Writing is too annoying....
So yeah! Last few weeks have been pretty fun I have to say! Sweden is just overall really nice. The general atmosphere is just nice and peaceful. Nothing too much different has really happened, I did get to go sailing this Saturday in a skiff. Forgot my camera for pictures though. It was really cool, its a small two man boat with a really big main sail. Goes nice and fast. So sailed around in that for a while, and we capsized it a few times for fun-ish. (Dry suits are really nice to have in very cold water).
Going to Denmark tomorrow for a few days! There's another exchange student living there who is from Mexico, so it will be nice to get some of the at home feeling of having them around. We're just gonna hang out for a bit, don't really know what we're going to do, pretty spontaneous action this is, but that's what being an exchange student is all about. Doing something new everyday and jumping on board with every opportunity.
I'll see about trying to put a longer post up when I get back, writing is just such a pain for me! Heh.
Hej Då!
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Long Time no Write
Well, Sweden is still nice.
Nothing much has really changed the last two weeks. Still doing the same procedure throughout the week. Language is still coming along slowly, but I can tell that I'm getting better at reading/listening but speaking it is still hard due to my small vocabulary knowledge.
Last weekend just had a lazy time. Didn't do anything at all except watch movies. Good to have those types of days sometimes. Did a zombie movie marathon. 'Twas fun. That was all for those days.
This weekend however was the Rotary District Conference, which is a large meeting for all of the Rotary members in the extended area that I live in. It was held in Karlskrona, town 3.5 hour train ride away on the other coast from me. At the meeting all of us exchange students, three others from the USA, four from Australia, and one from New Zealand, were supposed to put on a little show for everybody. So what we did was sold raffle tickets throughout the day too all the members for a cookbook that we put together. It included recipes from every continent. There were about 200 some people at the meeting, and we sold 463 at about $1.50 a ticket. It was really successful and we had all the founds go to the Rotary charity for helping to end Polio.
While there we were able to go to a famous Navel base and a car museum. The Naval base was really cool. Got to see the Swedish stealth boat which apparently is an interest to many super powers. Unfortunately I did not see it up close, we only went to an old part of the base. Also, we were not supposed to take pictures of any part of the harbor where the ships were due to security concerns.
The car museum was also really cool. They had some really really nice cars there:
And a beautiful bike that I would really like:
Well, not a lot more to say really, been writing to much on here that I keep using less and less words every time.
Hej Då!
Nothing much has really changed the last two weeks. Still doing the same procedure throughout the week. Language is still coming along slowly, but I can tell that I'm getting better at reading/listening but speaking it is still hard due to my small vocabulary knowledge.
Last weekend just had a lazy time. Didn't do anything at all except watch movies. Good to have those types of days sometimes. Did a zombie movie marathon. 'Twas fun. That was all for those days.
This weekend however was the Rotary District Conference, which is a large meeting for all of the Rotary members in the extended area that I live in. It was held in Karlskrona, town 3.5 hour train ride away on the other coast from me. At the meeting all of us exchange students, three others from the USA, four from Australia, and one from New Zealand, were supposed to put on a little show for everybody. So what we did was sold raffle tickets throughout the day too all the members for a cookbook that we put together. It included recipes from every continent. There were about 200 some people at the meeting, and we sold 463 at about $1.50 a ticket. It was really successful and we had all the founds go to the Rotary charity for helping to end Polio.
While there we were able to go to a famous Navel base and a car museum. The Naval base was really cool. Got to see the Swedish stealth boat which apparently is an interest to many super powers. Unfortunately I did not see it up close, we only went to an old part of the base. Also, we were not supposed to take pictures of any part of the harbor where the ships were due to security concerns.
The car museum was also really cool. They had some really really nice cars there:
And a beautiful bike that I would really like:
Well, not a lot more to say really, been writing to much on here that I keep using less and less words every time.
Hej Då!
Monday, September 20, 2010
Kristianstad Camping Trip
>
Camping! Went camping this week, had a really good time. Wasn't anything too serious, did some hiking, played some games and had a few competitions. The people at the camp were the American exchange students that I already knew along with some Aussies that are here. Probably the most fun thing that we did was axe throwing!
Also got to shoot a few shots out of a .22, even though its such a small gun it was really nice to shoot again, its been far too long. I really miss my guns.
