There are two kinds of people - Greeks, and everyone else who wish they were Greek.

11/14/2012

Today was another wonderful day at Kungsängsgymnaset, I can almost say it properly! Today our class took the national English test and I got to take it too! I think it was one of the few test that I have taken and both enjoyed and laughed at. It was very fun to take the English test and think, is this how fluent Spanish speakers feel if they took my Spanish tests that I freak out about. It was also very funny because it was all British English and in the audio all of the voices had British accents. Also I learned two new words today: lorry, a truck, and Torry a conservative member of the British parliament. The test took up the whole morning so we did not have our usual two Wednesday morning classes, Swedish and English. After lunch we had only one class: German! In German class they did a worksheet with the teacher. At first I tried to understand what they were talking about but after a couple of minuets I was completely lost.

Once school was over, at 12:45! love their schedule!, Hampus drove us home and then returned to school to finish his classes, he had had a free period. Once home we dropped off some of our stuff before walking into town. We were on a ongoing search of a Dalahäst. Why did we not look in Sala before trying to find them all over Sweden? They had been right under our noses this whole time! We found a great selection of Dalahäst in a floral and home goods store in the mall! Mission complete! After walking around Sala for a couple of hours we headed over to Ida's house to try and Skype Saskia and Katharina however we just missed them and were unable to connect so instead we just hung out for a while and tried out Ida's game for a scout event tonight: you had to remake a Lego structure but the structure was in a shoe box with only a couple of holes. Hanna and I joined Ida's family for an amazing dinner of potato and leak soup and corn pancake, I had never had it before and it was delicious! After dinner Ida and her family left for their scout event while Hanna and I walked back home. Along the way we meet up with Linnea and we walked home together. It was so nice to see her again since last February when she came over to MV. The rest of the night was spent watching movies, Free Willy and My Big Fat Greek Weeding!, with a midnight (aka 8:30 but it felt later because it had been so dark outside for such a long time and because we were so tired) snack. Overall a very nice day! Tack så mycket, tills vidare.

The ultimate decision in life: Tryffelkaka or Kokosrutor?

11/13/2012

Austin and I were unable to go to Ekebyskolan today so we returned to Kungsängsgymnaset for another great day. In the morning Hanna and I went to English and Social Studies. In English class the teacher took two more groups out of the room to talk about their books, while the rest of the class stayed inside and read an article, if they had not already, about catching and eating tiger snakes. They also had time to prepare for a practice English test that they will be taking tomorrow. I will be taking the test tomorrow too and I am really excited. It will be on British English so things will be a bit different but very interesting and very fun! In Social Studies a couple more groups presented their presentations and then the teacher talked for the rest of the time. Next came a lunch of burritos and tacos that we quite delicious. Then came math! Yep, you guessed it, two whole hours of math! Ida had to take an English test which was writing an essay so Austin came with us to math class. After the math teacher had finished talking the students were given work time. Work time for Austin and I meant crafts time! I think we have perfected the art of making balloons and cranes out of graph paper! We grabbed our usual chocolate ball snack during our five minute break before returning to class. After math, the last class of the day, we met up with Ida and talked for a bit before parting our separate ways, we would be meeting up later for dinner at Lars's house, our sponsor!

When we got home we thought it would be fun to bake something. We were going to make tryffelkaka until Hanna saw a link on the page to a recipe for a short cake-type backed good called kokosrutor. Change in plans, we are making kokosrutor! Kokosrutor os a type of thin, light, and fluffy chocolate cake covered in chocolate icing when it is hot so that the icing melts in a bit before hardening again and then it is covered in a light coating of shaved coconut. It was amazing!

Tonight Austin and I got to meet our sponsor for the first time: Lars! It was very exciting. We went over to his house for tapas and we brought our kokosrutor with us to share with the others. Hanna and Ida came along with the four girls who will be coming to the Toledo in February: Emma (my host sister), Hannah, Matilda, and Christina. It was very nice to meet all of the girls before they came over to Toledo. We talked about Maumee Valley and Lars told us stories of his travels. Afterwords, when Hanna and I got home, we collapsed on the couch to watch part of a movie before going to bed, completely exhausted. Tack, tills imorgon!

