I Didn’t Get To Pet Any Dogs Today

 < ok so I was really curious about all of these fountains that they have around here? I mean, where does the water come from and where is it going and why is it here? Cotton eyed joe? Anyway, so I drank some because it look really nice and I was really thirsty and it tasted like bottled water and it was so cold and I hope I don’t die, but dang that was good water.

Mary and Joseph carrying the bb jesus on a donkey.

Mary in the stable with Jesus

Jesus picking up peter when he realizes he’s walking on water

I think they’re all pulling in the fish from when Jesus was like “cast your nets on the other side!”

?

The description says Death of Saint Vierge, but idk who that is cause no one ever taught me anything about saints.

John baptising Jesus

Kid!Jesus working with Joseph to make a table

idk about you, but this looks like witch symbols

I saw many dogs today, but I couldn’t touch any of them because they were attached to humans

That middle one was in the Mortal Instruments movie I think

Daily-Kate-O-Gram, it is cold and I am as white as the snow

It’s a really good idea to have one of these in a ski village, I think

Throwback Thursday

My dad sent me a picture of me and my brothers from when we were little. I know it’s not travel related, but this is my blog and I get to do what I want.

look at those enormous heads and awkward smiles 

I think Doug and Nick should wear more vests.

 

I Remembered My Camera

dOllie/Kivilcim/whatever-your-name-is-this-is-so-confusing, since Christophe is always away, you should totes teach me French so that I can make friends and give directions to people. I can’t talk to anyone because I’m terrified of people and also I can’t speak French. All day I was trying to remember my French 1 stuff, but all that I could remember was Swedish and bits of Spanish and it was incredibly frustrating. ALSO, twice (count ’em. one, two.) someone pulled over and asked me in French where something was. I guess I didn’t look super touristy because I wasn’t wearing winter clothes and my camera was in my back pocket, but honestly, I look like I’m twelve, do you really think I know where anything is? No, I don’t,

efterrätt

my losing hand

I think Saga won, and then Astrid won, and then I won.

The terrifying stairs leading up to my bedroom. Still not as scary as the ones at Emily’s house, though. These ones have little grippy things so that I can’t fall down them the way all fall down every other set of stairs.

My bedroom at the chalet

It took me a while to build him because I forgot how to. I literally had to look up a wikihow page on building snowmen just to make sure I was doing it right. Pathetic, I know. It’s been a while though, guys. Give me a break!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umJl8t7G0q8 < this is all I could think of while I walked through this

THIS WAY TOWARDS PAIN!

Look ma! A picture with people in it!

Don’t mind my voice and the fact that I can’t remember the lyrics in that last video. I just wanted to show you guys how amazing the acoustics in that church were! Every other building in my city back in the States is a church, but none of them sound like that because they’re all “modern” and have “heating” and “other commodities older churches don’t have” yeah yeah yeah, okay, but does it echo when I whisper? No. I don’t mind sweating through a church service if it sounds cool when we sing. I mean, we’re Lutheran. All we do is sing. I feel like that should be taken into account whilst building Lutheran churches. The second part of the video is for Jenna because she really wanted to go on a *~European Adventure~* but everything I’ve encountered so far hasn’t been quite what I was expecting to see on a *~European Adventure~* until today. I just wanted to check if our headcanons matched up. So, Jenna? What do you think? Florida or Quebec City? 😉

Here’s a Video

hon-hon-hon, bonjour de France

  ok, now that I’ve got that out of the way. I’m in France, you guys. Like FRANCE, France. Not some French city like Fond du Lac or Eau Claire. Like, the real deal where people kiss with their tongue and fry their potatoes and grill their toast with eggs and cinnamon. Okay?

I know it’s dumb, but every French book I’ve ever had was published in the mid 1980’s, and I guess I had some delusions that French people were very 1980’s-ish and they’re not. I’m a little put-off, and I’m not entirely sure that I’m ACTUALLY in France because of it.

we stopped at Karin’s parent’s house on the first night and they were really cute and it was so nice to sleep. After that car trip with Nick to Florida, I swore I would never ever ever go on another road trip that lasted longer than 8 hours, but this whole experience has renewed my hope in Road Trips. It made me miss driving dearly though 😦 On the bright side, if I ever have a family of my own, I’ll always get shotgun or driver’s seat since I’m the mumma and I’m in charge! 😀

Look familiar?

Foggy morning in the mountains. Good time for a walk?

It wasn’t even cold.

I had my coat open the entire time!

Honestly, I was pretty sweaty because everything was uphill and I was really regretting the longjohns.

