This is the Most Poorly Written Post I’ve Ever Made

Hamish, Andrew, and Emily. I think I joined a gang. I’m not sure. I don’t know if I like it.

Andrew

We took this escalator up to a library and then when the library closed we tried to leave, but there was only this escalator and it only went up, so we had to use the handicap elevator???? I feel like this architect could have just planned it so much better

group hug! awww

Pablo and Jorge DJ-ing like bosses

yoooooo Pabloooooooo

Martin is an amazing dancer omg

Oh Narain

Aakanksha!

Martin wearing Andrew’s glasses

wow my lense is dirty

we woke up at 7 in the morning to walk Aakanksha to the bus stop

THIS IS THE BEST SCHOOL LUNCH I’VE EVER HAD!!!! ILY ST. ERIK’S GYMNASIUM! First time I’ve had curry too!

This is my ID. I’m lookin fresh to death, but my name isn’t Aaron??????? Or is there something my parents aren’t telling me?

Okay so I hung out with the losers (I say losers lovingly. That probably sounded mean if you don’t know me.) in the first picture all night and it was great and Muna from Kungsholmen came along which was super cool of her and I hope she didn’t hate us.

The next day I went to the train station to meet Andrew so that we could go to Södertälje together and he was late. Andrew, if you’re reading this, I haven’t forgiven you yet. He told me to meet him at 12:30, and he came at 1:13.

Moving on.

We walked around Södertälje a bit before meeting up with Breno and then later Narain, and then even later Hannah, Alejandra, and Jorge. We sat in this super amazing McDonalds for a long while before the DJ event started. (Jorge and Pablo take DJ-ing lessons and their club put on a charity event for kids with cancer. We all signed up to work it, but in the end only the 18-year-olds were allowed to work. Martin gave me his Crew shirt though, so it was all good on my end.) We got there and Pablo did some mixing and then we all stood around and talked/danced*.

That night we went home around midnight and because it was a sleepover we talked until 3. I then layed in the bed Hannah generously offered me (btw, if you’re reading this Hannah, you need to stop being so nice because it makes my stomach hurt and I feel awful taking things from you.) staring at the wall wondering how sleep happens. A little after four I think I fell asleep. The alarm went off at seven and that was the start of the day. Who needs eight hours of sleep? Certainly not me!**

We walked Aakanksha to the bus station and then went home. Narain called and he and Pablo met us outside the house, where from we walked to ICA to get some doughnuts for Hannah. Pablo is really generous and bought everyone doughnuts*** and wow, what a cutie. He stuffed a chocolate bar in my pocket and I ended up really needing it when I got to the train station to go back home because I hadn’t eaten anything all day. ily Pablo!! ❤

Idk what else to say? I hung out with Narain and Hannah all day because Pablo had to go to his host mom’s birthday. I love Hannah and Narain so much and it’s not like I can tell you our conversations? I seem to run into this problem a lot. We just sat around and made bad jokes for a few hours . <I hope that works for you.

Then I headed home. The bus and train ride home seemed to last years and I really appreciated riding to Södertälje with Andrew and being able to take the bus to Trossa to Hannah’s house with everyone because company makes the time go by so much faster and easier.

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!

I got up at seven (ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh seven) to go to school and I had a really hard time finding my first class. My room was A4107F, but the doors went G, D, C. No F. So I went to the room where F should have been (it didn’t have any number on it) and I asked the teacher and she was like “Go away, I need to start my lesson. I don’t know who you are, I can’t help you.” in Swedish and I was like “UM?!” and I’m desperately trying to explain my situation in bad Swedish and this other teacher guy comes up and he’s like “Who are you?” and he’s speaking English now, so I was able to explain myself completely and he still wanted to kick me out until I showed him my schedule. I think they made a few phone calls wherein Jonas explained who I was. It was all very stressful.

The kids in my class are super cool and super nice and I’ll take pictures of the school and classrooms soon.

In all, it was the best day of school ever and I can’t wait to go back.