Swedish Meatballs, floor ball, and boxercise!

11/12/2012

Monday! It was hard to wake up this morning after being able to sleep in this weekend. When I came out of my bedroom and saw Hanna still in bed I got really excited because I thought we had a late start today, however I was mistaken, Hanna was just really tired just like me. We dragged ourselves out of bed, down the stairs and to breakfast before gathering our clothing for gym and getting in the car. The cold air woke me up a little bit as I stepped outside the house. This morning our first class was Biology! Hanna starts the week with biology and ends the week with biology, just like I do at MV! After biology we had German class where they did more translating, except this time they had to think of different types of clothing they did not know the name of in German and write them down in Swedish. Then they had to translate them into German. After German we had two hours of math, with our chocolate ball break half way through. I am kind of getting use to two hours of math right in a row. It seems like a lot, and it feels like a lot when it is at the end of the day, but when it is in the morning it is not that bad.

After math we had lunch. What was for lunch you may ask? Swedish Meatballs!!! My favorite! I think I am going to have to make them for my family over Thanksgiving break, along with chocolate balls, Kringlor, Kladdkaka, and bisquit! I am quite sure that apart from the people, the thing I am going to miss the second most is the food here! So delicious! After lunch we only had two classes left. First was gym! This was my third time in a Swedish gym class but my first time with Hanna, and I knew the routine of getting ready and changing clothing before hand. I was really worried that I would not get a chance to play floor ball, one of Sweden's very popular sports, while here. I should not have worried though, within the last three days I have played floor ball twice, once with Ida's youth group, and again today in gym class. The gym teacher was a bit surprised to see me at first because the first time I had met him I was in Ida's gym class. I love floor ball! I like lacrosse and soccer better but it is definitely up there with my favorite sports to play. Although just because I like it, does not mean that I am good at it. I need a bit more practice, though I love it and have a lot of fun playing it. After gym class we had chemistry! In chemistry they got their tests back from the huge two hour chemistry test they had taken on Wednesday, the one the fire drill had interrupted. I am pleased to report that Hanna did very well! Their grading system is a bit different. They get different types of points, a points, c points, and e points, for different questions of different difficulties. If you want to get an A then you would have to say get 8 a points, 12 c points, and 2 e points, maybe. I am pretty sure this is how it works, though I will confirm it with Hanna tomorrow. It is quite confusing!

As we walked out of school today to wait for Hanna's mom to pick us up, the sun was just setting over the skyline of trees, and it was only 3:30! I will never get use to the fact that it gets so dark here so early! We drove Matilda and Sofia home before returning home ourselves and stealing in to do a little homework and finish up a movie, another Cinderella story, that we had started watching the night before. After an amazing dinner of lamb with a red sauce, delicious!!!, Hanna and I headed over to the gym that Ekebyskolan uses to take a boxercise class! I had never been to one before but Emma loves them and convinced us to come along with her. It was a lot of fun! I am going to see if urban fitness, the gym that my family belongs to, has boxercise class. After boxercise it was quite late, the class lasted about one and a half hours from 7:15 to about 8:45, and it was 9:30 by the time we got home because we stopped at the school on the way home. At home Hanna and I collapsed into the kitchen chairs for a quick snack before taking showers and then heading off to bed.

Hopefully I will be visiting Ekebyskolan tomorrow with Austin though it is not clear if we are allowed to go yet. I hope we are! I had lot of fun there and would love to go back and see some more of their classes. Also Austin and I will meet Lars tomorrow, and along with Hanna, Ida, and the four girls coming to Toledo in February, including Emma, we will have dinner together. I am very excited to finally meet everyone! Tack så mycket, tills vidare.

Natalie Ann Booth, don't you dare buy a bookshelf at Ikea! ... plus it won't fit in your suitcase.

