Parents

For the first time in 9 months I will see my parents today. 

I have had this date in my calendar for many days and yet in my mind it has always been so far away but now it is so close. 

I am full of mixed emotions about seeing them again as I know I have changed and I don't know if they are expecting same old Annie that left them behind 9 months ago. When on the other hand I can not wait to see them because I miss them. 

There is the fact that mum is going to be hilarious with all her excitement that it will just make me laugh and dad will be calm as he always is to help balance it all out! 

I can't wait to show them my city, my second home. I can't wait for hugs I have wanted in the hard times of my year. I can't wait for conversation to just flow. And I can't wait for the chocolate they are bringing with them!  

All in all I am full of butterflies. Excited, nervous butterflies! 

Swedish Birthday

Sweden has many traditions, one being that when it is your birthday you get woken up in the morning by your family singing you the Swedish happy birthday song, Ja Må Hon Leva, (English: yes let her live), while they hold a candle in which you blow out when they are done singing!

So on the morning of the 22^nd of May (my birthday) I go woken up to my host family singing to me holding a candle! It is rather strange to wake up to singing but also rather fun! My host family also gave me some wonderfully Swedish gifts to me at this time as well, which was so lovely of them!

That day at school I didn’t get sung to like we do back home which was kinda nice but I did learn the Waltz which was a bit different and not something I do every birthday! I also learned that being 19 does not make me a better dancer than when I was 18!

I went out for fika (coffee and cake) with a couple of my friends after school before going home for a family dinner!

Overall my first birthday away from New Zealand was a lot of fun!

Crown of flower from my host grandmother for my birthday!

 

A Walk in the South of Stockholm

The other day I went for a walk with my host family in the south part of Stockholm city. I got to see the city from a different point of view and see new parts of the city! It really is a beautiful city that I have fallen in love with!

We started off our little day trip by catching the underground train to the south part of Stockholm city and then started of our walk. It is amazing how much history this one city has. Every street has some story, something worth remembering, a story worth retelling over and over again and worth being heard all these times!

We walked along the water front while my host dad told us some of the history of the different things we saw along the way. One of things was an old prison. It is no longer a prison but now a hostel and is really quite cool! A really neat place to stay I am sure. We then walked up cute little streets that Stockholm is so full of, up rocks to see a beautiful view of the city and then on another walkway by the water to wear we got to the best place to have a picture of the whole city from! After I had taken a ridiculous amount of photos and gazed out over this amazing city with a renewed realisation of just how beautiful this place really is, we moved on to Gamla Stan or in English, Old Town. This place stays true to its name. It is very old, in fat it is the oldest place in Stockholm and is older than New Zealand by a long shot! In winter Gamla Stan was like a place taken right out of fairy tale, covered in snow and Christmas lights, how a white Christmas had always looked in my mind. But in summer it takes on a new type of beauty. The sun shining down over these narrow, cobble stoned streets, casting shadows all over, flowers of all colours in pots outside all of the shops and people everywhere from all over the world. I love this place and all its oldness!

We then started on our way to the centre of the city and as we walked past the castle we noticed a lot of people standing around waiting for something. So of course we joined in the waiting around fun! It ended up with being the change of the castle guard. This was a really cool thing to see and a case of simply being in the right place at the right time. There was a full blown marching band who put on one hell of a good show as far as marching band shows go! There was also a fair bit of yelling on one man’s behalf and a lot of marching for all involved! It was a really cool thing to get to see and I am really happy I got to see it before I left!

After the changing of the guard we walked to a place in the middle of Stockholm city called Kungsträdgården. In winter this is where the outdoor ice skating rink is, but in spring for a whole one week it is where the blossom trees are and boy are they amazing! Along with nearly all of Stockholm we were there to look at these amazing trees that lined this amazing park!

After that it was time for an ice cream and then to catch the underground back home!

 

Swedish

I wish I could write this and say that I was fluent in Swedish and that I was only ever talking Swedish to everyone and that I have forgotten English because of it. I wish that was the case.
I have learnt so many things on this exchange, just one of those things has not been how to speak Swedish.
Today I had a speaking Swedish test with one of the scariest teachers I have ever in counted in both New Zealand and in Sweden. Now first up I am not very good at speaking Swedish and when you add this teacher to the mix, well let’s just say that my Swedish goes out the window! So this was all going to be a very interesting! I went badly.
What is one of the most frustrating things about Swedish is that I can understand for the most part what everyone is saying but when it comes to actual words coming from my mouth I get insanely stuck and very scared that what I am planning on saying or how I am say it is going to be all wrong and I get all wimpy and chicken out! I know that it is stupid and I really should be more confident in speaking and making a right idiot out of myself as half the time I am never going to be seeing these people ever again but some part of my brain doesn’t seem to work like that. It runs away, rather than go `yes I am here and look I will now speak Swedish to you!´

I guess I thought it would be easier than it has been for me to learn this language. It is my first second language and now I am wishing I had taken French back when I stated high school! Oh well at least I am giving this a try!

Also I think it would help if the Swedes weren’t better at English than me in the first place!!

Fun. and Two Door Cinema Club

Again I am going to concerts! I can’t help it, when I live in a big city and they come here!

First was to see Fun. This concert was of course held at the place where you can have the most fun, Stockholm’s theme park! I was unsure about how I would like these guys when they perform live as I really like their stuff on CD but had no idea how they would put that across to a live performance. But in the end these guys were so great! They were having a ball on stage, dancing around and enjoying their own music just as much as everyone else in the crowd was! I was fully surprised by how amazing they were live and it was not what I was excepting which made it even more of a good time!!

(This is really hard to write without using the word fun!)

Fun. on stage!

The next concert I went to was Two Door Cinema Club! I brought the tickets for this concert in November 2012 and had been waiting to go ever since then! But my god was it worth the wait! First up they make great music, second they sound amazing live and thirdly they are Irish! The concert was just like a big dance party and was just incredible!! Also again I was in the second row and in the middle! It was so amazing! I think that these guys live is almost better than them on their cd! They just got so into it and it sounded so wonderful!

Two Door Cinema Club

All in all I am a sucker for live music!

Valborg

Valborg is held on the eve of the first of May. Valborg is a huge bomb fire held in the middle of a park in every area of Sweden, or where people live! The reason why there is a bomb fire is to scare away predators from grazing animals. This is not need in the city but in the country side that is why! Everyone in the area shows up to the bomb fire and wait around talking until it is lit by around 10 people with fire on sticks around the huge pile of wood and then the wood goes up in flames!!! Fireworks are set off and the fire keeps on burning!   

The Big Pile of Wood

 

The Big Pile of Wood on Fire!