A Vague Attempt To Make My Life Look Romantic

This is from that time my friends and I had a seance in the park

Here’s the front door of my new school

AT LAST

Indeed

We made a gingerbread house!!!!!

I saved his little hate in case I should find a little cat to wear the little hat

I through with apologizing. I  know I’m late, forgiving me is up to you now, I don’t feel like begging.

Where to start??? Um. Where did I leave off last? Guys, I don’t even read this blog. What are you doing with your lives?

I guess I’ll start with updates:

I know nothing. I am Jon Snow. I’ll start off with what I do know then (which isn’t much)

1. I’m for sure not moving to Nykoping
2. I’m for sure not going to Turkey
3. I may be changing schools
4. I may be changing families
5. I may be going to London
6. I may be dying of cold
7. I may be dying of heat in a parallel universe????

I think I might be going through menopause? Because half the time I’m so cold I could chop my hands off and not notice, and the other half the time I’m so hot that I’d like to bash my head against the wall until everything stops. I think that’s what menopause feels like, right? No one ever taught us about menopause because we live in a patriarchal society and therefore menopause is not of import. jk jk (maybe.)

Quick Side-Thought:

Sometimes I’m just staring off listlessly and I think the weirdest things? Today I was riding home and I remember Aaron Baldauf’s hair. Wow I miss that hair. I mean, Aaron’s alright, but his hair. Wowee. That was some really great hair. Monuments should to be built for that hair. I pray he should never bald. God bless.

BACK ON TOPIC!

I saw a super cool Lucia Thing. My younger host sister, Saga, swims and so we went to see her do her singing thing? I don’t know what I was expecting. I guess I thought that they would all stand around the pool and sing or something, but they JUMPED IN THE POOL WITH THEIR CANDLES AND MY MIND WAS BLOWN! Then there were these really attractive guys on the diving board holding torches, and I felt like I was in an episode of FREE! because they were wearing the same suits and everything. At the end they jumped into the water and my life was made. God Santa Lucia, everyone!! Jajaja

tha pool

Sagaaaaa

Here’s a really long video of the thing:

I saw Astrid’s ballroom dancing recital and while it was really cool to see them all dance (and the little kids were super cute and reminded me of my days in ballet) I felt SOOOO bad for her because her dance partner quit on her and she had to pretend he was there. She totally made up for a lack of partner, but it couldn’t have been easy to practice like that. In fact, there was only one girl with a partner, and 2 without besides Astrid. Boys. Ugh.

I also saw a theatre thing that Astrid’s school at been working on a few weeks ago (sorry for not mentioning it!) and I could understand a lot of it because *acting* and I was, once again, thoroughly impressed.

 Astrid is the one dressed as a man in the middle. I thought it was funny that every scene that required a man, the man was played by a girl, and then one of the only scenes that was gender neutral, the only two boys were cast together in.

It snowed here! I rejoiced by running outside and catching a few on my tongue. People be like “yo, haven’t you seen snow before?” and I be like “Självklart, mah home dog. I live in da nort. Snow da best doe, ja feel?” Now the snow is gone though, and I am very sad. Please accept this video as proof of the snow:

This is my school just as I was getting out. Hello, Moon.

Here are the results of today’s little trip:

stadshus

Oliver said that I could go up in the tower, but sadly I could not. The man at the gift shop told me that it’s only open in the summer, so I guess we can go up there later.

pretty pritty

Riddarholmenskyrkan. I was going to read you the history of it, but there were people around, so that’d be embarrassing.

It’s a door, if you weren’t aware. I know it’s awfully ornate for an entryway, but so it is.

Parliament House

StorKyrkan

Here’s a video of the changing of the guards:

Here are some unconnected thoughts:

We’re going to the highest point in Stockholm for New Year’s Eve so that we can see all of the fireworks. It’s going to be great! I’m making cookies and I think we’ll hang out for a few hours before it. Yay! I really love all of the exchange kids. A few of these people are so tragically amazing, I just, I just. Ugh. I’m so mad that we’re never going to see each other when this is all over. I hope that college lives up to all of my expectations and I can be surrounded by people like these again. It’s so dumb of me to be sad about it at this point in the exchange because 1) there’s so much time left! 2) I knew this was going to happen. I should be more prepared for this. I’m too emotional. Get over yourself, Kate!

