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.
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