The area we were at was really nice. There were some parts that had lots of ferns so it felt like a really old type of forest. We walked to a water fall while we were there, very similar to the one back home next to the highway.
The water was a bit cold and I didn't have any spare cloths so I didn't try to go for a swim. It would have been fun though.
One of the Australians is going to take me up to Gothenburg, the second largest city in Sweden. Its about two hours north. She says that there is a store up there that sells imported goods for cheep prices, and one of the items they have is Mountain Dew. It is going to be so good to have that again, I can't wait.
Besides that, nothing else much has happened.
Hej Då
Camping! Went camping this week, had a really good time. Wasn't anything too serious, did some hiking, played some games and had a few competitions. The people at the camp were the American exchange students that I already knew along with some Aussies that are here. Probably the most fun thing that we did was axe throwing!
Also got to shoot a few shots out of a .22, even though its such a small gun it was really nice to shoot again, its been far too long. I really miss my guns. The area we were at was really nice. There were some parts that had lots of ferns so it felt like a really old type of forest. We walked to a water fall while we were there, very similar to the one back home next to the highway.
The water was a bit cold and I didn't have any spare cloths so I didn't try to go for a swim. It would have been fun though.
One of the Australians is going to take me up to Gothenburg, the second largest city in Sweden. Its about two hours north. She says that there is a store up there that sells imported goods for cheep prices, and one of the items they have is Mountain Dew. It is going to be so good to have that again, I can't wait.
Besides that, nothing else much has happened.
Hej Då
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
High Lights of Last Week
Hmm. I'll start with the sailing so far. The last two times has been fairly interesting. Two times ago, the wind was kind of impradictable, fluttering on and off. So while leaving the dock I didn't have enough wind to control the boat with and inadvertently ran into the propeller on the boat next to me. Totally wasn't my fault... I was not properly steered off the dock, yeah. That's how the story goes. My crew-mate and I just kind of kept going and didn't say anything. After that, we were going down the channel to get to the open sea, started to make a tact, then the wind died... Got pushed in to some of the rocks on the side. After pushing away from them, checking to see if anyone saw, I then promptly gave to rudder to Maja for her to steer. I didn't want to run in to anything else. The rest of the day went smoothly though, and no damage was done to the boat.
The next time, (yesterday) started off well, once again the wind was finicky. We spent most of the time practicing starting procedures for races. Did pretty well most of the time. We then had two races, the first race was bad, got about half way through by the time the other boat finished, so we just restarted. The second race was to be out to a buoy then back to the dock. We were also supposed to try and used the spinnaker, a large sail that you put on the front of the boat for use going with the wind. Maja was steering and I was going to try and put it up, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, by the time I got about half way through it was time to take it back down. While I did that the front of it dipped in to the water and caught a lot of water and acted as a break. Also, while reeling it in I heard a ripping sound. On the way to the dock Maja was joking about how she doesn't want to sail with me because I tend to break stuff it the boat.
One cool thing that happened was the discover that I'm on youtube! See if you can find me! I'll give you a hint though. I'm on the left side of the person that is standing on the rail with the megaphone.
This is part of the Malmö game that I went to with my host brothers. Really fun game, and loud, as you can hear.
I went to the Airforce museum here, that was cool. They had come really cool planes there and a flight simulator.
Got a cool shirt and some buttons as a souvenir.
Beside that nothing much else exciting has happened. I'm going camping this weekend, so that should be fun. I'm also expecting posts to not be quite as frequent due to laziness and the overall excitement of being here dying down a little bit. I'll still try and do it once every 10 days or so, I think that's a good number.
Hej Då!
The next time, (yesterday) started off well, once again the wind was finicky. We spent most of the time practicing starting procedures for races. Did pretty well most of the time. We then had two races, the first race was bad, got about half way through by the time the other boat finished, so we just restarted. The second race was to be out to a buoy then back to the dock. We were also supposed to try and used the spinnaker, a large sail that you put on the front of the boat for use going with the wind. Maja was steering and I was going to try and put it up, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, by the time I got about half way through it was time to take it back down. While I did that the front of it dipped in to the water and caught a lot of water and acted as a break. Also, while reeling it in I heard a ripping sound. On the way to the dock Maja was joking about how she doesn't want to sail with me because I tend to break stuff it the boat.
