Michael, utbytesstudent till Sverige

Updat since november

2009-01-26T22:44:00.002+01:00

Ok I figure it's about time to update everyone on what I've been doing so far, so here we go. I suppose I'll just take it chronologically with everything that I can remember since my last journal.

So, starting from where I left off in November... That next weekend my friend Miranda from Canada who lives about 2 hours away came to Uppsala for the weekend and we hung out with Iliyas from France and also my Swedish friend Anton. (I do actually have Swedish friends, I guess I just don't write about them much...) We had a lot of fun and enjoyed the snow. I almost forgot about the snow actually, it seems like it was so long ago... We got about a foot of snow, maybe even more, it was amazing! So we had a lot of fun playing in the snow during the weekend.

The snow was so much fun while it lasted. During the week we went to Sunnerstabacken, a hill (or kind of like a basin) right near my house and åkte pulka (I'm not really sure what that's called in English, I suppose going on a sled). It was a lot of fun; I went with Anton, Gen from Australia and Amanda, my host sister. We had two "sleds;" one round one and one that could hold two people so we took turns going down the hill. I went again the next day with Gen and Iliyas and we had just as much fun as before. We threw snowballs at each other, wrestled in snow and buried Iliyas in the snow.

Unfortunately the magic of the snow was short lived because it melted that Thursday, well not entirely, but pretty much most of it, and it was all just slippery slush that was really annoying to walk on. So I had another boring week at school, nothing notable happened, the fun started again on the weekend. Rotary organized a weekend in Stockholm for us with all the exchange students in the three districts in our area (so we all already know each other because we went to language camp together). It was fun, we went to the Vasa Museum (even though I've already been there with my host mom) and to Skansen which is like this big park/zoo/cultural fair in the middle of Stockholm. We stayed in a hostel on Saturday night which was surprisingly nice and actually really cool. On Saturday night we had our oldies from the Southern Hemisphere talk about how their years had been and it was just so sad because they would be going home in less than a month, so they were all crying; it was very emotional for all of us. So on Sunday we went home which was sad because it the last time that we would see some of our oldies. On the train ride back to Uppsala we had to sit on the floor because some insensitive Swedish people's luggage needed seats more than we did. That's why they invented luggage racks on the trains, people!!

The next weekend Miranda came again with Emmanuel from France, who both live in the same town (Eskilstuna) and we hung out during the weekend which was a lot of fun. We had the whole Uppsala crew (Anna, Gen, Iliyas and I) plus our two friends from E-tuna (our nickname for their town) together which was really cool, we hung out for like the whole weekend.

The next week there was nothing too notable that occurred except on Wednesday where I watched Iliyas play innebandy (indoor bandy, which is a sport kind of like hockey but on foot; it is usually played on ice, but innebandy is inside and on foot) which was really funny because it was students against teachers, and all the students were dressed in Lucia clothes (more on that a little later). I also had my final exam in Physics A on Thursday which was really stressful; I studied really hard for it, which was a lot of work because I had to try to learn in like one week what the rest of the class had learned in a year (Physics A stretches over year one and into half of year 2, which I think is really stupid...). I didn't have to take it but I wanted to at least give it a shot. I failed; I got 7 points and you needed at least 12 to pass, but that's ok, I didn't really expect to pass anyway.

The real high point of the week was the Luciatåg in school on Friday. Every 13th of December is Lucia in Sweden which celebrates Sankta Lucia (Saint Lucia) from Italy (still have no idea why they have a holiday to honor an Italian saint in Sweden...). It was a concert in school where we dressed up in traditional clothes, which consisted of a long white robe and held candles while singing about seven songs in Swedish in front of the whole school. It was mortifying, but I think I did pretty well; we had been practicing for about a month. I still didn't know all the words to all of the songs; it's really hard to memorize songs in your non-native language, but I was able to cheat a little and hide the lyrics to a few songs in my candle, because it had like a plate around it on the bottom to catch the wax. I also forgot to mention that I saw one Lucia performance before this in Domkyrkan (the enormous church in the middle of Uppsala) on Thursday. On Saturday I went to yet another Lucia performance in the concert hall, which was really nice, but I have to say that after that I was thoroughly Lucia'ed out.

The next day Iliyas and I went by train to Upplands Väsby to have lunch with the other exchange students from our district at our District chairperson's house (our version of Al) which was huge and out a little in the countryside. She is so unbelievably nice and we love her so much. We had lunch and talked a little about upcoming events later in the year, like going to the Ice Hotel and skiing in Åre and she showed us her scrapbook from when she went on exchange to America.

The next week was relatively uneventful until Thursday where a bunch of the clubs and societies put on a performance called Kul i Jul, which means like Fun in Christmas, it was pretty funny even though it was a little hard to understand at some points. The next day there was another assembly for avslutningen which is like the end of the term and the start of the jullov, or Christmas holiday. That was pretty boring as it was just a bunch of teachers and administrators talking about boring stuff... The real fun started after that where my class had planned to play Lasertag, which was really cool. We played two rounds and I did really horribly on the first round, but actually quite well on the second round.

The next day (Saturday) we left for Gotland (big island off the coast of Sweden) again where we would spend Christmas. It was mostly uneventful there, which I kind of expected, until Christmas, which is celebrated on the 24th here. After dinner we had a visit from tomten (Santa Claus) who came into the house and gave us some presents, it was a shame that my host aunt missed him; she was out buying the newspaper when he came, it was strange though because they had a similar body type... After tomten left, we all opened the rest of our presents which was really nice, I feel so attached to my host family, I don't want to leave them. We came home from Gotland on the next Sunday.

The next week was really cool, I did a lot of stuff. On Monday, Emmanuel came from Eskilstuna again to hang out. On Tuesday, Anna, Gen, Emmanuel and I went ice skating on a lake outside of Uppsala with Gen's host family, which was unbelievably fun. When you skate on a lake, you use long skates, which are about one foot in length, which I think makes it easier to skate with. We spent a couple of hours on the ice and then went back home.

The next day Anna, Gen and I went to Eskilstuna because we were going to celebrate New Years at Miranda's house. We took a really crazy route to get there involving two busses and a train, but it was a lot of fun. We spent the night at Miranda's and made pizza and cake and also built a fire outside, which kept us warm because it was freezing. We went home the next day.

On Saturday Anna and Gen had a combined goodbye party because they would be leaving in less than a week. It was fun and not as sad as I expected it to be.

The next day we went ice skating again with my host family on a lake right near my house. We skated for about 3 Swedish miles, or about 30 kilometers, it was tiring but really cool, and the long ice skates make it easier because it's less work.

Next week on Tuesday we went ice skating again with Iliyas which was really cool, and I really am loving all this ice skating and I'm going to miss it so much when spring comes, I'm not sure if there are any indoor rinks nearby...

School started on Thursday which was not very fun, but I guess all good things must eventually come to an end... It was just a regular boring day at school until the afternoon where Iliyas and I met Anna and gave her emotional support because she had to say goodbye to her classmates. We then went home after that

The next day was a day of great sadness because it was the day that Anna and Gen were going home to Australia. My host dad gave Iliyas and I a ride to the airport so we could say goodbye to them. It was really sad and there was a lot of crying. After they left we went home and just spent the rest of the day together and didn't go to school.

The next week was just same old boringness until Thursday which was my birthday. My class sang Happy Birthday in Swedish to me when I came in (all 4 verses of "Ja, må han leva!") and they all signed a picture of me and hung it on my locker (which is like a tradition at my school for birthdays). It was really nice of them and made me really happy.

So that pretty much sums up everything I've done thus far. I'm going to change host families in about two weeks which is a little sad but will be ok because I know the family really well (Iliyas and I are trading families) and our newbie from Australia is coming in less than a week so we're going to try our hardest to make him feel at home.

Until next time,

Hej då!

Pictures of the snow!!!

2008-11-26T00:33:00.003+01:00

Here are the pictures from the weekend: HERE

Here are the pictures from Monday night: HERE

a smart car buried in snow, so cute!!!

Day 120

2008-11-26T00:11:00.003+01:00

What a crazy morning!

I abused the snooze on my phone (I use it as an alarm clock) and wound up getting up at 9:13, and my bus left at 9:23, so I somehow managed to get dressed and ready in about 8 minutes and run to the bus stop, without slipping, falling or dying in about a minute and a half. So I got there and waited for bus 20 to come. I waited. And waited. And waited.

It was after 9:38 and the bus still hadn't come.

Finally bus 18 came so I had to run across the street and down the road a little bit to get to the other side's bus stop (because it's not directly on the other side of the street). I also managaed to not slip and die. So I got on the bus, and managed to slip by without scanning my card to pay (because I left my school card at school and the other card has money on it, but I don't want to spend it for no reason) and then we were off. The bus skidded a lot and another bus (the really late bus 20 that we passed at 9:44) hit the back part of our bus (it was an articulated, aka "bendy-bus") with one of it's mirrors and it made a really loud sound at impact. The bus was skidding a lot and went slowly so I was really late. But luckily my friends Ida and Emelie who live in Södra Gottsunda (where Iliyas lives) where also on my bus, so we were all late together and they were able to explain why we were so late. The teacher wasn't mad though, Åslög is really nice, (that's her name) and they usually dont care anyway.

School was a normal day, I was happy in Chemistry because I got Anton to explain this new thing we were learning to me and I understood it which made me feel all good inside.

After school Anton and Iliyas came to my house so we could train our jumpstyle and get better. It's fun and great exercise; we want to perform in Stockholm next weekend for our next Rotary gathering there. (but you'll hear about that later)

So then they left and I ate dinner and had desert with the family, Anna (host sister, 26, lives/works in Stockholm) was over for dinner and is spending the night. And that's about it for today.

Day 119

2008-11-25T23:08:00.002+01:00

We got up really early to get to Rotary and met Iliyas on the bus and then finally made it into town where he had to walk through what felt like (to me) a blizzard, but it was still really cool because it was snow!!

The meeting was kinda boring, as expected, but you can't beat free food. We spent almost an hour in the hotel lobby after it was over, just sitting in front of the fire, because Gen didn't have any classes today and Iliyas' and my classes didn't start until 10:15. So we moved into this coffee shop and just sat there for a while until we had to go. I had Chemistry lab and then I headed back into town to Storken (a fika place) to meet Gen who had been waiting and Anton followed along. We chilled and talked for a really long time and then Iliyas came a little later and we hung out for a while before heading to my house. Anton left and we got to my house and then went again to play in the snow! We must have been out for about 4 hours on the hill at Sunnerstabacken just sledding and building a little hump to get some air time as we were jumping over, it hurt when we landed...

We then went back inside and dried off and warmed up. We hung out for a while and then they went home.

Day 118

2008-11-25T23:00:00.002+01:00

We woke up at like 12-ish again (Anton also stayed over) and had breakfast and blah blah blah. Iliyas came over and we hung out for a while and then I took Miranda to the train station while Iliyas stayed at my house working on the compilation video of us dancing. He went home a while later. It snowed all day and it just kept piling up!!

Gen sent me an sms asking if I wanted to play in the snow so I tole her to come to my house because there's this big hill close by. So she came and then we all went (with Amanda too) to Sunnerstaåsen/Sunnerstabacken which is this big slope where a lot of people were sledding. We spent a couple of hours sledding down and playing in the snow; we had such a great time. We then went home and ate and then Anton went home. Gen and I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and she slept over because she was going to Rotary in the morning (to my club, because she had been invited)

Day 117

2008-11-25T22:38:00.003+01:00

Miranda stayed at my house and we woke up at around 12-ish and then ate and stuff. I got a phone call from Katarina at 8:00 (while I was still sleeping and only semi-conscious) telling me to look outside the window. I reluctantly sat up and looked out to see... About a foot of SNOW!!! I was so excited and happy, but too physically and mentally tired to do anything so I wound up going back to sleep until around 12 and then proceeded to go out and play in it and stuff.

We decided that it would be nice to go into town so I could give her the tour of the main sights and it would be even better because everything was covered in snow. So we went into town and met my Swedish friend Anton and saw all the cool sights like Domkyrkan, Slottet and Botaniska. We played a lot in Botaniska while waiting for Iliyas to come and join us, then after a while when it got dark (at like 3:00!) we went back to my house. We cooked tacos ourselves (because nobody was home, they were in Göteborg looking at this special school) and then practiced more jumpstyle dancing. We then got a brilliant idea to go back into town and record ourselves doing the jumpstyle in all the lit places around Uppsala. So we went into town and recorded ourselves (Iliyas, Miranda and I; Anton filmed) jumpstyle-ing in Stora Torget, outside Carolina Rediviva, inside the "blue tunnel" thing, and on the sidewalk near Slottet (the castle). We got some stares and even a bunch of complements from onlookers. We went home, but had to take bus 7, because the wait for either 18 or 20 was too long, so we had to get off at Martallsvägen and walk to Iliyas' house. On the way we found this cool tunnel with graffiti in it so we recorded more jumpstyle in the tunnel, which turned out looking awesome. We then walked to Gottsundavägen to take the shortcut to Iliyas' house and then stayed for about 10 minutes before we headed for the Granelidsvägen bus stop to catch the last bus 18 home. We got to the stop at exactly the time that it was supposed to leave, and waited, but it didn't come so we thought we missed it. After about 10 minutes we realized that we would have to walk home, but it wouldn't be too bad because Iliyas had done it both nights before. (just for fun, because he wanted to and it was too snowy for the bike) So we started walking, which was pretty cool because it was in the snow, and just when we were about halfway between Granelidsvägen and Slånvägen and the bus comes rolling by, 15 minutes late. We tried running to the Slånvägen stop but it was no use and it kept going so we had to walk all the way home. It wasn't so bad, I was mostly talking the whole way there, mostly about the snow, although they were kinda quiet, I guess because she's from Canada and he's Swedish so snow is exciting but not nearly as big a deal to them as it is to me. So we finally got home and then went to sleep.

