En resa till skogen, vaniljte, fästningen, och ett disko!

I figure it's high time for another update, seeing as I've been doing them every week or so and quite a few things have gone on from last time until now.

Thursday, instead of having our normal day of school, our class met at the bus stop outside our school where we were picked up by the bus and taken about 15 minutes into the countryside where we were dropped off on some road heading towards the forest (skog) and met by our biology, swedish and PE teachers.

Me, Amanda, Julia and Pontus, slightly bored on the bus.

Today was bonding day in the forest and it seems that nearly all classes that focus around science, do it. Our biology teacher led the way straight into the forest, with no apparent sense of where we were going (he said he forgot the map at home). The day continued like this with occational stops to rest or for him to explain something about the nature around us. After walking (I use this term loosely, as we were trudging straight through the middle of the forest...oh yes, there was a path we could've followed, but that just wouldn't have been swedish enough because it seems that if they're in a forest, they have to go right through the middle of it) for around four to five hours, all the while taking notes and pictures of this adventure, we eventually met up with our teacher's cars. We formed groups of five or six and the teachers began unloading grocery bags filled with all the supplies needed to cook hot dogs and pancake-type things (for dessert). Each group got a bag and we walked up to the top of a hill and cooked our lunch. After lunch, we took the bus back to school and were then free to go home. All in all, I think it was a pretty good day.

Karin and Amanda cooking the pancake things

Vaniljte. Translation: vanilla tea. 'Tis a most wonderful and amazing creation and it seems can only be enjoyed when one stays over at Hallie's house. So, that's exactly what Jill and I did (if you can't remember, Hallie is the exchange student from Hustan, Texas and Jill is the one from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in Canada). I took the train up to Göteborg with some of my friends from school after school (not counting Swedish class, which we skipped :)) last Friday because I was heading for Hallie's and they were going to a concert up there (Håkan Hellström, check him out, he's good and Swedish, which is cool).

At Hallie's we ate lasagne for dinner then walked to meet up with Ashton (from Prince Edward Island, Canada) and Sian (New Mexico) to go to the Håkan Hellström concert. By the time Sian and Ashton arrived however, there would've only been 40 or so minutes of the show left, and we didn't wanna pay to go and only see that much, so instead we took to wondering the streets of Göteborg, which is always a fun thing to do. Hallie, Jill and I went back to Hallie's house, saunaed, made the vanilla tea (it's best with some honey poured in it), ate chocolate and watched Hallie's host sister's Sex and the City DVDs until 5 or so in the morning. Following our late night, we woke up at 8, met the rest of the exchangers (except for Tim, Chris and Shannon) in central station at 9 and took the train to Varberg where we were to have yet another Rotary organized gathering, except this time it was in my town.

From Varberg's train station, I led the group to the Fästning where we were greated by my host dad as well as Catarina Berglund, my next host mom, and Thomas Rydebo, my liason here in Sweden. The reason we walked to the Fästning was that was to be where we slept, in an old jail turned youth hostel; it was really cool! Following our cell assignments, we got a tour of the Fästning museum and then had some free time, which we spent in the Saturday market in Varberg's square and fikaing in one of the many cafés here.

The jail from the outside. The building on the right is also part of the youth hostel, but is just a regular building, not an old jail.The inside of the jail turned youth hostel we stayed in. Each one of the doors down below is the entry to each of our 'cells' that we stayed in.
Jill and I playing dress up in the museum.

Following our time on the town, we were taken out to an island called Getterön by motor boat, from which we took turns taking a ride on a small 3 person sail boat manned by my two host brothers. After the last person had their turn (which in fact was me) we had a late lunch of simple sandwiches. We were then taken back to the mainland where we had some more free time, during which I took everyone and showed them my house here. We then went back to the Fästning, helped cook dinner (tacos), ate, then sat around and talked until we eventually went to bed.

After an amazing night's sleep (after having only three hours the night before) we packed up our things and loaded into cars where we were taken to one of the local golf courses to try our hands at a little golf. First we were all shown how to hold the club and hit the ball at the driving range, then walked a little ways to a shorted nine hole 'practice' course. We were put into teams of three, then played all nine holes, which took about two and a half hours. The winning team (which unfortunatly wasn't mine) won some chocolate and we were then driven back to Varberg's train station where I waited with everyone for the train heading back to Göteborg.

We're now going to jump ahead to the next Friday...to the disko (Italy-spring-break gang, be excited... I know how you love disco's :)) There's a place in Varberg called Societien that every two or three months holds a youth disko (i.e. no alcohol...inside) where you have to be born in 1990 or later to get in. It has either one or two dance floors depending on the number of people and well, I dunno what else to say about it. Amanda, me, Julia, Pontus and some of their other friends who aren't in our class went to Amanda's early for a little preparty before heading over to Societien. This was really fun and let me get to know some people who aren't exclusively in my class (including Julia and Amanda's boyfriends, who are both really cool); around 10:30 we left Amanda's. The streets of Varberg were just covered with people our age on their way to the disco, which is kind of a switch, because after dark there's usually not too many people out and about; it was a really fun and exciting atmosphere. Once inside we found some other kids from our class and their other friends to dance with and the night just went on 'til 2:00 when it closed.