Just another week.

This week brought up my 2 months in Sweden! In some ways time has gone extremely slow whilst adjusting to the freezing weather and all of the other things that come along with being an exchange student. But in many others, time has been flying, spending numerous days out with the exchange students, catching up with what's been happening, planning future hang outs and generally just going on some awesome adventures!


The temperatures been warming up slowly, and the snow melting too! So now I'm experiencing a winter more like home. Cold (but no where near as cold as it has been!), wet and occasionally windy with the odd burst of sunshine! So it feels like spring might actually make it up to this part of the world.


School is getting easier, I'm starting to pick up on some of the words used in the classes so can pick my way through some of the work sheets and guess what's going on. English is still as chilled as ever, however, the teacher has realised that she can use me as a resource for her class. So I spend a lot of the lessons reading out vocabulary lists from the texts they are using, or trying to explain things to whoever I may be sitting next to in the lesson. Maths is also pretty sweet at the moment, doing about the equivalent of year 10/11 geometry, so I can actually do something! Haha, I feel extremely successful in my Swedish when I'm sitting in maths.


Tuesday this week was the 25th of March, and in Sweden, that means... WAFFLE DAY! It's a celebration of the fact that it's nine months until Christmas. Apparently in Swedish, "Our Lady" reffering to Mary and "Waffle Day" sound extremely similar. So it's become tradition to eat waffles on the 25th of March.. Watch out New Zealand, Waffle Day is coming 25 March 2011!


The week went by pretty quickly and then came another extreme hang out session with the exchange students. Involving, 6 exchange students, 1 "ambassadorial scholar" and 1 Swede, some Disney, Spotify, awesome blueberry and chocolate chip muffins, 1 day and a heck of a lot of fun. Was definitely a great day!

The 6 exchange students on one of the sculptures in Linköping

Then Sunday included a visit to the Easter markets at Gamla Linköping, or Old Linköping. There people had set up heaps of small stalls selling random bits and pieces that occasionally had to do with Easter, but generally not. Then a visit to some flea markets with my host mum with as she said "mycket skit". 


Easter is coming up, and it will be interesting to see all these random traditions that the Swede's tend to have. I'm definitely looking forward to Påsk (Easter) and the week of holidays that comes with it. 


Signing out for another week,
love Alex. 

Awesomeness in Åre!

So I've just spent the week in a town in the north of Sweden called Åre at the Rotary Winter Camp! Definitely one of the best times I've had so far on exchange.

The week started with catching my first ever night train from Linköping to a town just south of Åre called Järpen which was where we were to be situated for the week. After what was supposed to be 9 hours of sitting in a train turned into 11 hours in small beds I arrived in Järpen with the other exchange students from my town to be picked up by a few of the local Rotary members to be taken to our accommodation.

Sunday consisted of a few familiar faces from Language camp in Vimmerby but mostly a whole lot of new names and faces to remember. But as it turns out, being an exchange student severely improves your ability to remember names quickly! Who would have thought? After nearly everyone arrived it was time to embark on a tour of Åre and a trip to the pools at the 'Holiday Club'. After a quick lunch we got our things together and got taken by bus into Åre. One of the Åre Rotary Club members gave us a talk as we went throughout the town and told us of the towns history and how it became one of the largest tourism towns in Sweden with its Skiing in the Winter and the creation of BMX tracks on the slopes in the Summer. We continued walking and got to see the local church, which was tiny, old and of course beautiful. Then we headed on down to the Holiday Club which was HUGE! It was a hotel that had a bar, restaurant, spa, pools and last but not least SAUNA WORLD!! Where the saunas ranged from a comfortable 45 degrees to a not so comfortable 85 degrees! And it also happened to include an ice room at -10 degrees. After a few hours enjoying the pools and saunas we headed back to the hostel for dinner and more getting to know each other!

Sunday night included some activities thought up by our awesome chaperones. We were split up into 4 groups to complete 4 different team building activities. The first was that we were given a battery and some steel wool and had to use it to burn a thin piece of rope tied between two sticks. The next was to cross the "river" with 7 pieces of wood, and each piece had to have someone on it at all times and you couldn't touch the ground. Next involved some blindfolds, a long rope and a little bit of cheating. We had to all wear blindfolds, hold the rope and try to make a square. Lastly there was a rope tied over 1.5m above the ground which the entire team needed to get over without touching it and our only help was a plank of wood? Yeah, we totally conquered that! 


After a good nights sleep came the 6:30am wake up call for breakfast and then time to get to the beautiful slopes of Åre! Once we arrived we all had to rent our gear which took awhile with there being 40 of us. We all got ourselves sorted, the skiers into the most uncomfortable boots ever and the snowboarders into their more comfortable ones, then met our ski instructors who would be with us for the day. We then got split into groups based on ability and confidence; and as I'd only been once before and that was the previous Saturday I was in the beginner's group, who were headed to the kids slope. My instructor for the morning was Elin who was super nice and seemed to certainly know her stuff! After an hour or so my legs decided that they didn't like the boots, so I took an early lunch after successfully having learnt how to stop! After a good lunch break with all the students we headed back out into our groups for some more lessons and skiing. I got a new instructor for the afternoon, Oskar. We adventured back out onto the kids slope to try and practice some turning, which took ages for me to get the hang of! I seemed to either like going super slow, or way too fast for me to control, definitely provided some amusement. 

