Exchange Student Love

My last update was from a little over a week ago when I was on my way to the YFU Re-Entry camp.

The fun began already on the train on the way to the camp where we were reunited with lots of friends and Franziska and I watched Frozen all the way there!

The weekend was full of activities. Sometimes we had discussions in small groups about how our year was  and what to expect when we return home. It  was so cool that everyone could speak Swedish now! It was such a transformation from how nervous we all were when we first met 10 months ago! 

We played endless rounds of mafia late into the night, went swimming in the freezing water and enjoyed all being together for the last time. 

On Sunday when it was time to leave it was heartbreaking to say goodbye to some of my friends that I don't  know when I'll see again. When we were all standing there I was taken aback by the sense of unity  and accomplishment I felt in the group. We all did it. We all did it in different ways but we all made it through the year.

I returned home late Sunday night. We only had a 3 day week in school and next week is only 3 days as well and then we are done!

So far I've spent this long weekend relaxing and catching up on sleep. Yesterday I went shopping with a friend and last night we had dinner with friends.

There is probably so much more that I could write about from the Re-Entry camp but it wouldn't do it justice. It was an over-joyous experience.  Here are a bunch of pictures instead!

 

my discussion group!

best selfie ever!

tradition of throwing the leaders in the lake at the end of the weekend

 

If you can't view the pictures here they are all on this link plus many more! https://www.dropbox.com/sh/fiafl0jrhlrbo6u/AABFBKb1BKNZM5cAQY1j69kTa 

315 days?! That's almost a year!

Good morning everyone! It is currently 7.37am and I'm on the train to Stockholm. Though everything is peachy now it was a bit of a stressful morning. Jan and Yvonne are away on a trip and Gustav is the most 'never on time' person you will ever meet. So to be safe we ordered a taxi to pick me up at 6.10 so I could catch my 6.40 train to Lund. Well I got up at 5.30 and enjoyed the morning light streaming into my window. I was ready to go and went outside to wait for the taxi...6.15, 6.20, 6.25 no taxi. Last minute, literally, I ran inside to get Gustav and he had 10 minutes to drive me to my train. Let me just say that it's not legally possible to get there in 10 minutes, not even close. And we didn't make it in 10 minutes, it took 11 or 12. But amen for delays in the Swedish train traffic. My train was delayed to 6.45 so I made it with 2 minutes to spare, not exactly how I wanted to start off my morning. But as I said, all is good now. I smoothly made my connection and met up with 4 other exchange students. Oh, why am I going to Stockholm? Well I'm going to the place where we had our On-Arrival camp right when we got to Sweden. But now it's called Re-Entry. It's the first time since August that we all get to meet and gauging on how fun on-arrival was, this will be off the charts!

It kind of just hit me, re-entry. This is one of the first steps in coming home. I have sent home some things with my mom and dad respectively but that just felt like cleaning out my closet. Now things are real. Remember when I would post about being one, two, or four months into this program? Well now it's the one month countdown (well in 2 days). And that is just crazy to me. My dad told me that when I come home I'll have been gone for 315 days. 

Otherwise my week can be summed up in one word: brief. Monday, 1 lesson, Tuesday (TTT) full day, Wednesday 1 test, Thursday 1 lesson, and today I'm traveling. There are only 6 days of school left, spread out into two 3 day weeks.  Everything is winding down. 

PS sorry, no pictures!

Up up and away

Last weekend I got to try out the super cool sport of windsurfing. Anton is an instructor in the local club and they were having an instructor course and needed test students so I got 7 hours of lessons for free. Naturally the weekend of the class was the coldest weekend of the spring. Even in our wetsuits we were cold. But once we got going it was so much fun. It's really a lot of hard work and I fell off more times than I can count but like I said, so much fun.

Here is the whole group, instructors and students. 

On Wednesday my dad came to visit! Since I was going to take half the day off anyway to spend with him, I decided to surprise him at the Copenhagen airport. I left after my first lesson and got there right in time to surprise him. We came back to the city and wandered around. I showed around town, my school and everything. During the 36 hours he was there we squeezed in a lot. We saw all the sights, met my friends, and enjoyed each others company. Dad ended his time here with a big dinner with my host family. It was a bit weird to see my two families finally meet each other.
It's really hard to put into words how it is to be reunited, if only for a few days, with your family that you've been without for 9 months. It's a bit surreal. And saying goodbye was of course hard, but it's so much easier knowing that you'll be home with them in just a little more than a month again.

