I Suck at Posting, I know

Because I haven’t posted in weeks and I am tired now, here are just a bunch of pictures and short little tidbits. Have fun.
Since my last post I have been to Varberg twice. Once for exchange student fika and to spend the night at the Japanese exchange student (Chihiro!)’s house and the second time for a Halloween party.

First Varberg Trip

Sophie, Pablo, Keila, Me and Chihiro at the fort in Varberg

Us again on the street in Varberg

Eating lunch at Chihiro's house

Halloween

Sophie and I dressed up as guys, Chico dressed up as a girl

Aussie, Aussie, German, Aussie, France, France, Me, Swede

Group shot

We also had district conference! Which was actually reallyyyy boring… but we did an African dance for the old Swedish Rotarians while all wear matching tie dye shirts!

Goofy Shot

Us doing the African dance

Color coded

Flag shot

After the conference the Roteract (Young Rotarians) took us out for dinner

After which a few kids (Sophie, Dakota, Elsa, Chihiro, Chico and I) went back to my house where we ate large amounts of candy, watched YouTube videos and Sophie and I tried to teach them how to solve a rubiks cube.

On the way to my house

Chilling in my room

Dag Sjutiotvå (72)

My neighborhood

OH MY GOSH! Have I really been here that long!?!?!? It seems to have flown by!
Once again it is Wednesday, my short day! I started school at 9:45 with Engelska (English) where we were writing stories about our heroes. For those of you who had Sophomore Honors English with me first tri, you know that my belief in heroes is complicated, but because I have trouble explaining it in English, I just made up something and finished in about ten minutes, then I sat there playing on my ipod and occasionally people would come up to me and ask me words like ‘what do you call those things you put on your arms when you are a kid and can’t swim’ or ‘is WAZOOGA a word?’ After English we had Svenska (Swedish) where they were… well I don’t actually know what they were doing. I tried to follow but teacher talks so fast even some of the Swedes have trouble understanding him and whatever they were reading was in Old Swedish and I have enough trouble with New Swedish. So, to not make it a waste of time, I pulled out my Hitta Nemo (finding nemo in Swedish) book, my Swedish as a Second Language notebook and my Swedish-English dictionary and sat there translating the book.
We finished class at 11:50 and normally I stay for lunch, but it was fish today so I took the tram home and ate a peanut butter sandwich (thank you sooo much for the peanut butter mom!) Then I took my host dog, Gibson, for a walk around the neighborhood and took some pictures.

The entrance to my street

A random road

A street that leads to my street

My living room and host dog

After our walk, Gibson slept a bit and I had a big class of chocolate milk (with lactose free milk!) The Swedish version of Nesquik is called O’boy and it amazing!

After my snack, I went to my room and continued to read Hitta Nemo and study the words I didn’t know.

I Am Behind

So I have been terrible about posting, and I have no excuse for it. School was school, and so I can catch up, I will just talk about this past weekend which we had a Rotary event!

Back Row Left to Right: Dakota (Colorado), Chico (Brazil), Nick (Australia)
Next Row Down: Elsa (France), Me (Colorado), Simon (Australia)
Next Row Down Starting With Tall Standing Guy: Spencer (Washington), Natasha (Canada), Jessica (Australia
Bottom Row: Chihiro (Japan), Satomi (Japan), Elisa (Italy), Margo (Colorado), Sophie (Canada)
Congratulations if you actually read through that.

Now for the story: On Thursday, I left school at noon with Satomi and we went back to my house, where I finished packing and we ate lunch. At about two we took the tram back into town and on the way we met up with Elisa. Then we went to Central Station where we managed to just miss our bus, but it was okay because we met up with Elsa, the French exchange student. We caught the next bus which was a double decker! Of course we rode on the top level and a little bit into the ride Spencer joined up with us. The bus took about an hour and we spent most of the time joking around. They kept commenting on how much emotion I show when I talk and then Spencer and I started making fun of the fact that his school had a textiles program. When we arrived in Borås, we caught a train to Fristad. Apparently we didn’t have the right tickets though, but the guy was nice and didn’t fine us because we were all foreigners. Once we arrived we walked over to the folk university and met up with the rest of the exchangers and our district chair. We put our stuff in our rooms and then we ate dinner, which was just bread and lunch meat. After dinner we had a language test which was very difficult but actually went quite well. Once the test was done, our district chair left and we watched a movie, then one of the Australians, another American, the French girl and I went back to the house and hung out in the common room all night.
The next morning we got up at six to go to our district chair’s Rotary club. The breakfast was good, but I had trouble staying awake for the presentation. After Rotary we went to our district chair’s Swedish as a Second Language class where we did presentations with her students. After the class we took the bus back to Fristad and ate lunch then we practiced our African dance that we will do at the district conference. The rest of the day was pretty lazy and we were so tired we went to bed pretty early.
On Saturday we got to sleep in a little and then we did official Rotary business for a few hours before we all took off. About ten of us took the bus back to Göteborg and while we were waiting at the bus station this funny guy with a giant double chin came up. He was obviously a bit scared by the large amount of foreigners packed into the stop, and he didn’t speak any English and a lot of us didn’t speak much Swedish. But for those of us that could understand him (I could understand!) we translated and he was saying how great it was that we were loud and laughed and sang with each other because most Swedish teenagers are pretty quiet with their friends. Once we arrived back in Göteborg we did a little bit of shopping and then Sophie (canada) came back to my house where we got ready for a party. The party was at a big arena, sponsored by some radio station. We stayed until about midnight and the Sophie and I took the tram back and we went to sleep.
On Sunday Sophie and I both woke up not feeling so great probably just because of the exhaustion. We slept pretty late and then we went back into the city around one where I dropped her off to catch her train back to Varberg. After that I went back home and slept.