Days 114 to 116

2008-11-25T22:21:00.002+01:00

More days at school, nothing to be too excited about...

On Wednesday I went with my class on a studiebesök (study-visit) to kliniskmikrobiologilabbet (the clinical microbiology lab) for, you guessed it, Mikrobiologi (Microbiology). They grew tons of bacteria there and also performed lots of tests for different sicknesses. This would be "the lab" that the doctor sends those samples to. They showed us around the lab and then showed us a really boring powerpoint. After that we went back to school.

Friday was exciting. Math was cancelled (it's usually 2 hours on Friday) so I got out early (because I decided to skip PE) and had some free time so I went to a friend's house (a Swedish Friend haha) and hung out for a while. I then got a call from Iliyas asking if I wanted to go to the gym; this was an opportunity upon which I quickly jumped because he never wants to go to the gym. And that is some shit up with which I will not put! (stole that from Scary Movie 4...) So he got there way before I did because I was nowhere near buses 20 or 3, so I had to walk a great distance to get back into town. By the time I got to the gym, he decided that he was leaving in 10 minutes... Grrrrrr. So needless to say, I didn't get much of a workout. I went home and chilled for a little while and then got back on lovely bus 111 (that's the fastest, most direct one into town, but it doesn't stop in useful places in town, like if I'm trying to get to school) to the train station. I met my Canadian friend, Miranda, who lives in Eskilstuna and had come to visit me for the weekend. So we started off my walking around the town to see these lights that had been set up all around the town in various spots, it was really cool. After that we went back to my house and it was snowing, actually pretty hard. There was a thin (but still bigger than anything I have seen) covering of snow on the ground and I made my first Swedish snowball, whom I named Fred, and then threw it at Miranda and we had a snowball fight with the little snow that existed. Iliyas came to my house and the three of us hung out. We decided to learn this dance from Holland, known as jumpstyle, that looks really cool, so we practiced it like all night and stayed up until about 3:00... Nobody was home so we didn't have to worry about making too much noise but it is best to do it with shoes and since you NEVER wear shoes in the house here, we went outside in the snow to dance... It was really cool!

Day 113

2008-11-18T17:19:00.002+01:00

Today was just an average day at school, nothing exciting happened.
I went to sleep at 7:30 last night because I was just so tired and I think the darkness at 3:00 thing is getting to me... I woke up after 8:00 so I got a full 12 hours so that was nice.

On the way to school it rained which sucked...

But during the day, the rain tuned into SNOW!!!
It snowed lightly for like 2 hours but then it stopped and turned back into rain.

The ground was too warm so it mostly either melted or mixed with the rain to make this slushy stuff that was really slippery.

I got home and I feel like going to sleep again, but it's only 5:22... I guess I should wait... Maybe I'll go to the gym again.

Also, another notice, I finally sent in another Rotary journal, so if you'd like to see, it's at ryeflorida.org under the "Outbounds 2008" section. If you've been reading here though, there's really no point, because it's mostly just a summary.

Day 112

2008-11-18T17:12:00.002+01:00

Today I had to get up early to go to my Rotary club; this is the second week in a row that I have gone. Gen was invited by one of my club's members that was visiting her club, so she was there too and we watched a little presentation about one of the Rotarians who is a conductor. He also sang. It was scary.

After that we walked over to Polishuset (the Police building) and met Katarina and she gave us a tour of the crime lab. It was really cool; we got to see fingerprinting, handwriting analysis (that's what Katarina does), shoe print analysis, IT and photography. We also got to see the place where they take the mugshots and Gen and I both took pictures with the sign. It's funny, though, because they have a chair that you sit on, you dont stand like in the US.

After that, at about 10:00 I had to run to school to take a Biology test on Genetics. It was pretty hard and that's what I expected. The teacher told me (just like last time) that I didn't have to take the test, but I said (unlike last time) that I wanted to try. That made her happy so I took it. I don't know if I passed, but it doesn't matter anyway and I like trying even if I fail. I may have forgotten to mention that I passed that Mikrobiologi test that I took (without even knowing that we had one that day). I got 5 points out of like 25 or something, but for some strange reason that still counts as a "G." (the lowest possible passing grade) The grading system is: IG-not passing, G-pass, VG-pass with distinction, and MVG-pass very special distinction. (MVG is the best)
Needless to say I always get MVG's in Enlglish!! But we'll have to see about Biology...

Day 111

2008-11-18T17:10:00.002+01:00

Sunday.

We woke up at about 11:00 to find that it was SNOWING!!!
I was so excited and went outside to play in it and eat some. The ground was too warm so it mostly melted as soon as it hit the ground but it was still very exciting. Katarina drove them to the train station and they went home. I spent the rest of the day working on some homework and catching up on my online stuff. Later that night I went to the gym with Iliyas.

Day 110

2008-11-18T17:00:00.003+01:00

Today was the party! It was a lot of fun. Anna and I spent the morning preparing for the party and then at around 4 I went to her house to be made up. She straightened my hair and put shadows around my eyes, and I went into town like this to the train station to pick up the others who had just arrive. And yes, I did get many strange looks from the people on the bus.
So I picked everyone up and we rode the bus to Anna's house, unfortunately bus 111 doesn't run that late on Saturdays so we had to take 20, which not only takes a longer time, but also stops a little further away from her house.

So we all arrived and the party started. The night was a lot of fun and consisted of eating, dressing everyone up and dancing. We also drank this cool Argentinian tea drink which was really good.

We finally got home at about 2:30; I had Abraham from Mexico and Michael from Michigan staying at my house.

Pictures are here.

Days 104-109

2008-11-16T14:30:00.002+01:00

This whole week was just an average week at school; it was kinda busy because I had a lot of work for Math. I also have a Biology test on Monday, so that's a little stressful too. I also worked a lot on my online classes to get caught up. That's about it; this week was pretty low key filled with work and studying, that is until Friday...

We had been planning to have an exchange student Halloween party for a while and now it finally has come. So today, on Friday, after school, I went to Anna's house to help her set up a little bit and buy some things. Tomorrow the guests will arrive!

Day 103

2008-11-08T18:28:00.002+01:00

Today was nice because I was able to sleep in and go in at 11:20 and then went to school of Physics and Math. After school I went to Iliyas' house for a while and then went home and then he wound up coming to my house and stayed for a while. And that's about it.

Day 102

2008-11-08T01:58:00.002+01:00

I slept in and went into school at 10:00 and figured today would be a normal day.
It was mostly normal until at about 1:00 I found out that the whole class was going to Stockholm tonight to see Hamlet in the theater there and I didn't have a ticket. Luckily they had an extra so I was able to go. After school we all got on a bus headed for Stockholm and then when we got there we all split up and ate. I ate with some other friends in an attempt to branch out, and it surely paid off. I spoke only Swedish with them the whole time, which was nice because some of my other friends only want to speak English with me which pisses me off. We ate at this organic, all natural place in the train station and we all had noodles which were really good. After that we headed to the theater which was really old and really beautiful.

The play lasted for 3 hours. It was well done but very hard for me to understand because they spoke very fast "Shakespearean" Swedish. I could still figure out what was going on based on prior knowledge of the story and the fact that they were acting. It was a fairly modern adaptation but it was a little while. I thought it was well done, however.
After the show, it was pretty late and I took the train home, despite the cheaper but slower bus, because I had to catch the last bus 18 home so I wouldn't be stranded at the train station. When we arrived however, I found out that I wouldn't have to take the bus because a friend was nice enough to take me home because I live near her and she was taking two other of my classmates home also. So I finally got home around 12:16 and then went right to sleep. Luckily I had a sleep in the next morning and didn't have to go in until 11:20.

Day 101

2008-11-05T18:54:00.002+01:00

YAY OBAMA!!!!!!!!

Today had a great start when I found out that Obama won the election, I was really happy about it.
Today, Anna, Iliyas, Gen and I were going with Anna's counselor to Ekeby Gymnasiet to visit the school and get a tour. The school is unlike most other schools which are considered "theoretical schools" this one is a "practical school" with real world training. They have programs for things like cooking and florist-ing and we got to see the kitchens and the flower-arranging rooms which were really cool. After the tour we ate at the school's restaurant, which is run by the students (and it was great because we didn't have to pay) and then Anna's counsellor came back and picked us up and dropped us off in town and then we spent a little time in town before all going home. We wanted to do something together but we were all too tired and lazy. So I went home and then started talking to more people online again. Going to the gym now!

Day 100

2008-11-05T18:10:00.002+01:00

Has it been 100 days already?? (well actually maybe not, because I think I might have messed up the day count somewhere along the way, but oh well)

Today was not that special, it was a little bit of a long day today, I started at 10 and finished at 3. I was going to hang out with Gen after school but then I canceled and went home because I had a lot of work that I needed to do. I wound up not getting any work done and spent the entire night (about 6 hours) talking to a bunch of people online. Everybody just decided yesterday that it would be a good day to start talking to me... I felt loved, but it prevented me from getting any work done. I wound up staying up pretty late, but not late enough to see the election results so I went to sleep waiting for morning to come.

Day 99

2008-11-03T20:06:00.002+01:00

Today was just an average day at school. I decided to take my bike to school today, despite the 5(41) degree weather, I wanted to be healthy. It wasn't all that bad. I got to school at 10:15 and had a little over two hours of biology and then finished at 12:35. I ate lunch at school because it's free and they had köttbullar (meatballs) and they were very good. (good school food is hard to come by here) After that it was about 1 and I went into town and met Gen, because I hadn't seen her in about two weeks and we sat in a kebab place and talked and caught up for almost two hours and then Iliyas came and joined us. We then moved to Storken and had fika (I just love their giant kanelbullar) and then we went home and I have been spending the rest of the day working on my online classes (well not really, I've been trying to learn C++, but I'm going to work on my History class now)

Another sleep in tomorrow... just like always.... when do I not have sleep ins??

Days 90-98: Gotland

2008-11-02T15:21:00.002+01:00

There is much to say about höst lovet på Gotland. (the vacation on Gotland) I had a fun time, but the week was a weird combination of feelings. Let's start from the beginning...

We left on Saturday afternoon and drove for about 2 hours south east to a town who's name has escaped me and then boarded the ferry. After about three hours we arrived on Gotland and it was around 11:30 at night. Since we had taken two cars but had only brought one on the ferry, we had to take two trips so Katarina, Per and Amanda drove to the house which is about 7 kilometers away from Visby (the main city in Gotland) and we stayed with mormor (Katarina's mother aka grandma) and explored the city for a little while. There was not much to see at night but it was still pretty cool. After about 25 minutes Per came back and took us to their house.

They had just finished building the house and had also just finished putting all the finishing touches on it recently, so it beautiful and all brand-new feeling. Little did we know that a flaw in the house's design would be it's ultimate downfall... Amanda, Anna, Iliyas and I all slept in one room, which was pretty cool because it had like a little loft in it which housed other beds so we were all comfortable.

The next day is when the fun started. It rained all day, so we were trapped inside, which didn't seem like it would be so bad until we found out that Amanda had mens (pms). We learned that she turns into something of a firemonster when it hits, so she was constantly driving us crazy. Now this is why we felt that the house's design was flawed: there were really only two rooms in the house; our room and the kitchen-dining room-living room Room. So there was really no escape from each other. Cabin fever definitely had set in, because Anna, Iliyas and I all got along fine, but we were being constantly tormented by the firemonster.

It got better though, because by Thursday she started getting better and she apologized for being, well, a firemonster.

During the whole time we mostly spent our time indoors, and the two times that we did make it into Visby, it was either really cool and very very windy or cold and raining. The weather was not very nice. It also didn't help when we found out that it was snowing in Ekilstuna on Thursday night and then it started snowing in Uppsala on Friday.

On Saturday morning (today) we woke up at 6:00 (>_<) and then got ready to head back home. We did get one nice surprise; there was heavy frost outside so the grass was all frozen and white and there was frost on the car. It was about -5C out which was pretty cool, but it didn't feel all that cold. After the 3 hour ferry ride (on the floor in a corridor because all the tables and seats were taken) we got back to mainland Sweden and then headed home.

I was delighted to see that there was still some "snow" left. I use the term lightly because it used to be snow, but snow it's just a thin little layer of slush. But it's still snow, and I was excited!!

So the vacation is over and it's back to school tomorrow, good thing I have a sleep-in tomorrow!

Days 81-89

2008-10-25T00:29:00.002+02:00

I have been very behind on this, but here I go, trying to wrap up the last nine days.

Let's see what I can remember.

Last Saturday we had a district conference with all of the Rotarians in the area and all of the exchange students in our district came to Uppsala. We all had to sing songs in front of the Rotarians that represented our country so the guy from Michigan and I sang "The 50 States That Rhyme." After the conference we hung out in town for a while which was a lot of fun.

On Sunday night, Iliyas' family invited me to go bowling with them, so I obliged and actually won the first round and came in second during the second round, by about 10 points.

School this week was not too exciting. I slept in every morning until 10 except on Wednesday, so that was nice and today my Math class and PE were cancelled so I got to go home pretty early.

Yesterday I was invited to go to a "Tea Society" meeting at school at like 7:00. It was supposed to be a "Waffle Orgy" which Iliyas and I thought meant that they would be eating waffles, but they wound up just talking and then failing at making waffles. They then proceeded to take their shirts off, draw circles around their nipples and then rub cooking oil on each other. Then someone made chocolate pudding and every ate some and then one guy smeared it on himself and another licked it off. It was rather traumatizing, I must say. There is just something about Swedish people; when they get together, they always want to take their clothes off, whether it's in the sauna (aka bastu) or just at a tea party/"waffle orgy."