One cool thing that happened was the discover that I'm on youtube! See if you can find me! I'll give you a hint though. I'm on the left side of the person that is standing on the rail with the megaphone.
This is part of the Malmö game that I went to with my host brothers. Really fun game, and loud, as you can hear.
I went to the Airforce museum here, that was cool. They had come really cool planes there and a flight simulator.
Got a cool shirt and some buttons as a souvenir.
Beside that nothing much else exciting has happened. I'm going camping this weekend, so that should be fun. I'm also expecting posts to not be quite as frequent due to laziness and the overall excitement of being here dying down a little bit. I'll still try and do it once every 10 days or so, I think that's a good number.
Hej Då!
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Surströmming!
Yummie. Had surstömming tonight, the food that everyone has been telling me to stay away from and that it was mean that my host family was going to have me try it. I thought it was actually pretty good, I liked it. It had a salty, strong flavor to it with a kind of weird texture. Let me clarify what exactly surströmming is. It it this:
Raw. Basically rotten. Herring. Yeah.
Well, that's all I wanted to share in this post.
Hej Då!
Raw. Basically rotten. Herring. Yeah.
Well, that's all I wanted to share in this post.
Hej Då!
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
1 Month down
Wow, its already been a month, sure doesn't feel like it. Times going by fairly quickly so far. I've just about settled in to routine here, which means that not everything feels as new. Not that it's not special, just that I'm getting used to everything. Which is good, my brain is finally calming down and I can rest a bit easier.
School has been going really good. I'm mostly enjoying everything, most of my classes are fun. One of them in particular is going to be fun, its a design/engineering class. For it I'm going to attempt to build a small desk that would fold up and have a place to put my computer equipment. It would be perfect to have for when I go to LAN parties where I usually end up not having enough room for myself.
I've got a new friend over here! Her name is Anna Knutsson. She's been a really big help to me at school, translating everything for me, showing me to all my classes and such. She's also the reason that I am doing the technical program at school instead of the natural science. She suggested that I change to it because it would be more fun. She switched to it from natural science and enjoyed it much more. And its really convenient for me because I can just follow her to all my classes! But yeah, Anna has been really nice.
Language is going alright, slowly I'm getting it. Some of the work for a class is translating from English to Swedish and vise versa. I can't really go from English to Swedish that well at all, seeing how I don't really know any Swedish. But I can mostly figure out how to go from Swedish to English by figuring out what seems the most logical. So maybe after a while I can start translating to Swedish!
Other than that I've done one interesting thing this last week. Mushroom hunting! As in, walking through the woods, which are beautiful, moss covered, open and flat. Through some of the woods there's stone walls completely covered in moss that were built in the 1700s. There's just nothing like that back home, it really is amazing walking through he woods here. The mushrooms we were gathering really quite big, about 5-6 inches in diameter and about 7 inches tall, on average. I didn't even know mushrooms got that big. What was fun was when we were walking around they would point out mushrooms not to get because they would probably poison me and kill me. So yeah, it was really interesting.
Well, sorry for the lack of picture, I don't really have a reliable camera yet.I should be getting a new one in a week or two though, so then I'll start taking more picture.
Hej Då!
School has been going really good. I'm mostly enjoying everything, most of my classes are fun. One of them in particular is going to be fun, its a design/engineering class. For it I'm going to attempt to build a small desk that would fold up and have a place to put my computer equipment. It would be perfect to have for when I go to LAN parties where I usually end up not having enough room for myself.
I've got a new friend over here! Her name is Anna Knutsson. She's been a really big help to me at school, translating everything for me, showing me to all my classes and such. She's also the reason that I am doing the technical program at school instead of the natural science. She suggested that I change to it because it would be more fun. She switched to it from natural science and enjoyed it much more. And its really convenient for me because I can just follow her to all my classes! But yeah, Anna has been really nice.
Language is going alright, slowly I'm getting it. Some of the work for a class is translating from English to Swedish and vise versa. I can't really go from English to Swedish that well at all, seeing how I don't really know any Swedish. But I can mostly figure out how to go from Swedish to English by figuring out what seems the most logical. So maybe after a while I can start translating to Swedish!