One last thing: I’ve been pronouncing plebeian wrong my entire life as well. It’s pleBEian not PLEbeian. Emphasis, man. Gets me everytime.

THIS WEEKEND

omg, I shouldn’t have put off making this post

So. Friday I went out to dinner with Tanner, Narain, Samantha, Alysa, Andrew, Sophia, Emily, and another girl from Australia. We were going to go to this place called Vapiano, but we got lost for a while and by the time we got there, there was a fifty minute wait and we decided not to go in. We wandered around until seven or so because this other group that we were going to meet kept on saying that they were coming (but they didn’t) and so we went to a pizzeria in Gamla Stan and that was cool.

Afterwards, none of us really wanted to go home so we went to Espresso house and talked and played BS until midnight. So cool. I can’t even tell you how cool. I’d give you some obscure analogy, like a polar bear eating ice cream on December 21st, but it was cooler than even that. 2kool4skool.

sidenote: Tanner touched Alysa’s glass eye and it was super freaky and I might have cried a little.

Sunset near Gamla Stan

Samantha and Alysa

Sophia and Tanner

Okay, Saturday we went to IKEA to play hide and go seek. I lost my IKEA virginity in Stockholm, Sweden of all places. AMAZING!! The building was a circle and super maze-like and I’m really glad I didn’t have to be a seeker. I hid in this fake bedroom and people kept walking in, so I played Super Jewel Quest on my phone so that I didn’t have to look at them awkwardly. I was one of the last people to be found cause I’m boss at hiding.

We only played one round because there was another group that we were supposed to meet, but they were late and lost and it was all a big mess, much like the night before. (My group was Miranda, Samantha, Tanner, Narain, Daniel, and a few other Australians that I don’t remember the names of.

Afterwards we went to Coop and tried to find the elusive American Isle, but couldn’t. I made Daniel try Risifrutti, and he didn’t like it so I got to eat two XL Risifrutti containers in a row. yeahyeahyeah get on my level.

I wish it was possible to buy an IKEA room. They were all so stylish and trendy.

I bet that Aaron Tveit sleeps on one of these.

Eating IKEA food

I K E A

Today I went on a picnic on djurgarden and it was super chill. I met a boy from Brasil named Breno and a girl from Canada named Emily.

These days are hard to describe since the thing that made them awesome was the people. I can’t describe our conversations or why certain things were funny at the time. I hope my pictures suffice for lack of words.

Note: we left our picnic because some really giant swans got close to us and stood up and shook their wings and junk. nonononooooo. I don’t want to get attacked by a swan, thank you very much.

Breno

Emily is the one taking this picture

This is Getting a Little Out of Hand

I’m soooo bad at updating.

I can’t remember where I left off. I think it was Tuesday.

Tuesday: 

My group and I preformed that song that I talked about a few weeks ago. I don’t know if I’m going to share it or not yet, because I haven’t listened all the way through the recording. So far, it’s a no. If I do, there’ll be a little surprise for you at the end of this post.

Mikaela (I have no idea how to spell anyone’s name, so bear with me.) and her group was super flipping amazing and I don’t know what her song was about, but she’s a really good singer and I’m very jealous. That is all.

We talked about Islam in religion class and since I didn’t understand much, I skyped with Ollie when I got home, and she attempted to clear it up. I think I’ll have to read the wikipedia page though, because the whole Mohammed becoming a prophet and then getting in fights with rich people still kind of confuses me.

Wednesday:

I finished my Aspects of Africa paper (officially. I might have said that I did earlier, but I was lying if I did.)

In Humanistics, I found out that I have to do a field study on Norse Mythology???? I was told to go to some museum in Uppsala, so I guess I’ll be doing that at some point. Everyone else is doing theirs on Rome, so I get an indefinite extension to complete mine. Cool Beans.

During E-Block we went to the auditorium and listened to this guy play his hangdrum and sing sufi music. The best part was when they got some kids from the music section to go up on stage and play with him. He called his style sufi-jazz, so there was a kid on the saxophone and another playing a gourd-guitar. I just found out that gourd is spelled with a u. Amazing.