Tonight was a party celebrating Per's 60th birthday, so there were a lot of drunk Swedes at my house. Luckily they didn't all get naked as many Swedes like to do when they get together... We watched this Australian movie about suicide and secret love in high school with Anna, Iliyas, Amanda and a couple of the neighbors that were our age. It was a very weird film.
Well that's all for now.

Next week is höst lovet, or fall vacation, so I have the week off and I'm going to Gotland (an island in the Baltic Sea) with my family and Anna and Iliyas are also coming too. So we are leaving tomorrow night so it should be a lot of fun.

Day 80

2008-10-16T23:15:00.001+02:00

Today was just another average day at school, kinda boring, but not too bad. I was able to sleep in until 10, so that was nice. After school I helped Anna pick out boots that she was going to buy. (well I actually didn't pick them, she just wanted my opinion. Well I don't know if she even wanted it, but she just wanted me to tell her to buy them I guess) And after that I went to Iliyas' house and ate dinner there and then I went home and now I'm going to sleep and I know that this sentence has way to many and's in it. :)

Day 79

2008-10-15T21:55:00.002+02:00

I had a very late start today (1:20) and so I had hoped that I would be able to play the piano during the morning but Per was home when I woke up so I couldn't. Well I could, but I don't like an audience when I'm trying to learn something new because I have to keep playing it over and over again until I get it right and I'm sure that anyone listening would get really annoyed. So I wound up sleeping pretty late and then left for school a little early so I would have time to mail a post card. Then I went to school for my two classes, Biology and Physics. I like Biology because we were talking about genetics and I actually understood several of the questions on this sheet she gave us, and I was able to write answers without any help! Yay me!! Physics was a little bit of a different story, we were studying electrical forces. I understood the notes on the board and the sample problems he did, but when we actually did the work in the book, everyone was having a hard time understanding. After that I met Anna and we ate a salad at our favorite salad place in town and then hung out for a couple of hours and then I went home and played the piano (Finally!!) because nobody was home. I finally learned the second part to When You're Gone and I can play up until after "Can you see how much I need you right now?" I spent the rest of the night on the computer, talking to my dad and studying a little bit.

Also, I would like to wish a Happy Birthday to Maria! Grattis på födelsedagen!!

Day 78

2008-10-15T21:53:00.001+02:00

Today was a normal day at school, blah blah blah.... boring

After school was just as boring, I spent almost the whole night just watching clips from madTV on youtube. I just didn't feel like working on online homework, especially after spending so much time on it yesterday.

Day 77

2008-10-15T21:46:00.002+02:00

I got to sleep in this morning and I didn't have to be in school until around 10:00. I caught the bus and met with Emelie and Ida, two of my classmates who live a couples stops after me, and we talked. Right as we were pulling up to our stop, Emelie got a call and we found out that our Biology Lab class was canceled and so was our regular Biology class which meant that I had no lessons today. I wound up going to school anyway and hung out with them and some other friends and waited for the cafeteria to open and then I ate and then went home. I spent the entire afternoon from around 12:00 until like 5:00 working on English and History work. I feel like I'm always playing catch up. I hate how my English class thinks it's a history class. I also told my teacher off in an assignment, because we had to write our own Declaration of Independance (told you it thinks it's a history class!) but instead of declaring independance, we had to declare freedom from something else that was bothering us so I declared independance from online classes. We had to include a list of grievances like in the real one, so I did just that. It made me feel good after doing it, I finally really got to speak my mind and tell the teacher about how I think the curriculum is medicre and the assignments are uninventive, stale and have little or no educational value whatsoever.
Oh yeah, I went there.

Day 76

2008-10-15T21:41:00.002+02:00

In the morning they both left and then I was bored. The weather was really nice out and I really didn't want to just sit inside so I meet Iliyas in town. We hung out for a while and then met Gen, who was with her best friend from Enköping, the town she used to live in before she moved to Uppsala. We hung out with then for a while and then we all went home and I ate dinner with Iliyas' family and then we went to my house and watched a movie. I really reccomend watching Amelie, even if it's in French, because it's really good; really wierd, but really entertaining.

Day 75

2008-10-15T21:31:00.002+02:00

Today we all (Iliyas, Gen and I) went to Anna's counselor's house to hang out and study. We wound up not studying at all and just watched A Shot At Love with Tila Tequila because they were running a marathon. We went shopping for food and made our own lunch which consisted of a GIANT peice of bread (like a foot long and 1/3 foot wide) , smelly but really tasty French cheese and french fries. We wound up buying a 2.5 kilo bad of fries, because it was only one crown more than a 1 kilo bag, so we figured why not. (that's 5.5 pounds of fries, Americans) So then we watched more tv and then later her counselor came home and soon after that we left for my house. (not because we don't like her counselor or anything, we just wanted to go there) We just hung out and talked and stuff for almost the whole night and then went to sleep. Gen and Anna stayed over, but Iliyas went home.

Day 74

2008-10-15T20:39:00.003+02:00

Today I had a test in math. Now everyone must think, "Oh math is easy because there's no language involved." WRONG!!! It's really hard if maybe you don't understand the directions, or if the test is comprised of about 30% word problems. I was able to make out the meaning of a few of them, but then I wasn't sure what to do with the numbers. I guess it doesn't really matter because I'm not getting grades here but still I wish I could have done better. There's always next time, I guess. My teacher was babbling on a couple of weeks ago about how math is so international, but I wonder, if it's so international, why do I have to bring a DICTIONARY to math class?

After school I went and hung out with Anna, who helped me feel a little better after the confidence-shattering test.

Day 73

2008-10-15T20:36:00.002+02:00

Today was just another average day at school, sorry to disappoint, nothing really special.

Day 72

2008-10-08T23:37:00.002+02:00

Another sleep in today!!! But this time it was until 1:20!! I actually was planning on waking up at a reasonable hour and then working on some online homework and stuff, but that plan sort of failed when I woke up at 11:00. That pretty much gave me time to take a shower, eat breakfast and get dressed and ready and then catch the 12:23 bus #20 to town to get to school. I then got to school and sat through Biologi and learned about genetics (well I actually kind of already knew the stuff) and then went to Kemi and wrote post cards to my friends while the teacher was babbling about something that I didn't really care about... I did take notes though, so it's not like I didn't care completely, I just wouldn't have really gotten any more information from listening to her talk. Anyway... After school I met with Gen in town and we ate at Max, which I swear is going to be the last time for a while, and I'm definitely going to the gym tomorrow. I finally got home kinda later than I had hoped because I was planning on working on some more of my online stuff. I got home and then ate a little of the dinner they had saved for me (it was like a quice/pie sort of thing with ham and cheese and it was really good) and then Katarina came home from the gym and we talked for a long time (in Swedish) about my day and what I did yesterday and random things, and it was really nice. Then I went upstairs determined to work on my homework and I finally started working and realized that there is no way that I can complete this assignment and then spent a lot of time contemplating and thinking about how I can either get out of doing it, just not doing, getting a zero and moving on, or even dropping the course and seeing if I can pass my English class here off as "English III" back home. I finally came up with a solution, and please everyone don't think differently of me because of this, because this assignment has really been eating away at my sould for an entire week now. I have been losing sleep and been constantly streesed so I finally just got a friend to complete it for me so I can get this incredible weight off of my shoulders and stop the wrinkles and gray hairs from prematurely forming because of this one assignment. In case you haven't noticed, yes this does have to do with my furied rants about how much I hate poetry. The assignment is horrible and after I turn it in I plan to have a long talk with my teacher about it and how it should be removed to prevent further suffering. Anyway that's all for tonight, I need to get to sleep because I don't have a sleep in tomorrow. There is nothing to be learned or gained from being forced to write a poem in response to a dead woman's poem that the never intended to be published in the first place.

Day 71

2008-10-08T00:38:00.003+02:00

I had a sleep-in today, which was nice and I got to school at around 10:00 only to find out that my Mikrobiologi class was canceled and that I had an hour and a half to wait. So I called Anna to see what she was up to and then we hung out and went to this outdoor market thing near the "Nuclear Power Plant" aka the concert hall. (see "Day 3") After that I returned to school and had so much fun learning about stuff and blah blah blah. After school I met up with Gen who had just gotten back from a trip through Europe with her dad who had come to visit her. We hung out around town for a while and then came back to my house and watched movies with Amanda. Tomorrow I don't have to be in school until 1:20, so maybe I can actually wake up semi-early and work on some assignments! ...or not...

Day 70

2008-10-06T22:10:00.002+02:00

I had to get up early this morning. (well not that early, I guess I'm getting too used to sov morgnar and sleeping in) After a physics lab and a chemistry lab I had biology and then school was over at 12:35 so I ate lunch and then met up with Frenchie and we went and mailed some things. (I do not want to devulge any more details so as to not ruin surprises...) After that we went to Anna's house and hung out there for the whole afternoon and part of the night and I learned how to do a couple types of ballroom dancing with Anna which was really fun and funny.

Now I'm going to go to sleep pretty early so that I will be able to use some of the time tomorrow morning before school to work on this stupid English assignment. I HATE POETRY!!!!!! I hope that this doesn't change anyone's opionion of me, but I feel it is absolutely pointless to make young people suffer while studying it. It's bad enough trying understand the "hidden messages" and symbolism that nobody really cares about, but it's even worse when you are forced to write your own poetry. There is nothing that is learned or gained from this, there is no educational value whatsoever and I think that FLVS' curriculum is mediocre and downright horrible. They should not be trying to teach American History during an English class; I'm already suffering enough working for an actualy American History class, which I also absolutely hate. It is also way behind for an 11th grade level class, because the reading list includes 4 books that I read in EIGHTH grade English. And despite the fact that the previous sentence was a run on sentence (right before I posted it I just realized it wasn't, but I still would like to leave this here for dramatic effect) and I started this sentence with "and," I still have to say that I am DAMN good at English, (please excuse that colloquial phrase) even though I tend to overuse parentheses and ellipses (they are the "..." for those of you who didn't know) and I belive that the current ways of thinking in English "education" are an absolute atrocity. (excuse the run on and To think if I had actually spent all this time working instead of ranting, I might already be done with it, eller hur? I guess I'm not too bad at Swedish either... Well anyway, I certainly hope Anne Bradstreet is enjoying eternity burning in hell. :)

Can you find the subliminal message?

Day 69

2008-10-05T21:40:00.002+02:00

I slept really late (until like 12:30) and then stayed at Frenchie's house until around 4 and then headed home to eat an early dinner. I've spent the rest of the day at home just catching up on my online classes and talking to my mommy on skype. ^_^

Day 68

2008-10-05T21:34:00.003+02:00

It may have been a little confusing to understand my last post in terms of time, because I kept shifting tenses. So to explain; today, Saturday, is the day of Ewa's birthday and I spent last night at their house after the misunderstanding that was described in the previous post.
So I slept late like always and then we spent the rest of the day watching anime and movies and then at around 5 I went home to get a change of clothes and stuff because I was planning on spending the night again because the party would be over at around 1, and I knew I wouldn't feel like riding home that late because I'm lazy.
I came back at 6:30 and then we headed to Skarholmen, the yacht club, for the party. The party was nice, it was a little boring because it was mostly just a bunch of old people getting drunk and dancing to the live band. During dinner, which was an Italian buffet, there were frequent pauses to drop everything and start singing. They has distributed sheets with the lyrics to all these songs. There were at least 8 or 9 of these outbreaks of singing; it was quite funny, actually. Frenchie and I spent pretty much the whole time just talking because there was nothing else to do and then finally at around 2, we headed home and then went to sleep.

Day 67

2008-10-05T21:27:00.004+02:00

I had a sleep in morning today, so it was pretty nice. School was the same as always and after I went to Frenchie's house and wound up spending the night after misunderstanding the time we were leaving tomorrow. They said half past six, but they didn't whether it was in the morning or night, but I assumed that since they offered for me to sleep over, it must have been in the morning because that would be easier if I could just leave with them. But alas, it was at night, so there was no point in staying over, but it didn't really matter anyway... They have a really nice house in Södra Gottsunda. (not to be confused with regular Gottsunda, which is supposed to be a scary place at night)
The reason for this confusion was because tomorrow is Ewa's (the w is pronounced like a v: Eva) 50th Birthday, and "0" birthdays are a big deal here. Ewa is Frenchie's host mom and is my future host mom when we swap families after Christmas.

Day 66

2008-10-05T21:27:00.001+02:00

School day, same old, same old.

Day 65

2008-10-01T22:11:00.003+02:00

Today was pretty cool, besides the 3 hour Mikrobiologi class. We were experimenting with bacteria including E. coli, and I was the only one that seemed to think that it might be dangerous. I also was the only one to notice the the butane cans we were using were designed for camping and were filled with propane and had a warning on them: When burned, propane releases chemicals known to the state of California to cause birth defects, cancer and other reproductive harm. DO NOT USE INDOORS" As we were using about 8 of them simultaneously. And when I told people to take a look, they just thought it was kind of funny and so did the teacher. So much for having kids...

After mikrobiologi, we had lunch, but today was vegetarian's world day, so the food was rather nasty, so a group of us (my Swedish friends!!!) went to Subway to eat. There's no such thing as $5 footlongs, here, it's like $30000000 6", but luckily we had bogo coupons so it wasn't too bad. We ate out by the river in the same spot that I sat just a few days ago, but today it was rainy and very cold and icky out. After we ate we went back to school and had two more classes and then we were finished.

After school I went to Forex to exchange the cash I brought here because it hit an all time high today (which I though was strange considering the whole crisis thing) The rate was about 6.93 kronor for one dollar which is better than the 6.38 when I got here. The actual rate their (for buying) was 6.74, but that's still better than before so I exchange $450 and got around 3000 kronor. The rate for selling dollars was 6.99 meaning that it costs about 7 kronor to buy on dollar. The exchange rate made me happy all day.
After that I went home and changed and then headed for the gym where I met Iliyas and Anna. We spent a long time there, mostly talking and laughing, and then we went home and now I'm going to sleep.

