Italienarens Besök, Valborg, Göteborgdagarna med Rotary, Middag hos Maria, Bastu Extrem, Rediculously Svensk Musik och Kvibergs Marknad

Well, yes, you're right...it's been quite some time since the last time I updated this sucker and by quite some time I mean nearly a month an a half, which, my friends, is highly unacceptable, I know. But, let's jump right in as quite a bit has happened!

Major thing #1: Our friends from Italy made their way up here to good 'ol Sweden. They came on a friday and left on a saturday, making their stay eight days in total. Sooo much went on during those days that there's no way I could write it all down. Safe to say we all had an amazing time, though were very tired by the last day.

One day we spent at the beach, so here's a pic of my friend Amanda and I playing some cards.

Here we are on the bus heading down to Denmark. On the Italian's last day in Sweden we took them to Denmark. First to Helsingör, then to Louisiana, a beautiful indoor/outdoor art museum and then finally we spent a few hours in Copenhagen.

Outside the Castle in Helsingör. This is the castle in which Shakespear's play Hamlet takes place.

One Swedish holiday that is pretty unknown, one that I hadn't really even heard of a few weeks before it happened is Valborg. Strange word because the two words: Val and Borg mean Whale and Castle or Fortress, two things that basically have nothing to do with the holiday at all, if you even want to call it a holiday in the first place. It happens the 30th of May and is just sort of an excuse for all the youth to get together and grill out by the coast (or in the forest if one's not lucky enough to live by the ocean) and just have a good time.

Here's Chloe and I beside the bonfire on Volborg.

Rotary had been semi-lacking in the amount of activities planned up until this point in this half of the year (this point being around the beginning of May), but they really got themselves together and planned some amazing weekends for us. The first happening up in Göteborg where the Rotary Club of Göteborg organized first a visit to Göteborgsposten, the second largest newspaper in Sweden. We went there pretty early in the morning and got a tour of the place, then were put to the test by playing a really high-tech game on who could put together the best front page. Sad to say but my team lost :(

Having fun on the Göteborgsposten tour :)

Following Göteborgsposten and a nice lunch we headed to Saab Space, which is the space technologies division of Saab (you know....the other car company from Sweden). They again showed us around the place and talked about all the things they're working on and what the future has in store, etcetera.

After all of this is where the real fun came in for the day, a trip to Liseberg! For those of you who don't remember or have just started reading my blog and havn't been with it from the beginning, Liseberg is Scandinavia's biggest theme park full of roller coasters and topsy-turvy thingys that are tons of fun! We all took a trip there back in September, though it was high time for another trip. So yeah, the Rotary club paid for us to get in and then basically just let us run wild, and boy let me tell you, we did. We tried to fit as many rides in as possible in the amount of time we had there and I think we succeeded pretty well.

Riding the swing ride at Liseberg. This really brought me back to the days of the Benton County Fair, though I never really remember getting so nauseous on that ride...

Stéph and her hot black bumper-car.

That evening, following Liseberg, Stéph, Hallie and I went to this all night festival thing that Stéph heard about through her school at the Världskulturmuseet (World's Culture Museum). The festival started about 7:00 in the evening, though we came late, not getting done at Liseberg until around 10:00. Luckily for us, this festival was an all-night thing with activities and concerts planned for the entire night. We ended up not making all the way through the night, though we stayed long enough ('til around 3:00 am) to hear two really great artists the first of which I can't remember her name, which is too bad, because I liked her a lot. She reminded me a lot of Tracy Chapman and I mean, who doesn't love Tracy? The next band was called Navid Modiri & Gudarna which was a Swedish band that sung in Swedish though the lead singer was from Iran. They were incredibly fun to watch and everyone was dancing by the end. I liked them so much I even bought a t-shirt, which is now a great memory of that night. I'd highly recommend checking them out, though I'm not exactly sure how easy it would be to find them in the States.

We love Navid Modiri!

The following day we all met up pretty early (not necessarily the best idea seeing as we got to sleep so late the night before), and all packed into two cars driven by Rotarians and headed to the island of Marstrand which lies a about a half hour north of Göteborg. Back in the day this island was an important place for the Swedish royalty, as on the island lies a fortress where they kept a good number of prisoners. We got a tour of the fortress by an amazing guide named Hugo and then ate lunch at a nice little café before taking the half hour drive back to the city.

Here's a picture of the island of Marstrand. We had to take a ferry over to it from the larger island of Koö, which is where I'm standing while taking this picture. You can see the fortress right on top in this picture.

Jill and I pretending to be cold prisoners sleeping on the multi-person bed in the cells.

Here's our guide, Hugo, showing us the sword they used for decapitations.

Stéph, Jill and I being cozy on the couch in the café we ate lunch in on Marstrand.

The excitement for the weekend didn't end there however. Once returning to Göteborg, because it was such a beautiful day we decided to take some incredibly "Swedish" pictures, 'cuz you never know when they could come in handy.