Other than that I've done one interesting thing this last week. Mushroom hunting! As in, walking through the woods, which are beautiful, moss covered, open and flat. Through some of the woods there's stone walls completely covered in moss that were built in the 1700s. There's just nothing like that back home, it really is amazing walking through he woods here. The mushrooms we were gathering really quite big, about 5-6 inches in diameter and about 7 inches tall, on average. I didn't even know mushrooms got that big. What was fun was when we were walking around they would point out mushrooms not to get because they would probably poison me and kill me. So yeah, it was really interesting.
Well, sorry for the lack of picture, I don't really have a reliable camera yet.I should be getting a new one in a week or two though, so then I'll start taking more picture.
Hej Då!
Saturday, August 21, 2010
School starting
Hmm, where to start. Alright, well this last week was fairly slow, at least the first half was. Hanna took me in to town for me to get a sim-card for my cell phone. So that was really nice. And my host mother bought me unlimited texting, which was nice as well. So now I've got a fully functional cell phone, which is good. I did some more sailing again, this time I was in the class for younger kids, 12-17 age group I think. I was in the adult class before. At the class I met a girl that goes to the same school as me, so that was nice to meet her. The next day I went on a bike ride around the area, by my self, with out knowing where I was going, right before it was about to rain. So yeah, I ended up following a bike path that just goes in a big circle around the surrounding area. Got to go through a lot of the area, houses, park, downtown, through the forest, next to the train tracks. It was really cool. Ended up taking about an hour or so, and after about fifteen-twenty minutes it started to rain, luckily I brought my rain coat, my legs still got pretty wet though.
I haven't taken a lot of pictures of the area yet, mostly because I'm lazy, but also I'm not sure if there's anymore AA batteries in the house, and I haven't asked if there are. I miss my old camera...
School started up Thursday, well kinda, it was more of an introduction. I met all the teachers and, that's about it... Everything was in English, so I didn't really know what was said most of the day, I guess the teacher forgot to translate for me. I did meet all my other class mates, they were all really nice. They translated things for me when I asked. Which was good, because the next day, Friday, was kind of a 'game day'. All the classes went together to different games, e.g building a tower out of marshmallows and dry spaghetti. My class was really glad to have me because no one there had ever made a building out of stuff like that. I've been doing it since I was like, four or five, so I knew what I was doing. Consequently our class won that game with a tower of 94cm. By the end of the school day there were a few kids that were talking to me, who had also invited me to sit at the same lunch table to talk to me. So that was really nice.
Besides that I haven't really done anything else. Oh, so some stuff over here that have stood out. Construction workers actually work here. Like, the whole time they're on the job, there might be one guy taking a short break while the rest work, so its pretty outstanding compared to back home. Shopping carts have a lock on them that you need to pay to unlock them, you then get your money back when you return them, so its a really cool way of keeping them from spreading all over the place. All the soda here is made with real sugar, so its pretty awesome.
So yeah, after writing this I've discovered that I still don't like to write. Regardless of how well I know the subject. But yeah, oh well.
Hej Då!
I haven't taken a lot of pictures of the area yet, mostly because I'm lazy, but also I'm not sure if there's anymore AA batteries in the house, and I haven't asked if there are. I miss my old camera...
School started up Thursday, well kinda, it was more of an introduction. I met all the teachers and, that's about it... Everything was in English, so I didn't really know what was said most of the day, I guess the teacher forgot to translate for me. I did meet all my other class mates, they were all really nice. They translated things for me when I asked. Which was good, because the next day, Friday, was kind of a 'game day'. All the classes went together to different games, e.g building a tower out of marshmallows and dry spaghetti. My class was really glad to have me because no one there had ever made a building out of stuff like that. I've been doing it since I was like, four or five, so I knew what I was doing. Consequently our class won that game with a tower of 94cm. By the end of the school day there were a few kids that were talking to me, who had also invited me to sit at the same lunch table to talk to me. So that was really nice.
Besides that I haven't really done anything else. Oh, so some stuff over here that have stood out. Construction workers actually work here. Like, the whole time they're on the job, there might be one guy taking a short break while the rest work, so its pretty outstanding compared to back home. Shopping carts have a lock on them that you need to pay to unlock them, you then get your money back when you return them, so its a really cool way of keeping them from spreading all over the place. All the soda here is made with real sugar, so its pretty awesome.
So yeah, after writing this I've discovered that I still don't like to write. Regardless of how well I know the subject. But yeah, oh well.
Hej Då!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)