Tre månader senare.

Saknar dig, min älskling, Sverige. <3
Kommer aldrig glömmer bort dig.

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I'll be back soon, Västerås <3

On my way to the airport! Flying to Malmö today, Berlin tomorrow!

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Life goes so fast.

To live life to the fullest you must not be afraid to leave the past behind and run into the future.

I am constantly reminding myself, even more in these final days in Sweden, that I must not be afraid of the future. That I can not live in the past. I must always go forward, running into the future, not sitting and remembering the past and what it could have been.

So... LIVE LIFE. Go forward, leave all the baggage of the past behind. RUN INTO THE FUTURE.

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A thank you.

Coco,
You did the one thing for me that I could never do for myself, and for that, I will always love you. <3
Love you forever.

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Något som vi måste jobba på

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Photographs.

Himlen.
translated title: The Skies.

Färger på natten.
translated title: Colours of the night.

namnlös.  untitled.

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What and if

What and if are two words as non-threatening as words can be, but put them together, side by side, and they have the power to haunt you for the rest of your life. 

What if. What if. What if? 

I don’t know how your story will end, but if all you do is always true, then nothing will ever be too late.

You need only the courage to follow your heart.

Follow your heart.

Follow your dreams.

Never give up. 

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Big brother!

Now are we sitting in the public! Ready to go!!!

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SONG LOVE

I can not stop listening to Marina and the Diamonds as of late. The music catches my mind and will not let go. The song "Are you satisified?" reminds me so much of my not-so-average life. Not going the "normal" way is not easy to do, but it brings much more fullfilment. Their may be pain and struggle along the way, but laying your own path is so worth it.

I encourage everyone to take the path less travelled by, be yourself, and see were life leads you. It will probably be someplace great!

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Big Brother

I am heading to the big brother house later today for the life show! However, I have a dilemma... I have absolutely no idea what to wear! To go sinple and cute or rock it out with some fashion? :S

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National test

On Tuesday and today I took two parts of the National Test in Swedish. I took the reading part on Tuesday, and a writing part today. I was really concerned that it would be a lot of work and I would just want to die, but it was not! It was almost too easy. I could not believe I was making such a big deal out of something so little. Today I had to write about "No live without...". I wrote about how there is no life with out love. That there are two types of love, friendship and romantic love. Each have there own part in ones life. You can, of course, life without one of them, but you cannot live without both of them. After the test I went into town and met William for a little while before he began English and me Math. After class I went into town quickly with a friend before heading to go get Fika with my contact person. 

Breakfast.

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School:)

Today i wad back to school and ready to work. This morning, after recieving the news that I would be on Big Brother, not much was talked about except that. My friends are so excited that they get to go with me!  After lunch we started filming a short film about how words are adopted and added to the dictionary. Matilda didn't wait people to see her dressed up like an old person...

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Sick:(

I am home sick for the first time in a year. And it sucks. There is not to many interesting things to do when you are at home all day... watch a movie... yes, The Davinci Code. Maybe a tv series.... yes, caught up on Glee. Blog... doing that now. I can not come upon any additional activities. Back to laying in bed half asleep, half dead i go.

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Waiting on the bus.

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Today!

I just returned home from a day out with friends. We met this afternoon around 2:30 for lunch on Cornetto Bar. After we took an ice cream and walked to the consert house. We went on a music competition on the concert house named Musik Direkt. My brother's, Gustav, band was with in. Sadly they did not win, but it was a great time anyways. :) Good day if I do say so myself:)

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Moved!

I moved Wednesday evening ane am still working on getting  everything unpacked and put away. Pictures to come when I am all unpacked!

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Påsk/Easter

Today in Sweden we celebrate påsk or easter. It is kind of like Christmas without the presents. The same meal is feed, and you hang out with your family. It is traditional for children to recieve colorful painted påskäggs or easter eggs filled with sweets.

Glad påsk!
Happy Easter!

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Moving

I am moving for the second time this year today. While working on getting packed it feels strange to be moving. But it will of course be a new adventure! This time i know very little about where i am mobing and the family i am going to be staying with. Today will be an interesting day. :) Back to packing i must go!

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Off to the North Pole.

Today I am headed to the North Pole, well, almost.
Today I am taking the train up to Kiruna, Sweden for a short trip. I will be going to the Ice Hotel, touring around, going to Norway one day, and more. Mostly, I will be freezing again. Here in Västerås the weather has changed and we are having a nice warm spring. However, Starting tomorrow I will be back to 0 degrees, and snow. But I have hope to see the northern lights!

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Another reason Swedes are the best.

