I love being an exchange student!!

I'm special here, not that I'm not special in the U.S. too but here I am extra special, I am a Rotary Youth Exchang Student. Being one of these students really helps you get an enjoyable experience out of life. I started today off late, I am still recovering from sickness and so I didn't feel like going to PE this morning so, I skipped that and just came in for my afternoon classes. It was pouring rain on my way to school but it was a lot worse five minutes before I left so I can't complain. I got to school and thought "Who should I talk to about changing classes" my intuition told me to talk to my counselor, Eva. Eva is a very nice lady who is in charge of the scheduling of about 500 students, even so she makes time to help students individually. I went to talk to her about changing classes and when I got there some of the first words out of her mouth were "I've been reading your blog...". Thank you mom! The blog is a good idea. Anyway, since she has been reading my blog she has read my feelings about my class and she already knew that I wanted to switch! She told me it would be no problem for me to do this, I was so happy to hear this. I am really, truly grateful to my school for being so flexible with me! We went to talk to the headmaster of my program and he wasn't there so we couldn't talk to him. Later I saw Lisalotte, spelling, my mentor and I'm assuming Eva talked to her because she said that we should meet in the morning to decide which class I should go into. I think the choice is mine, second or third grade. There are a lot of really nice kids in the second grade class and that would be good but the second grade is the hardest as far as classes are concerned. I met a nice kid in the third grade class that I am thinkng about going into and I already know three of the kids in that class so I think I will be switching to the third grade. I will talk to Lisalotte tomorrow and figure things out for sure. If I go with the third grade though I think I will get to graduate swedish school! That would definately be a plus for the year! After these big talks I went to three hours of Swedish class and then came home and chilled the rest of the day. I am going to Stockholm tomorrow with Caitlin, we are going to visit Riley and go to an amusement park! Should be fun!!! I will take my laptop but no promises on blogs. All in all a wonderful, increadable, great day!

Kebab!

So today was again just a chill, relax, feel better, day. I went to the Rotary meeting though and that was good, I am trying to go every week, everytime I go people talk to me and thats good connections. My notable blogging thing today is Kebab. Kebab is just a type of meat I guess!? I really don't know for sure but there are signs all over that are in restaurants and stuff that say KEBAB. Today I got to try some kebab, Ingela called me and asked what I wanted her to bring home cause she didn't feel like cooking and kebab was one of the options she gave me. It was just a sandwich and I didn't take a picture but just imagine a sandwich and that's what this looked like. It was a very good sandwich and so ya, now I have had kebab!! WOOHOO!

Much love from Sweden,
Gabe

Monday and Tuesday...

So I decided to at least try and switch my classes in school, it just isn't working with these kids, they're afraid of me or they're too good to talk to me, either one I can't deal with this all year. I am going to try and get into a third year class because if I do that I can graduate Swedish Gymnasium and that would be completely awesome! Anyway, Monday I went to school just like normal and I felt fine until my last class and then I just started feeling really sick, my head hurt and I just couldn't concentrate at all, not enjoyable. It is bad timing to get sick because my class was going camping Tuesday to Wednesday this week and I just so happen to get sick on those days. I didn't go camping with my class this morning and that was going to be me giving my class one last chance for us to get along but now that I see it's raining I'm very glad I didn't go. I am just sitting at home trying to feel better and getting caught up on my blog! All in all nothing interesting has happened and I am just sitting at home, great stuff!

The weekend!

Epic falling picture, I'm still hanging on!

Severin Sape!!!!

Karl, Theresia and I eating delicous food, Eva is taking the picture.

Issi and I.

I'm a jogger :D

So after language camp I had a very fun and interesting, exciting, weekend! It all started with a dress up party! I have never been to a costume party and I don't know why someone would want to have a costume party when it's not even close to haloween but I got invited and so I went. It was really fun and I dressed up as a jogger! The party happened on Friday night, just a few hours after I got back from language camp. Saturday I went with my counselor and her family to their summer house. Their summer house was huge, really, really big. On saturday I just kind of hung out and relaxed, we went for a walk right after dinner and that was fun. I also got to talk to Theresia, my counselors daughter and tha was really nice too, she has also been an exchange student to Germany for a year so she gave me some good tips on being a good exchange student. Karl, my counselors husband, enjoys to cook so he made some absolutely delicious meals that I really enjoyed. On sunday Severin, my counselors son came out and we went waterskiing, yes waterskiing on the 12th of September! It was really cold but really fun and I'm glad we did it, after we were done skiing we went into the sauna and relaxed in there for a while. We then came back to Örebro and I introduced Caitlin to Eva, my counselor and I then finally went home! Haha, it was a very, very fun weekend and I am so happy that Eva is my counselor, she is a great lady that is just really a good person. She will help make this a year I will never forget :D!

