Rise Against what?

This is Herman, friend from Örebro.

Rise Against lead singer!

Oh ya.

Rock on.

scream and shout haha.

A free cd from the first band!

Cool lights onstage.

Look at all those people, the little fence thing is to show when the moshing stops, I was on the moshing side closer to the stage!

Gio singing love songs to Rise Against.

These guys knew how you should dress for a concert.

Bought a t-shirt from this guy, he was apparently from Ireland or England but the shirts were cheap and he was kinda funny.

The Globe. We weren't actually in it but we were in the sam building.

Long line, it goes around the corner for a ways.

Stockholm at sundown.

Haha riding that escalator.

Gio being serious.

Rasmus and I stuntin.

More people protesting.

Horse police, kinda cool.

The Irish man speaking English.

Cool giant dogs.

Bagpipes, ya.

Haha he's workin the front of the parade.

This was just the last part of the line for the signing with Rise Against, we didn't think Gio would get to see them.

This sign has three different languages on it.

Cute little weiner dog while waiting for the subway in Stockholm!

Saturday was quite a long day. It didn't start early or end that late but I did a lot. The day started with breakfast at about noon at Liz's house. My Västerås friends were coming to Stockholm day of to go to the concert. This day was big because it was Rise Against, a band from the US that is on a world tour right now and they came to play in Sweden, Giovanna and Alexa knew about this concert months ahead of time and I thought about going but changed my mind and decided not to. However, a week before the concert I was at a party with some of my Örebro friends and they told me that they were going and how awesome it was going to be and that I should go too and so I checked it out online and bought a ticket the following Tuesday. Back to the story of how my day went, Liz and I went into town and met up with the kids from Västerås. I had planned on going to the concert with them and by them I mean, Rasmus, Alexa, Gio, and Alexa's host sister and her boyfriend. After meeting them in town we had a few hours to kill and so we started off by going to meet Rise Against, I didn't meet them but Giovanna did. Rise Against was going to sign stuff in old town Stockholm, Giovanna found out about tis through friends and when we went there the rest of us didn't want to wait in line and Gio did so she wated and it payed off because she actually met the band. While she was doing that the rest of us went shopping! Not however before we saw an Irish parade thing, really not sure what it was. There were bagpipes and bitg Irish dogs and people speaking English and it all felt very Irishy but I am not sure what it was all about, we stuck around for a little while when a guy talked but we really weren't sure. We walked around and shopped and then went out to eat together before the show. When we were at lunch we met up with some other exchange students and chilled and had a good time! We then made our way to the concert and sat in line for about 45 minutes, it was however a lot of fun! We bought t-shirts in the line and stuff and messed around, met some cool people, it was good! We got inside and waited in line again for a while to get into the actual room where we were going to see Rise against. Luckily enough for me though we were still at the beginning of the line and so we got a really good place to stand. Two bands came before Rise Against, we didn't really like the first one but the second one was pretty good. I had a great time at the concert and was involved in a mosh pit for the first time which was actually a lot of fun. I was really happy with my choice to go and I have figured out that even if you don't like the band that much going to the concert is still a lot of fun! The Västerås kids had to go and so I met up with my Örebro friends and rode back into Stockholm with them and then met up with Liz and rode back to her house with her. It was a long day and I enjoyed it totally! I will go to as many conerts as I can!

Stockholm for the weekend.

Standing on a bridge over a road near Liz's house.

Thomas, Liz and I before Thomas went home on his trolly.

Stockholm has all the transportation systems you can imagine. They even have these little trolly things like in San Francisco. Food sampling night with Liz's host parents!

Here is some people protesting, I wasn't totally sure what but it was something about aribic peoples. They were standing accross from the political building in Stockholm.

American Apparel store in Stockholm they advertise on Facebook a lot and I didn't think they had any realy stores.

Just a cool picture I think of a building.

This was in a Café Liz and I took a fika in, it says "Gabriel våran snygging" which is like "Gabriel our good looking"

I really like the look of Stockholm in places.

