Well, the past week has been one of the biggest for me since I came to Sweden. The last thing I wrote was about Tuesday last week and well that is before stuff started happening.
Wednesday, I went to school and the big thing I did in school was film for Romeo and Juliet, we filmed most of the movie that one day and so I was doing that most of the day. After that I went to hang out with Caitlin for a little bit. It ended up that we hung out all day and made dinner together in the proccess. It was a proud day for us, we did it all ourselves! While I was out with Caitlin Eva called me and told me that Gunn, the president of my rotary club expressed intrest in hosting me in her home. About two hours later she called me back and told me that I would be moving on Sunday! I was pretty excited to hear this, the Ernestams are great people but I really wanted to experience a few host families while I am here, not just one or two. Eva had already told Ingela and Andreas and we talked about it a little bit, I think we all agreed it would be a good thing. They want me experience a lot while I am here as well. Wednesday was a good day.
Thursday, I had an open house at school and so I had to stick around after school to go and do that. I am part of the basketball program and so that I had a practice. We were showing what we do and so the school had different sports practicing in the gym throughout the whole night. We had a half an hour slot to practice and show what we are made of! It was a lot of fun! Before the practice though, I met up with a girl for coffee. She contacted me after seeing me in the paper and we met up. I talked to her for a few hours and it was a lot of fun, she is going to be an exchange student in either Washington, Oregon, or Maine next year. So I had a lot of fun talking with her, she is interested in where I come from and she is really nice! Her name is Pauline, I am sure we will meet again before the year is up.
Friday is when it all started, big day. Friday morning, I woke up and I knew it was going to be a big day. I went to school and did all the normal school stuff, I was supposed to film more and we were supposed to edit the Romeo and Juliet in class, but that didn't happen. I ended up waiting around school for a few extra hours and then I also had to give up my camera for the weekend so another kid in my class could edit it! After school I went home for just a half an hour to pack a little bit and then Ingela and I rode our bikes into town to meet the rest of the family for dinner. It was kind of supposed to be a last night together thing, it didn't turn out to be our last night together though. It was nice and we went to a chinese food place, none of us ate chinese but it was still really delicious. I had something I had never had before, it was a piece of meat, mashed potatoes, and vegetables, all on a mini cuttingboard and baked together, totally delicious. Ingela, Andreas and I then went to Skrika, a concert that Caitlin was singing and playing her chello in. It was in the Örebro Konserthuset, concert house, and so that was really cool, I had been there once before on culture night but this was better. Caitlin's school and one other school put it on together, I am sorry Lakeview but this was really impressive. I really enjoyedthe whole thing and it was almost three hours long. I got home close to ten thirty and started packing. I really needed to pack because knew I would not have much time to pack when I got home on Sunday. I packed, and got distracted, and packed, and got distracted, I got to sleep around 1:30am.
Saturday, I got up at 2:2oam and went on my way, I took a shower and rode my bike to Caitlins house. We met up before going to the bus stop together, Anita didn't think it would be a good idea for Caitlin to walk around by herself at 3am. We had to get bus tickets that left at 3:50am, if we didn't do that then we would have had to pay for a really expensive train ticket or we would have shown up to late. We both thought it would be kind of fun. We were on the bus and neither of us could sleep really, it was weird. We arrived at the station in Stockholm at 6:20. We decided to go to where we would meet everyone else because that place was more happening. We layed down on a bench and tried to sleep for about an hour before we got woken up by a security guard saying "We don't lay here in Sweden", he said it in Swedish but it still sounded awkward. We met up with some other kids that also got there early at about 7 and hung out in McDonalds for a few hours. We then moved to a new spot and waited for everyone else to come. I didn't totally know what to expect from this weekend but it turned out that there were 36 of us. There were two other districts, neither one that I had met before at a Rotary gathering but I did know a few of them from other trips. It's always a little intimidating to see so many new faces but everyone is friendly and by the end of one weekend you are all good friends! After everyone one had gathered we walked to gamlastan, the old city in Stockholm. Gamlastan is the place with all the tourist shops. We had some freetime at a christmas market and then we walked to the ocean and got on a ferry. We went across to another island in Stockholm and then walked some more to another place for lunch! We had the choice of chicken or beef, haha, and it was really good food. Some asian quizene, after that we walked to an ice scating rink and went ice scating! It was a lot of fun, ice scating is always a croud pleaser. After that we had a few hour of free time before we had to be at the hostel. Like good foreign exchange students should do in Sweden we went for a fika! Fiona, a french girl who is on exchange in Stockholm, took us to a very nice place and most of the 36 of us ended up there. We then made our way to the hostel and got our rooms and keys. We then went to dinner together and played some games with the rotary people and then all of us Newbies got some advice from the Oldies. It was a good day and I had a lot of fun, we hung out together after dinner and kind of just played some stupid games and did some fun stuff. All in all, great day together with Rotary, thank you Rotary :D.
Sunday, we woke up at 8 and took some showers. We then went downstairs and ate breakfast, it was a nice hostel. It was a kind of hostel where there were only 4 beds in each room and a TV. It was really nice, I stayed with Greame and Corbin, two Canadian kids, and Tom, an Australian that lives in Göteborg. After breakfast We all got together and packed our stuff into a little tiny car. We then walked to the train station and took a train and then to a bus station and took a bus. Then we walked, we did all this to get to Skansen, an open air museum in Stockholm. We went to the christmas market there and just kind of chilled for a few hours. While we were there we ate an interesting grease pancake thing, I liked it but I think it was bad for my health. We then walked back to the central station and Gunnar, our Rotary guardian left us to get home. We said our sad goodbyes and went on our way. Caitlin and I didn't make bus reservations before hand and we just expected to buy bus tickets like we always did, no big deal. It was actually a really big deal because for some reason everyone was in Stockholm that day, I think it was a big shopping weekend and Stockholm is the biggest city so we had a hard time getting out. It was either pay a bunch of money and get home really super late, or pay about the same as it would cost anyway and go to Västerås for a night. We have lots of exchange student friends in Västerås so we did that. We stayed with Giovanna and Greame and Alexa stayed there too. We sauna'd and were supposed to play videogames but never got around to it.
Monday, the unfortunate thing about doing this was that we had to catch a bus at 6am the on Monday morning, so we ran to the station at 5:30 and then waited on our bus for an hour before having to change trains at 7 to go to Örebro, I was totally asleep at this point and this journey sucked. I slept on the train for a few hours and we got into Örebro at 15 after 8, I was already too late to go andsee the showing of my Romeo and Juliet video so I just went to sleep on Caitlins couch for about 2 hours before we went to lunch with a Rotarian and his son. We had a nice lunch and made some good connections with some good people. I then went to school for about an hour and a half and watched some more Shakespeare plays that my friends and other 2nd graders had made. After school I met up with Caitlin again and we went to Andreas' parent's house to make candles! Caitlin had to leave right after she came to go to a Mary Kay training thing but I stayed and had dinner with them and Andreas, Ingela and Hanna were there as well! This was our last night together as me being a part of their family. It was fun and a good way to spend the last night with them. I went home and finished packing the last of my things, I have probably 3 times as much stuff now as I had before, it was crazy how much stuff I have. Finally the Ernestams took me home to my new host family.......
Will be continued Tomorrow!
No comments:
Post a Comment