En ny familj, min födelsedag, ett fika med de nya utbytesstudenterna, Skridskor Åkning och en Uppvisning i Ljungskile!

The most influental new thing that I think has happened would be the move to my new family: Familjen Berglund. They are comprised of Catarina and Sven, host mom and dad, then Sanna and Sofia, host sisters at 17 and 16 years old. They live about a two minutes walk from my first family the Stigs, so not much of a change that way. The Berglunds are incredibly nice and welcoming and are all very talkative and ask lots of questions and are curious about where I'm from. 'Tis a very good thing. If some of you don't know, the reason I move families is because it's part of the whole Rotary system. They want you to have 2-3 families so you can get a better spectrum of the host culture as well as a chance to meet as many people as possible. I've heard most of you are pretty interested in seeing my new digs, so here's some pictures of the new place with Swedish captions so ya'll can teach yourselves some new Swedish words :)

Mitt rum: skrivbord till vänster och fåtölj till höger. Om ni visste inte, mitt rum är husets biblioteket. If you can't tell my room is in the library of the house.
Mera böcker och mitt skrivbord igen. More books and my desk again.

Min säng och alla mina bilder och brev som ni har skickat till mig som är på min vägg :) My bed and all of my pictures and letters you guys have sent to me which are hung on my wall.

Familjsrummet som är på den första våningen. The downstairs family room.

Köket. The kitchen.

Matbordet precis vid köket. Dinning table right next to the kitchen.

Entrén men många blommor och en citronträd. The entryway with many plants and a lemon tree.

Borum på den andra våningen var vi ofta kolla på TV:n på kvällen. The living room upstairs where we usually watch TV in the evenings.
Gatan som familjen Berglunds hus ligger på, och om man går ner gatan ska han hitta kusten. Det är jättevackert här! The road that the Berglunds house is on. If you go down this road you'll find the coast.

Berglunds huset målade med typisk svensk gulfärg. The Berglunds house painted with typical Swedish yellow paint.

Utsikten från balkongen på den andra våningen. Till vänster kan man nästan se havet. Det skulle vara mycket bättre om det där huset var inte i vägn! The view from the upstairs balcony. To the left you can barely see the ocean. It'd be much better if that house wasn't in the way!

Something else exciting that has happened is I have turned 17! Yes, that is right. I am no longer that little boy you all knew :) I am now the big 1-7. How does it feel you ask? Well...exactly the same to be honest. This year I had what I would say were three celebrations for my birthday. The first happening the Friday before my actual birthday (my birthday was on a monday this year) and celebrated up in Göteborg with all of the exchange students. Hallie, the exchange student from Texas also had a birthday around the same time (the 18th to be exact) and so we thought it was appropriate to have them together. We invited all of the exachange students as well as Hallie's friend Eva, Hallie and my friend Beau who's an exchange student from Texas living in Norrköping who I've talked about a few times before, and then Stéphanie from France had her boyfriend, Remi, visiting that week, so he also came. Overall it was a really good group and I do believe a good time was had by all. The main event of the evening was making mini-pizzas which was incredibly fun and made me think about all the times I'd done it together with all of my friends back home.
Enjoying our pizzas. Beau, me, Eva, Ashton and Hallie.

Sian, Ashton, me, Hallie and then Chloe in back. Don't we just look so happy? :)

Stéph and her French boy Remi. Do they not look incredibly French?

Everyone gathered 'round Eva.

Monday morning, I was awakened by my host family singing "Ja, Må Han Leva!" which is the classic Swedish bithday song; they had with them breakfast on a tray and some presents for my special day. Being awakened rather early in the morning and having an incredibly up-beat, perky song sung to you may not be your idea of the best way to start the day, but it's a nice tradition and makes you feel pretty special.

Host sister Sanna, me , host dad Sven, and host sister Sofia about 5 minutes after waking me up at 7:00 AM. Notice how lively they look and how out of it I do.