*When I refer to all of us dancing, I’m excluding myself. Social situations with that kind of pressure give me a lot of anxiety and I know I may seem like a super cool person on the outside, but I’m almost always uncomfortable with everything and it takes a lot of effort for me to even talk to people I’m unsure around, much less dance in a dimly lit room with them. If I ever dance around you it’ll be impromptu and probably after several nights without sleep when I’ve lost all sense of boundary.

**That’s a lie. Today think I fell asleep in every single class. My eyes kept closing and when I tried to keep them open they were so heavy it hurt. I want to go to bed right now, but I need to make this post before I forget everything! 😦 I’ll do the ESA thing when I get home from school, Dad. I’m dying right now.

***I told him “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO” because I can’t let people be nice to me and also three hours of sleep makes you want to lay down and die, not eat doughnuts.

GOTT NYTT ÅR!

It’s January first!! The world still hasn’t ended! Sherlock premieres tonight!

Plans got really messy last night, so this isn’t going to be about what I talked about in previous posts. I’ll organize this into a time table because life is hard and confusing and it’ll give my transitionary adverbs a break. I don’t know what tense and which pronouns to use in all of this either because half of this happened to me and half of this happened to me and the group and some of it is still happening? Lordy Lord. Also, I’m bad at math, so those estimations of half are probably really off.

4:00 – picked up Perth from the station

4:40 – picked up Hannah from the station

4:50 – went back to my house to drop off luggage

???? idk the real time. I’m gonna guess it was about 6:00? – Went to Central Station to meet up with Josh, Avishkar, and Oliver to get coffee Starbucks was closed though and we were very sad.

7:00ish ish – Went to McIncredible. Then we sat and talked and it was nice and also a little boring because I am the worst at making plans. Every other day is a ‘red day’ in Sweden which means that the shops close at 2:00pm and whatnot. We discussed what to do with the time we had free until the time we had free was gone.

9:00 – picked Narain up from the station. Oliver, and Pablo left to go to house parties and Narain and Perth went off in search of food that wasn’t McDonald’s. The rest of us waited for Alejandra and Jorge to come to the station. We ate Hannah’s brownies while we waited so it wasn’t all bad

9:45 – Several brownies later we left the station to find a kebab house for Jorge.

10:30? – We got to Slussen (an area near the water) and watch live music under the shadow of Katrina’s Hissen.

11:40 – Narain calls me to come and find him and Perth, which rescues me from being crushed to death. Every person who has ever lived was pressing up against each other in a writhing mass of bodies and I thought I was going to die.

11:55 – I find them and we watch the fireworks from a safe distance away from the drunk people.

12:00 – HAPPY NEW YEAR! Instead of kissing each other, strangers give hugs to one another which is infinitely more hygienic. (Side note: All night people were grabbing at me on the sidewalk and stuff. Like, they’d take my arm or stand chest to chest to me and go “Hallå!” and at one point this guy came up and was like “Pata Spanska?” and I was like “No, pero- hey, Alejandra!” because I thought he needed directions or something and then he says to her “Me gusta ella. Es muy bonita.” and I’m laughing because I could kind of understand and Alejandra translates it to “He says he likes you,” and I say “Claro que si!” and that is literally the extent of my Spanish so I walk away before he can try and talk to me again, but wow. Just remember to S.I.N.G. if you ever get into trouble. Miss Congeniality taught me that. Self-defense class taught me to aim for the eyes.

1:40 – We finish listening to music and watching fireworks and look for a place to pee and eat and McIncredibles is the only place open so we head on back.

2:30 – We find Oliver at the station and take him back to McDonald’s.

3:00 – I’m really tired and I start to feel feverish? Also I get unnecessarily emotional and start crying because I suddenly remember that everyone is going to leave and I’m never going to see them again and the present is really nice and I don’t know if it’s possible but I felt nostalgic for it.

3:45? – We head home, missing the Nockeby train by nearly two hours. sl.se, the website we use to check train times, went down around midnight, so there wasn’t anyway to know unless we had checked before going out. Oops.

5:00???? – We get home after walking from Alvik and wow I was so cold, it was unreal.

7:00 – After several deep and meaningful sleepover conversations, I fall asleep. Dang.

1:00 – have breakfast

2:30 – Keep the party going by going to Starbucks and taking sips of everyone else’s drinks because that’s how you find out what’s good and I’m definitely not a mooch.