Fika is a must for all Rotary clubs in Sweden.

This lady was talking about sleep!

Liz and I eating and stuff.

The people we were sitting with, the women you can see on the far right is Liz's counselor.

Kalops.

Me and the mirrored wall. I always laugh when I take these pictures because it is just glass that's mirrored on one side so there is probably someone in there looking at me while I do this haha.

Look at all that snow. Wow.

I had to get up pretty early to catch my bus to Stockholm and I was also in a little bit of a rush because I never get everything I need to do done the night before. When I went outside I was quite surprised to see the earth covered in snow, lots of snow I'd say about six inches. I went with a different bus line this time and so I was able to be picked up much closer to my house. I didn't sleep so great the night before and so on the bus I laid my chair back and went to sleep for a few hours on the way to Stockholm. When I got there and took my picture against the mirrored wall and then met up with Liz in central station. From central station we went together to Liz's school and talked to one of her teachers about why she was going to miss her next class, we were going to her Rotary meeting! After we talked to her teacher we met up with a few of her friends in the cafeteria and killed about 20 minutes talking to them. We then proceeded to walk to Liz's Rotary meeting place and meet up with her counselor. Liz's counselor is a delightful lady whom I would be happy to meet with again. Her club was also very welcoming to me and for that I am thankful, we ate a deliciouse meat stew thing that is called kalops and listened to a women talk about how to sleep better. After the meeting we went shopping in the city and while we were doing that it began to snow. When I first arrived in Stockholm it wasn't snowing and I didn't think it was going to either but it did in fact follow me there. We then went to Liz's house and I met her host family again, it was nice to see them because the last time I stayed there they were really nice to me and so I knew they were good people. After that Liz and I just chilled the rest of the night. We had a family dinner with her family and the food was delicious! Another exchange student, Thomas, came over and we watched a movie together, the three of us. I was totally happy with my first day in Stockholm and who knew what the second day would bring :O!

Bettin...

If you look close you'll see a butterfly that was in the Skinnars house, it also tried flying into my mouth.

Mmmm rasberry pie with vanilla sauce!

doesn't that just look good.

Simplest pie I've ever witnessed being made.

Mmmm.

All the ingredients.

It is quite a large sticker.

Here is the car before, kind of. You can see on the trunk compartment that it is white, that is th underneath color and the rest is just a big sticker.

Alfred took a turn for the worse after he drank the bottom little bit of all our drinks, milk, water, apple juice, lemonade, it was good stuff. But Alfred actually felt fine.

Henrik Krigman, a friend who plays hockey talked about hockey, the game in general, it was very informant.

Sweden's treasure, Erik, IKEA is good too.

I was debating on whether I should go to Stockholm on Thursday or Friday and this made my mind up on one thing, speech. My English class was doing speeches on Thursday and I felt like that was something I should definately be a part of so I booked my ticket for Friday. I did my speech on speaking two languages, I think everyone in the world should speak two languages, this topic was mainly based on my experiences here in Sweden. We split our English class into three groups and I put myself in the first group because I knew I could handle it. There were only seven of us in my group so it was good for me to listen to the other kids presentations as well. I did that and then we ate lunch together and during lunch somehow Alfred dared himself to drink something gross and he got others to pay up money if he did it, the things that happen in cafeteria's. We then did something else as a class and that was cool because I like hanging out with my class. I got home and Emil came over to get help taking the sticker off his new car Tommy helped him out with that and I helped to a little too. I don't know if the sticker thing is common but the car was from Gunn's work and so it had a big advertisement sticker covering the whole thing, it could have easily been paint as well, cool stuff. A little after that I went to the Skinnars house to ask Anders about something and soon enough Kajsa and I made a pie! Actually, Kajsa made a pie and I watched her do it but it was really really easy and in the end it tasted really good too. I watched some tv with them and after the pie had been eaten I wet home :D. Fun day all around, sometimes I just do a lot and sometimes I don't do anything. The balance of life.