Taking a break from skiing provided a great photo opportunity!

After a great day on the slopes had by all we headed back to the hostel to hang out some more, sauna, play some pool and then have a feed. Then we were given our assignments! On Wednesday night the local Rotary club, Åre, were going to be coming to the hostel for dinner, and the 'speaker' was going to be all of us! Each country was given the task of finding out about a foreign country and doing a sort presentation about it to everyone. Not only that, but, it had to be in Swedish! Me and my fellow Kiwi Fayez got the task of presenting the USA. So of course we started right away? Yeah.. Maybe not. Procrastination is the key! Hahah. 

Tuesday was pretty similar to Monday, get up, breakfast, catch the bus to the slopes, a morning of ski school, lunch time, an afternoon of skiing. After that though is where things changed! We were taken on the bus to some ice caves! Definitely an awesome experience. We walked next to a semi frozen river, which had a waterfall! There were massive ice chutes where there was a lot of ice that had been slowly starting to melt away letting the water begin to flow through them again. We continued walking down towards the caves, which is where things got a bit interesting. My version of 'good shoes' as suggested by our chaperones that morning were my ugg boots, because that's all that I had brought with me. So I had some troubles going down one of the hills to the caves, I had fallen over a few times so just decided that I would slide down! Much more fun I think! Once down to the caves we got to see an awesome man made ice house, and several other rooms, that included many seats, a 'fire' place, a bar and there was also a chapel. After checking out the awesome ice sculptures we headed back to the hostel for some more hanging out, planning some of our speeches for Rotary and of course some eating!

The ice chapel.

Wednesday was the day we were going to go up to the top of the slopes! Sitting at 1274m above sea level. For me, this meant doing a blue slope for the first time to get to the gondola, and funnily enough, I was pretty terrified! The first half went really well, I just took my time with some of the other beginner girls and it was pretty enjoyable. Then came one nasty as hill! Not only was it ridiculously steep, it also happened to be really icy! But I made it down eventually, and off to the top we went. Once we were there, we couldn't particularly see all that much, but still, it was awesome to say that we got there. For the way back down, we took the gondola to half way and then used some of the blue transport tracks to make our way back to the base to meet up with everyone else for some lunch. The afternoon passed with some more successful green slope skiing, getting more and more confident each time! Then it was back to the hostel for a rushed getting ready, donning of the blazer, and preparation of a speech for Rotary! 

We made it to the gondola! (L-R; Alina USA, Sarah Australia, Me, Jessica Australia)

The Rotary members started arriving at around 6:30pm while most of us were still trying to translate our speeches into Swedish, some of them even helped! But eventually we were all sorted, and grabbed our seats for what would turn out to be a great evening! A great mushroom soup for starters followed by Moose! Yeah, kind of strange, but actually really delicious. Then came the first half of the speeches. USA started us off presenting Australia, followed by Australia presenting Mexico, Argentina presenting Japan, Mexico presenting New Zealand! and Japan presenting France. Then came dessert, an awesome Kladdkaka (Chocolate fudge cake) with cream, so good! Followed up with the rest of the presentations, South Africa presenting Canada, France presenting Argentina, Canada presenting Germany, Germany presenting South Africa and last but not least, NZ presenting USA! I think we definitely did a good job, when our presentation included a singing of all the states, and the declaration of independence! The rest of the evening included a banner and t-shirt presentation, badge and business card swapping and a whole lot of hanging out. Most of us stayed up pretty late, just chilling, listening to music and making the most of our last night together!

Thursday was time for more skiing (: Or if you were saw, time to explore the town for the day! I decided to tough it out and make the most of the awesome slopes and keep pushing on. After a couple more runs down the green I decided to mission it onto the blue! Mission successful! Definitely super hard, but also really fun at the same time. The soreness kicked in after my go on the blue run, so I decided that I would bus into town with some of the others for a quick exploration after lunch. We had a quick look around, got an Åre pin for the blazer and picked up a Max burger to go. Then it was back to the slopes to get our bus back to the hostel for last minute packing, dinner and then goodbyes. 

I definitely had an amazing week in Åre and will never forget! I may have come out with several bumps and bruises but it was well worth it. Rotary definitely hooked us up with a great time and all of the new faces from Sunday were now new friends who I hope to catch up with during the rest of my stay here in Sweden. And by the way, now that I'm such a pro skier, I'm expecting all of you back home to take me skiing with you when I get back in 2011! Hahah. Please note that I'm actually not kidding, and will be coming along whether you like it or not!

Lots of love, 

Alex.