5:40 – Go home because I’m definitely have a fever and am the clammiest of clams. Dear lord. Go on, feel my hands. They are sweaty and cold just like the rest of me and I am probably dying ohmygod. I’m shivering while I type this. Literally, my teeth are chattering and my stomach hurts the way it does before you jump off of something really high. This is disgusting. I’m hope it’s just left over emotion from last night and I’m not actually ill.

Okay. I hope this post was informative. I think there’s probably a million things I’m missing. We danced at the new years thing. All of those dances I had during gym class with that weird kid who tried to ask me to prom Sophomore year were useless and I had needed to be taught all over again. I think that’s it. I don’t know. I’ll probably remember more later.

^ Gabriella left a few days ago, so a bunch of us said good bye to her at the airport.

In which I get progressively more lost

?

it’s a watertower?

oh, is it really that easy? Just hang a left?

That dark place on the hill that I went to used to be a fort or something? In 1654 I think it said. Now it’s a cafe and there’s the remains of a cannon road on the other side of it. I accidentally deleted the video clip of me explaining all of that.

two posts in one day! Lucky you!

Okay, so this is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and it doesn’t have anything to really do with my exchange, BUT I think it’s important.

So I changed my name, and I like it a lot better. It was weird at first, but now I’m used to it. I know that y’all back home (and Ollie) are always going to call me Alexa because that’s what I’ve been called forever and it would feel fake to call me anything else, but I think that when I go to college and beyond I’ll keep the name Kate.

Those of you who read as voraciously as I will recognize this name change as an awful plot device to show character development, and if I ever do something really cool and have a biography written about me it’s gonna be hella rad to have this little thing put in, but beyond that I feel like Kate fits me better and that’s how it’s going to be.

The only problems that I can really forsee arising is that when I get married, how are people going to refer to me and my husband? Are they going to say Kate and Johan or Johan and Alexa? If mom is ever talking to one of my college friends at a party or something and she says “Oh yes, Johan and Alexa are so adorable together!” my college friend is going to be like “VA?!” and think that we’re in a polygamous marriage or something! The other problem is what if something really traumatic happens to me, say, being kidnapped and thrown into a river, and I develop Multiple Personality Disorder in order to suppress it? Who will be the real me? Kate or Alexa? Schizophrenia will be hard enough to deal with without not know what my name really is. Dang you guys. Dang. If this ever happens, don’t even use my name. Just pat me on the head and tell me it’s okay.

Nicholas Charles Horning, You Had Better Skype Me

Last night I went to the Imagine Dragons concert and AHHHHHHHHHHH OMG it was so amazing! I’ve never been to a concert before, so this completely blew my mind.

They had two opening acts: Moth and Flame & Dan Croll

I thought M&F was good, but then Dan Croll happened and they were even better and then Imagine Dragons came on and I wanted to die because they were amAZIIING!!! We were the second or third row from the front, so we saw everything (except for Hannah who is 5’1” and could only see people’s backs. Poor Hannah 😦 ) The whole thing was super intense and I could feel the bass in the bones of the people around me.

Since the refrigerator here is broken, the milk keeps freezing. I quickly discovered that there was yogurt in the door, and it’s been there the whole time, but I’ve never looked at it close enough to notice it. I’m afraid my host family is going to be very upset with me pretty quickly here because I LOVE YOGURT. I love it so much, I think about it all the time. Risifrutti doesn’t matter  when there’s a liter of yogurt and granola at your disposal. Sometimes I’m laying in bed trying to fall asleep and I think about how excited I am to eat yogurt for breakfast the next morning. It’s getting pretty pathetic, you guys.

Today we had hole time for humanistics. Only it wasn’t for an hour like it usually is, it was for three because Humanistics lasts forever. Afterwards we had E-Block until 5:10. Some woman was going to come in and talk about her book about Pompeii, and I really didn’t want to go for several reasons.