Here's me being "Sweden-Man"!!

No...we're not nude in this picture....or, are we? ;)

The following day was the last of the adventures for that weekend. We took the train out to a town right outside of Göteborg called Lerum where the president of Lerum's Rotary club and his biker gang met us and took us on a few hour ride in the Swedish country-side. It was a beautiful day and it made me think back to the days of going for rides of my dad's motorcycle :)

Here's my motorcycle man that I rode with.

All of the exchange students in my town have a great time with our Swedish as a second language teacher, and she obviously enjoyed having us as well, because she invited us out to her house to have a nice dinner and sort of a good bye type thing. It was really nice and cool to see her house. It was a really, really old and old fashioned house out in the country and sort of showed what Swedish houses were like back in the day.

Here we all are in her kitchen. Chloe to the left, then Luise from Germany, our teacher Maria, Maglen from Venezuela and then me to the right.

The following weekend was yet another Rotary organized event, this time taking place out in the small town of Skene. With the bus, we arrived at the local school/aquatic center and met up with a man named Kjell (pronounced Shell) who is the Rotary president of Skene and also the owner and superviser of the aquatic center there. First thing on the agenda was to cook a bunch of Swedish food. We used the school's home-ec room to make a smörgåsbord (literally) of various Swedish dishes and we used recepes from a Swedish cook book he gave to each of us.

Hallie and Ashton making potatoe pancakes.

Here's our finished smörgåsbord of food. We didn't even manage to eat 1/4 of what was there.

Following the consumption of our rediculous amount of food, the best part of the evening began. We headed to the aquatic center about 9:00 in the evening and began one of the most memoriable experiences I think I've had this year, called Sauna Extreme. What it was is Kjell led us through a bunch of different sauna treatments. First we headed into the sauna and he had water scented like lavendar which he poured on the sauna stones. He then used a towel to whip the air in the room around so it sort of blasted against our bodies. He then took a big bowl of coffee grounds and ladeled a huge scoop out into each of our hands. We were then to rub the coffee all over our bodies as it's apparently a good exfolient and good for your skin. We then washed it off and headed in to swim for a while. In the mean-time he brought out fruit for us and began preparing the next treatment.

Hallie, Stéph and I with pink faces from the coffee rub.

We headed back into the sauna and this time he had cinnamon flavored water which sort of burned your skin when the steam hit you. He then took out a huge vat of honey and we were told to rub it all over and in our hair, etc. He said that honey is one of the best things for your skin and is full of vitamins which help it. Now, before rinsing the honey off, he told us to go down the water slide because it makes you go like five times as fast and let me tell you, he wasn't lying. It was amazing! Following the water sliding experience, Kjell brought out a bunch of body paints, so we took some time to have fun drawing stuff on eachother.

This is the creation that Siân came up with. I think it's rather fitting, don't you?

It was now time for the final round in the sauna. This time when we came in it was as hot as it had been thus far. He used the towel again to whip the air around and then brought out a container full of ice cubes. We then melted the ice on ourselves to apparently help with better circulation, etc. We then came back in and headed for a smaller, not so deep pool. In this pool he had a floating foamy mat thing that he had sodas and roasted sasuages on. We all got into this smaller pool and ate our sasuages and just reflected on how amazing this experience was, and let me tell you it was. It also brought us much closer together as a group and is definitely something that none of us are going to forget.

Hallie and I with our korvar (sasuages) or well majs (corn) korv in Hallie's case.

As the time is getting near to go home, we all decided that we had way too much stuff to take home with us, though we didn't really know how to get rid of it without throwing it away. Siân and Ashton however came up with the idea that we sell it. So, they found this flea market place in Göteborg where we could rent a stall for the day and try and sell all of our clothes, books, and just junk that we didn't really want any more though didn't really want to throw away. The idea worked great and we got rid of almost everything and each person even made some pocket money.

All of us peddling our goods. The things that didn't sell we just took to a used clothes store.

It's sad but true that my year here in Sweden will soon be coming to an end. It's pretty hard to believe that in less than a month and a half I'll be back home in good 'ol Oregon seeing all my family and friends for the first time again in soo long. Before that happens however, there's a TON of things on my agenda...a visit to the opera, a trip to Stockholm, a big good bye party and we can't forget my family's trip to visit me! I actually have only 7 days in the month of June where I don't have something written into my calendar to do and because there's so much to do, I don't have a whole ton of time for school, thus meaning I have 5 whole days of it left spread out over the next two weeks. I'll try to keep this updated during that time, though I'm not exactly sure how well that'll go. I'm gonna guess that there'll be one major update left before I come home. And what date is that, you're wondering? Yes, get your calendars out because the 11th of July Connor's plane officially touches down in Portland, Oregon. Very weird to even think about...

As it had been such a long time since I last updated, this blog post came to be very, very long, though I hope you enjoyed reading it :) I love comments and e-mails!