Halloween

Here in Sweden, Halloween isn't as big a deal as back home. There really isn't trick or treat and dressing up. It's more like Fathers Day where it's recognized and maybe you send a card or something.

Now that Christmas is coming up, my host family has been showing me some Swedish traditions. They have a drink, similar to Coke, called Julmust. It's just a little bit different. They also have this drink called Glögg. It's brewed, kind of like tea, but it has lots of different spices in it.

Lov

"Lov" means "vacation". I have one week of free time until school starts again this coming Monday.

Today was a good day. I accomplished nothing besides eating, reading and sleeping. I feel as if my mind is slowly atrophying into mush. Aaaaaaaaaaahh...

The book I am reading is the aforementioned "The Girl Who Played With Fire" which I picked up in the Pocket Shop at Malmö Central Station for 100 crowns. It's really good so far.

Things I'm looking forward to: Reading my book some more, Friday (Seeing some friends), Saturday (Halloween Dinner), Sleep (my eyes are tired) and another day of relaxation (tomorrow).

Lediga Vecka

This week was pretty non-descript. I had a business economy test today and was relieved to actually understand most of it. I also had a Swedish test. It's like the equivalent of English class at home, more like literature. I could only answer about half the questions. On the ones I did answer, I had to resort to English for some of the words. Still, it's great that I could understand some of the test.

My Russian skills are steadily improving. My friends and I have been greeting each other in Russian. Here's a typical conversation that we might have:

здравствуйте товарищ!

(Good day Comrade!)

здравствуйте комиссар!

(Good day Commissar!)

K родина!

(For the Motherland!)

фашистский свиньи!

(Fascist Pigs!)

Vill du äta lunch nu? Jag är lite hungrig.

(Want to go eat lunch? I'm a little hungry.)

Okej.

(Ok.)

The downside is that nine times out of ten the school food is disgusting to such a severe degree so as to be inedible. There are upsides though; the juice is incredible. There is also this stuff that they have sitting out called "Knäckebröd". It's kind of like drywall, but it tastes better. They usually put butter on it. It's grrrrrrrrrrrrrreat.

The only other thing to report is that this coming week is our "ledig vecka", or off-week. No classes or anything so I can sleep in some more.

Tivoli

Yesterday on Saturday, I went to Denmark with some friends to visit an amusement park in Copenhagen called Tivoli. We met each other at Malmö Central, the train station, and waited for Marguerite's host family to pick us up. We waited for a bit and I changed my Swedish crowns to Danish crowns at a nearby Forex.

While I was looking around, I saw that the sequel to one of my favorite books had come out in English. It's called "Flickan Som Lekte Med Elden", which means "The Girl Who Played With Fire". It's a really good series (trilogy actually), and I heard recently that the English version of the third and final book has just come out in the U.S. Here in Sweden, they are really proud of it because it's by a Swedish author, Stieg Larsson. They've been adapting the books into movies and I saw the movie version of the first book last weekend.

When her host family came, we all got in the car and drove across the bridge that connects Sweden and Denmark, the Öresund bridge. Along the way, you could see wind towers that were set up in the sea. This was the second time I had crossed the bridge, the first time being when I my host family took me home from Copenhagen airport.

This is the main entrance to Tivoli. They only open for a few weeks at a time, usually during holidays. The next time will be at Christmas.

We just walked around and rode roller coasters for a few hours. It was really fun. This is all of us together.

This was in line for the last ride we went on. Caienna is showing me a dance.

After Tivoli and dinner, we went home and spent the night at Marguerites host family's house.

Tomorrow Is Friday!

Today will be my last soccer practice of the season, I think I will look into doing inomhus fotboll, (indoor soccer).

In my Swedish class, we visited the library. I was surprised by the number of English books that they have there. Also, they have Finnish, German, Romanian, Italian, French, Spanish, Russian, Serb-Croat, Norwegian, Danish and Persian books. I going to get some Astrix and Bamse comics to read for improving my Swedish.

In other news, det är jätte kallt ute. It's pretty cold out right now. It actually snowed a little bit today, but it didn't stay for long. In this part of Sweden, it usually doesn't snow. There is wind though, ohhhh yes indeed. I'm not sure if it's because we're so close to the sea, but sometimes it's hard to walk if you're walking upwind.

Can't wait for tomorrow.

Princess Cake

Undoubtably the crowning achievement of the Swedish civilization up to this point, Princess Cake is the coolest thing since sliced bread.

Here is some:

This is what usually happens to it.

Snapshots

These are my russian textbooks. The white one is for grammar. I have Russian three times a week.

Package from home! Lots of warm clothes in here. Plus Abuelita Hot Chocolate. Score.
This page has some of my Cyrillic alphabet practice. The biggest one that you can see is upside down and reads "Boris".
This phone was graciously given to me by my host club. It's pretty cool.

6/10/2009

In Sweden, the dates go day, month, then year. I'm not sure if that's a Swedish thing or a European thing but it makes more sense when you think about it.

Over the weekend I went to Lund again. This time it was for Höstfest, which was sponsored by C.I.S.V., which stands for Children's International Summer Villages. As far as I can tell, there was no connection to Sjölunden, the language village that I went to over the past few summers.

I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I was disappointed. It was a lot smaller than I had first thought. The first thing they had us do was this weird game where a few people had questions on their backs and we had to go around and answer them. This soon broke down into random guessing because all the questions were in Swedish.

Then we had dinner. It was traditional Swedish food: potato salad, sandwiches, that kind of thing. It was good though. We amused ourselves by wearing fake mustaches that we had bought in Malmö earlier. Mine was kind of a grandpa/professor looking one.

They finished off with this singer who may have also been a comedian for all I would have been able to tell who did a few songs before the end.

For the rest of the night, we just kind of hung out. Some other exchange students made tacos with groceries we bought earlier, but I fell asleep before then.

The next day we all went down to a coffee shop for breakfast and then caught the train to go our respective ways.

Fredag, Den Andra Oktober

Day starts with Svenska. Not the "learn to speak Swedish" one, but the "Swedish literature" class that everyone has to take. We are split into groups, and each group is researching a different a time period in literature. Our group is the most recent type of writing, Modernism. Today our group was looking at a film by Ingmar Bergman called Den Sjunde Inseglet.

Then I had math, which is very simple right now. It's like y=mx+b, so I'm going to see if I can get bumped up to the next level. After that was S.F.I. (Swedish for Immigrants). There are no immigrants in the class, just exchange students. That was an hour long. Then Företags Ekonomi (Business Economics). I think we're going over doing the bookkeeping for salaries right now.

Höstfest on Saturday.

Bowling In Malmö

Yesterday I went to Malmö with some other exchange students. It was a "Rotaract" event. I'm not really sure what it is, but we had fun. I think we got there at about 7 p.m. and came back at 10 or 11.

We all met in O'Leary's to go bowling. I did pretty horribly, mostly gutter balls. Then we ate dinner at the food court nearby and sat around.

That was about it, but it was a great evening with the other exchange students that I really can't describe.