This weekend I spent in Varberg with the Olsson family. They have daughters, Linda and Johanna, who are right around my and Jespers age. When we lived in Varberg the Olsson family were our best family friends. It was so much fun to spend the weekend there. Johanna's birthday was last weekend so I joined her and her friends for an amazing birthday brunch at their home. We also went kayaking and I got to see my old house, which for the record, looks just the same. We biked around town and it was a really nice weekend.

Photot Cred: Johanna Olsson!

Now I'm home again and I was just thinking about how busy my weekends have been lately. After spring break Wiebke came to visit, then Misha, then there was windsurfing and then my dad came and this weekend I was away and next weekend I'm travelling too. It's so much more fun where there are things going on and to look forward to!

And April becomes May

Wednesday April 23: Olympiaskolan (my school) had a soccer tournament. Every program (a couple classes per grade in each program) made a team. I thought that the tournament was going to be low key and more funny that serious. It was so wrong, it was super competitive with referees and everything. There were about 5 student teams and a teacher team. Unfortunately our team got knocked out in the first round. So we just went home.

Friday April 25: After school I went to meet Wiebke at the train station! She had travelled all the way from Hamburg that morning and I was so excited to see her! We spent the weekend exploring Helsingborg. Actually, on Saturday we Helsingör. It's the danish city right across from Helsingborg. We took the ferry over which only took 20 minutes. We wandered around the city before the castle, Kronborg, opened which was the main attraction. We went on a tour of the castle and it was really interesting. No royalty actually lived there, it was more for protective purposes. Kronborg is however probably most famous for being the castle where Shakespeare's Hamlet takes place. (more info here) After the castle we went in to town to eat the classic Danish smörrebröd, followed by some ice cream. We took the ferry home and tried another Danish classic, pølsekorv. When we were back in Helsingborg we did a little bit of shopping and I introduced Wiebke to the most important Swedish meal, fika!
Wiebke came for the most amazing Swedish weather. We walked on the beach and read outside in the run. We ate dinner outside and went to Sofiero. On Sunday Wiebke had to leave. But we had such a fun weekend together!

Wednesday April 30: We had a giant Chemistry test all morning and then we were done for the day plus it was a 4 day weekend! So Elna, Malin, Sofia, and I went to Sofiero to get some ice cream. Then we went in to the park and played cards until it was too cold. May 1st is a big holiday in Sweden so (as Swedes usually do!) they celebrate the eve before, in this case the 30th. My family got together with 3 other families and we had a huge pitch in dinner. All of the families had been on the ski trip. We had an awesome dinner and then per tradition we went to the beach to watch a traditional bonfire. The days before April 30th are like national spring cleaning day. So all of the stuff you clear out of your yard is piled up on the beach and then set on fire the night before May 1 to welcome in the spring!

Thursday May 1: Misha came to visit! Throughout the time she was here we biked around a lot. We biked to Kullagunnarstorp, to Sofiero, and Pålsjö. We made yummy dessert and talked and had fun.

Saturday May 3: It was time for the SAT. I slept over at Ellie's house on Friday because we had to get started early on Saturday. To be exact, we woke up at 5 and took the train at 6.12. We got to the testing location really early and had to wait a while. The test in itself went alright I suppose, you never really know. After the test we were hungry and guess where we grabbed lunch? TGI Friday's! It was so American and we both enjoyed giant burgers! Yummy. We walked around Malmö for a while but then we both just hit a wall of tiredness and we headed home.

Last week was our first full 5 day week since spring break. Nothing truly too spectacular happened. But last night I went with Ellie, Tina, and Linn to see Divergent  it was amazing! Highly recommend it!

I have something like 6 weeks left in Sweden. On the one hand, this countdown is making me super excited to see my friends and family again. But how could I ever want to leave my life here?
Instead of worrying about this I'm going to value the time I have left here. There are still lots of fun things coming up. (Especially a special visitor coming next week (!!!))