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. :(