Last Post

I am not sure people are still reading my blog, but regardless, I am writing this final post as a way to conclude my year in Sweden. This blog was always intended to inform people about my experiences in Sweden, but in the end, this blog probably helped me the most. I am often introspective and writing helped me organize and understand this year, and maybe even more so, this life.

Even as the days and months blurred together like a dream, I had my posts as a reference point. Nearly a month after my return, I feel this year was meaningful, life changing, and I befriended and learned to love some truly magnificent people. But sometimes it was lonely, difficult, confusing, tiring, and isolating. It was no one or nothing in particular that caused this, but at times the experiences of living in a foreign land and having to adapt to a new culture forced me to question who I was, where I came from and where I was living, what the purpose of my year abroad and even my life were, and what I stood for; the very fibers of my being. During these introspective moments I often felt a loss of direction, but afterwards in an almost cyclical nature, I found clarity.

It has taken me a month to sort through my emotions regarding my year abroad. At first I was in denial that I had left Sweden and it was difficult. Now I have entered a regular routine and I have started college, and am preparing for my first classes. I cannot take Swedish, but am beginning Norwegian. I am hoping my studies will remind me and provide new insights about my year abroad. Usually I feel comfortable being back in Minnesota, but I am still attempting to sort out my emotions and experiences.

I now think of my exchange in a mostly positive light, and the difficulties helped push me in ways that I now appreciate. My blog records my happiest moments. I can color my life in hues of negativity if I want, but that is not something I intent to do.  I have lived a lot of my life preoccupied about being imperfect, how others saw me, and how I could have improved the past. I can’t live like this any longer, and my year abroad taught me this. I want to say what I am thinking, if it is something I feel should be spoken.  I want to feel like each day is an opportunity for learning, friendship, and growth. I don’t want to feel tired, embarrassed, weighed down, or like it is necessary to be frazzled every waking moment. What a waste of a life. Instead, I choose be energized by the opportunities I have in the present and future, and enjoy and be comforted by meaningful memories. I want to remember when I looked around and felt loved, felt like I was filled with love for others, listened to other people and listened to their enthralling stories, felt hope, felt content, and felt in total ecstasy about the beauty of this planet, like everything was bound to work out, even if it might be in an unexpected way. I think that my blog helped me remain positive and hopeful and I am thankful I have this record of my exchange. I am grateful for this outlet to share my thoughts and I am thankful for the encouragement my dear friends and family gave me.

My former self would be terrified with this moment in time. I don’t know what I am going to study or how the future will emerge.  But now I will try to remain optimistic. Realistically I know I will continue to feel doubt and confusion, and struggle at times, but as I know, there can be hope and clarity afterwards. Everything has a way of making sense and different experiences and relationships are constantly being woven together in ways that can be both unexpected and expected.   But this is what forms the fabric of my life. The cloth is being woven tighter, colorful patterns appearing. I think it is beautiful.

Euro Tour!

I have just returned from a tour around Europe with about 80 other exchange students from all over the world all living in Sweden. I feel so lucky to have been a part of this trip and I am in awe of some of the sights I got to see as well as the people I befriended during these seventeen days. I went to Germany (Berlin), Poland (Cracow), Czech Republic (Prague), Austria (Zell Am See), Italy (Lido di Jesolo and Venice), France (Paris), and Belgium (Brussels). I am exhausted but very happy after this adventure. I enjoyed all of the cities, but especially loved the long hike and rest we got in the stunning Austrian Alps.

I am enjoying my last hurrah here in Sweden and I will be home in just over a week. That is just strange.

Germany

 The East Side Gallery-a restored part of the Berlin Wall with murals on the other side to memorialize the former division in Germany.

Poland

Cracow: The home city of Pope John Paul II

One of the most meaningful parts about visiting Poland was visiting Auschwitz. I didn't take pictures because it felt wrong. It was a very important experience. I left feeling exhausted and sick to my stomach.

The Czech Republic

I am proud to call the Czech Republic one of my ancestral homes.