Today I went to Coop Konsum to shop food for tomorrows train ride to Kiruna over night. I figure I wont have enough time in Stockholm to really stop and eat. I looked at sandwiches and other prepared foods, but did not find anything that I fancied. I decided to just get a Risifrutti and worry about real food tomorrow. I went to the self check out. I paid with cash, got my change and recipt and left. I was busy thinking about the few other things I needed to get before going home to finish packing. I headed to the shoe store to purchase shoe laces for my boots. My laces had almost fallen apart. When paying for the laces I realized I had forgotten to get  the paper money at the grocery store. I was debating weather to go back, or leave it go. It was only 20kr, about 4 US dollars. I decided it couldn't hurt to go back and ask, so that is what I did. The lady knew exactly what I was talking about, she had even wrapped it in a note describing who's it was. I could not help but think that in the US at self checkout, the next person would have taken it as free money. They would have thought nothing of it. Finders keepers losers weepers. But in Sweden, even that 20kr, was right there waiting for me.

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Why I do want to go home.

Despite all the feelings of not want to go home, a part of me still wants to go back.
I want to see my family. I want to walk on the beach in Florida. I want to see friends. I want to eat cake. I want to go to Dizzy's. I want to go see a movie without spending $20 on the ticket. I look forward to new adventures, growing even more, seeing even more places. I guess it is kind of melancholy, there are things that I will miss about Sweden, and things I have missed from the States.

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Blogging.

Not only do I feel like a bad exchange student because I do not manage to blog with regularity, but I also feel like a bad Swede. Many Swedish teenagers have a blog. And they write every day. I don't know how they manage to make their life interesting. They turn shopping into blogs, eating into blogs, everything that they do can be documented in a blog post. And, they get paid to do it too. But here's a photo for the day.

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I have been gone for a week.

A snapshot from the car window on the way up.

I got back on Saturday from being on a week long sport break. On the break I traveled with my host family to Sälen to go skiing. It was, to say the least, AMAZING. I could not have asked for a better week. I have documented the whole week in photographs.

Driving into town on the first night, yet another from car snapshot.

Cross Country Skiing to go feed the birds. (another post all about that)

Up into the hills of Sweden.

Little Brother, Joar, playing in the snow.

Skis sitting outside ski house.

Brother, Agaton, posing as a model. 

Cousins Alexander and Simon with brothers in snowmobile sled on the way up to the top of a mountain.

River passed on the snowmobiles.

Grandmother making emlor

Selma. Yummy!

Agaton thinks they are good too. 

Sunset from the mountain top.

more sunset

and more sunset.

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A productive yet unproductive day.

I eventually decided to completely redo everything that I had previously done on the food show for my English class last night. I wanted it to be pretty good, even though I had under 24 hours, and knew it would not be my best work, I got into it and was a machine last night and this morning. All with the help of coffee and tea. I was up until 2:30 this morning slaving away on the video, but at that point I decided it was time to get a little sleep for the night, so I went to bed. Before falling asleep I made sure to set my alarm for 7:30am as to not sleep in and not have time to finish before heading off to school. After a quick breakfast of strawberry yogurt and grains with tea and coffee, of course, I got back to work. I worked and I worked, running into the occasional problem with the Adobe Premier crashing, but  after much practice the night before I was in the habit of saving after every thing that I did. I was finally finished, 40 minutes before class, 20 minutes before my bus, but just when I was taking a breath of relief, it crashed while rendering. And then again, and then again. And once again, for good measure to make sure I was angry and a little stressed. No matter how angry I was after this close to ten minute ordeal, I took a breather, and let my computer have one too, that is just what it needed. However, by this time I had come to realize that I was likely to miss my bus, so the best option was to upload it to Youtube, so they could access it even if I was not there at the beginning, this however, turned out to be a mistake. It took about 20 minutes to render, I had not taken into account the extra 40 minutes it would take to upload, or 10 to process. I could not help but stare at the estimated time remaining as it slowly worked its way down, until it was complete, 25 minutes before my class was over. I took a breath of relief. Even though I had missed my class, I had completed what I took to be good work. Not so much to my surprise, after class I received messages from my group mates saying how spectacular it was. However, after seeing it more then 100 times during the past 24 hours, I had become quite tired of it, while welcoming the comments, I have not really appreciated them. Anyways, because it is already on the internet, why not share my work with you all:

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Sweden in the winter.

WHY IS THIS SO TRUE?!?!?!?!

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Food Show

For an English assignment at school, we were instructed to film a cooking show in English. Me and some of my friends filmed two weeks ago and I am currently working on editing the show. I thought I would give you a little sneak peak of what I am doing right now:

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I love Sweden

Somedays, I just absolutely adore Sweden. Not a day goes by that I do not enjoy and love, however every once in a while there are just those days that are so fantastic. Today has been one of those days. This morning I was a little angry because last night while I was sleeping, it snowed. It did not just snow, it snowed 6 inches. 6 INCHES! It was pretty, but ultimately when I had to school I was a little angry about the extra trouble the snow is. However, after a good and productive day at school, on my way home, I could not help but admire the beauty. And remember how:

"Snow is like a magical blanket; it hides what's ugly and makes everything beautiful."