11/11/2012

Today Hanna, Ida, Austin, and I went to Avesta, a smallish city about thirty minuets north of Sala. Avesta is quite a bit bigger than Sala, so I am told, though we did not get to see much of it because we spent the day at the shopping center or more specifically at Ikea! Because Ikea is a Scandinavian company we though it would be the perfect place to spend our Sunday afternoon. Hanna's mom drove us to the the shopping center in Avtesta and we headed straight to Ikea. It was extremely fun walking around, in and out of the bedrooms, kitchens, bathrooms, and living rooms pretending we lived there and trying to decide which one was our favorite. Ikea was a dangerous place to visit and Austin and I came out, arms full of the things that we had bought. However, we did not realize you had to pay for your bags and ended up at the end of the register, bag-less so we had to carry around all of the things that we had bought until we managed to grab bags from another store.

We also ate at Ikea, and what do you get when you go to Ikea?! Swedish meatballs of course! I had had them once before when my family went to the Ikea in Detroit to get my brother a desk and they were good, but I don't know if it was the fact that I was so hungry or the fact that I was in Sweden, or the combined efforts of both, but they were amazing! I also had lingonberry soda for the first time ever and it was amazing!

After Ikea we wondered around the mall for a while and then sat down to have a feka, the Swedish term for a sweet snack (why don't we have a term for this in English!?), before setting off again to find a miniature Dalahäst without any luck, we are going to try some of the shops in Sala now.

When we returned home from Avesta, Hanna and I, both exhausted, collapsed on the couch to watch a movie before dinner. After dinner Hanna drove her mom and me to her grandmother's apartment in an assisted living facility. Yes I said Hanna drove us. At the age of 16 you can get a piece of paper stating that you have the ability to drive if a family member is in the car with you. Hanna is a good driver so everything went well. Her grandmother was very nice and although she did not speak any English we had Hanna as a translator. On the way back from Hanna's grandmother's apartment we stopped at the store to buy groceries. We also ended up buying unique Swedish candy for me to try including kex, a Swedish chocolate bar. It was very delicious! We spent the rest of the night relaxing, watching movies, and eating our Swedish candy. Tack, tills vidare.

Also, side note, today is father's day in Sweden!

What likes Swedish dried flat bread, is fast, and says bah bah? Sheep!

11/10/2012

Today Hanna let me sleep in very late, I did not wake up until 1:30, though it was a gyrating week so I did need the sleep. After breakfast Hanna and I headed over to Ida's house. From there we walked down the street to William's house. William has his drivers license and was able to drive us to Ida's friend, Matilda's house. Matilda lives just outside of Sala in the countryside and her family owns sheep and chickens. When we got there we were met by her mom and their two seven week old kittens. They were adorable and they reminded me of when my family adopted a stray cat who gave birth to three kittens in a box in my parents closet. They were so cute and were at that stage where they wanted to explore everything. One of them even ended up on Ida's shoulder like parrot.

After playing with the kittens for quite a while we continued on to the sheep. Her family rises a special old Swedish species of sheep. Their fur is very thick, very long, and a mixture of different browns, blacks, and whites. We fed them Swedish dried flat bred and petted them when they came close enough. They were adorable! Ida decided that she was going to try and catch the smallest of the sheep. We spent several minuets running back and forth across the pasture trying to pin the sheep into a corner so we could catch it, with no luck. Sheep are fast. Some close friends of my families own a sheep farm in Wales. When I was very young my family went to visit them at their sheep farm over spring break. Lambing season is in March and we happened to come just in time to see the lambs being born. It was an incredible site, to see the babies trying to walk for the first time and the mothers licking them clean. At one pint during our stay we had to move some of the mothers and their babies to a different pasture. In order to do this we had to catch the mothers and put them in the trailer, the babies usually followed their mothers so we did not have to worry so much about them. We spent ages chasing the sheep around the pasture before we finally managed to get them into the trailer. It was quite a workout and an adventure.