Day 64

2008-09-30T23:02:00.002+02:00

Today was just an average Tuesday; slept in and went to school at 10. The morning was very exciting because when I woke up it was 2 degrees Celsius (35 F) and the grass was frozen!!! I was so exciting and took a picture, but it just looks like regular dew, you can tell that it's frozen...

So after a boring day of school I went to Iliyas' house and we finally finished watching Death Note and then we went to the gym and then I went home and now I'm going to sleep.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KAITLIN!!! GRATTIS PÅ FÖDELSEDAGEN!!!

Day 63

2008-09-29T23:32:00.003+02:00

Today was interesting.
I went into school at 10:15 and went to my biologi class. I knew they were having a test but I figured I should still show up, so I went in. The teacher then said, "Oj, Michael, du behöver inte att vara här" (you don't have to be here) so I didn't have to take the test (well I knew that I wouldn't have had to) and then I just left and tried to figure out what I would do for the next hour and 40 minutes until my next class. So I found out what everybody was doing (gotta love mobiles aka cell phones) and then a little while later I met Gen and we had lunch at Max. After a while we met with Anna and then a little after that Iliyas showed up and then Amanda so we all hung out for a while. I went home around 4 and then had dinner about an hour and a half later and then I went to Iliyas' house because he wanted to show me a new song he was learning on the piano (which I then picked up in like 10 minutes which made him a little mad) and then at aroun 7:30 we went to Gen's house to meet her dad who had come in from Australia. We stayed until about 9:40 and then rushed home and I got home a little late... Oops..

Day 62

2008-09-28T22:37:00.002+02:00

Today was not too interesting. I spent the morning and part of the afternoon catching up on my online classes, which was good because I really needed to.

At around 3 or 4:00, Iliyas came over and then Gen and then eventually Anna and we baked cookies with Amanda and then watched TV for a while and then everyone went home and I worked on some more English and History.

And that's it for today

Days 52-61

2008-09-28T00:49:00.004+02:00

It's been 10 days since my last blog post, but I've been pretty busy.

Over the last weekend I went to Stockholm again with Iliyas' family and we basically just walked around and went into a bunch of the tourist shops in Gamla Stan and ate at this really good Kebab and Felafel place.

Over the next week, I had sovmorgonar (sleep-in mornings) every day due to scheduling and classes being cancelled. I hung out a lot with Anna, Gen and Iliyas.

On Thursday and Friday we had no school; it's supposed to be a "study day" so I spent the time hanging out with Anna, Gen and Iliyas some more and we've watched a lot of movies, so it's been fun.

Pictures can be found here
On Thursday night, I was riding my bike with Iliyas to his house from the gym and I was suddenly violently attacked by a pole and was flung to the ground. I luckily did not hit my head (I wasn't wearing a helmet) but I was unlucky in the fact that I landed on the hard, unforgiving bike path instead of the nice soft grass next to it. Luckily I was wearing a leather jacket, jeans and leather gloves or my left arm would be very torn up. I escaped this vicious attack with only minor injuries; a swollen, bruised foot; a scraped (only a little bit) knee and a bruised hip bone. I was able to ride the rest of the way to his house but I wasn't really able to walk properly until today. It all happened because we were riding downhill and we picked up speed and went around a turning hill which then opened up into a big field shrouded in mist, which caught my attention, so I looked to the right and when I looked back... POLE!!
Gen was nice enough to wrap up my foot for me the next day when I got home which was nice, it did help, but that night I woke up in the middle of the night and it hurt so much that I had to rip the bandaging off, and then the pain vanished... weird

So tonight (Saturday) we watched Step Brothers, which had to be one of the dumbest movies I had ever seen. I had lost all trust in Will Ferell after Talladega Nights, but gained a little back after Blades of Glory, but alas, I do not trust his movies to be funny anymore. We actually stopped watching it after an hour because it was so bad.

So that's it for now, I'll try to keep posting consistantly, but I've been really busy with hanging out with friends and working on my online classes. (which I hate!)

Pictures can be found here

Day 51

2008-09-18T23:29:00.003+02:00

Today was one of my long days of school: 8:30-4:30. But I had this huge 3 hour break in the middle because I'm not taking another language (a lot of people aren't either) and Chemistry was cancelled, so I had nothing to do. A friend invited me to his house to pass the time because he lives really close, but then Anna grabbed me and dragged my with her class as they went on a little history tour of Uppsala and talked about some stuff that I didn't understand. It was fun though and a good way to kill time.

After I got back we went to the library to kill more time but then I was really hungry so I went to eat, and the lunch was so good! It was salmon fillet and I have to say that it was the best food I've had at school so far. After that I rejoined Anna in the library and we chilled for a while and then I had to go to physics.

I hate physics. Mostly because I can't understand anything and my teacher frightens me. He's rather strange looking and has more hair in his oddly-shaped beard-mustache-sideburn-chin-face thing than he had on his head even though he's not really that old. The classroom we have Fysik in is connected to some other room which I guess is like a lab or something, and he would keep going in there constantly for a while and then come out and then go in like 7 minutes later. Nobody knows why he does it, but we think he's hiding or something...

After school Iliyas and I met and went to the English Bookstore to wait for Anna to finish school. We were both reading this really funny (because it's mostly true) book called "The Xenophobe's Guide to Sweden." It was just so funny and full of typically Swedish things that we could relate to. After a while Anna showed up and we went to Subway to eat and then she left to go to some Advanced Swedish lessons.

Iliyas and I then went back home to get our bikes and then went to Friskis och Svettis, the gym, to work out, because my host family was nice enough to get me a membership. And yes, I know the name is very funny, it is the source of countless jokes, like "let's get frisky and sweaty" or "shall we go frisk and sweat now?" The name alone provides endless entertainment.

We stayed pretty late, until past 9 and then headed back to my house where we had fika and then Iliyas went home and then I went to sleep.

Day 50

2008-09-18T23:01:00.002+02:00

Today was pretty amazing because my first class (Mikrobiologi lab) was cancelled so that enormous three hour space left me a lot of time to sleep. I actually wound up waking up around 9:30 and I wasn't able to fall back asleep, so I got up and decided to practice the piano some more. I had already learned how to play the opening part to When You're Gone by Avril Lavigne and I wanted to learn the rest of it. I didn't need to be in school until 1:20 today so I spent the entire morning playing the piano. I learned how to play the next part of when you're gone (up to the part right before she actually sings "When you're gone") and I also learned how to play Take A Bow by Rihanna and My Immortal by Evanescence. I felt so proud of myself, but then I had to catch the bus. I actually got to school just a little bit late, because I missed the bus I should have taken because I was too busy playing the piano. I almost forgot to tell my method:youtube. I learned how to play the songs by watching tutorials on youtube and just memorizing the songs.

School only lasted for two hours and then Iliyas and I met up with Gen and we hung out around town for a little while, ate at Max (again) and then walked to her house, because she took her bike to school but we took the bus, so we just walked alongside her. Her house isn't too far away, about a 25 minute walk.

We spent a while at her house playing the piano, because I was dying to play and to show everyone my new skills, and at about 8:00 we left and headed for my house. On foot. It's rather far if you're on foot. We took a detour through Södra Gottsunda so Iliyas could get his bike and then we continued on to my house. They rode their bikes there and I waited 12 minutes for the bus because I had only used my card once today, so I still had another free ride. I still beat them...

So we got to my house and then we had fika again and then I gave Gen a bunch of music on her iPod and then it was getting late so everybody went home and then I went to sleep.

Day 49

2008-09-18T22:58:00.000+02:00

Today was just an average day of school, nothing really special to report.

Day 48

2008-09-18T22:47:00.002+02:00

Nothing much to report here, I went to the wrong Biology lab class, but it was ok because it was still my class just not my "group." For Biology and Chemistry labs, our class splits into two groups, so I went with the early one because I was there at 8:30, because nobody told me that our group didn't start until 10:00. After that I had a lot of free time because we had regular Biology next, but not for a while. So I hung out with a different group of people then I had been before, because I figured it would be good to branch out, and it surely was. We talked a lot about the US and the differences between it and Sweden and it was really good to make some more closer friends.

After school I met up with Gen (from Australia) and we went for fika at a place called Storken in the middle of Stora Torget (the main sqaure). While I was eating my favorite giant kannelbulle we noticed that a lot of people were speaking English around us, especially this big group of people sitting behind us. So after listening to them for a while, we decided that there were at least two Australians, two Americans, one Irish person, and someone that we thought might be from eastern Europe. After a while we figured we had to go talk to them so we gathered up the courage and finally went and introduced ourselves. We found out that our new friends were studying at the university, and that we were right about their nationalities, except for the eastern European girl, who turned out to be Greek. Unfortunately, right after we started talking to them they had to leave, but I'm sure we'll see them again because they told us they always hang out there.

Day 47

2008-09-18T22:46:00.001+02:00

Today we spent the morning preparing the house for the winter and pulling the small boat out of the water and flipping it over. We also finished cutting the grass and by 2:00 we were on the way home. Soon we were back in Uppsala and I spent some time at Iliyas' house and then went home.

Day 46

2008-09-18T22:42:00.002+02:00

Today was a lot of fun, we spent a lot of time cutting the grass at the house with a ride on mower and then we took a boat (with oars) across the lake to a little stream. We followed it up and discovered an abandoned saw mill that the stream was cascading over in a little waterfall. It was really cool.

Later, after showering and getting ready, we headed over to a party at the house of some friends of Iliyas' host parents. We mostly spent the night eating, watching the adults get progressively more and more drunk and playing video games, because there were a couple of other people our age there.

We went home at around 3:00 AM and then went to sleep.

Day 45

2008-09-15T23:41:00.002+02:00

Today was Friday, which is always exciting, but today was even more excited because I left for Hudiksvall with Iliyas' family for the weekend. If you've never heard of Hudiksvall, well, I don't really blame you, but it's located about half way between Uppsala and Sundsvall. Still not helping? It's in the very south part of Norrland. Well it's about a 2.5 hour drive away.

I got out of school early. (I got to skip PE, yes!!) and got home and finished packing up some crap. I then played the piano for a little while, because I've been teaching myself to play the opening part to When You're Gone by Avril Lavigne. At a little after 5, familjen Svensk (literal translation: the Swedish family, yes their last name is Svensk, which means "Swedish" in Swedish) came and picked me up and we were off. After a while we arrived at their summer house which was on a lake in some forest in the middle of nowhere, but it was very quaint and really nice. By the time we arrived there it was pretty late so we went to sleep not too long after arriving. That's all for today.

Day 44

2008-09-15T23:38:00.002+02:00

Today was just another average Thursday: the longest day of the week for me. Not because it's the day before Friday, but because it actually is the longest school day, as I get out at around 4:30. That's really about all I have to say about today... That is all

Day 42

2008-09-10T20:23:00.002+02:00

Today was another average day at school, except for the having only 2 classes and having a three hour break in between them. During the two hours of Mikrobiologi we looked at bacteria colonies that had been grown from samples taken from different areas, such as the air or the door handles. We then had to present our findings so I got up and reported to the class about the air, "Luften är jätte disgusting och dirty." (the air is very disgusting and dirty) Everybody laughed, not at me, with me. After that I had my three hour break, in which at some point I would be eating lunch, but I decided to wait for Anna and Iliyas to finish their classes and then we went together. For lunch the main course was blood pudding, which sounded and looked absolutely disgusting, so we passed and had this macaroni casserole thing instead and some potatoes. After that Iliyas left because he had a class, so Anna and I went into the IB "house" which is this building next to the school where the IB students hang out and study, but Anna knew the code to get in. So we hung out there for a while and then I went to Biologi for an hour and then came back and a while after that we left to go into town to fika. After fika(ing) for over an hour, we met up with Amanda and then went and ate (again) and then met Gen at Max and watched her eat, and then I left and went home because they were all going to a choir rehearsal. So then I came home and was talking to a few people online and then Iliyas came over because we were bored and then we played some video games for a while and then he left and now I'm going to sleep.

Day 41

2008-09-10T20:08:00.002+02:00

Today I had a sleep-in because my first class wasn't until 10:00. So I left the house at around 9:30, which is cutting it a little close, (because I was taking my bike) but I figured I would be fine. That was until I hit Dag Hammarskjölds väg (the long road that leads right into the city) and discovered, much to my horror, that there were 300000000 mph winds blowing against me, which caused major delays, so I arrived at school at about 10:14. I then realized that I left my schema (schedule) at home so I had no idea which class I was supposed to be in or which room, so I just sat around and waited until it was over and then rejoined my class. Oh well, it was just Mikrobiologi (do I need to translate that?) and they were just doing some bacteria thing that I wouldn't have understood anyway...

I realized that I will not be able to survive in Spanish 4 (in Swedish) so I'm going to try to transfer back down to either Spanish 3 or Spanish 2.

After school today I went with Gen back to Iliyas' house and we watched more movies; Twisted (which was really good) and Sahara. (which I've already seen) It was a lot of fun and we had a good time. I had to ride my bike home in the scary darkness again... But it's not really that bad, at least its mostly downhill.