That evening my host mom invited her brother and family over for dinner and then my first host familiy the Stigs over for dessert. If you couldn't guess, we ate mashed potatoes and gravy for dinner :) This time however they were eaten with traditional Swedish meatballs, which I've decided is probably my favorite food over here. They're sooo good and luckily my first host mom got me a Swedish cookbook as a present, so I now know how to make them (though I don't really see what makes them "Swedish" other than the name).

The whole family gathered around the dinner table. Starting from left to right is: partly cut-off is host sister Sanna, host cousin Saga, host sister Sofia, me, host mom's brother Pontus, Pontus' wife Kerstein, host mom Catarina and then right in front is Pontus and Kerstien's daughter Selma. My host dad Sven is taking the picture.

Blowing out the 17 candles on my cake which the Stigs happened to make for me. You can't see it here, but the grapes on top were arranged into a "C".

Continuing with the bithday celebrations...the next Friday I had a little "evening" with some friends from school where we make nachos, ate candy and watched a movie (The Producers...I don't think I'd recommend it unless you really like up-beat musicals...which none of us did). I have no pictures from that evening, but let me assure you that a good time was had by all.

All of the exchange students that came from the southern hemispheric countries of South Africa, Australia and New Zealand leave for their exchanges in January, thus going back home in January. These would be the "oldies" as I've explained before, who are the ones who show all of us "newbies" the ropes of being an exchange student. Once they had gone back home, that meant that it was time for a whole new crop of newbies to arrive. We, now being the official oldies, decided it was our responsibility to introduce them to the world of Sweden correctly. So, what did we do? Had a fika of course! We all met up in Göteborg on a particularly brisk Saturday afternoon and proceeded to hunt for around 45 minutes for an appropriate place to hold this influential event (the first place we wanted to do it was too full...as was about every option after that). We ended up walking around most the city to every good café we knew of and finally ended up at one called Respect, which was perhaps a bit too expensive and chic but had lots of space to accommodate the 13 of us. There are four newbies in the group all of which are from Australia and all of which are girls, meaning that yes, I am the only one left holding up the male side of things in Rotary district 2360.

Because Sweden is a very wintery country, it makes sense to do wintery things... i.e. go ice skating. Which is exactly what we did with my school instead of one of our regular PE lessons. The place we went skating was about a half hour drive away from the school, thus they gave us half of the day off for it. We left after lunch on a monday and had the rest of the day until 3:30 for the skating and let me tell you it was a hell of a lot of fun! I had only been ice skating one time before this and that was with the middle school in sixth grade, but for only have been one time before I have to say that I wasn't half bad.

Me, Frida, Amanda and Julia keeping our balance on the ice.

You'll be surprised to know that I didn't fall to the ground once during this whole excursion :)

Jill from Canada who, as you know, is living up in Ljungskile was in her town's talent show/theater performance thingy this last weekend and we exchange students decided to travel on up there to be part of her cheering section for the show. Following the show we all went back to her host family's house and ate pitas for dinner before being driven out to her her first host family's little vacation cabin about 10 minutes outside of Ljungskile in a little community called Ullevasund. The following morning we went to her first host family's house for a really nice breakfast before catching the train back to Göteborg and for Chloe and I, back to Varberg.

A crazy ice waterfall just a short walk from Jill's house. I hope this gives you guys some sort of idea of how cold it actually is here.
Me with the shining star! Aren't we just soo excited!

A slightly emo picture of me staring off into the horizon on the cliff that Jill's family's vacation cabin is built on. Down below is the ocean...and yes, it is frozen.

Stéph and I enjoying the nice breakfast put out by Jill's first host family. Mother, if you're wondering, that's the insanely expensive sweatshirt from the host fam...it's a nice one.

This now concludes yet another entry into the documentation of my journey here in the wonderful land of Sweden. I hope you all have enjoyed getting a little look into the life of being an exchange student and oh how amazing it truly is. It's just about five months until this adventure ends and time has gone faster than I ever could have imagined. Be sure to leave me comments or send me e-mails to let me know how you all are doing, I love hearing from you. I'll also let you know that my picture website has also been updated. For a while there it was sort of spazzing out and wouldn't let me add anything, but everything's back to normal now and it works fine. Miss you all - jag saknar er!