Chloes Uppvisning, min Tredje Familj, London, Påsklov och Halmstad

In less than a month more than you can ever imagine has happened, making these last few weeks (and those that are coming up) one of the busiest times yet during my exchange. So, be ready for a long post.

My friend Chloe who lives here in Varberg is in the art program and takes dance at the school. Her dance class has been working incredibly hard since Christmas to get ready for a very big dance performance held at Varberg's theater. Hallie, Stéphanie and Ashton came down from Göteborg and we all went out to dinner before and then headed over to watch and be Chloe's "family" for the show. The show was great and you could definitely tell they all spent a good deal of time on it. That night they all stayed out at Chloe's house (she lives about 15 minutes outside of town in a much smaller town called Åskloster). The reason I didn't stay was the following day I was to move host families...

The group of us who went to watch Chloe's show: Stéph, Ashton, Hallie, me and Chloe.

Of which I have successfully done and am now on my third and final host family: Familjen Lindström. The Lindströms are made up of Eje (dad), Birgitta (mom), Ida (host sister 17), and Minna (host sister 15). The family's really nice and very similar to my previous host family, thus meaning I'm sure I'll get along with them pretty well. The best part, however, of this new family thing is where I live in the house, or well, out of the house. My "room" is actually the little "stuga" they have out in their garden. It's like a mini version of a house where I have a tiny kitchen, living room/bedroom with a few couches and my bed, then a very nice bathroom which they've just renovated. My friends and I like to refer to it as my bachelor pad (thanks for the name Mom ;)). It's really nice to have my own sort of private place out there and not have to worry about sharing a bathroom or anything with anyone. Another thing new about this family is (and Mom, you'll be happy about this) I have to do my own laundry, which is like a first in my life, but to be honest, I kinda like it and it's like so much easier than everyone makes it out to be.

This is the outside of the "stuga" that has become my bachelor pad.

The outside of the family's house.

The bedroom/living room part of the pad. The extra bed is there for my italian that's coming today (of which you'll read more about below).

Sitting area and some shelving.

The kitchenette complete with sink, cooktop and mini-fridge. The coffee table in front is there because I had no other place to put it with that extra bed being in it's place.

The day I moved to my new family I didn't actually stay there. In the late afternoon everyone that was down from Göteborg and I stayed out at Chloe's house and all made tacos together and stayed up talking and watching movies.

All of us around the dinner table eating the tacos we made with Chloe's host family.

The evening after staying at Chloe's, my art class all headed for the airport outside of Göteborg to catch our flight to London. The following three days were a whirlwind city adventure that went by faster than any of us liked. We arrived in London's airport about 10:30 at night on the first of April and after taking a train, then taxis we finally arrived at our hotel at about midnight where we all headed straight for our beds.

After having eaten a very early dinner before heading off for the flight, we all were incredibly hungry once arriving. Here's me with a chicken curry pasty bought from a little kiosk in Liverpool Station directly after arriving.

The view of the city from our hotel room.

The next day we got up around 8:00 or so and all boarded a bus (and no, not one of the cool red double-decker buses) for a guided tour of the city. The tour lasted around three to four hours and when we were finished I felt as if we covered most of the known parts of the city as well as places I'd never heard of, though were interesting all the same. We took two strech/pee breaks during the tour; one outside of Buckingham Palace and the other by the houses of Parliment (by Big Ben, the clock tower).

Part of my class and I outside of Buckingham Palace. You can't really see the palace in this picture, but it sure is a nice fence, isn't it?

A shot of Big Ben from the tour bus.

The tour bus let us out in one of the main shopping districts where we got some lunch (Subway! Oh how I miss it) and spent the rest of the afternoon shopping in the thousands of stores covering the city. That evening we thought it'd be fun to take a walk down to Piccadilly Circus which is really cool at night lit up by all of the neon signs on the buildings.

Here's a group of us eating our glorious Subway down by some river. The weather the first day was absolutly wonderful, as you can see from this pic.

The classic London red phone booths. I just had to take a picture.

Piccadilly Circus at night. It's absolutly amazing there with all the neon signs lighting up the square.