Heck, it was so warm, I decided to take all my winter wear off and sit in the middle of the hiking trail to read. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND GOOD OMENS. IT’S A VERY FUNNY BOOK. But then maybe 20 pages later the trees I was sitting under were heavy with snow and they dumped it all on my head and I had so much snow down the back of my shirt. Such is my life.

and then the fog cleared a bit

so I started walking into the village

and then I started running because walking is slow and I am impatient.

I stopped to show you guys this river though. I forget what it’s called. It’s on a map I was looking at earlier somewhere downstairs, but I’m too comfy to look it up again for you. surry 😦

This is for YOU, dear reader! If you have this blog url, then chances are I like you a lot! Or you’re a huge creep and stalked me on facebook to find it! If you put that much effort in though to read my silly little blog, you probably like me though, and if you like me, then I like you because people who like me are the type of people I like.

I was sweaty again when I got to the village and decided to stop running because there were people around and idk about you, but I always stare at runners to shame them into not running and that’s what they were doing to me. I mean, where are you going in such a hurry? Is there a fire? Has someone fallen into a well? I don’t think so. Slow down there, Speedy Gonzalez. You’re making the rest of us Slowpo Rodriguezes uncomfortable and anxious.

idk which one is Mont Blanc. They all look the same to me. Is it this piece of elevated land? Probably not. I should never be so lucky as to locate it on the first try. They’re all pretty nonetheless.

French architecture reminds me of these fake houses that I saw in a documentary about North Korea one time. There was this really nice city in South Korea near the border of North Korea and the North Koreans built a city across from it even grander with taller buildings in an attempt to get the South Koreans to defect or something, only no one lived in the grand city because all of the buildings were fake and only had one side to them like buildings in stage productions.

there were lots of windows with bars on them???

awkward selfies are the only kind of selfies I’m allowed to do. Mama once told me I should only take photos if there are people in them. Here ya go. Sorry for the lack of people. Like most humans, I’m alone for the majority of my life and I can’t exactly photograph myself in front of things I want to show you. So. Here’s your Daily-Kate-O-Gram. I’m healthy, still totally alive, and kinda cold.

Ulf picked me up around 3:00 and we went up to the skiing area via scary gondola thing? I can’t remember what they’re called. All I know is that it was slightly terrifying because woWEE WERE WE HIGH UP and also on the way back it was verrrry full of people. Look at that view though. Guys. Look at. that. view. These kinds of views are the sort that make you believe a god. Like, wow. I don’t know. If my life were a movie, I think this is where the trumpets would have kicked in.

The ride down

so many mountains

And then today I went for a little walk, but forgot my camera. This is the first time in weeks I’ve had so much sun, and my body went into shock halfway through the walk so I had to come home and lay down to get rid of my stupid sun headache. Tips From Kate: BRING YOUR SUNGLASSES IF YOU GO OUTSIDE, YOU GOOSE!

Later I felt guilty about not going skiing or being outside for long because everyone else is getting fit and I’ve kinda been skipping on the EuroTour fitness thing I promised Hannah I would do, so I did sit ups until I wanted to throw up and then I did some lunges. Probably none of you care about this, but I just wanted to go on record saying that I DID DO SOMETHING WITH MY DAY, OKAY? I DIDN’T SPEND THE ENTIRE TIME WATCHING CHRISTMAS ROM-COMS. OKAY? OKAAAAY? I’ll do more tomorrow. I’ll build a giant snowman or something.

MEGA-UPDATE

The sun came out today. It’s been years since I’ve seen the sun. I put on my spring coat and stood in the sunny patches while I waited for the train. I know this doesn’t sound very important, but I think today may have been the best day I’ve had in several weeks because of it. I like all my friends and stuff, but THE SUN YOU GUYS!!!!!! I couldn’t think about anything else today.

Alright alright alright. Let’s get on to the stuff that people other than me care about.

This post comes to you in 5 parts!

1. I’m good. Like really, really good. 

I don’t know where I’ve been. I think part of the reason I’ve been so down the last few months is because I don’t have an over-arching goal or concern (Musicals, Horse Training, Work, etc.) Since I don’t have something big to worry about constantly, I’ve been worrying about everything in equal measure. Every little thing’s been bothering me and because I don’t tangible goals to validate my existence, I was using people to validate my existence (omg, Kate, that’s so unhealthy! That’s not what people are for! Psh. You’re telling me.) I’m such a pretentious pseudo-intellectual saying that, but I think it’s important to know these things if you’re considering being an exchange student, because if you don’t get a life-consuming hobby, your hobby will become sleeping and fretting and that’s no way to be. So. Tips from Kate. Get a life.