Austria

Salzburg: The birthplace of Mozart

The view after a long hike.

Victorious after a three hour hike in the Austrian Alps

Italy

Lido di Jesolo

Venice 

France

The Louvre

Sacré-Coeur Basilica

Belgium 

Brussels

The Group

Brandenburg Gate. I already miss this group, even though I only met most of them in the last quarter of my exchange. They helped make it a fulfilling year. Their support and friendship has been irreplaceable. 

Och nu är det juni

I am having a hard time believing that I am nearing the end of my last full month on exchange. In a week I will be off on a seventeen-day adventure around Europe and then after a week of laundry, packing, and saying goodbye, I will be returning to my house in the USA. It is exciting, stressful, exhausting, tear inducing, and fabulous all at the same time. I spent a year trying to learn a new language, understand a new culture, understand myself better, and build relationships with host families and friends and suddenly I will be placed in old familiar settings again. It is both a comfort and sort of scary.

I am excited to see family and friends and begin college, but it is a strange feeling to leave my home in Sweden. Northfield was my universe before left. Now that I have left for a year, I feel my life has many more dimensions and my view of the world is exponentially larger. As always though, the more I learned in Sweden, the more I realize I don’t understand about my own country and the world. This just makes me want to continue travelling. Many of my exchange friends have also gotten the travel bug, and we joke that we will need high paying jobs in order finance all of the trips we are planning to take. 

Right now I am in a bit of a confused state trying to think of a way to describe how I feel about going home, what I have learned, what the purpose of this year was for me, how I have changed, and how this year will guide my future.  These questions have been swirling around in my noggin for several weeks. Perhaps after Eurotour, and during my final week I will have some answers, or perhaps I won’t know until I return home, or several years from now.  But what I do know is that this year has been wonderful for me. It allowed me to take a pause from the stresses I put on myself, as well societal pressures. I have been reminded that I don’t have to conform to peer pressure or other peoples’ views of the world. I realized that sometimes it is just my mindset and imagination that creates obstacles. I simply spent a year living and exploring. I was able to discover the landscape and architecture of a new place, learned to communicate in a language I had never studied before a year ago, I befriended some really extraordinary people, and I am left in awe at the kindness and love my host families and real family have given to me. I am able to call another place home.

Since the last time I updated, I have visited Stockholm for the first time, took studenten (Swedish graduation which included a week of activities, including a ball and dancing with my class on the bed of a dump truck as it drove slowly around town to extremely loud music), spent a few days at a exchange friend’s summer house with her host family, visited Lund and Helsingborg to say goodbye to two exchange friends, visited Växjö in Småland, where my first host sister lives and studies (We visited the immigration museum and it was interesting to read the Minnesota displays), went to Göteborg for a few farewell fikas and a lunch with all of the exchange students, and celebrated my host sister’s birthday with a picnic at the lake near my house.  I have been savoring my last few months and weeks in Sweden. 

Gamla Stan, Stockholm

Balen! 

Studenten! 

My host sisters and Naomi

Singha: The most charming host dog in the world

At the sea visiting a good exchange friend's summer house

Saying goodbye to two lovely exchange friends from India and Germany in Helsingborg. 

 The sea off of Western Sweden

Norway, France, and in Between

It has been an exciting and important month since my last update.

In two months I will be packing my bags and I will be preparing to make my return.   The closer July 26^th approaches, the more I find myself thinking about home. When I arrived I was so caught up in the excitement of my new life that I didn’t have energy to think a great deal about what I was leaving behind.  I am now beginning to think about my life back in the US, how it will be the same and different, and how it is going to be to leave Sweden. It sort of feels like I just packed my suitcase one day and left one life and started another, even though I spent months preparing to leave for my exchange. I have grown so accustomed to my life here in Sweden, the people that surround and support me, the landscape, the food, the language, that coming “home” again won’t simply be comforting because I will be leaving behind another home. I am going to have to have to reacquaint myself with my former life.  It kind of saddens me to think that I won’t be able to speak Swedish with everyone or eat boiled potatoes nearly everyday. (maybe not the last part of that.) I am hoping that after having left for a year, I will be more appreciative of what I have in Northfield. Most importantly, it will be wonderful to see family and friends. I am disappointed I missed my sister’s graduation from college.  

