Days 31&32

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.