Åre!

Sunday the 14th to Thursday the 18th of March I was skiing in Åre with 40 other exchange students! Kelly and I got there at 3 pm and everyone else had already arrived so we jumped into the pool and sauna world to meet them. I hadn't met a lot of the exchange students because the ones from the southern hemisphere had just arrived in January. In the evenings we had the whole hostel to our selves so we took over the lounge and watched movies and got the sauna going. Rod and I were in the sauna one night and a group of others ran in and dumped buckets of water on us-not funny!! **********During the day we went skiing! We got group lessons and private lessons and free time to go where ever on the slopes! There was several trip parks, I just tried the half pipe because everything else was too scary! We went to the top a couple times but it was usually covered in cloud which is really hard to ski through when you can't see 2 meters in front of you! I helped my friend Morgane ski down an easy slope which took us almost an hour because she was really scared to go down even a 5 degree slope. She had almost a total melt down half way back to the lodge but we eventually got there! ************You could ski right into town! We went down there propped up our skis outside a store and wondered around the place in our ski boots! We also did a little off-pist skiing through the trees, one of which rather painfully hit my shin.But all in all, it was the best time I've had skiing in my life!!! ************One evening we went to visit a spectacular frozen waterfall and snow house and church. It was really cool and I bought myself a big rabbit fur lined hat there. *************We went home Thursday after noon after one last morning skiing!

Sports break

March 6th to the 14th was a break from school to encourage us to do sports! On the Friday night, I went to a party and there was karaoke! A friend of mine made me go up on stage and sing Bad by Micheal Jackson! It was kind of embarrassing but I had fun making a fool of myself because I didn't know the lyrics! I didn't win the competition though! ********On this break I had planned to do lots of cross country skiing and ice skating but the weather was warming up so the snow wasn't very good for skiing and the ice on the lake was too thin to skate on so instead I went swimming and saw the movie Alice in Wonderland with my friends. The week was nice and relaxing and on the Sunday Kelly and I packed up our skis and left on the 5 hour trip to Åre, Sweden's most famous ski resort, to spend the week skiing with other exchange students!

Järvsöbacken

On Sunday February 28th, Kelly and I went skiing at järvöbacken, a mountain an hour out of town. It was so fun, the two of us skiing all day! Kelly took me tree skiing where we went off the run and skied around trees! It was a lot of fun, but I wasn't very good at it, luckily there was a lot of snow! I fell once and in the snow and got completely covered except for an arm and a ski sticking out! That was a tough one to dig myself out of! Then I came up to two kids lying in the snow across my trail and made a belly flop to stop running over them! That was a rather painful position that I couldn't get out of because I was lying on my skis! Eventually the kids helped me up after shouting at them in English as politely as I could! Besides that, tree skiing was a lot of fun! ********* I spent the night at Kelly's house because she lives closer to Järsvö than I do. We watched the musical Chicago then fell straight to sleep. It wasn't until the next morning on the way to school that I found out that I miss the biggest hockey game in the Olympics! Canada against the US! But we won so that's all I needed to know!!

Cooking class

On February 17th, the cooking class that I had been attending ended for the year. It was a lot of fun, we'd make a meal then eat it for dinner! We cleaned the kitchen one day, hosed down the whole floor! We made coleslaw another day and I knew how to make coleslaw already so I whipped some up on my own and the teacher really liked it. the teacher, Margaret, liked me but she wasn't very helpful, she was kind of absentminded and her English was hard to understand, but she tried so hard! We had a test and she gave me top marks and made an example because I didn't study since the notes were in Swedish but I still got I good mark! Yes, I know how to cook!

Skiing on the Swedish Alps!

February the 19 to 21, Tomas, my Rotary counselor and his family, took Kelly, my Australian friend and I to their winter cabin in the mountains, to go skiing! Tomas, his wife Annet and their two boys; Kristofer(9) and Magnus(8) go skiing a lot because there are 2 skiing mountains close to their cabin. So the boys are really good at skiing! Kelly has been skiing in Australia since she was 7 so she's really good too and was giving me pointers on how to ski better! ********The mountains are a lot more rounded than the Rockies but it's still really good skiing-a lot better skiing than the prairies! That weekend was cold, -17 so there weren't many people out, no line ups at the lifts! I followed Kristofer and Kelly down a black run called the ravine and almost made it all the way down, but near the bottom I had a spectacular face plant! *********In the evenings we had a nice hot sauna and watched TV. One of the nights we had a smoked moose meat delicacy. It was very nice, tender and lean but the meat was a lot more raw in texture than what I'm used to. Sunday, it was to cold to ski so instead I taught everyone what s'mores were! The boys caught on to them pretty quick, Kelly didn't like them for some reason and I ended up just eating the chocolate! After lunch, we drove the 4 hours back into town. It was a fantastic weekend! *********Sorry I don't have pictures, I lost my camera. :(

Brandan's visit

 

The first week in February, Brandan and some other exchange kids went on a skiing trip in France. I wanted to go to but there was no adult supervision so my district chairperson didn't give me permission to go too. Brandan, a friend of mine from Florida, flew into Stockholm on his way back from France and instead of going straight home to Lund (the south of Sweden), he came up to Hudiksvall to visit me for the weekend. We had gotten a lot of snow so the trains were delayed and I picked him up at the train station at 2 am Thursday night. ********* Friday, I missed school and we went up to Sundsvall (an hour north) to visit Morgane for lunch. It was nice to hangout with exchange students because there aren't many of us who live in this area of Sweden. ********* Saturday morning, we made french toast because we hadn't eaten it since we got to Sweden! I showed Brandan around and town and then we met up with Anna for Fika. In the afternoon, we made chocolate chip cookies because that's another thing we miss from home. In the Evening, we watched some movies with some of Johanna's friends and ate the cookies. *********Sunday, I taught him how to cross country ski because he's never done it before! He went home that evening, a 9 hour train ride all the way down to Lund! I'm going to go visit him one day, being an exchange student is great!!

Shrove Tuesday

Febuary 16th was Shrove Tuesday and it was also my name day. Shove Tuesday (Fettisdag) is celebrated in Sweden by everyone eating semla which is a pastry with the top cut off then filled with cream and the top back on and sprinkling it with icing sugar. There's a little bit of marzipan in the middle of the cream and everyone loves them. some people eat them in a bowl with warm milk pored over it, but must just eat them and kids always get cream all over their face! For name days, people don't do much unless you're a little kid, you might get some little presents and goodies or on the King's name day everyone puts up their flags. So on my name day I got semla! I also went to my friend, Maja's house for supper. We got around to talking about skiing and it turns out that the dad's downhill ski boots fit me perfectly! So I got to borrow then to go skiing with the next weekend!!