Många Fester, en Fiskmås, Uddevalla, Språkhelg, Köpenhamn, Snö och Göteborg med en ny Kompis

Well, the time has come for another update. It's been over a month since the last, and I have to say that is not a good thing. There's so much that I've not written about that I'm just gonna try and remember things and not write too much about any one thing, but knowing me I could ramble a bit.

There's been quite a few things that I've done with all of the exchange students or at least some of them. Towards the beginning of October Ani (exchanger from Mexico) had herself a birthday party, so all the exchange students met up in Göteborg at her house and ate some tacos then went into the city and spent the rest of the night at cafés talking and having a good time. The weekend after that we had a pot luck of sorts at Hallie's house. Her host parents weren't home and said that she could have some people over, so her, Jill and I organized a pot luck where everyone brought what they wished and we just ate a bunch of good food and met with good fun people (read: exchange students) and stayed up all night talking. The next evening (Hallie's was on a Friday) I had Amanda, Pontus and Julia over to my house because my host parents were out at a party. I made them enchiladas and they all brought drinks and dessert (Ben and Jerry's which has just recently began being sold here and everyone loves it, even though it costs like 5 times more than regular ice cream). We ate the Ben and Jerry's while watching a classic Swedish comedy show called Hipp, Hipp! followed by Djungel Boken (the Jungle Book in swedish).Us exchangers at the pot luck at Hallie's

The following weekend Hallie and Jill came and stayed with me in Varberg for both Friday and Saturday nights. We honestly didn't really do too much. We tried to do a little shopping on Saturday but that ended up not happening because all the stores closed at like 2:00 which we thought impossible even after all the warnings of my host mom. Instead we went to Café Mignon at spent the whole afternoon talking over baked goodies and varm choklad. Though there was a bit of adventure: Before heading to the café, Jill and I decided to buy a korv (hot dog) from a street vender and we just walked around as we ate them. Well, I got mostly done with mine and then out of no where this huge sea gull comes and tries to steal it. Luckily he didn't get it, but he did slice my finger with his claw along with hitting Hallie and Jill in the head. We started yelling incredibly loudly in english causing a bunch of people to turn and start laughing. At the time it was really shocking, but looking back I'm kind of glad that it happened; it makes such a good story :)

Every third year in a Swedish Gymnasium has to do a project to graduate, which is basically the exact same thing as Philomath's Senior Project. Jill lives in a small town called Ljungskile (the place that we had the Rotary camping trip), but she goes to school in the bigger town of Uddevalla (about 30,000 people), which is around fifteen or twenty minutes north of Ljungskile. The school that she goes to is one of or possibly the biggest in Sweden and is divided into three completely different segments. The part that she goes to is for art. So, the entire week of the 23rd of October, the third years of her school had to have their projects done and ready for display, so that whole week they were showing off what they had done. Because they're an art school, everyone did something artsy. On wednesday after school, Shannon, Chris and I took the bus from Göteborg up to Ljungskile where we met Jill, Sian and Ashton and went to Jill's host family's summer cabin (only about a 5 minute bus ride from Ljungskile station) where we stayed the night. The next morning we woke up early (only four hours of sleep that night) to catch the latest bus from the area near the cabin into Uddevalla where we headed for Jill's school. She gave us a tour and we met up with one of her friends before beginning on the art projects.

There's only two of the art presentations that really stand out to me. The first one was a video made by two girls of them doing an 'Underwater Dance'. In order to film it they of course had to take a trip to Greece to learn the dance moves or something (which to me just looked like a bunch of awkward under water swimming). Overall I wasn't impressed in the least and personally think it was just an excuse to film themselves in bathing suits and for the school to partially pay for them to take a trip to Greece. The other one that I remember was a fashion show turned dance routine; this one was actually cool. There apparently were two groups who decided to do fashion shows for their projects, so they combined their efforts along with some students who wanted to put together a dance routine and this fashion show is what they all came up with. One group just wanted to design regular clothes and headwear whereas the other wanted to create clothing out food packaging i.e. boxes, containers, wrappers, etc. Both groups had some pretty amazing creations and overall I think it turned out really good.