When I went home, I got a really bad headache (which is starting to come back. Something to do with my neck I think?) and so I went to bed right away, woke up for like an hour in the middle of the night and then slept again until my alarm went off. Times is hard.

Today:

Cecil Baldwin came in for about five minutes and then he left abruptly. I’m told he suddenly decided that he had a really bad fever and couldn’t make it through the rest of the class. I wish teachers at Fondy would have acted like that.

In Svenska 3 we read something. I don’t know what it was about, but Scent of a Woman was mentioned. I made a list off all of my favorite tv shows and movies and books and podcasts so that Muna would have something to watch while she waits for SNK to return.

We went to lunch and I had cereal for my 5th meal in a row. Honestly, I’m starting to feel a bit nauseous at this point, but there isn’t much else to eat at my host family’s house and that’s all I can have when they make meat for dinner. I really need to ask for more grapefruits and eggs or something.

In natural science we did an experiment with solubility, wherein we boiled carrots and beets in water and oil. I don’t really know what we were proving, but I participated, and so I got an A for the day. Yay me.

In music class we started out Blues unit, and now I have to sing the blues. I really lucked out with my group because we’ve got Sandra on the piano, Erik on the trumpet, and Hugo on guitar. Hugo and Sandra are really good and Erik is the only one who plays the trumpet in our class, and I feel like trumpets are pretty bluesy.

Tonight, I went to Dorren for my photography class, and it was super fun as always. Today we took still lifes of things that we had in our pockets and one of mine got posted to facebook. They put some sort of instagram filter on it, but it still looks pree coo.

In other news, I really like drawing hands. Hands hands hands. I stare at everyone’s hands until they feel uncomfortable. Ah, the joys of being with strangers. They will never see me again, so I don’t care if I make them uncomfortable.

Here’s the video. I decided it was alright.

Hello, Schoolmates

Okay, so Josefine wanted the link to my blog, and I’m just going to assume that she’s going to share it with other people because that’s how things work. Anyway, catch her up. If you are not Josephine, you can skip this part.

• Nick Baker = Jonatan
• Cecil Baldwin = The religion teacher
• school lunch = whyyyy
• Kate = awkward and very pedestrian
• Highlights = things that happened that were worth sharing. Not necessarily all good.
• I use the words Then, Okay, So, and Whatever a LOT.

Yesterday I went to the highest point in Stockholm with Daniel, Aakansha, Iara, and Sofia. They are all exchange students from Texas, India, Brasil, and Italy respectively.

They met me at T-Central a half hour late and while I was waiting some old black guy smoking a cigarette came up to me and asked me something in (french?) and- nevermind, let me reenact it for you.

dudebro: HON HON HON BONJOUR BAGUETTE EIFFEL TOWER

me: I’m sorry? Do you need directions?

dudebro: oh, i so surry. u speek inlgleesh? i say “i wonder wat a bootifool womahn is doing seeting all by herself?”

me: I’m… uh… waiting. For my boyfriend. Fiance. Guy. He’s big. Real strong. mhm. Gonna be here any second.

dudebro: ah. *sulks into shadows and watches me until I duck into a store*

Yeah, so that was creepy.

Today, I started my humanistics paper (at last! No more procrastinating!) and then I went to a rotary meeting where some guy talked about American politics. From what I could understand he agreed with the Republicans on the whole Government Shutdown thing, and when he talked to me and told me as much after the meeting, I gave him some straight facts and I think I might have changed his opinion on the whole matter.

I thought it was really weird that they were discussing the government shutdown for an hour, because it doesn’t really affect any of them directly as our foreign affairs are separately funded. Strange.

I went to science class and the teacher told me I needed to participate in class discussions if I wanted to pass. Okaaaay then. I’ll raise my hand if that’s what she wants, but I’ll probably say something totally unrelated.

After school I went to Dorren and we sang songs until 8 and it was really fun and I love choir a lot. The only hard thing is trying to match my american/british vowels to their Swedish ones. I don’t think it should take too long to perfect though. Mondays are my new favorite day of the week because of choir.

Here’s some pictures I took during the last two days:

Aakansha

Iara

kitty kitty

kitty kitty kitty kitty

Debbie, Muna, and ??? omg I knew her name. I’m so dumb. Everyone hates me because I’m so bad at this.

JOSEPHINE! HELLOOOOO!!!!

