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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