That evening I went back to Hallie's house and stayed the night (another four hours of sleep this night as well) because we had to get up at around 6:30 on Friday in order to catch a train from Göteborg to Borås where we were to have a little extra language check-up with our language teacher from the previous language camp we had. So yeah, Hallie and I took the train with Chole and Sian (we all got to Borås in various ways and we just so happened to take the same train as them) and arrived in Borås' central station where we met up with everyone else (including Susanne, our language teacher) and walked to the university that Susanne teaches at regularly in Borås and had a little chat session with her Svenska som Andraspråk class who had been learning Swedish for a total of 3 weeks. It was pretty cool to finally be more advanced than someone at Swedish :) After that meeting we were driven to Fristads Folkhögskola which is where our language camp was back in August. It brought back some good memories, lemme tell you. We then ate some lunch, had some classes, had some free time and then ate a really nice dinner before going back to the house where Susanne and her helper Randi read us a Swedish ghost story (appropriate as it was nearly Halloween). The rest of the night we stayed up talking and listening to music. Oh! and Chris (from New Zealand) tought me how to moon-walk!! Isn't that cool!? New skill for back home! :)

The next day (5 hours of sleep...now I'm running on about 13 hours for three nights, not a good choice) we watched a film in Swedish before doing some sort of a scavenger hunt (all the clues were in Swedish of course) and eating lunch, then packing our things and heading for the train station. We took the train to Borås, then the bus to Göteborg where I went back to Hallie's with Jill and hung out until around 9:00 in the evening at which point Jill and I went to Central Station and went our separate ways home. When I got home, I immediately showered and went to bed for the next morning we were to get up early and drive Rickard to the airport in Copenhagen where he was flying to Spain to meet his grandparents who are at their appartment there at the moment.

The drive from Varberg to Copenhagen took around two and a half hours, of which weren't too eventful. The first stop obviously was the air port, where we made sure Rickard got through security, etc. ok. After leaving him, we headed into downtown Copenhagen, our fist stop being the Little Mermaid statue. For those of you who don't know, Han Christian Anderson, who wrote many famous fairy tales (The Ugly Duckling, The Princess and the Pea, Thumbelina and...of course, the Little Mermaid), was Danish and is probably Denmark's most famous author.Lena, me and Oscar infront of Copenhagen's famous Little Mermaid statue

We then went and found a place to park downtown and spent most the rest of the time on foot. First heading for a place to Fika called Café Norden, which apparently has been there since like forever ago (I can't really remember how long my host mom said, but a very, very, very long time).You can see Café Norden, it's that building in the background (don't mind all the people in the way)

After our stop at the café we just began walking along the street that Café Norden was on called Strøget, which apparently is the longest pedestrian street in the world with plenty of shops, but since it was Sunday none of the shops were open, meaning we could only look in the windows and admire the beautiful buildings. All along the way on this street were bunches of hot dog venders selling classic Danish rød pølse or 'red sasuage'. Of course we had to get some if they were classicly Danish :)You can't really see the redness too well in this picture, but it's really, really bright

Right after buying the pølse, we headed over to the famous statue of Hans Christian Anderson and took pictures sitting in his lap which you can see below. We continued our walk, heading for the street in Copenhagen that almost everyone has seen a picture of. I can't exactly remember what it's called, but I believe it's in the area of Copenhagen known as Christianshavn. It's got the classic Danish buildings and a canal with many boats. Here's a picture, I'm sure you all will recognize it.Following this, we went back to the car and drove to an area known as Christiania which is a district of town that is partially self-governing and in some ways separate from the rest of Copenhagen. At one time it was once a safe-haven for people who were up set with the government and the lack of houses in the quickly growing industrial Copenhagen, so they created their own society. It has since been over run with drugs (mostly just Marijuana) and more than normal violence (which isn't too much compared to many parts of the US). The Danish government has been trying to crack down on the residents and to control the drugs, but apparently this hasn't really done too much. I thought it looked pretty cool with lots of murals and posters and art everywhere, it made me think a lot of the Country Fair. Here's some pictures, but they're not too good because you're not really supposed to take pictures there since the locals can get angry.Here's a large mural that's right in the entrance of Christiania. Very Country Fair, yes?Here's just one of the paths...looks pretty brutal, eh?

At this point we left Copenhagen and began driving up the east coast of Denmark heading for a town called Helsingør where we would take the ferry over to the Swedish town of Helsingborg. Along the way we stopped at a really nice little Danish resaurant that was in an old farm house. Inside it was decorated so classically Danish, it was really cool and was just so European :) After eating we drove the short way to Helsingør and boarded the ferry. From the ferry we could see Kronborg Castle, the castle that Shakespeare's Hamlet takes place in, which was neat to see.Once back in Sweden, we just zipped up the freeway to Varberg, and I finally got a chance to sleep.

