Dag Femtioett (51)

Contents of my package

This morning I went and picked up the package my parents sent me from the post office. Then my host mom and I had to go to the immigration office to make it legal for me to be here. It was legal before but now it’s ‘offical’ haha. Anyway, by the time we got out of the office, it was twenty minutes into my first class so my host mom just dropped me off at home, where I opened the package and enjoyed my snacks and candy. At noon I had a Rotary meeting but I was bored so I went in around 11 and wandered around town for a while. The Rotary meeting was fun, but pretty boring because it’s all in Swedish and it was some guy from Volvo talking about environmental cars or something. When the meeting ended it was raining out but one of the guys was going the same direction as me and shared his umbrella. I got to school half way through English class. We were writing scary stories, so I just helped some of the groups. After English we had choir, where we are singing a songs in German, Norwegian and then an English song written in the 1500’s.

Dagar Fyrtioåtta - Femtio (48-50)

I don’t have any pictures for these days, because I was sick. I somehow managed to catch a cold even though no one around me had a cold. This was my first time ever being sick while away from home/away from my parents so it was a little hard, but it wasn’t too bad. Basically I just watched tv and laid in bed for Sunday and Monday, and on Saturday my host mom and host brothers went shopping and I got a sweatshirt and a coat.
I’m feeling better now so it will get more interesting.

Dag Fyrtiosju (47)

 

Today I had Rhythm Ear Training starting at 9, then we had Kultur och idéhistoria which is sort of like social studies. They were reading about Plato’s philosophies which was way above my Swedish level so I doodled. I also discovered that the teacher doesn’t know I don’t speak Swedish, because he keeps calling on me and all I ever say is “Jag vet inte” or “Jag förstår inte den” (I don’t know and I don’t understand it) so he probably just thinks I’m really dumb, but I’m going to see how long it takes him to figure it out. After that we had lunch then Arbetsmiljö och Säkerhet which I don’t even know what is about so I just spaced out. After school I hung out with my friend Joel for a little while, then I took the tram home.
Then we went golfing! I have never golfed before, besides put-put so I was reallyyyy bad but it was fun away. I was on a team with three girls who were friends of my host family and their dad was a pro golfer so they lived in Florida half the year and all spoke English with a perfect American accent. After we golfed for about four hours, about eight families that all used to get together to golf when the kids were younger, all went to our neighbor’s house for a party and I won an angry birds pillowcase just because I was so bad at golf, hehe.

Dag Fyrtiosex (46)

My host doggy Gibson

Today I started school at 9:50 with my Musik och Kommunikation class. It’s a strange class and I really don’t have any idea what is going on. Last week we played games but this week we read poems to the class. After Mu Ko we had Svenska. I tried to pay attention but ended up drawing a muffin with a face on it, then we were left to work on some questions in groups and my group spent the time trying to teach me Swedish. Then we had studiegrupp which is like homeroom and I finally got my bus card. Then I ate lunch with two of my friends and I tried to teach them how to say ‘th’ and they tried to teach me to pronounce Swedish ‘r’ ‘å’ ‘ö’ ‘ä’ and ‘sju’ which I have trouble with because we don’t have those sounds in English. Then I had a break for two hours then Svenska som Andraspråk (swedish as a second language) but the teacher never showed up so all of us exchangers and foreign students just messed around in the hallway then went home.

Dag Fyrtiofem (45)

Skype screen shot

Today was my short school day. I began at 9:45 with Engelska/English where we talked about dialects and I tried to imitate Southern, New York, Boston, Minnesota and Chicago accents, then we wrote ghost stories. After Engelska, I had Svenska/Swedish and I have no idea what we did. Then I ate lunch with my classmates and went home. When I got home, my Mormor and Morfar/Host Grandma and Grandpa came by, then I spent about four hours skyping with my best friend Carli who is on exchange in Romania right now.
http://carliexchange.blogspot.com/ link to Carli’s blog =)

Dag Fyrtiofyra (44)

My School

In Sweden (and most of Europe) you have different classes every single day, which is definitely hard to get used to, but I really enjoy it. Today I had Orkester/Orchestra, Matematik/Math, Engelska/English and Kören/Choir. In orchestra, we played a Queen medley, Don’t Stop Me Now, and The Show Must Go On. My school’s music program is rated the best in Western Sweden so our orchestra is really good and it was really fun to play these modern songs with such an advanced orchestra! In math we had a test that was only three questions long! It was really easy, but I did that math two years ago, so I have an advantage. In English we read some story then watch Monty Python! In Choir we sang some song in German and then I finished at 3:50 and took the tram home.

First Two Weeks Of School

My class

Ahh! Sorry I haven't posted anything in so long, but with school going I have not too much time (Read: I find sleep more attractive then anything else) School here is so relaxed, but also very tiring because other than Engelska (English Class) it is all in Swedish. Other exchange students will know what I mean, but for those of you who have never been completely surround by a language you only know a tiny bit of but are expected to know a great deal of, most classes go like this: first five-ten minutes I pay a lot of attention, focusing very hard on trying to figure out what the teacher is talking about. After a little while (it varies on the class, swedish=2 minutes, history=15) I will get caught up on a word. They will say something that I recognize and I will stop and go 'Wait, what does that mean... is it ancient or important? okay, so if it means ancient, how does it fit into the sentence... wait, what was the sentence again?' and then when I focus back in they are a million miles away and I am lost, but things are slowly getting better.
I will try to be more regular with posting from now on, and I will focus more in on what I've been doing and what school is like.