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.

I’m dying and I hate everything whymeeeeeeI

I made the post and then I tried to add the pictures and the computer froze and lost the whole post. So. I quit. I’m not rewriting it all, because now I’m in a terrible mood. You get the abridged version.

Friday.

no. nothing happened. I ate pizza. Here are those pictures I promised earlier.

I was so close.

this is ridiculous

Here are some more to tide you over.

secret agent man

tell me who you are

so mysterious

species please

what kind?

bird

this reminded me of the IKEA monkey

IKEA monkey

Saturday:

Cafe Dox exchange student gift exchange.

I didn’t participate because I suck at giving gifts.

It was nice

We went ice skating afterwards. I was wearing tights because all my pants were in the wash. I was super super cold (but also super super cute.)

Lots of kids had never seen snow or ice skated.

I was helpful. Made me proud to see them going off on their own. And sometimes they fell, But they got up without help, and that’s what counts.

We went to McDonalds to warm up and ate ice cream because we like to be ironic.

I got home at midnight because I was sitting with Narain and Tanner at Central Station for a few hours after they missed their train home. Had a little heart to heart. It was grand.

Sunday:

Went to see Catching Fire with Hannah, Emily, and Oliver.

The movie theater candy

Hannah is like the best friend I had in a past life, Emily is like the friend on the internet I never met in Real Life, and Olver is like the big brother who never came to stockholm with me.

If you guys ever run into these three, you’ll need to step up your wit-game. Clever sarcasm abounds.

Oliver and Narain

Emily and Tanner

Afterwards we looked at the NK display and had our minds blown.

Then we went to a trendy cafe.

Hannah’s bus home was coming, so we left really soon after getting there.

We ran to Emily’s host family’s apartment to get Hannah’s bag, and then ran all the way to the pendltag platform.

My lungs still sting from the cold air.

I think that’s it.

OH!

I might be moving to where Hannah lives at the end of the christmas break. So there’s that. No more living in Stockholm. It’s alright. Hannah’s the best. Also, music program at school. I miss singing.

OH!

Also, I’ve been staring at dogs when they walk past me, and then they stare at me and they stop sometimes and their owners are like ‘whatchyou doin m8?’ and I keep looking over my shoulders and I can tell the dogs want to be with me. This is my power. I can control the minds of dogs. My YA novel character power has been achieved, not a moment too late either, seeing as it should be at it’s full force around my 18th birthday.

Please Forgive Me!

It’s been forever. I know. I’m sorry. Kind of. Ugh. Nothing incredibly interesting happens that I haven’t already written about, and I don’t want to bore you all to tears. There’s a fun video and some groovy pictures with this post though, so you get twice as much from me this time than normal!

So…

Um.

On Tuesday last week I missed my first 2 classes due to a killer headache and on Friday I almost missed that really amazing SFF teacher’s last day because I turned off my alarm and woke up an hour late. I went to school and caught the last 30 minutes of class though and said goodbye and it all turned out okay.

I wrote 4ish pages of that Humanistics paper and I’m supposed to be writing more right now (we get to stay home during humanistics because they don’t feel like booking the computer labs for us at school) but I’m doing this and drinking Apple Cider instead.

I was supposed to see Christal today, but she cancelled and so I think I’m going to email her because I have a lot of things to ask her about EuroTour and London.

Even if I can do EuroTour, I still want to go to London because that’s not on the trip list and it would be silly to not go considering how cheap the tickets are. Aakanksha has some cousins living there near the airport and McKenzie has a family friend closer to the city there, so they’re going to talk to them and see if they would be willing to take us in for a few days, and I need to talk to Christal and see if it’s okay to go.

I jumped a fence on the way back to the train to get home on Thanksgiving because we took a wrong turn and the whole thing was fenced in and I thought we would be late if we didn’t hop over the fence to get to the station. The fence was one of those weak bendy ones though and you can’t exactly climb that type, so I just kind of laid on top and fell over to the other side and I got these freaky looking bruises from it and ripped my favorite pair of tights, and I definitely learned my lesson about floppy fences.

For those of you not in the know, I got accepted to the University of Mary Washington a few days ago and I might have cried a little.

Cecil Baldwin is still always sick (super annoying). OH! I saw his tattoo super close up the other day! It’s a weird scale thing with words written in Hebrew. The real Cecil Baldwin just released another chilling podcast in the Welcome to Night Vale series.

I think I just finished the MVP Elks scholarship. Clap for me. It’s been days.

We go ice skating a lot. I’m going to be a professional figure skater when I get home.

idk. what else do you want to hear about? Thanksgiving was cool? Not much to talk about there though that the pictures and video don’t say. 

a different library than the usual one I go to

the statue in the middle of the rink

Gabriella

the bruises

Titling these is super hard, you have no idea

Philosophy = I don’t know what happened, but I saw Cecil Baldwin’s full arm tattoo and was super disappointed. Jonatan said it might me a Satanic worshiper thing though, so I guess I can always pretend it’s something scary and cool. I don’t know, it was like a pitchfork in a circle?

Svenska 3= We read poetry about death and then I translated one of the poems and had to write a super detailed and disgusted essay on something that happens in my daily life. Mine was a really surreal piece about waiting for the train in the rain. I didn’t read it aloud because I was embarrassed by how freaky it was.

Lunch = penne noodles and hamburger?

Natural Science = nap time because I couldn’t remember my password for the school computers

Music Class = I still suck at music, but Rickard was just as hopeless, so I don’t feel too terrible. They wanted me to stay after school and teach him how to harmonize though and I had a thing, so I recorded me singing the song with the piano so that he can figure it out on his own this weekend. I really hope he pushes the due date up to next thursday. We are soooo not ready.