Pictures from Eskilstuna!

The rest of the week..

So I stopped with Wednesday night, that was really a lot of fun and I'll remember it for a while. Thurday we had classes and those things like normal, then we went to a zoo that was really far away, really really far away. I don't know how long we were walking but it seemed like a long time. We only had an hour at the zoo but we got to see quite a bit, monkeys, tigers, lions it was fun, I don't think I had been to a zoo for like two years before this. After the zoo we went swimming at a place called Vattenpalatso (water palace), it was a really nice place and it exceeded my expectations completely. It had a wave pool and a water slide and 6 saunas. Good times. Rugved and I had to leave a little bit early to attend a birthday party for our host moms sister. I have been to so many birthday parties here it is unbelievable. It was a good little family party and we ate some delicious cake, wonderful! After we got home I called up the rest of the students to see if they were still hanging out, they were, and then my and Rugved left the house to go meet them up. We met them in the center of town at a pizza place and then somehow we all ended up in the town square sitting in a circle talking and having fun! It was our last night together for the week and we probably won't see all of each other at the same time again for a few months so it was kind of sad :(. It still felt good to be together and to get to know each other. Friday we had our normal classes in the morning and went to lunch, all week we went to lunch with the various Rotary clubs of Eskilstuna and introduced ourselves in Swedish. After lunch we came back and gave the class a critique and then we had a big hunt around the school for questions that we had to answer. I didn't even come close to winning the question thing but it was still fun. We sang and learned some swedish songs and had a delicious final fika and then we all went on our separate ways. All in all the week was totally wonderful and fun! It was great to meet the other exchange students and now I have contacts in various parts of Sweden, great stuff, really it was nice. I am so glad that that week happened and it just made me even more excited to be here!

Well, it has been a long, long, fun, fun, week :D

Well I just wanted to day that things here are awesome, maybe the best. Ok so here was my week, in chronological order. It all started with Andreas dropping me off at the train station. He told me what to do and dropped me off, it was great just being treated like an adult and given responsibility for myself, he didn't need to hold my hand to get onto the train. I met up with Caitlin at the station and we got on the right train together. I took a picture of my pasport and the tickets, there are two tickets, one for the ride there and one for the ride back. Each ticket is only valid for one person so you may be asking yourself how we both went on it. Well I am fifteen years old until the 29th of this month and therefore I am a child, as far as the swedish railway is concerned, Caitlin is 18 so she got an adult ticket and I got to be her child! We got to Eskilstuna four hours early so we could check it out, and thats what we did. We walked around, had lunch and basically just chilled in town before everything started. We walked by the hotel a little earlier then people were supposed to be there and I saw Riley Cox. Riley Cox is another exchange student here in Sweden, I flew over with him when we came and we recognized each other. So we stopped and talked to him and two other students from Stockholm where he lives. Everyone else showed up about an hour later and we all got split up into our different host families for the week. There were two of us in each host family and I ended up with Rugved, a kid from India living in Nyköpping. We stayed with the Cheadles, some really nice people that had four kids and this week it just so happened that two were gone. Their son, Mike, had just gotten back from South Africa on a yearlong exchange. It was really nice to talk to him and he is an awesome guy that gave Rugved and I some really good advice. During the day we had the same schedule all week. We started at 8:30 and had a fika break at 9:30, then we broke for lunch at 11:45 and were done with lunch at 1:15, had another fika at 2:30 and then were done with the classes at 3:30. These were Swedish classes taught at a local college, it was just us exchange students and we had two teachers, but most the time only one was there and one Oldy. An Oldy is one who has been an exchange student in Sweden for six months already, for me these kids come from New Zealand, Australia, or South Africa. In six months in January when all the kids from the southern hemisphere go home and new ones come I will be an Oldy. The Oldies already know how to speak Swedish and they are all from English speaking countries so it was really good to have one around. Ours was Stevie Jack from New Zealand however, during the week other Oldies came to visit and I think overall I met six of them. So on Monday we all had a bbq at a lakes edge and we played KUD, a swedish game that involves nocking over some sticks with other sticks. We started to become more comfortable with each other after the first day and then after the bbq on Monday night we were all already best friends. On Wednesday we all went bowling together and ate dinner together, then all of us students walked a half an hour away to go swimming and jump off a big tower in this lake. It was really, really cold but we all had fun and nobody got sick!.... Thats all I will write tonight, I will hopefully finish up the weeks activities tomorrow, GOD NATT!!