I arrived in Sweden around 9:00 pm on July 31st. When I arrived at my host family's house, we had tea and a chocolate cake with raspberries that Anna had made for my arrival. I was very tired so I went to bed and slept really well.
On my first full day in Sweden, Simon, Hannes and I rode our bikes to the city center of Uppsala. The bike ride was fun, and Uppsala is a beautiful city. We visited the castle in Uppsala and the famous cathedral. We had lunch at MAX (Swedish McDonald's) and we looked at many shops. We also rode our bikes to my school and it started pouring rain like crazy!
On my second day in Sweden, I went sailing with Hannes, Simon, Ulrika, Ulrika's sister and her children. We sailed on a lake that is about a 10 minute drive from my host family's house. We sailed out to this island in the middle of the lake and went swimming. Swedish lakes are SO COLD! But overall the swimming was a lot of fun, even though it was a bit chilly. When we headed back to the marina, the wind had stopped, so we had to use a paddle to get to a point in the lake where there was wind and we could sail back.
Anna and Axel are helping me learn to read in Swedish, by using children's picture books. Typically, one of my host siblings will read a page and I will tell them the words I don't understand. They'll explain the words to me, and then I will read a page and they will correct my pronunciation. I read a book called Ture, and later Ulrika told me it was a book for toddlers. Even though I can only read picture books, I feel like I am definitely learning Swedish.
On Saturday, we packed up the Volkswagen and headed to Vika, Bengt-Ove's home town. Vika is about a 2 hour drive north from Uppsala. We stopped for lunch in Hedemora. The village sits right beside the lake, and we stayed in a small cottage right by the water. Staying in the cottage was nice because it was very cozy and we were really close to good swimming! My host family purchased a new floating dock for the lake so we installed that as soon as we got to Vika.
Saturday night, we had a campfire and a lake party with some friends of my host family. We took a motor boat to the other side of the lake to get to the wood-burning sauna. I spent most of the day alternating between swimming in the lake and sitting in the sauna. Saturday was a really fantastic day and I got to meet a lot of new people, which was overwhelming, but exciting.
Sunday was a very relaxed day. I spent the morning swimming at the lake and trying out the new dock, and then I helped Ulrika cook lunch. On Monday, we drove to Orsa and Rattvik to buy a feeder for Bengt-Ove's family farm in Vika. After we bought the feeder, we had lunch at a fast food restaurant called Daisy's and I ordered this dish that had mashed potatoes, salad, and sausage all rolled up in Swedish flat bread, it was wonderful. We went swimming in Lake Siljan after lunch. Siljan was very interesting because the water is very shallow, we went really far out into the lake and the water was barely at my waist. The lake was suprisingly warm, (by Swedish standards) and I had a lot of fun splashing around in the lake with Anna and Axel. We had dinner with some friends of my host family, and I made a salad.
On Tuesday, I spent the day swimming in Lake Vika. In the afternoon, I helped my Bengt-Ove and his brothers install the feeder they had purchased in Orsa the day before. We drove to Falun in the evening to have dinner with the same friends from the lake party on Saturday night. Their house is beautiful and we played a traditional Swedish lawn game called Kubb. After dinner, we went for a walk in a park in Falun and that was beautiful.
Wednesday was a pretty ordinary day. I helped Bengt-Ove and Ulrika clean up the cottage and get everything packed. We had lunch with Bengt-Ove's Mom and she made this potato dish, with potatoes baked into this loaf of bread, I loved that. After lunch, we drove back to Uppsala.
On Thursday, I tried traditional Swedish pancakes with tomatoes and cheese for lunch. After a delicious lunch, Anna and I took the bus into the city center and went shopping. The H&M here is massive ( 3 floors- with escalators). It was a really delightful afternoon, even though I still don't know my clothing size in European sizing. I went grocery shopping with Anna and bought ingredients for dinner. I cooked my host family my mom's homemade mac n' cheese recipe and they really like it! It was very difficult for me to convert the recipe from English to Metric, but the mac n' cheese turned out really well.
I've had a very busy first week! That was just a very brief summary of all of my adventures so far.
Let me know if you all have any questions about what I'm up to in Sweden or what Sweden is like in general. :)
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