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.

Stress

This morning started off with my mum texting me telling me that I can’t fake swear on the internet. Usually, I’d be all “yeah, k whateves.” and take it down, but instead I replied none too nicely ranting about how stressed out I am. I probably did that because I’m stressed out. I know I shouldn’t be, but I am, so I am. I still am. Not so much as this morning though because today was really funny.

I woke up early to shower so that I could be at the school early to talk to the counselor and when I got there she was in a meeting with another student and then was too busy to talk to me for the next thirty minutes. So I read. Then we discussed my classes and she put me in SFF and a music class (with Mikayla (sp?) and Nick Baker) and she told me that I should go to the Rome class since I don’t like the Human one. Awesome. I’m totally going to Rome!

By the time I was done talking to her, my SFF class was about to start and so I had to run up seven flights of stairs to get to it on time. When I got there, there were three other kids sitting outside the locked door of the SFF classroom. Awesome. We sat there for fifteen minutes and talked. There was a girl from Finland, a boy from Egypt and another boy from Eritrea. Then the teacher came up and told us in Swedish that class was cancelled because she had a funeral to go to and that we should hang out in the library until our next class. So I read.

The next class was Religion and I was kind of excited because I like learning about other people’s religions and I thought maybe I would learn something even though the class is taught is Swedish. Nick Baker and this awesome girl named Farida Tanttu sat with me and we talked for forty-five minutes before someone kid came into the room and told us that our teacher was sick and that we could go to lunch or whatever. Religion is a split lunch class, so I have 40ish minutes of religion and then lunch and then another 50 minutes. I walked with Nick and Farida to lunch, and we saw what they were serving and all decided to go home instead. There’s a reason lunch is free. I’m going to make a lunch sucks and a lunch rocks tag so that we can all keep track of how often the miracle of a good school lunch occurs.

So basically, I didn’t have to go to school today.

I got home a half hour ago, finished the last ten pages in my book (that’s two books in two day! I’m on a roll! Can’t stop this, oh no can’t stop this!) and now it’s 12:30 and I’m kind of hungry but they only have frozen bread and cereal here and I feel like I’m at Cana’s house. I think I’m going to go get some lunch and then make some cookies or something so that the Skarins can taste the joys of fat. kk peace out

I think I might be going to Rome

School was superrrrr boring today. I’m sure it was interesting if you knew Swedish, but I don’t so I sat there bored out of my mind most of the day. Sometimes I make up conversations in my head like that Whose Line Is It Anyway? game where they sit in front of the black and white television and do voice overs. My favorite game to play is when I pretend that the teachers are mobsters and when the whisper together they’re talking about who’s next on the hit list and where to put the bodies. Anyway. I won’t bore you with all of my daydreaming and just get down to what you’ll all probably find interesting.

It’s time for another round of

HIGHLIGHTS:

