Today was my first day at Kungsängsgymnaset, the high school, grades 10-12, that Hanna, Ida, and Hampus, Hanna's older brother, go to. We woke up at about 7 this morning to get ready for school and I had cornflakes for breakfast; they bought them for me so I could have something familiar for breakfast and everybody was really excited because they all like them but never buy them. We got to school by 8 but Hanna did not have a class until 9:10 so we went to the principal's office to check in and they gave me a small plastic holder for a name tag. Then we went back to Hanna's locker, I made a name tag to fit in the plastic holder out of some lined paper I had with me, maybe I will add some color to it tomorrow. I met one of Hanna's friends Sofia and the two of them gave me a tour of the school. It is quite big, or at lest it seemed that way to me, but that may be because I did not know where anything was, and it's a bit confusing. Hanna assures me that I will learn my way around in no time; I am a bit skeptical but I will trust the pros for now.
The first class we went to was English class. They had had to reed a book outside of class on their own and today in class they had to write a book report on the book. Hanna read The Gift; "a Christmas story with a good life lesson at the end" according to Hanna. It seemed very intense and Hanna was very nervous that she had forgotten the book over vacation, but she seemed to have no trouble writing pages and pages on the topic. It all seemed very intense. The teacher gave me the prompt for the book report and is was quite long and included many writing points along with a short list of grammatical writing tips and English words that get mixed up often.
The next class we went to was Social Study or Society, I am not sure what we would call it that in the U.S. The class was quite long, 90, minutes and it was all in Swedish, though I understood a little bit because Hanna translated a few of the words for me. They were comparing the Swedish government to the U.S. government. They also talked a little bit about the election, because it is today, and how the electoral system works. I smiled when the teacher said Ohio and swing state in the same sentence and thought about what my parents were doing just then, had the voted yet? Because it was only 11am, or so my time, my parents were probably still asleep. I also got to listen to some students give presentations in class, though I had no idea what they were talking about, it was still cool to recognize a word here and their and make up different meanings for different words.After Social Studies we ate lunch in the cafeteria. Like at Ekebyskolan lunch was free and today it was fish in a tomato sauce and to Hanna and my surprise, it tasted a lot better then it looked.
After lunch we had our third and final class of the day. Two whole hours of math! Granted there was a break in the middle, where a good portion of the class ran down to the cafe to buy a snack, most of us got chocolate balls. I think I am addicted to chocolate balls and I am going to go through withdrawal when I come back home where I won't be able to find them anywhere. Good thing Ida wrote down the recipe for me last year when she was in the U.S. Even though math was really long, Hanna has 7 hours of math a week (my dad would love it), it was still really fun. I was able to understand a little bit of what was going on and when I didn't understand one of the words on the board I used Google translate. Hanna caught me one time and laughed but she said it was a good idea, even though Google translate is not that reliable. I was able to learn many of the Swedish numbers today just by listening to the teacher talk and write on the board.
It was a very exciting day at school. When we came home from school, Hanna's mom ordered pizza and we had a very yummy snack before starting our homework. The pizza here has a very thin crust, even thinner than most of our thin crust pizzas, and it was delicious! While Hanna did her homework I wrote my blog and listened to music. Apparently I was extremely tired because without meaning to I fell completely asleep. Hanna woke me up in time to get ready to go to the gym, we were going to meet Ida and Austin to take a step class, but when we got there the class was full so we returned home and hung out a bit before dinner. After a delicious dinner of salmon and potatoes I taught Hanna how to shuffle cards, and she taught me how to bake an amazing chocolaty goodness: Kladdkaka! Kladdkaka is kind of like a cross between a thin brownie and a thin chocolate cake, but much more gooey and delicious! We ate ours with fresh whipped cream and tea! It was amazing! Why don't we have chocolate balls and Kladdkaka in the U.S.?!?!?! Tack så mycket, tills vidare.
Were you surprised that they were talking about the US election in class today?
ReplyDeleteAlso, please share the recipe for chocolate balls!
I was a little suprised that they spent so much time on it in class, i thought it would be something samll that they mentioned in passing. We do not talke about elections in different countires very much in school so i though it was very different.
ReplyDeleteI will creat another page and share all of the recipies! :)