After chasing the sheep round some more we went to see the chickens and then headed back into the house to warm up. We sat down in some very comfortable couches and played with Legos! I had not played with Legos in ages and we had a lot of fun, Ida even built an airplane equipped with everything you might need, including an umbrella. We ate a wonderful dinner of spaghetti and meet sauce at Matilda's house before heading back to Ida's house and then to the Rec. Center to play two hours of floor ball with Ida's youth group. Floor pall is kind of like indoor hockey and is played with shorter plastic hockey sticks and a wiffle ball. It was extremely fun to play!


After floor ball William drove Hanna and I home so that we could take quick showers, eat a little food, and then head back into downtown Sala to Ida's church. There we heard a short sermon and then split up into discussion groups. After about 20 minuets of talking we all gathered together to play a game. Ida's parents had set up an obstacle course called DTCH5 (or something like that). To complete the obstacle course you had to fill your mouth with pudding, climb over two chairs, onto a saucer, around a stool, around a group of cones, crawl under a table, climb over a set of chairs again, hop in and out of two hula hoops, and then spit the chocolate pudding out into a pitcher. The winners were the ones who's pitcher weighed the most after five minutes. However there was a trick: you could not let any part of your body touch the obstacle course directly, there always had to be a dish towel between you and the course, feet, hands, knees, everything! It was very fun to play and even more fun to watch. It would be a good idea for a pep rally; hint hint, wink wink, nudge nudge, student council. After the obstacle course we played a quick game of sardines, a version of hide and seek, before returning home, watching a movie, and passing out in our beds. Today was a tiring and amazing day! Tack, tills imorgon!

I Think I will go for a walk...

11/9/2012

Friday! Today we woke up a bit late so we had to hurry to get to school on time, Hanna did not have time to eat breakfast so she had to buy something at school. Our first class of the day was German where they worked on translating words from Swedish to German and then finding the antonyms of those words. After German it was time for Swedish class. In Swedish class the teacher spent a short amount of time talking about a very big project that was assigned to them. They had to write a research paper on an animal of their choice. Part of the paper has to be in Swedish and the second half has to be in English. This project will count as part of their Swedish grade, English grade, and. Biology grade. After the Swedish teacher had finished talking Hanna, Matilda (a friend and one of Hanna's classmates) and I went to the library so they could do research for their project. Even though we had lunch next Hanna was starving so we ran down to the small cafe underneath the library and bought a sandwich for Hanna, it was a piece of bread with cheese and vegetables on top kind of like our open face sandwiches. Next came lunch! It was a special lunch today, pizza! They do not get pizza often so this was a special occasion and the pizza was delicious. It was the kind that has a really thick doughy crust like you are eating cheese, vegetables, and meet on top of a piece of bread. After lunch we went to Social Studies where we listened to a bunch of presentations, they had not finished them last class. After Social Studies we went to math however we were all felling a bit parched, Matilda, Sofia (another friend and classmate), Hanna, and I, so we hurried down to the cafe to buy something to drink. Hanna an I got this special cactus lime fizzy water that was delicious. In biology class the teacher, and the Swedish teacher who visited for a bit, talked about the big research project that they were doing and then game them all work time.

After school today Matilda, Sofia, Hanna, and I went to the store Willy's right across the street from school to buy chips, whipped cram (for the Kladdkaka cupcakes that Matilda made) and soda; we would be going over to her house a bit later when Frank and Patric got out of practice. Hampus drove us all home and Matilda walked home from our house to her house, a short walk, to set things up. Over at Hanna's house Sofia, Hanna, and I made chocolate balls to bring over to Matilda's house, though most of them were gone before we got there. ;) Matilda, Frank, and Patrik met us at Hanna's house and we all walked over to Matilda's house. We ordered Chinese food and then devoured the chocolate balls, always best before dinner. After we had eaten dinner we watched one of the movies Matilda had rented at the store, Canine In The Woods. It was a really freaky and really weird movie. After the movie ended and while we were playing cards Jonathan arrived, another friend and classmate. After a while playing 31 and go fish we decided to take a walk. Don't ask me why but we ventured out into the freezing cold air and took a walk telling ghost stories and freaking each other out into the freezing cold air. When we got back to Matilda's house we decide to watch a very funny movie, 21 Jump St. However we did not get a chance to finish the movie because it was so late that we had to head home. Nice school day, pizza, chocolate balls, movies, Chinese food, and friends. Over all I would say it was a great day. (Great pronounced with a Swedish rolled r sound) :)

What's stop, drop, and roll in Swedish? Stopp, släpp, och rulla!?