The whole next week I had off, because of something called Höstlov or 'Fall Break'. Every school in Sweden has this week off, basically time to recharge and relax and get used to the ever-shortening days (yes, the sun begins going down around 4:30 at the time of writing this). So, the first few days of it were pretty low-key; basically me trying to catch up on all the sleep that I'd missed. On Wednesday (side story! Rumor had it that on Wednesday it was supposedly supposed to snow, though everyone was just kind of thinking yeah....right. But low and behold, when I woke up Wednesday morning there was snow covering the ground. Not too much, maybe a few inches, but still, a very nice welcome to November) I took the train up to Göteborg and met up with Hallie because her friend Beau, who is an exchange student from Hallie's district back in Texas who is now in a town on the east coast of Sweden called Norrköping, was coming to visit for the break. His train was supposed to arrive in Göteborg's Central Station at around 10:30 in the morning, though after a series of unfortunate events (i.e. the snow and a tree falling onto the train tracks), it didn't arrive until 2:30 or 3:00. Hallie and I just spent time in the shops and a café while waiting for it to arrive.

Once he finally got there, we went back to Hallie's and chatted away the afternoon over some vanilla tea and smörgåsar (sandwiches, swedish style, usually with just butter, cheese and maybe ham and always eaten open-faced. Yes this is the same thing made at a smörgåsbord, but a smörgåsbord is technically the spread of food on the table where you make the smörgåsar. Smörgåsbord is traditionally eaten at Christmas, it's not like an everyday thing here. Just to let ya'll know :)). We then had pea soup with Hallie's parents and went out onto the town to try and find something to do, plus it's always fun to wander Göteborg at night :) We got back to Hallie's around 12:00 or 1:00 then sat around talking and finally went to bed after a few hours. The next day we slept late and finally got out of the house and headed for downtown; we needed to do some winter shopping! (don't worry Mom, I didn't spend too much money, just a few essential things...and some new jeans) So that's what we did until around 5:00 at which point I needed to head for Central Station and go home because I had to get back in time to eat and then go to my friend Amanda's birthday/chocolate party.

Her party was really fun and more chocolate than one can imagine. We listened to good music, ate chocolate and talked about what we'd been up to over Höstlov. It's nice to hang out with actual Swedes and know that I've successfully made friends over here; I dunno, it just kind of gives me a good feeling inside :)

After the party I thought all my adventure was to be done with for the break, but Saturday afternoon, as I was unloading the dishwasher, I got a call from Beau just wondering what I was up to. I had nothing to do, so long story short I ended up heading back up to Göteborg where I met up with Hallie, Beau and Sian where we went and got a Kebabrulle (this turkish fast food type thing that has since become really popular all over Europe. Kebab is either beef or lamb, that is spinning over a fiery pit and they just shave off really thin slices of it and roll it in a tortilla/pita thing with lettuce, onions, cucumber and a sauce. I dunno if that was a good description, but they are really good and I wish we had them in the US) then headed back to Hallie's and ate chocolate and drank cider. It was a very low-key night, but beat staying at home and getting together with friends is always fun. The next morning Beau and I headed to the train station so that he could catch his bus home (which he ended up missing and had to reschedule) and I could take the train home. Overall this has been a very good week and now it's back to school for a week before heading off to Italy next Saturday, the 11th. I found out that I'll be staying with a boy named Frederico; yes, that sounds very Italian. I'm excited :)

As if I havn't written enough, I figured I'd give you an update on how things in general are going with school, my swedish, etc. To begin with, I really like school. I mean I don't necessarily do all the homework and stuff (and it's not like I need to either) but just being there and trying my best is really fun. I take some of the tests and just kind of do what I'm able to do. The class that I'm in is really great and sooo helpful and willing to speak Swedish even if it at times is slow going. And speaking of speaking Swedish, that's going great as well. At home I speak pretty much primarily Swedish and I try to at school, though a lot of the times my friends and I will realize that we're speaking English then switch to Swedish then the conversation will come back around to English. I think it's really helped me that I've studied German before coming because there's so many similarities. Overall, I really like Swedish, even though it's obviously not the most helpful language in the world (only 9 million speak it; a number that's dwindling), but hopefully it'll be useful to my German when I come back home and they say knowing any second language is better than nothing, plus I can always pull it out as a talent at parties or something, right?

I'm sorry that this is sooooooooo long and that it's been forever since I've last updated, but that's just how it goes I suppose. My next update should be all about my trip to Italy and will hopefully have a bunch more pictures. Be sure to leave comments or send e-mails, 'cuz you know I love hearing from you all :) I miss you and hope everything is going amazing for you, no matter where you are right now; 'cuz I know it is for me!