Here’s that video I promised

Everyone-ish is in Rome

Yesterday I had one class and there were only 2 other people in it (Debbie and Paula). We talked about Africa since the library was closed and we couldn’t check out books or go on computers. Then, Debbie pulled out her laptop and we watched a show called “Outsiders” which documented three elderly Finnish sisters who married 20 year old men in Africa because they wanted to have a “love adventure” and the men wanted to leave their country so that they could be richer. It was pretty freaky.

We went to McIncredible after the documentary and talked and then I went home and slept for a million years.

BTW, you all need to be watching the new Fox series, Sleepy Hollow. It’s like Supernatural, Once Upon a Time, and CSI all mixed together.

Today I had a field trip to some sort of Astronomy museum. My science teacher was really excited about it, so she convinced my Svenska 3 teacher to skip teaching class so that we could spend more time there. The science teacher ended up coming a half hour late with an excuse given in rapid Swedish. The museum was alright. I saw a fake fetus in a jar and a three legged pigeon in a jar and a two-headed snake. I was going to take pictures, but I forgot the memory card in the computer, so I’M SORRY.

Then I took Mickayla back to school and we went to music class. Marcus Markus Marckus was there and he said that we get three more days to rehearse, THANK GOD.

I went to Dorren’s oppen hus, and it was nice. There was a really confusing skit done in Swedish that consisted of a man in a dress, a girl in a playboy bunny costume, and an angry girl who screamed “I’M BLACK AND PROUD,” even though I’m pretty sure she was middle eastern. I accidentally stumbled into an oriental dance class, and they made me dance and the only thing I could do was the figure eight thing with my hips and the sexy walk. I’m hopeless at shimming and booty shaking, so it was really embarrassing. Anyway. Let’s not dwell on that. I hung out with Hanna and Rhoda and it was nice and I really like them and I’ll be joining the Dorren choir as well as the photography class and so that should take up some of my time. HOORAY!

I really like Gamla stan, so I’m glad I’ll be getting to spend more time in it.

OH, I almost forgot to tell you this story! My friend Paula told me about how she has this 32 year old boyfriend, and the way that they met was she was on the subway and she smiled at him because he was hot and he smiled back and when she got off, he followed her and was like, “I’m sorry, this is weird, but I really want to talk to you. Can I have your number?” and so she gave it to him and later they went to a cafe and ever since then, they’ve been dating for over a year. Literally love at first sight. Crazy stuff.

I scowl at attractive men because how dare they be so attractive? Makes my eyes hurt. All the boys here are so stylish, I know I’m going to be disappointed when I get back to Wisconsin where everyone is colorblind and wears basketball shorts and doesn’t brush their hair.

Okay. yeah. Today was good. I had a cinnamon bun for lunch and it made the rest of my day sweet.

Playing Hooky

I didn’t have school again today. Thank goodness it’s Labour Day, or else I might have felt bad about it. All three of the teachers that teach the first 3 hours of my school day were missing, so I left at eleven to go to Gamla Stan so that I could go to *My First Rotary Meeting*. I thought that I was going to get lost when I was going to or when I got there, but no. I’m pretty good at reading maps, so I found the meeting place right away and I had an hour before I had to be there. So I wandered around and it was pretty boring and uneventful.

I’m such a good blogger. Anyway.

Went to the meeting, it was nice. Everyone shook my hand and they all held on for far too long while the continued to talk to me. Business as usual. I think the most awkward thing was that I didn’t know what to say to this people except for “nice to meet you!!!1! 🙂 Thanks for having me!! :D” and so there were many awkward pauses and such. Then we had lunch (mine was a salad that was mostly cheese and halves of tomatoes. ?) and I noticed that a lot of the rotary members were female and also not elderly which was strange and refreshing.

The meeting was pretty interesting from what I could understand. The presenter was from Ghana and she was talking about a program funded by Swedish tax dollars that helps lower income countries set up research teams so that they can help themselves with SCIENCE. Hooray for science!

Then I got on the train to go back to school only I didn’t go back to school because I got lost. I got off one stop early because I thought that I could find the way back to school from that stop and I felt like walking some and the train was stuffy but uuUUUGHHHHH. I stumbled into the big city, eyes bleary, disoriented as a newly born calf. I walked around trying to follow signs, and it started pouring out (I had my umbrella, but my jeans still got soaked) and I must have walked for about an hour before I finally found a green line subway station and went home because by that time school was over.

