Fisk, Rent, and other such things

I have been so busy it's hard to even know where to start...

I believe that I left off saying that we were on the way to the café, Café Mignon to be exact. It is the Stig family's favorite place to grab a coffe or 'kaffee' and something sweet to eat. On our way to the café we wandered through the market that is set up every wednesday and saturday in Varberg's main square. The market is filled with clothes (an awful lot of socks I noticed), fruits, veggies, handy crafts, etc. I must say, that it seemed very European. :) After the café, Rickard, Morten and I came back to the house and me and Rickard decided to take the dog for a walk, so we walked down along the path that is right next to the ocean, and we'd stop every so often and he'd explain what a certain building was or where a certain path led.

This is getting too lengthy for the time that I have, so I'm gonna speed things up and cut to just the important parts. That evening Oscar, Morten and I went next door to Morten's parents house to visit his sister and daughters who are here visiting from Amsterdam where they now live. They were very nice and quite funny and of course spoke perfect english (as does nearly everyone). Once returning to the Stig residence, we played some cards (I learned a game that loosly translated means 'Shit Mouth' it's actually very fun and it seems that almost all Swedes know it) and waited for Thomas Rydebo, my contact person in the Rotary club, 'cuz he was going to be having dinner with us. We ate 'tacos' which is very similar to our burritos though they put cucumber and mushrooms inside along with the normal American burrito fillings (ground beef, cheese, sour cream, lettuce, tomatoes [which I of course opted out on], salsa, etc). After dinner they decided to eat their dessert outside in the garden under the retractable awning. Would've been a good idea except that it was 70 degrees and slightly sprinkling. For dessert we of course ate ice cream (what else would you have in that kind of weather?) I was bundled up in my warm sweatshirt where everyone else was fine in shorts and t-shirts....crazy swedes. Another thing I found peculier is that swedes aren't silence fillers. If there's nothing to say they'll just stare around a room waiting for another topic to come up, which is kind of difficult for me, because I don't handle awkward silences very well (though I don't think that it is awkward for them).

The next day we got up and Morten decided that we should go fishing. So, we loaded up our things into their chic little European car (you can see a picture of it in my pictures.....see link to right ---------->). We picked up a family friend's 12 year old son named Ted on the way and drove a half hour into the country to a very beautiful lake. The drive out was absolultly beautiful along back country roads. We got the paddles from a man that we rented the boat from, put on some boots and gortex pants, and headed for the water.

We were out for maybe three hours and Morten was the only one who caught anything, a 4 1/2 kilo beast who kept moving all around the boat even after a knife had been shoved in it's head. Exciting, yes.....disturbing, I think so as well. (again, see pictures at right) We got back from fishing in time for dinner (salmon and 'dilpotatis' or dill potatoes) and then Lena, Oscar and I walked to the theater where we met Chloe the other exchange student in my town who is from Colorado and her host brother and his two friends. The play that we were to see is Rent, put on by a club from my school that is semi-professional group who do a play every February and then an encore every summer. This play blew anything that I'd ever seen straight out of the water and the theater they had it in was absolutly beautiful, best of all though, it happened to be in English, so I understood nearly all that was going on (some of the accents were hard to get around).

We came home, I went to bed, and got up at 6:30 to meet the Rotary club and eat some breakfast. The breakfast was very American (a good thing) with scrampled eggs, bacon, bagel-type things, hot chocolate, etc. I must say that I kinda pigged out. The Rotary meeting was kinda boring, everyone was very nice of course and I met a lady who may be my 3rd host family, if I even end up having 3 (they're still not sure yet, though they do know that I'll be staying with the Stigs for 5 months, so i'll move right after Christmas).

Some clarification:
Lena = Host mom
Morten = Host dad
Rickard = Host brother, 15 years old
Oscar = Host brother, 12 (2 weeks until he's 13) years old

Today I'm going to open a bank account and get a SIM card for my cell phone, we also may go sailing. Tomorrow we're heading to Chloe's host family's house and Tuesday I'm having a meeting with the head master from my school to talk about what classes I will take.

Be sure to have a gander at my pictures and I'll write soon.