11/8/2012
Today was my 3rd day at  Kungsängsgymnaset and what a day it was. It all started off normal. I woke up, had breakfast, and then we headed off to school. Hanna had a three hour chemistry test this morning, she did well on it so it's all good, so I was going to go to Ida's classes in the morning. We met Ida in the locker area where Hanna left to go take her test, and Ida, Austin, and I went to Ida's first class, advisor time and her second class Biology. It just so happened that her advisor and her biology teacher were the same person so we did not have to change rooms. However, halfway through the biology class things began to get interesting: the fire alarms began to sound! Everybody was really surprised and not quite sure what to do. We made our way out of the classroom and as we headed to the door we looked around us. To our surprise a wall of smoke was rolling towards us from the direction of the natural science wing. It was quite scary and we all hurried out of the building. Outside in the freezing cold air nobody was sure what to do so we all huddled together for warmth in a group that consisted of the rest of our class. There were people yelling in Swedish, teachers running around, and students complaining about the cold, I was one of them. Shortly after we had gone outside a fire truck pulled up and one of the teachers announced that this was all a drill. One of the people in Ida's class explained to us that things were so messy and unorganized because they only had fire drills about once a year. Ida then explained to us that the fire department creates smoke in fire drills sometimes to force the students to exit the building in a different direction. Sure enough shortly after she had explained this we saw an entire class climb out a window. The whole fire department looked really disappointed and quite annoyed with the state of our fire drill. One of the students who had been in biology just went right into the building despite the calls from his teacher, the students in this class, and the firemen. The teacher had to go in and get him. We slowly made our way around the building to a separate building, connected by a walkway upstairs, though you have to go outside if you want to pass through downstairs. So after our teacher deemed it safe to reenter our classroom, we continued on with our class. The whole affair was an adventure and I know realize why we do fire drills once a month or so, though their fire drills had smoke.

The rest of the day proceed without any major hiccups, compared to the fire drill. I went to all of Ida's classes today, math, chemistry, and physics. Side note, thanks to Dr. Barnes and AP Biology, Austin and I understood everything the biology teacher wall talking about, photosynthesis, even though it was in Swedish. Austin and I also tried a yogurt like substance that was very sour. We ate it with corn flakes and sugar. Austin absolutely hated it but I thought it was kind of good, in small amounts and covered in cornflakes and sugar.

After school Austin came home with Hanna and me because Ida had a trombone lesson. We made Kringlor, a type of sweet pretzel, and formed them into many different shapes, covered them in butter and sugar, and then ate them. They were delicious though we did not give the dough enough time to rise so they were a little flat. We had so much fun baking that we did not keep track of the time and had to race over to Ida's house. We were going to an abs workout at the gym near Ekebyskolan had to drop Austin off to change, he would walk over with Ida while Hanna and I went to the gym to change because we did not want to walk to the gym in shorts, since it was freezing cold outside. However, Hanna thought that the class was in the gym near Kungsängsgymnaset and we were very confused when we arrived at the gym to find only a boys soccer team practicing and the doors locked. We called Ida for directions and made it to the class a little late. Guess who was there when we arrived: Emma's dad, Jonas Moen! The class was very fun and a great workout. Afterwords we rode our bikes home and ate an amazing dinner of schnitzel, a German dish I had never tasted before, it was amazing!  Then Hanna and I made hot chocolate and watched Avatar. Overall an eventful, exciting, and delicious day! Tack så mycket, tills vidare!