I enjoyed peaceful Easter break out in the country with my host sisters and host parents filled with picnics, fika, jumping on the trampoline, running, and it was warm enough to sunbathe before it got colder again. At the end of break I took the bus to Oslo to visit fellow Northfielder Anya Zach. She was kind enough to show me around Oslo and we stayed at her relative’s house. I think that was almost more fun than going into the city. They lived a bit outside the city in a small village in a valley with views of looming, forest-filled mountains. The family had four energetic daughters between the ages of 7 and 18 and I was very touched by their hospitality towards me. It was wonderful to see a familiar face again after ten months.. As exciting as it is to venture away from familiar places, it was comforting and fun to be able to see a friend from home, reminisce about AP World Literature, compare our experiences in Scandinavia, and think about our return to Northfield. Anya was a great hostess and I feel grateful that she took time to show me around.

As soon as I returned, I had a weeklong marathon of choir rehearsals to prepare for our spring show called vårblandningen. The concert featured the choir and the orchestra accompaniment, including drums, bass guitars, a clarinet, flute, cello, viola, violin, trumpet, and piano. We sang traditional Swedish songs, heavy rock songs, a Coldplay song, a John Lennon song, a Lady Gaga song, a Beyoncé song, in addition to about thirty other songs. It was an eclectic mix and the theme had to do with songs you remember. My host sister sang “Imagine” by John Lennon as well as danced with a group of friends to a mix of popular songs. Her level of commitment impressed me. This choir meets only once a week and sometimes it feels more like the quantity of pieces is more important than the quality, but observing the people who cared deeply about the performance made me take it more seriously and give the choir more respect than what I initially gave.  In the end, I think we pulled off a pretty respectable two-hour show. Sometimes there is a place for an inviting, non-selective, and open place to sing favorite pop songs.

The morning after our three performances, I went with the group to southern France for a week. We were able to keep costs low by staying at a monastery in the mountains and living in youth hostel quality rooms. We performed at several schools and ate lunch there. It was interesting to interact with French people. I expected them to speak English better. I am realizing how good at English my Swedish peers are. They begin English as soon as they start school so by the time they are my age they good or even nearly fluent. The temperature was around 80 degrees the entire time. We toured parts of Nice, Marseilles, Toloun, Avignon, and also spent an evening in Monaco. It was an exhausting but lovely trip. We were busy from morning until late at night each day.  Seeing a new landscape, ancient architecture, exploring Provence,  getting to know the members of the choir and orchestra better, trying crepes and real French baguettes, and passing fields of red poppies made for a memorable trip.  It was the final tour of our beloved director and as we completed our final performance most people began to cry. I was touched by how our love of music allowed us to come together in such a profound way.

I will soon be off for a few days in Stockholm before a busy graduation week with my classmates in the aesthetic track. After that, it will be less than a month before I head off on a two and a half week tour of Europe. I enjoy all the traveling I have had the opportunity to do in the last few months but with each trip I take, the more I realize just how much like home Sweden feels and how cozy my house in the forest is.

Vår

I have no school this week. It is a warm, gorgeous spring day and I have been out of the house enjoying the sunshine more than I have been indoors.

I can now say I have been north of the Arctic Circle. Just as the snow had disappeared from my home in   southwestern Sweden, I spent 23 hours on various buses and trains and arrived in Kiruna where it was considerably colder and snowier. I met about sixty other Rotary exchange students from around Sweden. It was a fun five-day trip. 