Day 40

2008-09-08T23:53:00.002+02:00

Today was a normal school day, but it was nice because I actually understood some of the things we were talking about in Biology. School ended at 12:30 today and then I had lunch (which wasn't very good) and then met Gen (from Australia) in town and we hung out for a while before meeting Anna and then after that Iliyas. We all hung out around town for a little while and then decided our plans for the evening; go to the gym together and then go to Iliyas' house and watch another horror movie. So I rode my bike home with Gen and then got ready to go to the gym. Katarina had booked a session with a personal trainer for me, which was very nice. It was actually a lot of fun and we want to make "Gym Mondays" a recurring event. Any caloric burning was probably nullified however when we ate at Max earlier in the day on top of me eating school lunch, and then we had ice cream and chips at Iliyas' house while we watched the movie. The movie was An American Haunting which was actually pretty good and I really liked it because it was one that I actually haven't already seen. It was pretty scary and really good, I would recommend it. Then I rode home alone, in the dark, at 11:10 at night through the scary parts of Vårdsätra. Well they are not scary like Eskilstuna at night, there's just these two parts that are just a big open field with trees all around, almost like a big clearing. There's lights on the road, so everything else is shadowy and creepy; it certainly doesn't help if you had just watched a horror movie... haha Anyway it's getting late now and I have to go to sleep, it's nice, however, because I can sleep in a little because school doesn't start until 10:00. Maybe I'll take the bike again, I could try to work off today's calories.

Day 39

2008-09-08T23:50:00.003+02:00

The highlight of today was going mushroom picking again in a forest somewhere outside of Uppsala. It was a lot of fun and we even had a little fika in the middle of the woods. Later in the afternoon, I went with Iliyas to the "beach" which is really just a nature reservation by a lake. It's also attached to a farm and there were some cows which I tried to pet, but they were too scared and ran away. After that we went back home and then I ate dinner and later went to sleep.

Day 38

2008-09-07T00:29:00.001+02:00

Today was pretty fun. I met up with Iliyas and Gen from Australia who just moved into our town. (she moved from Enköping and has been here for 7 months) We met in the center of the town; Iliyas and I rode our bikes (in the light rain) and met her at Max. We walked around for a little while and then had fika at a really nice cafe that had giant Kanelbulle and then walked around some more. We went to Videohuset and rented The Omen and bought some godis. (candy)We then ate at Max, but then Iliyas had to head home so we left and headed back home. Gen came to my house and we hung out and talked for a while then ate dinner and then Iliyas came back and we watched the movie, which was really good. (even though I've already seen it) Then everybody went home and then I went to sleep.

Days 33 through 37

2008-09-06T11:36:00.004+02:00

This week was so much fun, that it's going to be hard to condense it into only a short post, but here we go.

Monday morning we took the bus into town and managed to find the school with no problems and we met up with everybody else and then started our first Swedish class. The classes were really easy, as I had expected, but I had figured they would get better. The classes ran from 8:30 until 3:30 with lunch at a Rotary club and two fika breaks in between. Each day we ate at a different Rotary club, but they were all at the same hotel, which I found to be a little funny. The food was ok, but not really that great. Each time we had to all stand up and give our Rotary greeting: Hej, jag heter Michael och jag kommer från USA. We would then head back to the school for more lessons. Unfortunately, they did not really get any better, because there were a lot of people who had absolutely no prior knowledge about Swedish, so the classes had to move at a glacial pace, which was rather annoying for Iliyas, Hamza from France, Miranda from Canada and I, because we were already past this level. But it was still so much fun being together with everyone and hanging out in Eskilstuna, which I actually later found out is one of the most dangerous places in Sweden to be in late at night... But oh well... I'm alive and I survived even after we were chased by some crazy guy through town who was looking for two guys with drugs that were going to stab his girl friend and needed to use one of our phones. Oh yeah, and that other guy that was asking what hotel we were staying at, and we just pretended that we didn't speak English and that we were all from France. We got on the bus after that... That was Thursday night, after we had eaten at McDonald's because a Rotary is the manager so we could order however much food we wanted so everyone just pigged out. So after a week of fun, we finally all said goodbye and split up to our various cities. We all have each other's business cards, cell phone numbers and pins however. My blazer has so many pins on it now.

Pictures of this week (including the Viking Weekend) can be found here.

Days 31&32

2008-09-06T11:08:00.002+02:00

It's been a while, but I've been pretty busy and have been away for a week.
Today, we were heading to Västerås for the Viking Weekend and I had slept at Iliyas' house because his host dad was going to drive us there. We picked up Anna as well, even after he drove past her house, ignoring my observation of "I think that's her house," and then sent Iliyas to knock on some random persons' door, only to have Anna appear out of the house 4 doors down. Good thing the people weren't too pissy because we woke them up at 7:30 on a Saturday morning. After a rather fast, swerving, scary ride, we arrived in Västerås and were dropped off at some camp site in the middle of nowhere (as in, not anywhere near the city center) and we began to meet all the other exchange students. It was a lot of fun to meet so many new people; there were a ton of Aussies, a couple Kiwis (New Zealanders), Frenchies, Mexicans, Canadians, Americans, and one Italian girl, German girl and Japanese guy. There were also a bunch of Swedish students that had been to various countries last year. We did various viking activites such as rowing a big viking boat, ax-throwing, and archery. We slept in these giant tents and it was really really cold and very uncomfortable but actually quite fun. We had 15 people piled into the tent so we were all on top of each other, but it was really cozy and warm. The only problem was that the area was infested with mosquitoes and although I did not suffer a single bite, many other people got bitten a lot, especially Iliyas; we counted 25 bites.

We spent the next day just talking and getting to know each other, because there were almost 20 new people, about 10 "oldies" (Australians and New Zealanders) and a couple rebounds. We also worked on a presentation that we will have to do during our district conference in a month. At around noon, we all started heading to the train station in Västerås to head to language camp in Eskilstuna. The train ride was pretty nice because the trains were very modern and incredibly smooth; seriously, you could not feel any bumps on the tracks. We arrived in Västerås and then walked to the nearby Best Western hotel where we met with our new host families for the week. I was paired with Abraham from Mexico, which was good because I got to practice a little bit of Spanish. We met with our host dad here and he took us back to his house which was very nice and not too far from the city center.

pictures coming soon.

Day 30

2008-08-29T18:14:00.002+02:00

I missed another opportunity to sleep in today because I had forgotten that my first class doesn't start until November so I was in school at 8:30 with nothing to do until 10:15... I was lucky though, because I met my friend, Hannah and she invited me to come to her IB math class. (the IB program is all in English but I'm not allowed to go into it because they want me to learn Swedish) It was actually very nice to learn something; we learned about sets of numbers and stuff like that. Although I had never done that sort of thing before, I understood it instantly and was helping out the other people in the class. The teacher was really weird and said that today was ok, but I'm not allowed to come back again... Oops. Oh well. After that I still had some time, so I went to IB Philosophy. Those who know me well know my feelings for philosophy, but it was actually very nice; maybe it was because the teacher wasn't an obsessed, sadistic sociopath. The philosophy teacher was very nice and warmly welcomed me, unlike the math teacher. After that I rejoined my class and had a pretty good day. I finally got home (to an empty house because everybody is away) and now I'm heading to Iliyas' house for dinner and to spend the night. Tomorrow we're off for Viking Weekend and directly after that, Language Camp! So it might be a while before another post, just to give a warning.

Day 29

2008-08-28T19:00:00.002+02:00

Today was not all that exciting; I just went to school and then came home. I had my first Swedish-for-non-Swedish-people lesson today and it was painfully boring, because it began at the "I have never heard a single word of Swedish" level and the teacher was extremely obnoxious. Tomorrow is when the fun starts kind of, so until then, the future shall be shrouded in mystery. Also it's worth noting that after tomorrow, I will not be contactable through Skype, AIM, or MSN so tomorrow would be the time to contact me; noon (eastern time) would be good for me, even a little after that. After that I will be unreachable for a week. Well, not totally unreachable, you can always call my mobile (aka cell phone) but for everyone in the US of A, that can become expensive after a while. Well actually, its not too expensive...

Day 28

2008-08-27T22:35:00.005+02:00

Today was rather similar to yesterday; mostly just experimenting with water and stuff. Today, my waterproof pant-things were only a couple sizes too big and not horribly immense like yesterday's. We collected some more water samples and then put some chemicals into them and then took them to the lab and put even more chemicals into them and they turned so many fun colors and the whole time I didn't really know what was going on but it was still fun and this sentence just keeps going on and on and on it seems like it will never stop; it's got to be the longest run on sentence I've ever had, it just wont stop, but I guess everything has to end some time, so I guess it will stop now. It was a lot of fun in the lab because we got to wear lab coats and fun goggles that looked like designer sunglasses. After all this, we finally made the journey home and then I took the bus back home. It was really funny walking through town with a giant bag and then getting on the bus. Then I finally got back home to Sunersta (thats the part of Uppsala that I live in) And now, despite having started a sentence with "and," I'm going to sleep because it's almost eleven and I have to go to school tomorrow. I wonder if I should take the bus or the bike to school?

The past 3 day's pictures can be seen HERE

Day 26

2008-08-27T22:20:00.002+02:00

Today my class (NV 2-Biotek) headed to Erken on a field trip to study limnology, or the study of fresh water. The bus ride was a little over an hour and I talked with my new friend Anton the whole time. He is Korean, but he is adopted, so he doesn't speak it, but thankfully he was able to tell me about a good Korean restaurant in Stockholm! So we arrived there and then settled into our rooms, which where actually really nice. They were in this building that used to be somebody's house, but was then donated to the University. The rooms had two bunk beds in each, but our room only had three people, which was nice: Anton, Samuel and me. After we got settled in a little bit, we headed to the lab and began our experimentation. We were split into groups and each group would study a different part of the lake and we got the "not exposed to wind" section of the lake. So we had to put on these big rubber pants with attached boots over our clothes and then wade into the water to collect samples. The one I had was 3000 sizes too big in every direction, so I was definitely the most gangsta of everyone. It was a lot of fun to basically go swimming without getting wet and we collected a lot of samples of different plants, plankton, worms and snails. I even saw some fish but I wasn't able to catch them. After many hours of this, we went back to the "house" and then ate dinner, which consisted of meatballs and pasta (with ketchup!! yuck!!) and then we just hung out until sleepy-time. Two of my classmates brought guitars so they were playing and a couple people were singing. They sang some Beatles songs and some Disney songs in Swedish. (which was really weird for me, knowing them in English) I went to sleep at about 10:30 because I was really tired.

pictures coming soon...

Day 25

2008-08-27T20:00:00.002+02:00

Today was a Monday and a rather special Monday, because due to scheduling and cancellations, I only had 40 minutes of class today, but it somehow turned into 4 hours... Read more to find out... (this sounds like the summary on the back of some crappy elementary school novel...)

Anyway... I was very excited about today, because this one, lonely class (Biology) happened to be scheduled for 11:55, meaning that I would be able to sleep in, right?? WRONG!!!! I had forgotten that I was going to the Rotary Club today because Katarina was making a presentation about her job, so instead of sleeping in all day, I had to get up at 6:45 and go into town. Luckily we drove there so I didn't have to bike or take the bus. The presentation was interesting, even though I only understood about 26.385% of it. Everybody was really happy to see me and they all want to take me to do things like fishing and outdoorsy-things. And it's always nice to eat free food at a hotel. After the meeting, I rode my bike home (we took it on the back of the car, they have this magical rack that attaches to the tow-hitch on the back of the car)
--I need to just add a little interjection here about another thing I've noticed about Sweden. Firstly, almost every car that isn't a sub-compact (ex: smart cars and other itty-bitty ones) is a station wagon, (aka hatchback) to make a guestimation (that's right I just said guestimation) I would say it must be about 82.4% hatchbacks and there's practically no suvs or "big" cars here. My Honda Civic, which is considered a "compact" in the US of A, would be considered a normal/full sized car here. Also, there are a ton of Volvos (not a surprise) and a lot of Peugots, Renaults and Skodas. (in case you don't follow, those are types of cars)--
Getting back to the main story... I rode my bike home and then tried to go to sleep, but that didn't work, so I wound up watching American cartoons on the internet, because I got this sudden urge, and they brought pangs of nostalgia. (but not homesickness)
I then caught the 11:06 bus into the city, because it takes a little under thirty minutes, because it goes the ultra-long way around Gottsunda and Södra Gottsunda instead of taking Dag Hammarskjölds vag like I do when I take the bike. It also takes just under 10 minutes to walk from Slottsbacken (the bus stop) to school.
During Biology we mainly discussed the field trip we would be taking the next day to Erken. We were going to stay one night and conduct various experiments with the water. So after that I thought I was free for the day and I wanted to just go back home and sleep, so I figured I would go do that, right? WRONG!! AGAIN!! I found out that we were taking school pictures today (a little early don't you think?) and I figured I must have just missed the memo, but everybody else was surprised too. So I was thinking "Oh isn't that nice, it's just like SURPISE!!! pictures today!!" What really sucked, however, was that the pictures weren't until 16:00, aka 4:00 (that reminds me of something else, here they write times as 16:00 but they don't say "sixteen o'clock, they still say 4, well actually they would say klockan fyra...) So then I realized that I would have to wait three and a half hours just to take stupid pictures. But it wasn't all bad, because I was set to meet with my Rotary counselor Ulrica Ståhl for a visit to a local Biology museum. Upon arriving at the museum, however, we found out, much to her dismay, that the museum is closed on Mondays, despite the conflicting information presented on the website. So instead we took a little walking tour of Uppsala, and visited several University buildings. (anybody notice how I keep switching tenses throughout? That's because in some cases, tense shifts are necessary to make the sentences sound right, but also it partly because I am writing this two days after it actually happened, so it's confusing every time I write "today..." because it was not today. Also, anybody notice how I constantly keep changing from spelling out numbers and just typing the digits? No? I didn't think so, that's why I decided to point it out myself! ^_^) Here, the university, Uppsala University, (UU) is not on one central campus, but the buildings are split up and strewn (I always liked that word) across the city. So after walked all around, we got some ice cream and then I when back to school at about halv tre (2:30). Just as I was walking up to school, Anna (from Australia) came walking out and so we decided to go get ice cream (again!) because she wanted it and I had nothing to do. So we went and got ice cream and while we were eating, Iliyas (from France) called and wanted to come join us. So after having a little trouble finding us, he came and we got even more ice cream (so I had three that day... but I did miss lunch so...) and then Anna headed home and Iliyas and I headed back to school because we were both waiting to take pictures.