Dag Femtionio (59)

 

I realize I’m really behind in posts and I’m trying to catch up now!
Wednesdays are normally my short days, but today I didn’t have school at all! The other exchange student from Colorado (Margo) didn’t have school either, so we met up and did a little shopping, then we went and got my hair cut! I have really thick, curly hair, and in this humid, rainy and windy environment, it was just too much to handle, so I cut it all off! Okay, well, not all off it, but most of it. After my hair cut, we took the tram back to my house where we made some spaghetti for lunch because we are too cheap to eat out, which is pretty expensive here. Then we went back into the city and did some more shopping. I got a purse, some Swedish styled shirts and sweaters and a pair of leggings so I can start to dress like a Swede. After some more shopping, Margo and I went to a cafe and had fika where we people watched for a while, then we were both really tired so we went home.

Dag Femtiofem (55)

Me on the train

Today me and the Italian exchange student met up at her house then took the tram down to Central Station. We had a bit of trouble finding our train and figuring out how to get tickets, but we got it done just in time and made it on the train. Elisa (the Italian) was fascinated by how fancy Swedish trains were, and explained to me that our country was doomed to fail just because we don’t use trains very often (it was only my third time ever on a train that wasn’t for scenic purposes) and then she took my camera and ran around the train taking pictures of the train. It took about forty minutes and then we arrived in Varberg. There we met some other exchangers, Simon and Jess (Australia), Natasha (Canada), Keila (Argentina), Lisa (USA), Deigo (Chile), Chihiro and Nao (Japan) and Pablo (Hungary), and we went to a cafe. So basically we just terrified the cafe with our foreign-ness for an hour. We played a little game where we guessed where each person came from and people seem to have trouble believing I am from the US. They always seem to think I am either from Italy or Eastern Europe… I have no idea why. Anyway, after fika we went to an autumn festival at an old fort. There was a museum talking about the fort and the skeleton of some guy they had found murdered hundreds of years ago. We chilled for a few hours and then Elisa and I had to go catch our train.

 

Dag Femtiofyra (54)

Poseidon statue on the way to school

Today I started at 9 with GeMu Rhythm (music theory rhythm section) where the teacher played rhythms and we had to write it out. I really like this class, not because it’s interesting, which its really not, but the teacher is pretty old and speaks slowly so I can actually understand pretty much everything! Then I had an hour break where I just chilled in what is called the Ghetto which is just where the music kids hang out. Then we had Kultur och Idéhistoria which was pretty boring because the teacher talks really fast so I can’t understand anything. Then I went out to lunch with three of the guys from my class and when we got back, I found out our next class was cancelled so I had a jam session with some other kids from my class. After our jam, we had sport class, but me and two of the guys forgot our gym clothes so while the rest of the class did orienteering (you get a map and run through the forest trying to find certain points on the map) we hung out in a park. Then when the class ended, one of the guys had to go home so me and the other one went to Burger King, which is actually much better here, and we chilled for a while.

Dag Femtiotvå (52)

Fake mustaches

Wednesdays are my short days! I start at 9:45, so I got to sleep in a bit, then I chatted with my host mom while I ate breakfast. I started with English class where we read a story about some gangsters. The story was written the 1960’s and was set in New York, but the teacher was like “This story is set in America so it uses a lot of American sayings,” then he kept asking me what they meant and I was like, “I have absolutely know idea what that means” and then everybody laughed. After English we had Svenska (Swedish) I don’t really know what we did because the guys sitting behind me kept talking to me, then they started going through my bag, and took a big stack of my business cards, which is okay, because I still have about 200 of them, haha. We left Svenska early because it was picture day today! For some reason they guys in my class all decided to draw mustaches on for the picture. The picture took forever because we kept screwing around, then finally we finished and went to lunch. I didn’t have any other classes but was bored so two of my classmates and I went to a candy store and hung out for a little while. Finally they had to actually go to class so I took the tram home and did some homework.