I feel like I should have been more scared than I was? I mean, I was sooo lost and none of the maps I found were comprehensive, but I was more concerned about the rain than the fact that I was walking up and down streets that all looked exactly the same and could only find subway stations that had the wrong color line. idk, man.

So that’s why I didn’t have any school today. I think I’ll get a map of Stockholm tomorrow morning so that I never get lost in the rain again.

Summer in the City

Today was my first day of SFF. I got into class and there were almost thirty kids in there (I thought there were only going to be three, so imagine my surprise) and the room capacity was probably twelve, so we kept all of the window and doors open. The teacher spoke completely in Swedish which sucked. I mean, she spoke slowly and enunciated, but I still could only understand every five words, so I didn’t know what was going on. Then she wrote something Swedish on the board and I understood 4 of the fifteen words and everyone was pulling out their notebooks, so I did too.

I raised my hand and was all, “I’ve only been here two weeks. I don’t know what’s going on, can you please explain this to me?” and then she was all “Just try your best.” and I was like “I don’t know what the board says well enough to try my best. Are we writing essays? What does it say?” and then she was all “Just write an introduction about yourself instead of doing what the board says.”

So, I still don’t know what all of the other kids wrote, but I wrote a paragraph about myself and Wisconsin and I drew a picture of a cow in a blizzard that made her and the girls sitting next to me laugh. I turned in my essay and started talking to this Italian boy with an Italian name that I can’t pronounce or spell. He seemed pretty cool though. After the teacher scanned all of our essays, she gave the non-international section kids (me and a few other students) some reading material that was completely in Swedish and then told me and the Italian boy that we should go to beginners Swedish. No kidding. He wrote two sentences and I wrote six. Everyone else had a whole page front and back. She gave me the email address of the beginner SFF teacher and I’m supposed to email her to find out when and where her classes are. ??? Okay, then.

Then I went to lunch (which was rice and some suspicious looking chicken.) didn’t eat anything, and hung out with Jonatan and Aida until Farida got out of her class so that we could go see THE CITY.

It was pretty cool. We hung out for five or six hours, walking around and looking at things. They’re all super awesome and amazingly like all of the things that I like and all have tumblogs (besides Aida) and we fangirled over tv series and movies that we’ve seen, and Jonatan loaned me Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children in English and they showed me around Gamla Stan and now I know how to get there by walking from my school and I want to spend lots of time there!!! (everything is so cute, you don’t understand. I feel like I’m in a coffee shop AU)

Pictures from yesterday’s science class:

FOR SCIENCE!

I am not a murderer, I am a SCIENTIST.

Pictures from today’s outing:

We passed this bridge that was covered in locks. Lovers write their names on here, hook them on and throw the key into the river. Apparently sometimes people come with wire cutters to chop theirs off when their relationships fail.

Jonatan, Farida, Aida, and I in a cafe underneath a concert hall

The acoustics in this library are so amazing! When you whisper, it echos! It took all my self control not to start singing!

Gamla Stan

We went to the Old Town today and it was fun. We got ice cream and walked around and went on a boat tour and here’s some pictures.

handsome boy making flavored candy canes

my drug dealer hangs out here

Hugo and I in some sketch underground cafe that was totally empty

the put fake cannon balls here and tell tourists that they were attacked

look look see see

I think it’s supposed to be a rooster??? Is this something to do with the disciples denying jesus?

German Church stained glass

quality Swedish graffiti

Gamla Stan

Gamla Stan

These street artists should be praised for their creativity

photography museum

fake viking ship

It’s made to look like a giraffe

more amusement park

Hop on Hop off tour rides

Saga taking a picture of me taking a picture of her taking a picture of me taking a picture of her taking a picture of me taking a picture of her taking a picture of me taking a picture of her

Stockholm’s oldest amusement park. Sounds dangerous.

There’s a preserved war ship in there

This is were the rich peeps live. Tennis players and such.

They told me that each apartment you can buy consists of 20 rooms and two floors. I wouldn’t even know what to do with all of that. Probably vacuum a lot. I hate vacuuming.