-Willamina Slater      

With the beautiful sunset, and gorgeous snow, walking home from the bus was simply a pleasure.  

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Studio Work

Last week I worked in the studio with Jennifer Eklund (jennifereeklund.blogg.se) taking pictures for my photography course, we managed to catch some very good images, and some others that are just plan funny. This week I have begun the editing process, but can not seem to settle on what I want to do. We did both the Gotye and two Chanel 1920's looks.

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Living life in the moment.

In my life I have struggled with two things. Not living life in the moment, and living life in the moment. Everyone always says to live you life in the moment, and I have finally managed to do it. The only problem is, while living life in the moment, I have lost track of any goals, dreams, or places I want to go. I am standing near yet another crossroad in my life now, moving back to the United States after a wonderful year abroad in Sweden. I have no idea what I will do when I get back to the United States, or even what I want to do when I arrive back. To just go back and complete high school, to move to Washington and serve as a Page to the US Senate, or to head off to boarding school for two years. These are my biggest options, and for them I have no choice. Mostly I blame this on me having no idea what I would like to do after high school. What feild of study in college trully embraces who I am, and everything that I want to accomplish, I cant come up with one. In this big loss of direction in my life, I have decided that there is only one thing that I can do. Write. Not for the world, but for me. Write in a journal , someplace only I will see, go deep inside, and remember who I am, what I am, and what I want. This is my task for the night, to look inside and remember what I want out of my life.

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I'm Cold

Today it has decided to be nice and snowy and -19 degrees. Besides freezing my rear end off, I am laying in bed because it is really really cold.

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1920s Chanel or Gotye

One of the Coco Chanel looks. 

For my photography class, I have to have at least two studio photos that I will keep. My studio date is next week, and I am still not really sure how I should style the model. The model is Jennifer Eklund (check her blog out here: jennifereeklund.blogg.se)
I was thinking of doing either a 1920 Coco Channel look, or have her pose with a painted body. I have pictures of both  of the options that I will put below. Let me know what you think!

Chanel look 2

Gotye option.

Jennifer in previous shoot. 

Jennifer

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Normal day.

Today is just a normal day in school in Sweden. For now...

So exciting!

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Turkey

Today I went to my Rotary contact person's house and ate turkey. It was so good to eat turkey after not having any for nearly a six months. It was almost as though it was Thanksgiving in Sweden. I had a great time. We ate a lot of food. We had turkey, mashed potatoes, a casserole, salad, and a pie with ice cream and vanilla sauce for dessert.

Turkey: yum yum

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Weightless

Today is a lazy blog day. It's Saturday, give me a break... I will share with you a video of me at Tom Tits, a science museum in Stockholm.

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Ice Skating in Stockholm

Ice Queen,Wesley

On a cold winters day, I think there is nothing better then ice skating with great friends! And one day after Christmas, that is just what I did in Stockholm. The more friends the better, I say, I was there in Stockholm with many exchange students for a going home party at Otavio's house. This particular time, it was the day after the party, all tired from staying up too late the night before, but we did it anyway!

Meg and Wesley

Peter. Yeah... Just Peter.

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Christmas!

It is no surprise that I had a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful Christmas in Sweden! It was really great, even though there was no snow in sight.

Christmas or "Jul" in Sweden is Celebrated on December 24 (or Christmas Eve). My mom, Moni, explained to me that it was because Santa (Tomten) lives in Sweden, and has to get to the rest of the world, he starts in Sweden on the 24th and then heads on to the rest of the world to give out gifts for the 25th of December.

We woke up, and in Sweden, Christmas is a day to get dressed up. My mom was dressed in traditional Swedish clothes from the north. The Christmas celebration started with a Traditional Swedish Christmas Board at around 1. The meal consisted of: pickled hearing, pattiet, ham, meatballs, small sausages, potatoes, and much more.

Ham, with  pattiet in the background

After the large meal, we sat and talked, and then took a fika, with many different goodies. After fika, Tomten came and brought presents. Each present had a rhyme on it to clue what was inside. I got books on Sweden, and a Swedish cook book. I got things to make gingerbread with, a warm fur hat, and traditional Swedish mittins and socks. 

After fika, the traditional Swedish thing is rice pudding. My siblings and mother had rice pudding, but I dont like it so much, so I had a sandwich with left overs from dinner. After all of this Movies were watched, and just hung out together. 

All in all, it was a fantastic Christmas, one that I will never forget!

Christmas  tree

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