So I guess your getting tired of hearing about these people, but I promise that tomorrow and the next day will have many other new people in them. How do I know this? Well if you were paying attention and read my note about tense shifts in my story, then you would already know that I'm writing "today's" events on Wednesday evening.

So after a while longer, we finally took our pictures and then I took the bus home and then packed up all my things for Erken and then went to sleep pretty early (for me at least) at klockan halv elva. (10:30)
Tomorrow the fun starts (and the really funny pictures!)

Day 24

2008-08-27T19:50:00.006+02:00

Running a little behind, but here we go...
Today after we woke up, we all ate breakfast and then said our goodbyes and then headed for Kristinehamn to drop off my host-grandmother. When we arrived, we went into her house (well it's like a mini apartment, kinda like a multi-family house) and had fika, which was nice. She told me that the building was over 300 years old! (how long has America even been a country?) We had coffee, cookies, kanelbullar and chocolate biscuits which were all very good. Then we said goodbye and headed back home to Uppsala. I mostly listened to my iPod the whole time (although I must have listened to When You're Gone about six times...) About 40 minutes away from home, we stopped at this enormous candy store that had every type of (Swedish) candy imaginable and Amanda and I got some candy. They had some really strange ones, like salty octupus-shaped candy and egg-shaped (and possibly flavored >_<) candy, which I was too afraid to try. We also stopped at McDonald's on the way home and this was excited because it was the first time I had eaten at one, because I have been to them here before, but I haven't actually eaten anything. (when I went there I was hanging out with friends) I had their Asian Beef burger which was pretty much just a big burger with teriyaki sauce and cucumbers in it; it was pretty good though. Somebody back home check this for me: do we have Asian Beef burgers at McDonald's in the states? Or is it just here? Also here the Quarter Pounder is just called QP and the Big 'n Tasty drops the n and becomes "Big Tasty" and the Big Mac still looks the same. You can get just a regular cheeseburger for 12 kronor (thats "ingen big deal" as they say on the commercials here: not a big deal) I think it's a big deal, because 12 kronor, at current exchange rates, is roughly $2, and I believe unless things have changed since I left, you can get a regular cheeseburger (like with no meal or anything) or only like 59 cents or something. Then we arrived home and that was about it for the day.

Bwaaahh!!!! I absolutely forgot!!! For dinner tonight I experienced something so typically (and exclusively) Swedish: Surströmming (aka ~~rotten~~ fermented herring) The smell is well known for being absolutely horrible and when you want to have it, you have to open the cans and eat it outside or the house will forever be uninhabitable. Well it's not really that bad, (after a few years the house would eventually lose the stench) just after a while, it starts to get to you... The fish are whole (without heads and are already cleaned out) but you have to pull out the meat and try to remove the spine and the tiny bones in it. Then you put the pieces on knäckebröd (aka crisp bread, more like a large cracker than bread) along with potatoes butter and onions. Katarina was nice enough to prepare one for me, so I didn't have to get my hands all smelly and covered in ~~shit~~ herring. It didn't taste all that bad, and it definitely tasted better than it smelled. It was very salty and acidic; it didn't have the nicest flavor, but at least I can say that I've tried it. Most of my classmates were shocked that I even tried it, because they all hate it and most have never even had it!This is the Surströmming after it has been unleashed to wreak havoc on the world.

Day 23

2008-08-24T16:39:00.003+02:00

Today was a lot of fun. I woke up a little before 10 and ate breakfast and then we left for Eva and Tomas' boat. (my host-aunt and host-uncle) We headed to the water, which was pretty close to their apartment and got on a little boat, and I was thinking "I thought they said we were going sailing, how is it sailing if we're on a tiny motorboat?!" What I didn't realize is that we were riding the boat to the marina and then getting on the real sailboat. It was a lot of fun sailing to the island on Sweden and Europe's largest lake even though it was really cold because of the wind. We finally got there and got off the boat and went around the island mushroom-picking. This is actually a popular pastime; picking strange mushrooms and then eating them. It sounds rather crazy, but the mushrooms were actually pretty tasty and not poisonous, as I am righting this over 24 hours after I ate them, and I'm not dead. After we ate dinner on the island we sailed back to the mainland and just chilled for a couple hours and then I went to sleep.

You can see the pictures here.

Day 22

2008-08-24T15:24:00.005+02:00

Today was my second day of school, and I liked it a lot better than the first. Not that the first was bad or anything, its just that I probably spent more time out of school than in school today. the day had an interesting start, however, because it was Katarina's birthday, so, following Swedish tradition, we all woke up up with singing, cake and presents. After a big breakfast I had to scramble to get ready, although I guess I didn't scramble fast enough because I missed the bus... But luckily Katarina and Per were taking the car to work today, so they were nice enough to drop me off at school so I didn't have to ride the bike.

My first class was an elective block and I had chosen photography because I had figured that it would be easy and fun, so I headed down to the classroom it was supposed to be in and as I was waiting, who shows up? Anna, from Australia, so we waited outside the room, but then we realized that nobody else was there so we were beginning to think that we were the only ones, but no teacher showed up, so we asked some administrator and she pointed out to us that the class didn't start for a couple of weeks, so we suddenly had nothing to do. So we decided to walk into town (well we were already in town, but to a different part of town) and get something to eat. (well I wasn't hungry because I had that big breakfast, but she didn't eat anything) So we ate and talked for about an hour and then headed back to school and I went to Swedish class. It was kind of hard to understand, but then the teacher handed out this paper that showed a river that flowed into the "literary ocean" with little streams from Greece, Rome and some other places that demonstrated the course of literature over time. I actually felt good because I recognized many of the authors and their pieces of work, and I had already read many of the books. But then Anna showed up and pulled me out early so we could go meet with Sven. I forgot to mention this, but we had organized to go meet with him because we wanted to manage some parts of our schedule or schema. So after that, we had some more free time, because I didn't really need to go back to Swedish (well I could have but I didn't really want to...) so we went and ate lunch which consisted of "chicken bits." When I first read that, I was a little scared, but upon arriving in the lunch room, I realized that they were chicken fingers with some curry sauce on the side that was really good. After that we decided that we would go with Anna's host sister to fika, which was fun. After about an hour I had to go to my next class which was Math.
I figured math would be the one class besides English that I would be able to understand, so i was kind of looking forward to it, except that fact that it was 2 hours long... It wasn't that bad however, because everything was really easy and it's all stuff that I already knew how to do. Sweden is really far behind in math compared to America. Another thing about Swedish schools that I like is that most teachers let you listen to your iPod during class, which is really cool. I didn't have mine, but I did have my phone and the headphones for it, but I decided I would wait at least a week or so before trying it, just in case... I don't want to make a bad first impression... We had a break half way through the class which was nice and I also managed to answer two phone calls without anybody noticing... Which reminds me of another topic about school; you are allowed to use your cell phone (mobil) here during school, just not during class. Which really makes sense because its not doing anybody any harm if you use it between classes, but at home they go apeshit if they see a phone. You're not supposed to use it during class but everyone does anyway, its just usually sms (text messaging) not calling like me...

I also forgot to mention before that since I'm an exchange student, nothing that I do really matters and I'm not getting grades because I'm not in the full class. Here each class is spread over 3 years so I can get a grade for just a third of it. It's better off this way anyway because if I was being graded, I would be failing already... Well maybe not already, but I would be pretty soon.

So, after math, Anna and I met up again and headed to the supermarket to go get flowers for Katarina. I had gym class then, but it wont be starting for another couple of weeks like photography so we just left (I still can't get over the whole leaving school thing...) and went to look at the flowers. The local florist was way too expensive so we only bought filler flowers from them and bought some yellow and red roses from ICA, the supermarket and made a little bouquet. We also got some små godis (candy) for oursleves and then waited for Katarina and Per to come pick me up.

They finally came and we gave her the flowers which she loved and then we left (when I say "we" I mean Katarina, Per, Amanda and myself) and were headed to Karlstad in western Sweden. We were going to see Katarina's sister, Eva, in an outdoor play with horses and dogs. So after about 4 hours we arrived in Kristinehamn and picked up my host grandmother, who is 82 and only spoke a little English but was really really really nice to me. Then we headed to Karlstad and finally arrived on this horse farm as the sun was beginning to set and a fog was rising from the ground.
The play started a little later at about 9:30 when the sun had almost set. At first it was very interesting, and there was very little dialog, which made it very hard to understand, and it only got worse. I'm not saying the play was bad, it was just very very very very confusing and very very very very hard to understand, and everyone was just as lost as I was because the dialog did not explain anything. We all agreed that they could have cut the play by about an hour (or two) because it was too long and frankly rather boring. But I still thought it was really cool with the horses, they were very well trained.

After the play we headed back to Eva's house and after a while we had dinner, which consisted of kräftor, (crawfish) prawns and some type of crab claws. (maybe stone crab) It was very good and after all was said and done, it was about 2:30 and I was really tired so I went to sleep. It was a very busy day and I had gotten up that morning at 6:45.

Day 21

2008-08-21T22:38:00.002+02:00

Today was a very interesting day as it was my first day of school. I awoke at the horrid hour of 6:45 or qvart i sju and then got ready for school. After a breakfast of yogurt and cereal (mixed together, because that's how they eat it here) I left the house at 7:30 or halv åtta and headed for the bus stop which was about a five minute walk away. I waited for the bus for a while and paid for my fare with a text message (its 5 kronor cheaper that way) and then got on the bus. At the next stop, Anna (from Australia) got on; this was no coincidence, it was carefully planned, and a few stops later, Iliyas (from France) got on and then we rode into town where we got of and walked in the rain for about ten minutes to school. As soon as we arrived Anna started saying hi to everyone and we felt all sad because we didn't know anyone yet... but then I saw a bunch of people that I knew and I started saying hej and then I felt better about myself. ^_^

We all gathered in the Aulan (like an auditorium) and then they gave a speech about what a great year it will be (of which I did not understand a single word) and then we headed to our respective classes. So we all met in a room and they said some words about the upcoming year and thankfully one of my friends, Viktor, translated for me and then we got calendars (planners/agendas) and then we left to go to our next class. (even though it was for a while) That's one thing very different about Swedish schools; there is a lot of free time in between classes. Then one of my teachers (Stina) pulled me aside and was nice enough to take me to the office ~~to get punished for being a stupid American~~ to get my meal card, bus card and locker key. The meal card is to ensure that non-students or former students or homeless people don't try to come and get a free meal and you scan it every time you go in, which is kinda cool. The bus card is for anybody that lives more than 6 kilometers away from school so they can ride the city bus for free (the city buses here are sooooooo nice and they're really big and green) twice a day (once to school and once back) or if you want you can ride the bike to school and then use the bus card to go into town later... And finally, the locker key; well it's not that exciting but the lockers here actually have keys instead of combination locks so that's cool.

After this I found my classmates hanging out in the hall so I stayed with them until my next class: English. It was actually a lot of fun because the teacher was American and spoke 100% English during the whole class; not a single word of Swedish. We practiced some tongue twisters, then we practiced say Shakespeare-era insults at each other (Thou are an onion-eyed serpent's egg!) and then we did a group exercise that involved telling a story, with each group member adding on from the last. Our group's story mysteriously paralleled the plot of the movie Speed, but that wasn't my fault, the guy who started the story made it about a bus with a bomb that explodes if the bus goes under 50...

After English we went to Chemistry and everyone warned me that the teacher was really mean and nasty, but when I met her, she seemed very nice, but maybe that's just because I'm an exchange student... Haha I actually like that she spoke very clearly and I could understand a little bit, but when she started using bigger words she lost me.

After this we had lunch which consisted of some kind of soup with bread and this nasty "pancakes" that were neither American nor Swedish style; they were square and mushy and rather disgusting... but everything else was good.

After lunch we had a "Language block", so I decided to go check out Spanish 2 to see if it was too easyt. They only offer Spanish 2 or 4 for my schedule, and I have already taken Spanish 2 back home, but I figured it might be nice to take a class where I actually know what's going on... There were only about 5 others in the classroom, but the teacher seemed nice enough and she could speak Swedish, English and Spanish, so it wasn't too hard to communicate with her. But after about 10 minutes she said we were done even though we hadn't learned anything, so we left and she gave us textbooks to take.

So I met up again with my friends and we had some time to fika, so we ate kanelbullar and drank coffee while we talked about stuff. People always keep asking me why I chose Sweden, and now every time someone asks me, I try to come up with a really crazy answer, like "I LOVE Abba" or something funny like that. It's a good way to break the ice anyway.
...dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen....

Moving along, we had physics, which was absolutely impossible to understand, and also absolutely impossible to stay awake during. So I basically stared at the floor and fell asleep with my eyes open.. Then finally the class was over and we headed to what I thought was Swedish class, but turned out to be Biology.

The room was really interesting, probably to a downright distracting point, because the side of the room where I was sitting had about 6 fish tanks of various sizes all filled with different types of fish and tons upon tons of algae. two of the tanks were really small and had only algae in them, I think this was so some type of study. The teacher passed out some information about a field experiment that we are going to conduct in a small town outside of Uppsala. We are going to spend one night there and conduct various experiments on the water and aquatic life there and since I'm not getting any grades and I can barely understand them, I'm just tagging along and getting closer to my classmates. This was the final class of the day, so after that I left and I was able to find my way home on the bus all by myself! And I also got to use my fancy new bus card, which was fun because you have to wave it in front of the machine and then hit a button, but mine wouldn't register, so I had to stand there for a while waving my card around like an idiot while people stared. Well it actually wasn't that bad... I got it after like three tries, so maybe I'm exaggerating...