Kiruna is the northern-most city in Sweden. It has a population of over 20,000. The LKAB mine as well as a space research facility are the main employers. We visited the huge mine during the trip but my camera died. The mine is so large that we took our coach bus down three kilometers on a two lane road. The road had a gradual decline. We stopped at an underground museum, learned about the mine at the underground movie theater, and had fika in the underground café. The mining operations were even farther underground. The iron ore is now extracted mostly by huge machines that are controlled from above-ground. Most of the miners now actually sit in an office building. They hold joysticks and control the machines using computers and videos. Part of the city of Kiruna is being torn down and rebuilt elsewhere. The mine must continually do research to find new places to continue mining, and there are valuable resources underneath the city. Also, the mine is becoming too close to the city for safety. The mine has to pay, but they say the new buildings will be nicer than the old.

The largest ice hotel in the world is located a bit outside of Kiruna. Everything in the hotel was made out of ice, besides the occasional glass door. My camera did not do justice to the beautiful ice structure. The hotel is build every year from ice harvested the year before. Artists from around the world apply to design one of the suites-each with a different theme. There are also ordinary rooms. There was poetry and quotes carved, beautiful murals, and sculptures within the rooms, lobby, and hallway. There was a room with a 1950s car made out of ice, walls carved in geometric patterns, a room with a polar bear, and on and on. I felt like I was dreaming.

 We spent half a day in Narvik, Norway. This city is northwest of Kiruna, on the coast. As you can see from the picture, the water wasn't frozen, and never freezes due to the gulf stream. The mine in Kiruna transports all of the iron ore away from Narvik. It would not be so feasible to continue mining operations in Kiruna if there was no way to ship it away. Ordinary railroad tracks around Europe cannot support the super-heavy loads, so shipping the ore is necessary. The bus ride out to Narvik was beautiful. The geography was unique with mountains, fjords, and beautiful lakes. 

As soon as I returned, I switched host families. It was rather difficult to move again from a place I had grown to love, but I will be back again.

I am now out on the land again, but this time only a short bus ride from town. The weather is nice and I can bicycle eight kilometers to town whenever I want. I have been welcomed and feel very grateful and I am excited to get to know another family. I now live with two host sisters who are 13 and 17, two horses, numerous cows, four cats, a dog, and three birds. 

I am on påsklov/Easter break. Yesterday I sat in the sun all day, biked, and baked chocolate cake with a friend, and then sat outside with my host family and enjoyed the cake, ice cream, and warm weather on the green grass in shorts!  

Encountering some blåsippor on my morning walk. 

I love the peacefulness and beauty which comes with living outside of town. I am having fun discovering my new home.

Swedish Life

It is April 1st and I find I haven’t written a post in nearly a month. I am rather perplexed how it can be that I have been in Sweden for eight months. I now have my return date of July 26^th-a day before my visa expires.  I sometimes feel a longing to see friends and family back home and to express myself fully in my mother tongue, but I feel sadness that my year is reaching its final months. Next year, most people won’t be able to speak Swedish with me, I won’t get to see my wonderful host families and friends, cuddle with my host cat Milton, and travel to interesting places with friendly exchange students. I will miss my home here.

I can now say I participated in a musical. I spent three intensive weeks preparing with my classmates. Before that, beginning in September, we had two class periods a week. It was a little-known Swedish musical called Ringo. I had a small role, but it was fun nonetheless. I spoke Swedish in front of an audience, danced, and sang. Being a part of a musical was something I had never thought about doing before, and I probably won’t again, but it was fun.

It seems I barely moved in with my second family, and it is already time to move again. I feel comfortable and it feels a bit stressful to be uprooted again, but fortunately I have gotten to know my next host family and I lived with them two weeks in January. I have been lucky to have three amazing families, and look forward to living with my third family, but I will miss my second family. I am sure I will be back. My favorite moments are at dinner or when we sit and fika together. We are often busy and going and going our separate ways so these times are special. I feel I made many improvements with regard to my Swedish and we only spoke Swedish at home. The words flow out more easily now and I can have real conversations. It is something of a miracle actually. Last year, I could only admire the poetic quality of the language, and could recognize only a few words. About a week ago, I started a classic Swedish book by Vilhelm Moberg called Din stund på jorden. (Your Moment on Earth). He is more famous for some of his other works, but my school library only had this novel available. He wrote fictional but realistic stories about Swedish immigrants and their journeys to the USA and memories of Sweden. I have read some other Swedish books but nothing this difficult or eloquent.  It is exciting.

