Tuesday, August 2, 2011

The First Days

1st of August, Monday/Måndag

I woke up at five o'clock in the morning due to jet-lag and the fact that the sun rises really early here.  So, I spent about an hour unpacking and organizing my room. Which now looks like this:


Delsjön
After I was done with my room, I went down stairs and had my first Swedish breakfast with my host dad! Breakfasts here are pretty simple, toast with butter and meat, tea or coffee, and some yogurt or something like it. After breakfast with Magnus, I went back to my room and finished organizing. After about two hours, I was hungry again, so I ate a second breakfast with my host mom (I know, I'm a pig, but my stomach was finally settled after flying, so I was hungry.) Then Anna (host mom) and I went for a walk with their dog Gibson, and the dog they were watching while it's owner was away, Kenso. There is a huge golf course/park/lake area by my house that is absolutely gorgeous. After our walk, Anna, my host brother Oskar and I drove to their summer house in Instö which is about an hour away from Göteborg. There we swam in the Swedish ocean, which is surprisingly warm, met Mormor and Morfar (Anna's mom and dad), and ate and watched movies.

Me jumping into the ocean at sunset

2nd of August, Tuesday/Tisdag
 
Marstrand
I woke up early again, this time around six o'clock, and had another Swedish breakfast with Magnus. Magnus' vacation had ended, so he had to go into work, so most of the day it was just Anna, Oskar and I. Oskar and I watched a movie while Anna taught her aerobics class. Then we went to a near by town called Marstrand. It is a sort of summer and tourist town with an old fort on it. We mainly just wandered around the town, and ate this weird cactus and lemon sorbet ice cream stuff. For lunch we had what they called French hot dogs. I'm not sure if they are actually French or not, though. They look just like American hot dogs, but taste much, much better then American ones. Then we went for a bath, which is just a swim in the ocean, that is just how it translates to English. After a little while we took the ferry back to the mainland and drove home to Göteborg. In Sweden they have this thing called Fika, which doesn't translate to English, but it's basically just a sort of coffee and chat, but anyway, when we got home I had Fika with my host brother Johan and his two friends. It was really nice to hang out with people close to my age after spending so much time with only my host mom and my twelve year old host brother. Afterwards my Rotary counselor, Jonas, came over to talk about the club a bit and to figure out my insurance and cell phone.  After dinner Johan decided that I needed to see the 'real' Göteborg, so the two of us took the tram and toured the parts of Göteborg that wouldn't be on a group tour as Johan put it. Once we had walked through most of the downtown area, we stopped at a 7/11 (they are everywhere here) and bought some Swedish candy and drinks then went and sat at the harbor watching the sunset as he taught me some Swedish.


More to come later =)

Observations:
  • Sweden is much more friendly to us lactose intolerants than the USA is, and the food actually tastes good! They have great soy yogurt and lactose free butter that tastes just like butter.

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