1.  I got to school early to talk to the counselor. She wasn’t there. She’s going to be there tomorrow though. Probably. *sigh*
2. I went to Humanity class for 3 hours. I didn’t need to be there since I wasn’t registered, and I don’t think I’ll be going back. They made us write an essay about what it means to be human. I got really technical and politically correct and when I shared it with my group I found out that that’s what they did too. When the class started discussing the subject as a whole I think they got into an abortion debate. I heard the Swedish word for fetus a few times. I don’t know. Wouldn’t surprise me.                                                    When we got a ten minute break I asked the teachers (there were four of them in the room for some reason???) what the class was about and what we were going to be doing for the rest of the year, and they told me we were going to be focusing on what it means to be human and then we were going to be writing an academic paper about  for our final project. Yawn. The girls I was sitting with told me at the end of class that the highest grade that you can get on the final paper is an E. Well, åt helvete with that. I didn’t want to be in the stupid class anyway! I especially don’t want to fail it because it’s designed for you to fail. Why would I even try then?? Seriously! These people are insane.
3. Half of my class (H3) was in another classroom that focuses on architecture and is going to Rome in January for only 1,500 Crowns. That’s $230. They’ll be there for a week. WHAT A STEAL!! I’m going to see if it isn’t too late to join that class. It would be a good time to bond and see Rome again now that I’m older and cognitive. If they haven’t already booked the plane tickets and sleeping place that is.
4. We went to lunch. There were Pork Pancakes, Beef Wok, and Vegetarian Wok. I had some tortilla bread, a cup of milk and called it a lunch. All school food at every school ever sucks. This is the truth. These are the facts.
5. I went upstairs to find out if I made the choir or not. The results of my journey to the seventh floor are inconclusive. There was a list with six kids names on it and their vocal parts, but six kids a choir does not make. So. I don’t know if that was the chamber choir results or what. If it is, I don’t feel very disappointed because there were 30 or so kids trying out and that would mean 23 other kids didn’t make it. I don’t know. I’ll see what’s up tomorrow. Maybe I got the date wrong? The choir teacher wasn’t there to talk to me.
6. Today was Hugo and Saga’s birthday. There was cake and presents and I felt bad that I gave them their candy as soon as I arrived because I don’t know them that well and I don’t know what else I could have possibly given them on their birthday besides what I had given them a week ago.
7. I’ve had a headache for the past three days now. Ugh.
8. The Skarins won’t speak English with me anymore in an attempt to teach me Swedish. That’d be fine if they talked to me so that I could have some context. I have things I want to say, but dinner is just them talking really fast in Swedish to one another and I don’t know what the topic is in the first place, so how am I supposed to follow? Besides, no one has really talked to me in the last few days, so it’s hard for me to pay attention when I’m not involved in the conversation. I just kind of zone out all the time now. I should probably be using the time for productive thinking, but I’m so worn out by trying to follow along in class and keep up with all of my Swedish speaking classmates that by the time I get home I realllly bored of thinking so hard and not getting anywhere that I just want to sleep. I don’t know how to tell them that they need to speak slower or speak Svenglish when I’m around because whenever I’ve asked for that in the past they forget after two minutes. Whatever. SFF should be helpful.
9. I just started crotcheting Abby’s baby’s blanket. It’s going pretty well I guess. I need some sleep.

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.

First day as the main character of a YA novel

^ that’s part of the train ride. Hooray for public transportation!

I met some of Hanna’s friends (Elsa and Anna) and we had coffee for about 45 minutes before going to school together and 2:30. They’re super cool and even invited me to a party and I felt like maybe I had the ability to make new friends. Then I got to school and the only person who sat next to me at first was this blind girl named Mikeala and she didn’t really talk and I didn’t know what to say because she might not have spoken English so well or understood it well and I didn’t want to be weird and then the the second half of the class came in and they all shook me hand?????? It was really weird because here in Sweden (at least so far as I’ve encountered) when people shake your hand, the hold on for another thirty seconds after while they talk and it’s really awkward and sweaty.

Then this girl named Debbie sat next to me (I was worried I smelled bad, but no. All of these kids have been with each other in almost every class for the last two years so they’re all really good friends and don’t want to talk to the new girl.) and another girl who’s name I didn’t catch and they were super cool and explained everything to me and we talked for forty minutes before looking for our lockers and then I was supposed to catch the train home because first days of school here only last for an hour or two I guess.

I didn’t go home though, I went to the guidance counselor’s office because I’m not signed up for any specific classes and I don’t know what to do. The counselor wasn’t in though, so I’m going to go to school midway through the first class at 8:40 so that I can talk with her and get things straightened out.

So, overall everything’s great (besides that stupid bird thing. God.). I’m glad I brought my converse because that is literally the only shoe the kids wear. The teachers dress the same as the students and we call them by their first names. So Coco and Doug would fit in in the Swedish world. I kind of feel like I’m at a really liberal college. My host parents say that at Hanna’s school there were bins of apples sitting in the hallway and that the kids had to take off their shoes in the entryway. People are only liberal here apparently.

Astrid says my Swedish is getting better. I think it’s because we watch American shows a lot with swedish subtitles.