So I arrived home and then remembered that I was having dinner at one of my Rotary contact person's house so I got ready and then she came to pick me up. Her son was leaving on exchange for Ireland this Saturday so she wanted me to meet him before I left. Dinner was nice and during the meal, vi pratade bara svenska (we spoke only Swedish), which really boosted my confidence level and made me more confident. For some reason it was easier to understand them than just about any other Swedish person I have met... maybe it was because we used a lot of "Swenglish," so I guess we didn't truly speak only Swedish.

So tomorrow is my second day of school, and it will probably be a little better than today because I wont be so tired, and hopefully I can try to understand a little more. And maybe I will actually try speaking Swedish with my friends, because I have to say, with some guilt, that it is way too easy to just let them speak English because they are so willing to practice speaking it. I'll have to insist: bara svenska! bara svenska! ingen engelska! After school tomorrow, my host family is taking me up a little north and we are going to see my host aunt perform in a play, and then we will go sailing if the weather permits, so I am greatly looking forward to this, so until next time,

Hej då!

Day 20

2008-08-20T21:56:00.002+02:00

Today was rather interesting, it started off with me waking up and then I suddenly felt like riding my bike so I called Iliyas and asked him if he wanted to ride into town but then I found out that he was already there so I raced off to meet him. We ate at Max (well actually he just ate) but since we didn't have bike-locks we couldn't leave our bikes so we just rode around for a while and then I got a call from Anna and about 20 minutes later she met us at Stora Torget (the main square) and then we went shopping for some school supplies, which actually turned out to be just a notebook because apparently that's all I would need for now. So then she took the bus back to my house and we rode back and the funny thing is that we only arrived about 5 minuted after she did, despite the fact that the distance was about 8 kilometers. So we met Anna at my house and Amanda was waiting for us, because I had accidentally locked her out because she didn't bring her keys with her... So then we hung out for a while at home and then Anna left and then Iliyas left and then Katarina came home from her conference that she had been at for the past day and we had a quick dinner. Then Katarina left to pick up Per at the marina because he finally sailed the boat back.

Well it's a little after 10, and I'm going to sleep now because I have to get up around seven tomorrow and catch a 7:40 bus into to town for my first day of school! I can't wait and I'm really excited, even though I won't be able to understand anyone or anything that's going on around me... So that's all for tonight and wish me luck for tomorrow!

Day 19

2008-08-19T22:53:00.003+02:00

Today proved to be slightly less exciting then I originally had hoped, but it wasn't too bad. I started off like countless other days with mere vegetation and I spent most of the day reading online humor sites and funny blogs to pass the time. Amanda came home from school and we were planning to do something, but we couldn't really figure out anything to do and the plans kind of fell through. So I called Iliyas (from France) and asked him if he had any ideas of what to do and he invited us over to play video games and hang out so we figured that sounded alright. Then Amanda got a call from her parter in an upcoming sailing competition and they had to practice today, so a little later she left with her friend and I went to Iliyas' house in Södra Gottsunda, which is where I will be staying for the second half of the year. (to clarify, they will be my second host family and he will come stay with my current host family) They have a really big house and they seem very nice. We played Super Mario World on the Super Nintendo which really brought back fond memories of childhood. (even though it wasn't that long ago) After I few hours we stopped and had some ice cream and then talked for a while about different things and then it was getting pretty late and dark so I decided to head home. Now, it's a little after eleven and I won't be going to sleep just yet, but probably pretty soon. Tomorrow will probably be just as boring, but the day after is when school starts so that should be exciting and fun.

Monday

2008-08-19T00:58:00.002+02:00

Today is day 18, but who's counting?

Today was just like many others; I mostly just vegetated on the couch or in my room for the whole day and thats about it. Tomorrow we hopefully have something planned for the afternoon so that should be a little more interesting than today. Also all my readers (even though there's not that many of you) please keep Tom in your prayers and hope he has a quick recovery from his hip surgery that he had today.
Thats all for now.

Random thoughts

2008-08-17T17:34:00.003+02:00

here are just some random thoughts that suddenly came to me:

I have yet to see Swedish fish. (except the icky black ones that are salty-black licorice flavored)
Fika is amazing
People here dont text nearly as much as in America, they think I'm crazy when I say that most people send between 2000-3000 texts or "sms's" every month
They call it "sms" instead of text here (sms is the official acronym for a text message and mms is the acronym for a picture message)
Still haven't had meatballs but will be having them sometime this week
I love Sodastream and we need to get one! (it's a magical machine that carbonates water)
Biking isn't that bad
School will be fun, even though I wont understand most of it for a while.
Swedish people talk very very fast
I can live without Starbucks and Dairy Queen
I love yogurt
yogurt+cereal = good ^_^
It actually won't snow nearly as much as I thought it would
language camp will hopefully be a lot of fun

thats it for now

Today we fika(ed) with a friend of Katarina and her daughter and then we helped them load a mattress that we were storing here onto their car and now I've just been writing blog entries and journals for Rotary all day. Do check out my journal Although I don't think it's been posted yet but probably some time later tonight.

Day 17

2008-08-17T14:45:00.002+02:00

today was definitely another one of those unproductive days; I mostly just sat around watching tv and I saw "Who's That Girl" with Madonna in it, it's from 1987 and was actually kinda funny. I watched some more tv and then we had dinner and then watched Stranger Than Fiction, which was actually pretty good, even though it was a little slow in the middle. After that, I went upstairs and studied some Swedish and then went to sleep again at around 12:30. I tend to sleep about a full 12 hours every day; from around 12:30 at night until almost 12:30 the next day.... But that will all change this Thursday...

Day 16

2008-08-17T13:08:00.002+02:00

Running a little behind, but here we go:

Today stared off like many others, but quickly elevated to a level of excitement that was not extremely high, but still rather acceptable. I rode my bike into the city (distance which I now know is about 8.2 kilometers) to my school, Katedralskolan in the city center. I met Katarina outside of the school and we went inside. It had a little bit of a funny smell and was dark and a little creepy with nobody in it, but I think it will be better once school actually starts. I think the smell came from the new flooring they were installing on one side of the building. We met with a lady, whose name has escaped me, (just like everybody else's) who discussed my classes and the program that I would be placed in. In Swedish gymnasium, (upper high school, grades 10-12) one chooses a program (kind of like a major) that corresponds with their desired field of study. As I currently do not know what my intended field of study will be, I had no idea of which program I should go into, but we've decided that the best program for me would be the NV2-Biotek program, which is mostly science, including Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Micro Biology. I met with my physics teacher also, but again I try to remember his name, but to no avail. He gave me the physics textbook that we will be using, which is good because now I can try to translate or at least look up the subjects in English that we will begin to study now.
I also found out that there was no room left in the Japanese class, but I'm ok with that because it is supposedly late in the afternoons and I dont want to stay later than I have to, and it will be difficult enough learning Swedish (and probably Spanish) along with Japanese; especially trying to learn Japanese in Swedish. This brings me to another point: I will probably also take a Spanish class here , which is good because I can continue my Spanish when I get home. the only problem is, for this year, they only have Spanish 2 or Spanish 4, and as I've already completed Spanish 2 in the States, I don't think I would want to repeat it, but on the other hand, I don't know if I can handle Spanish 4, as this would be skipping an entire year. And again, the whole "learning a foreign language in another foreign language" thing might make it difficult as well. If I take Spanish 2, then there's a good chance that it's all things that I already know, but it might also help me learn some Swedish in reverse. (If I already know the Spanish word they are teaching , but I don't know it in Swedish, I will successfully be learning Swedish in Spanish class)
I also found out about several other classes that I am allowed to drop from my schedule because they are stupid. Just kidding, actually because I'm an utbytestudent aka exchange student, and that makes me special. I'm probably going to drop web design, because I kinda already know it, and doing so would let me go into school late on Tuesdays, because it's the first class of the day, and let my leave early on Thursdays, because it's the last class of the day. I also think I'm going to drop music, as I don't play an instrument and I have more important things than music...
I also have one (well actually two) periods where I can choose a class to take and there are several choices but the ones that I think I can actually handle are Photography and Film. Photography seems like a nice easy class, and Film seems like it might be fun, but a little difficult because it involves watching movies and then having serious discussions about them. (and I was never good at picking up the subtle nuances that make a film a "masterpeices" while at the same time costing millions of dollars just for a single two second shot that nobody will even remember except the freaks that go to Sundance) Wow, that was a little rant there, anyway....
I can also take Psychology, and actually learn something (Anna Cullen!!!) but that might be too difficult and I don't really want to repeat, and I don't think I would be able to survive in Swedish Law.
I have a little bit of time before school starts on Thursday (yeah, Thursday, not Monday!) to make my choices for the classes and see how everything works out.

After the meeting we went to the supermarket and bought a few things, and it was a lot of fun, as it was my first time in a Swedish supermarket. We bought some ice cream and then waited for Iliyas (if you don't know who that is, then maybe you should pay more attention to my previous posts!!) (I also realized that explaining who he is would take about two words, while this whole parenthesized rant took 38) to arrive at the school, because Katarina was going to go in with him to his meeting, because his host parents ~~don't love him~~ were working and his Rotary contact-person/counselor is ~~negligent~~ on vacation. So I waited outside a different office while they met with Sven (see I actually remembered one name!) and then we went home. I was too lazy to haul my fat ass back home on the bike (there are a lot of hills on Daghammarskjöldsvägen and its very tiring) I went home in the car with Katarina and then we ate dinner and then we watched Rush Hour 2. Katarina went to bed then, but I stayed up and watched CSI and then Taxi (with Queen Latifah) and then I went to sleep.

Day 15

2008-08-15T00:12:00.002+02:00

Today I met my other host sister, Anna, who works at a hospital in Stockholm. She is leaving for a week-long hiking trip to Norway tomorrow and was preparing everything for the journey. Thats about it. As you can tell, I'm rather tired and this is the bare minimum of details. Sleep time now; its 12:13

Day 14

2008-08-14T16:46:00.001+02:00

Today I took my bike into the city with Iliyas (from France) and back again, it was over 22 kilometers. That's about it.

Day 13

2008-08-13T00:06:00.003+02:00

This here is the homemade bread dough (read below for the story)

These here are two types of yogurt; strawberry-passionfuit(the Yoggi one) and plain vanilla (the square one) and on the bottom is mayonnaise, which comes in a tube here. the green one is regular and the yellow one is lemon flavored.

Today started exactly the same as the past couple of days, and like the others it really didn't get interesting until Katarina came home. I watched the Olympics and that was about it for the day.

After Katarina got home, we watched a little tv and then we started making some bread from scratch. It had a lot of whole grains and some nuts in it and it smelled really good when we put it in the oven. We ate dinner outside because it was rather warm tonight and a little bit after that we took the bread out of the oven. We then watched some more news and a summary of the day's Olympics and a little later we tried some of the bread and it turned out really well and I really liked it. After that we watched American Idol (which is still running here and there's six left) and then I came up here and I'm getting ready to go sleep. I also just found out that Bernie Mack and Isaac Hayes died and that made me a little sad... :(

Day 12

2008-08-11T23:37:00.002+02:00

Today was slightly more exciting than yesterday, although it started out quite similarly to some others (see days 7 and 11 for details)

The first highlight of the day was dinner which consisted of Swedish pancakes. It may sound funny, but pancakes are a dinner item here and are eaten with different types of jam instead of syrup. One takes a thin pancake on a plate and spreads a line of the jam on the pancake, then rolls it into a little tube. This is then cut into bite sized pieces and ingested; this process is repeated until all pieces have been ingested. Three choices of jams were present at tonights dinner; strawberry (chunky style), apple sauce, and lingonberry. The strawberry jam had little pieces of strawberry in it and was my favorite, and I tried the lingonberries, but they turned out to be almost inedibly sour. I also forgot to mention that before one even begins to commence the pancake-ingestion process, one must first ingest a soup, (it was actually very tasty and had chicken and little shrimp in it) as this is the customary procedure. Usually it is a type of pea soup, but tonight it was a creamy chicken base.

After dinner, we biked over to a family's house to give their son, Daniel a gift as he is going on (non-Rotary) exchange to Ohio. They family was having a little going away party with their neighbors and we also found out that it was also his birthday. (Katarina had forgotten this) So we sat through their dinner while I was trying to make sense of what his mother was saying because she speaks so quickly that native Swedish speakers have a hard time understanding her. She was very nice though, as was everybody else. So we finally left at almost 11 and headed home and now it's almost 12 and time to go to sleep.

Day 11

2008-08-11T23:36:00.001+02:00

Today was very boring, blah blah blah. Spent the whole day on the computer reading about plane crashes and sinking ships on Wikipedia. That pretty much sums up day 11.
The end

Day 10

2008-08-10T00:17:00.002+02:00

Today I awoke rather early at 9:00 (that's early for me) because Katarina and I were going to Stockholm. We took Iliyas (from France) with us because he hadn't been to Stockholm yet. We also gave our neighbor (I think her name is Anita if I remember correctly) a ride because she was going to meet with some friends and it would save her a train ride. Anyways....

So we had a nice time in Stockholm and saw some of the sights that we missed last time I was there. The Vasa museum was pretty interesting, as it housed a ship (called the Vasa, named after the king that time) that sank in Stockholm harbor when it was first launched. It was excellently preserved, but they estimate that it will only last about another 200 years before it completely deteriorates. It was pretty amazing actually.

After that we met up with some friends and went to fika at a nice cafe. The food was really good and we had a nice time.

After that we parted with them and walked around Gamla Stan (old town) with tiny winding streets and souvenir shops selling Swedish flags and shirts. It had such an old world feeling and I really liked it.