1) I didn’t go to Rome with the class, so the book doesn’t really matter to me. I mean, it might have, but

2) I didn’t read the book. So,

3) I wouldn’t be able to ask any questions about it. And

4) If I were to ask questions, they would have to be in Swedish. My Swedish isn’t advanced enough to ask questions about Pompeii and books. Besides that, my heart beats really fast and I sweat for like ten minutes after I answer a simple question in class. I don’t think I could handle the level of participation this sort of thing requires.

5) omg, 5:10? You’re kidding me. That’s less than an hour ago that I would have gotten out of school. Ughhhhhhhh

So, to conclude this thrilling story I went home half way through hole time because after talking to some of my classmates they said it wouldn’t be a big deal if I did.

Tomorrow I don’t have school, so I guess I’ll return my severely overdue library books (Sorry mom. You were right. I can’t handle the responsibility of library books.) and do some NaNoWriMo stuff. I’ll have some stuff for you Ollie!

I don’t know.

So basically I got left with this blue hair dye and my pen pal said that I should use it and everyone else I asked said it would be cool. Everyone is a liar liar pants on fire. I looked absolutely mental with blue hair, and I was super distraught, so I decided to try and dye it back. I got this dark brown hair dye and did it in the school locker room, and it turned out black-ish green? I haven’t washed it since, but I hope it turns out brown after a few rinses. The box didn’t say what color it would turn into if you had blue hair, so I guess I should have expected this. I just want dark brown hair, guys. When I get my allowance from rotary I’ll figure out how to do that. Sighs upon sighs. Don’t trust other people when it comes to hair, kids. Life lessons here.

 

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!!!!

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.

A Rant and an Update

Ohmygoodness. Every time someone asks what country I’m from, and I say America, they go “Well, there’s more than one America, you know ;)”

No. NO THERE ISN’T. You asked me what country I was from, and I told you the shortened version of the name of my country. The USA is the only country with the name America in it. You didn’t ask me what continent I came from, you asked me for my country. This isn’t about being politically correct, this is about you being annoying.

Someone said that we need to call the USA the USA instead of America because saying America makes it sound like we think we’re better than everyone, and we need to break that stereotype.

Here’s a nifty tip: Be a nice person, and do kind things for people, and then when they ask you where you’re from, and you say “America,” they’ll think, “Gosh, that American was a really nice person. I guess not all of them I giant jerkwads! In fact, I should like to visit there someday, because I enjoyed this person so much and they represent their country so well, that it sounds like a dandy place to go.”

So, yeah. People need to get over themselves.

Moving on. 

Yesterday no one talked to me and that was great. Then I got a migraine and slept for five hours and when it was time for bed I couldn’t fall asleep until two, so I was tired and grumpy all day today.

I’m a full-fledged vegetarian from here on out. It’s been going great so far. It’s just the smell of fried foods that kills me sometimes. Must. Resist.

OH, wait, that was a lie. I went to a Rotary meeting yesterday, and they talked to me. They’re looking into getting me more than one host family, which is nice, because perspective. Also, I waited outside Dorren for 20 minutes, and my rotary contact didn’t show up, and when I called her, she said that she left through a different door and didn’t see me. So, there was that.

Today I had music class and Sandra decided we needed to change the melody. And I was put in charge of that for some reason. And it’s due on Thursday. And I sing with the rhythm of an unevenly loaded washing machine, so I can barely sing the song as it is. Cool.

Then we had SFF and the teacher was gone, so I sat downstairs and got to know the older, more mature kids in the class, and they’re all pretty great.

Then we watched a documentary about Hang Drums in Religion, and for the second half of class the teacher was at a Dr. appointment, so we went to the computer lab and I studied Swedish.

Then we had the Club Fair and I signed up for a book club, a creative writing club, and a film critic club, because I love to participate when things are organized and there are more than 3 members in the club, and I don’t have any secretarial responsibilities.

Then we had a class photo, and I’m pretty sure I blinked in each shot.

Then I went home and my hands were white because it’s FREEZING outside.

The End.

Can you tell I’m still hung up on the America thing? Ugh. It just really gets to me.

I think this might be their excuse for a corndog. Hank would be very disappointed.

I feel like a Swedish peasant when I hang out in Gamla Stan

this is the pretty courtyard

Me waiting

Sonja on the royal steed at that museum I went to a few posts ago