Rasputin

Today, Thursday, was a good day. As far as days go. I spent most of the time in Språkvärlden studying Russian. I also found out that my bag ended up in Trelleborg Station after I lost it on the bus on Tuesday. Next week is a one week break from school called Sportlov. Tom from my district in Michigan who's been living in Åbo (Turku) Finland is coming here next week so we might meet up or something.

Anyway, I have a new song stuck in my head called "Rasputin" by Turisas which is a Finnish symphonic metal band introduced to be by Philipp Tyskan, the German. They have an accordion and violin player and they wear red body paint with black stripes along with furs and viking armor. Spännande.

Ra Ra Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen
there was a cat that really was gone
Ra Ra Rasputin, Russia's greatest love machine
it was a shame how he carried on

I leave you with these, from "The Meaning Of Liff", a creation of John Lloyd and Douglas Adams:

Aberbeeg: Of amateur actors, to adopt a Mexican accent when called upon to play any variety of foreigner (except Pakistanis - from whom a Welsh accent is considered sufficient).

Ewelme: The smile bestowed on you by an air hostess.

Liff: A book, the contents of which are totally belied by its cover. For instance, any book the dust jacket of which bears the words. 'This book will change your life'.

Meathop: One who sets off for the scene of an aircraft crash with a picnic hamper.

Peoria: The fear of peeling too few potatoes.

Scraptoft: The absurd flap of hair a vain and balding man grows long above one ear to comb it to the other ear.

Thrupp: To hold a ruler on one end on a desk and make the other end go bbddbbddbbrrbrrrrddrr.

Ventnor: One who, having been visited as a child by a mysterious gypsy lady, is gifted with the strange power of being able to operate the air-nozzles above aeroplane seats.

Yarmouth: To shout at foreigners in the belief that the louder you speak, the better they'll understand you.

Helgen

This weekend I was at a birthday party for my friend Peter in a place called Byärsjölagård that I defy you to pronounce on the first try. What I've noticed about birthdays parties, or at least 18th birthday parties is that they celebrate them later after the actual date and make a rather big deal about it. They also do them in pairs from different classes, presumably to double the guest list and split the costs. I had a pretty good time there.

The day after I went to Simrishamn with my host family for a more formal party with some of their friends. It was very fancy, we had several courses, from soup with champagne and cream in it to Italian meat roll type things and then on to dessert which was kind of like custard with sweet almonds. Very good.

Today was a pretty normal day, Swedish For Immigrants then to Språkvärlden where I studied some Russian. My German friend Philipp got his Finnish book in the mail the other day so I helped him study with that as well. Philipps goal is to learn all the Scandinavian languages with the singular exception of Danish on the grounds that it sounds like someone trying to speak Swedish while choking on a hot potato. That includes Faroese and Icelandic, which are together only spoken by about 500,000 peopler. However, it's low number of native speakers is almost certainly made up for by or perhaps adds to the inherent coolness of both languages.

Dugir tú føroyskt? Eg veit það ekki!

(Do you speak Faroese? I don't know!)

Also in Icelandic, they don't take in any loanwords. They kind of just make it up from older words from their own language. For example is "talavölva" which means "computer" can literally be translated to "number seeress".

Familjen Barlöv

Yesterday I moved in with my new host family, the Barlövs. There's Anette my hostmom and Kjell (pronounced "Shell"). She's a gynecologist and he's a retired gynecologist. Anette works at a clinic in Ystad and Trelleborg. My new room is quite impressive. There's the room itself of course and then there's the the adjoining study and mini-kitchen. And bathroom.

Svarte is a small town about about 5 kilometers and 5 minutes from Ystad by either train or bus. I have a great view of the sea from my bedroom window which is nice. I'll be staying here for a couple of weeks, until they go on vacation to New York. Then I'll move back in the Grahns for the remainder of the year.

6 of 12

The first thing I would like to address is the ungodly amount of snow that we're getting down here. If you want to go outside you can't walk, you can only hope to wade.

The next thing is that I have been here for a little more than a half a year. I remember landing being a disoriented in the airport, waiting as continental drift slowly overtook baggage claim, seeing the "Welcome Phil" sign being waved over the crowd at Arrivals. Over the past six months I've experienced a lot from Tivoli Amusement Park in Copenhagen to Skansen Zoo in Stockholm to Sweden's southernmost city, Ystad. I've still got about six more months before they can deport me and there is still so much to do and see.

Over the year Rotary arranges a lot of trips around the country (and sometimes out of it) for us to go on. There was a trip to the Rönne river where we canoed for two days, we visited the National Museum (National Muséet) and of course there was the language class where we all met for the first time. I'm looking forward to our Kiruna trip sometime next month and then there's our big end of the year Eurotrip.

It's about this time of year that the new exchange students from countries like South Africa, southern Brazil and Australia in the Southern Hemisphere come to replace those who have already been here for the year. We now have five more exchange students in our district. Three girls from Australia, one from the US and a guy from Argentina. I'm looking forward to meeting them.

January 14 - Present

Our computer broke. I turned 17. I started to study German. There was a snowstorm yesterday and we had to stay at home. Other than that the only thing less impressive than the past few weeks is my ability to write about it.

Forgive me.

School Starts Again

School started on monday two days ago. This semester I have a few new classes like Naturkunskap, Information och Layout and Filosofi. Tuesday I didn't have to come to school because all of my classes were inställd, canceled. Except for Engelska, but I don't have to take that class. I'm going to fotboll tonight, first time this year. I might go to a friends before and play videogames for a while.

I'm looking forward to my birthday on the 20th.

Christmas Holidays

God Jul och Gott Nytt År!

I had a nice quiet Christmas this year. We had about 7 types of sill to choose from, which is raw herring. We sat and watched the Polar Express while we waited for Lena to come home from work at around eight. It was Rolf, Lena, Annette (Rolf and Lena's daughter) and me. We opened presents one by one starting with the youngest to the oldest and then back down again and so on. I got lots of chocolate, a national team shirt, a CD of Swedish music, a book about Sweden and "And Another Thing", which is a great book. I also got a one month trial for the gym that Annette works for, so I've been twice by now and I've really liked it so far.

The next day everyone came over again including Emmie who is Annettes four year old daughter. We had a great lunch of Christmas leftovers and then played games for most of the day. I went and saw Sherlock Holmes at the theater with a friend a couple days ago. It was a really good.

I have another week of so until school starts so I'll probably just hang around watching Scrubs and reading. Maybe go to the gym every other day.