The following day we started off taking the Underground to two different art museums, the Tate Britain and Tate Modern. We spent a longer time at Tate Britain which is composed of classic works by many famous British artists, whereas Tate Modern is, as the name suggests, made up of mostly modern artists' works, such as Picasso, Monet and Salvador Dalí. We had the remainder of this day to do as we pleased so we all headed for the most famous shopping street in London, Oxford Street. We shopped some, ate a combination lunch/dinner and shopped up until the stores all closed between eight and nine in the evening.

On the Underground on our way to Tate Britain.

On a little canal boat that connects Tate Britain with Tate Modern.

That entire time I had been craving ice cream for some reason and my wish was finally answered by the one (or well...two) and only Ben and Jerry's! Phish Phood and some chunky brownie something or other :) Mmm..mmm...

The following day, Wednesday, was the last day of our time spent in London. We got up rather early and headed for Madamé Toussaud's wax museum. If you've never heard of Maddamé Toussaud's, it's a wax museum where they've set up a bunch of exhibits that they've placed a number of wax copies of celebrities throughout and so you can go up to them and take pictures with them. It's incredibly cool in there and a bunch of fun to "meet" the world's celebrities. Directly after Madamé Toussauds and eating a quick lunch we headed back for the airport and home.
Me with the Royal family. We're close friends...didn't you know?

One of my favorite pictures taken on the Madamé Toussauds excursion...take that Hitler!

I couldn't leave London without experiencing the joy that is Starbucks seeing as we don't have it up here in Sweden. My wish was granted in the airport before leaving.

Easter is a pretty big holiday here in Sweden giving us a week off from school as well as everyone being free from work on Good Friday and the monday after Easter day. One thing that is interesting though is the time that Eater or "Påsk" is celebrated here, that being the day before Easter Sunday, so I guess you could say Easter Saturday... Apparently every year my family has a little easter present hunt in which I recieved a new t-shirt (which incidentally was the wrong size and I have since exchanged it for 2 t-shirts which equaled the same price). That evening we headed over to my host family's good friends the Bergs who are the host family for my friend Luise who is an exchange student in Varberg from Germany with another program.

Here's part of the "Påskbord" or Easter-Table. Basically the spread of food layed out before we all dug in. The food eaten during Christmas, Easter and Midsommar is apparently all about the same with a bunch of fish and meat and potatoes...and not a whole lot more, though they use a lot of eggs for Easter as well.

Here's the typical Easter decoration that almost every family has in their house. As you can see it's like a bunch of twigs with feathers and little orniments hung on them. A very strange idea I think, but it's tradition I guess.

During the week off for Easter (Påsklov) I spent a lot of time up in Göteborg and Ljungskile visiting my exchange student friends. We didn't really do anything super special during the time, just kinda hung out. One night Ashton, Siân and I headed up to Ljungskile and went to a club in Uddevalla (which is a bigger town up north where Jill attends school). Another night we were at Stéphanie's house where she made us a French dinner of omelette and coconut flan for dessert.

All of us on the walk back to Jill's house.

After Stéph's dinner we headed out into Göteborg to see if we could come up with anything exciting to do, plus it was a beautiful night and it's fun to see the city come alive with it's night life.

The wednesday following Påsklov my host dad, sister and I headed south for the town of Halmstad to watch an apparently influential handball match. Halmstad is the capital of Halland, which is the Län or county/state that Varberg resides in. We drove down after school (it's about an hour drive), picked up our tickets at the arena, then headed for the center of town to find somewhere to eat dinner, which ended up being this combination Greek and Italian place where we all got some sort of pasta, which was delicious.

As we were walking around town I took some pictures just to show you what some other Swedish towns look like and Halmstad is a classic example. Here we have the town square with city church.

This building just looked very Swedish.

Here's the handball arena. I think of handball as kind of a combination of basketball and soccer, if put in really simple terms.

Another arena shot. Handball is probably one of the most played sports in Sweden, on par with the popularity of soccer, which is incredibly high.

That now wraps up the latest happenings here in the wonderful land of Sweden. There's quite a few things coming up which you all will here much more about soon, including the class from Italy's trip up to Sweden and various dinner parties being put into the works by us exchange students.

Thank you guys so much for following along with me on this adventure. I'll be seeing you all very, very soon!

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