2. I’m 18 now

I went to Emily’s house the weekend I turned 18 and we watched fight club and ate American pancakes and made cupcakes and pet her bunny and it was magical. We had a pretty sick dance party and Emily and I became best friends on snapchat to reflect our irl best friendship.

I accidentally deleted the dance party video. This is a summary of what you would have seen.

breakfast!

bunny in a lil bunny hat

omg we ate so much pizza that night

watchin the olympics

Sam and Emily

Emily is a cupcake MASTER

totes adorbs

makin cupcakes

McKenzie made us miss the bus so we had to walk a half hour in the rain

I’m really excited to go back home now because I CAN VOTE IN ELECTIONS NOW OH YEAH, MAKING A DIFFERENCE ONE VOTE AT A TIME!!!!

After the sleepover we went to Cafe 60 to celebrate Avishkar’s birthday. Then next morning my host family woke me up by busting into my room singing the Swedish birthday song with the traditional Swedish birthday cake and I couldn’t have been happier it was super kind of them to do that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! wowowowow

3. Breno

Breno was one of our Oldies from Brazil. He went home on Feb 10th. He’s the best person ever and we all miss him a lot.

Breno and McKenzie

Andrew got Breno to sign his chest

4. Valentine’s Day ❤

I made everyone Valentines, but when I got to the cafe I realized that I’d forgotten them. So I went home (A half hour ride.) and then when I was heading back to the cafe, I realized I’d forgotten one, so I had to go back again (a fifteen minute ride.) So in total, I travelled and hour and fifteen minutes for these valentines and I ended up only being able to give them to three people :((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((( I have a problem, I am very aware. A normal person would have said oh well, but these valentines were hilarious because I’m hilarious, and I needed them to be appreciated. I love my friends so much. They’re perf.

5. This Last Weekend

Hannah came up from Nykoping, but I didn’t hang out with her and everyone for very long on Saturday because Valentine’s Day was a lot of social interaction and I needed a break.

Sunday I almost stayed in bed all day too, but they annoyed me into coming out. We got sushi and I ate a spoonful of wasabi. It was all good until we started walking to T-Cen to pick up Hamish. Suddenly I was having a heart attack and I was going to throw up all at the same time. More tips from Kate: Don’t eat a spoonful of wasabi just to prove you’re hardcore. I had to go get some yogurt or something and in the meantime Emily and Hamish showed up. A bunch of them wanted to go look at the kungstragarden subway station, so I sat with Emily and waited for them to come back to T-Cen because she had had a heart attack earlier that day too.

My exchange family!

T-Cen

Kungstragarden

Kungstragarden

Kungstragarden

TOURISTS!

Then we sat on the docks until it started raining, after which we went to Cafe Dox to take cover.

And that was what you missed these last few days. I stole all of these photos from McKenzie’s blog because I’m too lazy to take my own these days.

My Friends Are Better Than Your Friends

are they perfect? or are they PERFECT? i’ll make a real post recounting the last few days in a bit, promise!

:(((

So all week I’ve been feeling pretty awful and I was feeling super duper awful today so I wasn’t able to go to school or the fotografiska museet with my photography club which was sad, but I was able to marathon romcoms, so Kate Recommends: About Time, The Switch, The Proposal, and He’s Just Not That Into You. Also, 12 Years A Slave is super amazing and you SHOULDN’T watch The Secret Life of Walter Mitty or Lizzie Borden Took an Ax or Flowers in the Attic because they’re reallllly boring. If Oliver is reading this (which I hope he isn’t. stop reading my blog. all of you. I get freaked out when you other exchange students talk to me about my blog.) I’m sorry I didn’t watch The Mighty Boosh yet! I just remembered it while I was typing this up! Someday, I promise.

Sportlov

On the 23rd I’m leaving for France to go skiing in the Alps??????????????????????????????????

  I stole all of these photos off of the tags #charmonix and #argentiere on instagram so that you wouldn’t have to google it yourself.

Obviously, I won’t be skiing. There area we’re in is pretty advanced and I can barely do the bunny hills without killing myself. I think I’ll spend my week sledding and writing and taking walks. France you guys. France. Dang. This is so surreal.

Here Are the Pictures From Yesterday

Gracie, Eloise, and Narain

A rally in Platen

Me and MacKenzie

Emily and I

Me, Tanner, and MacKenzie (we’re all very attractive people in real life, I swear to you!)

The crowd gathers to see the changing of the guards

Narain and Emily

Sofia, Gracie, and Eloise

MacKenzie and Hamish

Model version of Stockholm

Gracie

Sofia

Tanner being creepy

Me and Tanner

Sofia

Eloise