to mean a coffee and snack break, but you can fika - it's used as a verb - any time and the more times a day you do it, it seems the better. Kind of reminds me of the British 'tea time'). Along with the newbies (us exchangers who have been here since August), 3 of the 5 oldies came, the 5 students who have been here since January: Tim from Australia, Shannon from South Africa, and Chris from New Zealand, then there's Sam also from South Africa and Emily from Australia, but they weren't able to come. We all exchanged our first day at school stories and the oldies gave us advice and told us how long it took them to start understanding and speaking Swedish pretty fluently (the concencus is it takes about 3 months, one of which I've completed, so only 2 more to go!). It was nice to meet up again and also meet the oldies who I'd heard a lot about.

Today, school was very fun. To start things off, in the very beginning of the day I told Julia "idag, jag ska prata bara svenska", meaning "today, I shall speak only Swedish" she said okej and the message was passed around, so I had to use my little Swedish that I've learned to get around today. People of course helped and I obviously cheated quite a bit or we spoke English if there was something in class that I needed to know or something else needed explaining, but overall it went pretty good. And it made me really proud of how far I had come.

Today was also the day that we were supposed to get together with the NVES (the program I'm in, though I'm in NVES 2) 1 and 3 classes and have a little bonding time. At 1:00 we rode our bikes to a field not far from the school where we were broken up into groups and then had tasks we had to complete within our group. For example: we had to thread a multi-foot long piece of rope in through the arm-pit hole in our shirt and down through our pants and then give the rope to the next person where they did the same thing, connecting us all to the same rope in the end. We then had to get the rope through and out of the last person's clothes (I hope you all can get the image from that description). We then had a scavenger hunt where we looked for various plants and berries in the nearby forest.

On saturday I'm headed for Liseberg, the amusement park in Göteborg, with the other exchange students. So I'm sure my next post will have info about that in it.

Look for it and leave me comments!

I miss you all, but have to say that I'm having the time of my life!