Break = I went home and had a meltdown because the internet wasn’t working and I couldn’t figure out where to go to meet my rotary contact and I ended up getting there a half hour late and ughhhh.

Dorren = That’s with a swedish ‘O’, to be clear. I hung out with a girl named Hanna (Hannah?) and a guy named Oscar (Oskar?), and Hanna and I watched Oscar edit photos for an hour, and we talked and ate sandwiches and drank tea and it was a grand time. Then Christal picked me up and we went for vegetarian food and IT WAS THE BEST, OMG! I’m so tired of meat, this was a blessing! Then I forgot my phone charger so I went back and hung out with Hanna  and Oscar some more and then we all went to the train station and here I am. What a day. I want to go back to Dorren because those kids were really cool and I like them a lot and they listen to good music and the photo editing was really interesting and yay!

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.

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.

I didn’t sign up for this

My class is H3, which means I’m in the highest grade level and all of the courses have to do with language. You can take German, French, Italian, Spanish, och/eller Latin. I can speak a little tiny bit of Espanol. All of the other classes I would have no hope to achieve anything in. There’s a few other classes that we’re required to take like Philosophy and Natural Science, but mostly it’s language courses with a math option thrown in their to spice things up. I’m not signed up for anything. I just go to the mandatory classes and lunch and then I go home. The guidance counselor told me that I should talk to her in a week and then we’ll see how everything is going.

??????????????????????????????????

She told me that in a week she would schedule me for Swedish For Foreigners. I’m in Swedish 3 right now, the hardest Swedish class there is. Why wasn’t this pre-arranged??? I’m missing a week of SFF! Whatever. And then she said she would see about getting me into an art or music class? In a week though. Because apparently it’s better for me to sit in on classes I won’t be in later and not understand what’s going on than sit in on classes that I’m going to be in the rest of the year and not understand what’s going on. If you can’t tell, I don’t like waiting. Mostly I want to have my SFF class so that I can start to understand what everyone is saying.

Highlights of the Day:

We had to go up to the sixth floor to get our Philosophy books, and everyone left that blind girl I mentioned earlier behind. I figured she would be fine because no one was worried about her, but then I thought maybe it was like when everyone left my wheelchair bound math teacher in the classroom when there was a fire drill and she actually needed help, but no one thought to give it. Turns out, she did need help, because she ran into the side of the staircase, no where near the stairs. I asked if she needed help (in english, because I’m really thoughtless. “Behöver du hjälp” is easy enough to say, but I didn’t think to say it because I’m slow.)  and she obviously didn’t understand me, but I took her hand anyway and lead her to the stairs, and THEN some kid from my class remembered that she had a blind classmate and came looking for the poor girl.

My philosophy teacher looks like irl Cecil Baldwin. He even has a mysterious tattoo on his arm. I couldn’t understand what was going on except for what he was writing on the board so I stared at his arm all of class and tried to figure it out. I let ya’ll know what it is when I see it in a few days.

I took the music class thing into my own hands and went to the seventh floor to talk to a choir teacher. I met this weird little man and he wasn’t very helpful and was totally scary and he told me about chamber choir and there were only two spots left to try out and I couldn’t decide if I was going to, but then at the end of the day I want back and there was a nice McVeigh-like choir teacher there and she said I should ask to join S3 instead of being in H3 because it’ll be more interesting classes, and also told me I could try out tomorrow at 12:30 and so I guess I will. There’s some sight-reading and some piano-voice response stuff and then I have to sing her a song that I know by heart. Which one??? I Carry Your Heart With Me?? Something from a musical?? Who knows. Ugh. This is hard. The other choir teacher said most kids sing Christmas songs. I can’t think of a single Christmas song besides Silent Night that would be good for this. I don’t really want to sing a Christmas song. Anyway. 12:30. I’m going to die.

Debbie and her friends let me eat lunch with them. I can’t tell if they like me or if they feel bad for me. Probably the latter. I think Debbie actually likes me, but it’s tough to know because I’ve never had to make friends in an environment where everyone is already friends with each other. Life’s hard.

In Nat Science, the teacher had everyone go into corners based off of what they thought about science (is it a belief, fact, always changing, or something else) and she had us do that like seven times, but she only told me what each corner meant the first time around, and then she went around the room and everyone had to say why they believed what they did. I would like to put several expletives here, but this blog is supposed to be classy. Eventually, I just staying in the same corner because I was comfortable in my spot against the wall and was tired of trying to figure out what was going on, and she just skipped over me for the last few questions THANK GOD.

So that’s been my day so far. woo.

Here I am falling asleep in my Svenska 3 class.

This says I, one. I prefer the title Everyday. It made sense.

Swedish Game of Thrones. This is my excuse for not reading them.

Here I am in my Svenska 3 class not understanding anything.

This is Miu-Miu. She sleeps in my bed a lot, but leaves when I get it. Jerk.

Vad du vill jag ska att tala om??

I just go back from Language Camp wherein I reviewed the little that I had learned before I had left and met some really cool rotary kids and I’m not sure what I’m supposed to write on this blog??? I changed my name to Kate and I like it a lot better. I drink a lot of water because it makes it easier to swallow all of the meat people serve. I really like porridge with applesauce. And lemon water. And taking the train. And marabou chocolate. I still don’t like to shop. The weather is nice-ish and we swim at night at when it rains and the pool is warm because of a solar cover so it feels like a bath.

My rotary contact called me, so we’ll be seeing each other soon for fika. I’ll probably go to a meeting soon and such. It’s really late and I’m tired. Please enjoy this picture of my weekend.