Well that about sums up the day, for dinner we had some sushi and it was alright, but we're going to try a different one next time. Hopefully I can find a Korean BBQ place here... After dinner we watched a movie called 21 Grams and it was really good, I suggest that you watch it. Right now. Seriously. Now.

Just kidding, not now. But soon. Very soon. In about six minutes and thirty eight seconds from now.
Anyway, that's it for today so God natt

Do have a look at today's pictures; they can be found HERE!

Day 9

2008-08-09T18:40:00.002+02:00

A little late as usual in posting yesterday's activities, but I got home late and I was tired.

Yesterday had yet another uneventful start, but it was the evening that was of much more interest. I met up with a group of 7 of my future classmates and we fika(ed) at Mc Donalds. i may have explained what the concept of fika is, but for those who do not know, it is a unique aspect of Swedish culture that can most easily be described as a coffee break. Friends meet at a cafe or coffee shop and sit and drink coffee and eat pastries like Kanelbullar. This can be done anywhere, and we did it at Mc Donalds and it was a lot of fun. After about an hour we headed over to the movie theater to get our tickets which cost 100 kronor (about 15 USD) to see Mamma Mia. Its funny how I keep doing so many stereotypically Swedish things, like going to IKEA or watching Mamma Mia. I have to say it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be; it was a nice feel-good, happy movie. Meryl Streep sang much better than I expected her to, but Pierce Brosnan can not sing at all and should never ever try to or even think about trying to sing ever ever again. Another thing, I found the character Sophie (the girl who wanted to find her dad) to be rather obnoxious and way too perky... But anyway (there I go starting another sentence with but) the night was very enjoyable and I got to make some new friends. So until tomorrow (which will actually be later tonight),
Hej då

Days 7&8

2008-08-08T00:33:00.002+02:00

Nothing very interesting happened yesterday, and I didn't really feel like writing about it yesterday, so I skipped. But I'm sure everyone lived without it. (I just started a sentence with but!! >_<) Oh well... So yesterday was pretty uneventful; I slept until 12 and spent almost the entire day on the computer so it wasn't very productive. That pretty much sums up day 7.

Day 8 (today) started the same as yesterday; slept in and went on the computer. Today I went to Anna's house for dinner (if you dont know who she is, read the other posts) because today is her birthday. So I spent a couple of hours chilling at her house and then I walked home and watched American Idol with Katarina. It's actually running right now as if it's still ongoing and there were still 7 or 8 left. It was funny though, because every time they would say call 866-IDOLS01 or 02 or something, a notice would pop up covering the phone number saying "Voting is not currently available within Sweden." I guess it would be hard to vote, you know, seeing as how it's already over and everything. She wanted to know who the winner was, but I didn't want to ruin the surprise, but after it ended I told her that even though David Cook one, I liked David Archuleta better. So that's about it for today, and I'm going to sleep now, as it's 1:03 here. Isn't it funny that this is how I end all of my posts? Until tomorrow,

Michael

Day 6

2008-08-05T23:37:00.001+02:00

Today was not that interesting to write about as some of the others... Sorry readers, but I did have fun today.

I slept in until about 11 this morning and then spent the rest of the morning on the computer. At about 3:30 Amanda came home and we planned to meet Anna (from Australia for those of you just tuning in) and go into town. So we caught the 4:05 bus into central Uppsala and went to a place called Max to eat. Max is like a Swedish version of McDonald's and their burgers were actually very good. (Sweden does have McDonalds in case you were wondering and Burger King too) After that we went to the candy shop and got some Swedish candy and then rented Big Momma's Hus (yes that's Hus not House, it is Sweden after all) and Juno and went home to watch them. Another thing, all American movies are in English with Swedish subtitles and there's also a lot of American shows on TV with subtitles; nothing is dubbed here, it it's really cool. The movies were pretty funny and Amanda's friend Ulrica (or maybe its spelled Ulrika) came over too and watched with us and we had a lot of fun. Well thats about it and it 12:15 here so good night.

it means "my big love" aka Shallow Hal

aka Miss Congeniality

Big Momma's Hus aka Big Momma's House

Day 5

2008-08-05T14:46:00.003+02:00

I was too tired last night to write this, so here it is; what I did yesterday.

Today had a very early start; I had to get up at about 6:45 for my first Rotary meeting here, for which I have been preparing for several days. I had to give about a 10 minute speech about myself in Swedish in from of 30 people I didn't know. Well I did have some (a lot) of help from my host father with the translation and I had a little Powerpoint too to show everyone some pictures of my house, neighborhood, family and cats. It turned out that there were only about 15 people there, so it wasn't so bad and they all really like my speech and couldn't believe I had only been there 5 days.

Later, I went into the city again to try to straighten out the problems we had when we tried to open a bank account last week. After presenting a letter from my Rotary Club saying "yes they weren't lying, he really is studying here for a year" they let us open an account. So soon I will have a local debit card to use. After getting that sorted out Per left Amanda and I to explore the city, so she showed me around some of the local areas and we went inside the Domkyrkan which is that giant church in the middle of the city. So after about another hour of walking around we took the bus back home.

About a half an hour later, Anna from Australia came over and we all watched 21 and SuperTroopers which were both really funny and ate popcorn. After we ate dinner Anna left and about a hour after that I went to sleep ^_^ So that was pretty much what happened today (well really yesterday because I'm writing this today, but whatever)
Until tomorrow (well actually later tonight...)

Hej då

Day 4

2008-08-03T22:08:00.002+02:00

Well even though its only 10, I'm very tired and want to go to sleep soon; this one will be brief.

Today we went into Stockholm to pick up my host sister, Amanda, from the train station. She has been sailing in Norway and just got back today. After meeting with her we took a brief mini tour of Stockholm to see some of the sights; the most exciting was the Royal Palace and the marching band in it. Well that's all for now I'm going to sleep as I have a big day tomorrow. But do have a look at today's pictures:

They can be viewed HERE

Tredje dagen i Sverige (Sweden, day three)

2008-08-02T23:11:00.004+02:00

Today was a rainy day in Sweden and the temperature was around 20 (celcius) so it wasn't too bad. The day started off with a trip to Uppsala Konsert&Kongress in the southern part of the city, which is a brand new opera house that was designed by a famous Danish architect. The building was the subject of much controversy because it was constructed in a very old area with very old buildings and local residents didn't want this ultra-modern building spoiling the old world charm of the area. We went inside and the interior architecture is just as impressive as the outside and we went to the observation deck on top and had a look around.

After that, we walked back into the city's central area and visited a local festival celebrating Carl Linnaeus also known as Linné. It was a nice cultural festival with folk music, traditional crafts and foods. I especially like the hjortron jam and the havtron juice. The handmade brushes were especially fascinating, as the process has been the same for over a two thousand years and it's just amazing. I also walked by a stand selling jewelry made of bent forks and spoons, and they were so amazing and ingenious. Well then we went back home as the rain was really picking up.
After changing into dry clothes, we went and picked up Anna, an Australian girl who has been here since January and went to meet Iliyas, who just arrived from France. They have a very nice house and seem like very nice people. I also learned that they will be my second host family after 6 months and they have a son and daughter, who is leaving for Spain pretty soon. We just got home a little while ago and I'm really tired, as it's almost midnight here now. Well until tomorrow, Hey då

You can see all of today's pictures here

Sweden, Day 2

2008-08-02T00:18:00.003+02:00

Today, the Nielsens took me into Uppsala for a nice walking tour. The city is amazing, and the center is closed off to traffic, so everyone is either walking or on bikes. Our first stop was the bank to try to arrange an account with a card for me, but this was unsuccessful because they need a letter from my school, so we'll have to wait until Monday for that.
Next we walked through the main center and eventually stopped for some kaffe at a fika. Another thing I learned today about the Swedes is that they really love their coffee and they love it really strong. (well actually I already knew that) But this morning (well actually noon when I woke up) I had breakfast which consisted of a sandwich and some coffee. Now this coffee was about half as strong as espresso (I think) and was black, with no milk or sugar; that's how my family drinks it. Now, despite what I expected, it actually wasn't that bad, it an interesting taste and flavor. Back to the fika, it was a nice small cafe and we had more coffee and some enormous kanelbullar which are cinnamon rolls with sugar chunks on top. (almost like tiny tiny sugar cubes) This time, I got an Islatte which had some milk and a scoop of vanilly ice cream on top. The milk didn't really help the taste that much, but the ice did. The kanelbullar were very tasty and looked like the giant pretzels you get in New York because they were brown and had the sugar chunks on them which look exactly like the salt on those pretzels.

After that, we walked over the creek that runs though the center of the town and past the Domkyrka or Cathedral and into the Gustavianum museum. Contained inside exhibits about early Swedish history and the vikings, but the main point of interest was the anatomical theater, which was a large room where medical students (and the paying public) would watch the dissection of executed criminals.

Then we headed back to their house, but had a quick detour to the local marina on the enormous lake (the same one from yesterday but a different part) and saw some of the views. Despite it's size, the entire lake freezes and during the winter there are lots of people skating and snow yachting (which is basically a little sailboat on skis). The ice will even be thick enough to drive a car on, and many people do to avoid having to drive around the lake. (why drive around a lake when you can drive through it! ^_^)

I also met the neighbors around our house, and they are all very nice, I just wish I could remember their names... Two of them have dogs that are really cute and they both have pools. (I didn't think anyone would have a pool in Sweden) They also have sons all around my age and one who is 13, who's name is Erik (I think). Our next door neighbors also have two trampolines, that I am allowed to jump on at any time. The people here are so laid back and you can just walk into people's backyards and they don't care at all, the people here are so nice!

This reminds me of another thing I learned about the Swedes: they love to pick wild berries and mushrooms. Yesterday when we were walking around the lake we picked some wild raspberries which were very tasty. And today my host parents where asking our one neighbor who ate dinner with us if she seen any hjortron or cloudberries where growing in the area.

It was starting to get a little cold after dinner (we ate outside) so we went inside and I watched tv or "the telly" as they call it in English here. I was flicking through the channels but nothing particularly interesting was on, so I watched the news about the Olympics for a while and them looked again. After our guest left Per and Katarina came and joined me and we watched Dirty Jobs on the Discovery channel. Another thing about Sweden; there are a lot of American shows and movies on the telly including Family Guy, Scrubs, Roseanne, America's Funniest Home Videos (which is on several times every day), The Fresh Prince "in" Bel-Air, CSI, All American MTV shows, all American Discovery (except shark week) and Animal Planet shows, and Dharma and Greg, to name a few. All American shows are in English with Swedish subtitles, which actually helps, because I can hear the sentences while reading the Swedish text and I can make the connections and also notice the differences in translations, especially with "figures of speech" and slang. We also had another cup of coffee while watching the telly, despite it being 10:30 pm.

Well now it's almost 1:00 so I need to be going to sleep so I don't wake up at noon like today. Tomorrow we are going to Stockholm to pick up Amanda, my host sister and to see the sights. I was just informed by Madelyn, who's from California and is staying in Stockholm that tomorrow there is a huge Gay Pride parade in Stockholm but I don't think Katarina and Per know about it yet, so this should prove to be a very interesting trip.

Well that's all for now, so until next time,

Hej då

First Day in Sweden (again)

2008-07-31T21:42:00.003+02:00

As I write this, I am sitting in my bedroom looking out the window to see the sun finally setting (its 9:45 PM here). Backing up, after a nice dinner with Katarina and Per we went for a short walk though the surrounding woods and to the lake. We followed the trail among the trees, which itself followed the coast of the placid lake. I've learned a few things since moving here earlier today... First wild berries grow everywhere and you can just pick them and eat them, second, Uppsala is infested with giant snails that are everywhere (but I think they're cute).
<--(btw this is a sign for the YMCA except it also includes a YWCA too)

And finally I realized that I miss everyone already.

Michael

First Day in Sweden

2008-07-31T18:15:00.002+02:00

Hej Everyone!

Here is my first update from Sweden!! Let's start with the flights; they weren't terrible, but they were still pretty bad. It was nice, however, to meet up with other people from across the country also going to Sweden. So after being picked up by my host family, the Nielsens, I got a nice little driving tour around Uppsala, before coming back to their house to unpack. After about an hour they asked me if I wanted to go to IKEA with them to pick out a desk for my room so I agreed. So my first Swedish experience was going to IKEA, and I have to say, it was pretty cool. Also, Swedish IKEA stores are almost exactly the same to their American counterparts, just they have a lot of new stuff that has not yet made it across the pond. Until next time,

Michael

Update on Flight Information

2008-06-27T04:55:00.002+02:00

Just got an update on my flight information; I will be leaving out of Fort Lauderdale and flying to Detroit, where I assume I will meet up with some other exchange students (hopefully...). Then there is a layover of an unknown length, followed by connecting flight to Amsterdam (yeah, Amsterdam!) But I don't think I'll be able to leave the airport... >_< Then, I will board a KLM flight to Stockholm/Arlanda airport, where I will meet my first host family, the Nielsens.

Until next time

Sponsor and Host Club Information

2008-06-25T07:35:00.004+02:00

I'm sponsored by the Rotary Club of Davie/Cooper City in District 6990 and Hosted by the Uppsala Linné Rotary Club in Uppsala, Sweden: District 2350.

Jag är sponsor vid rotaryclubben av Davie/Cooper City i distrikt 6990, och jag är hospits vid rotaryclubben av Uppsala Linné i Uppsala, Sverige, distrikt 2350.

Hej då

Not there quite yet...

2008-06-25T07:29:00.003+02:00

Well I'm not in Sweden just yet but I am scheduled to leave July 30th to arrive at Stockholm/Arlanda airport. Check back and I will start posting when I get there!

Hej då

by the way, all times are local time (Stockholm or GMT -1:00 Time)