In other news, I did my Rotary presentation in Swedish a few weeks ago. I feel like I had to read off my script more than I would have liked, but I did it entirely in Swedish and spoke for thirty minutes about my life, experiences in Sweden and differences and similarities I have noticed. I have a wonderful Rotary club here in Sweden. It wasn’t as nerve-wracking as I would have expected. I have done about ten presentations about the USA and Minnesota for various English classes at my school and that helped prepare me. Today I have a rather free schedule, and went to my host sister’s class and presented about the USA in a mix of Swedish and English. The twelve year-olds did quite well at understanding and had many questions.

Next Tuesday, I prepare to go to Kiruna, which is the northernmost city in Sweden. It is a city sixteen hours north of Stockholm. I am taking the night train. We will be learning about the city, driving over to Northern Norway, viewing the large hotel constructed of ice, and enjoying the company of about forty other exchange students.

I usually choose to blog when I am quite content but I can most definitely say that my exchange has been a mix of extreme happiness, being content, stressed, and also a bit discouraged if I am overly tired. Fortunately, I usually feel quite happy and grateful to be in Sweden. There is no real way to summarize my range of feelings. One of the aspects of my exchange that I wish I had more control over was my schooling here. Now that I have no more musical rehearsal, I have rather a lot of free time and not much homework. I have had to be self-motivated to study Swedish but have also had time to simply read, bake, jog, and interact with my host family and friends. I have also picked up the violin again. I would go insane if I didn’t create this structure. My third host mom works at a small school, so perhaps I can also arrange to volunteer once a week there. I have had to find a balance. This year has offered me the chance to read more, discover a new language, allowed me to get to know beautiful families and friends, made me realize the importance and enjoyment I get out of exercise, the happiness I get when I play my violin, and the pleasure I get from baking and then sitting down with my host family for fika afterwards. 

This post was not the easiest to write because my English has started to go down the drain. I will try to update again though the longer I am here, the harder it is to find time to blog.

I am off to make pizza dough. My host family is having my third host family for dinner tonight. 

Bilder

Tomorrow is the premier for the musical I have a small role in. Right now I have a break before our last dress rehearsal. I don't have a lot of time to blog now and I find it difficult to write in English without taking an hour or two to edit what I wrote because it is hard to think of the right English words and I tend to switch the word order around. My Swedish isn't great or even good but perhaps that is a good sign.

I still have about five months here in Sweden and seven have passed. This is a strange thought. It seems longer than that at times, but if I think about it, it feels like a week ago that I greeted with a big hug by my first host sister and host mom and felt the newness and excitement of my new life. I am coming home on the day my visa expires or a few days before depending on when my ticket is booked.  There have been days when I have felt confused or exhausted, but overall this year has been a very meaningful time.

Hem ljuva hem! (Home sweet home!)

A walk home from school

Naomi and I were in the newspaper. 

About a month ago, I had two exchange friends over for the weekend. We baked, had fika, and had a lovely time.

The exchange students (26) came to my city for a weekend of skiing in early Feb. Here we are in an old castle about half an hour from my city.

I think I have an obsession with baking. I had my upcoming host sister Fanny, Naomi, and another friend over for fika and baking during our winter break in February.

Rehearsal for the musikal Ringo. I am in the back. We have our premier tomorrow.

Copenhagen! I went for a day with my host dad and sister. My host aunt is a producer at Det Kongelige Teater. I saw My Fair Lady in Danish and got to walk behind the stage at both the old theater house and the new opera house. She lives in Malmö which is a short trip over the sea. It was fun few days but rather cold and windy.

  

The beautiful old theater house.

 Malmö-the view from my host aunt's flat. 

The Leaning Torso, a new building in Malmö.

The bridge to Denmark.

Not the most flattering-but evidence that I was in fact in Malmö.