12 weeks

I’ve been in Sweden for about 12  weeks now I think. So I’ll try to catch you up on everything I’ve been up to since I left.

My Town Eskilstuna

I had a wonderful departure with a going away party a week before where I got to say goodbye to a lot of my friends and family. I had a great last week and after having a great last night of saying goodbye to my friends, I was ready to go. I had some flight changes and instead of going from Portland to Washington to Copenhagen to Gothenburg, I went from Portland to Washington to Munich to Gothenburg. The trip was a little hectic at times but I got there safe and sound. I spent about 2 weeks on the West coast at my host families summer house. It was really relaxing and I got to know my host family really well and it helped me to settle into living in Sweden. They took me golfing, swimming, waterskiing, cliff jumping and took the boat around to various different island. After a few weeks on the west coast I traveled to language camp for a week with a bunch of other exchange students in Sweden. It was a really good week because I was able to meet most of the new exchange students and I really needed help learning Swedish. Although the camp didn’t help that much with my Swedish It was still one of the best weeks of the exchange so far. I don’t think I’ve ever become that close with such a large group of people.  I said goodbye to all of my newly made friends and made my way to my new city, Eskilstuna. I live in a city of about 60,000 in the city and about 100,000 in the area, so it’s a bit different then Farmington. My host family has been great and they live in a very nice two floored apartment that is very close to the center of town. I have about a 20 minute walk or 10 minute bike ride to school along a river, so it’s a very pleasant and beautiful ride to school. I’m in the technical program so that means I take physics, construction, calculus, design, and data communication. Needless to say there aren’t a lot of girls in my class but that’s fine there are plenty of other beautiful Swedish women around.

                Typically Swedish people are very shy at first and it takes a little bit of time to establish really good friendships, and I have experienced this a few times. Luckily immediately I became very close to my friends almost within the first couple of days. So usually what I do with my friends is after school we’ll go to a coffee place and have fika (which is basically a coffee break with some sort of pastry or desert). Or I’ll go to a friend’s house and also have fika and play Fifa. Other things I do during the week are having Swedish classes because I really need them, sometimes I’ll play soccer or basketball, and once a week I play Innebandy which is basically like floorball, and soon I’ll be starting rugby soon. Also my host dad is really into hunting so he took me skeet shooting. On the weekends I’ve gone to Stockholm a few times, I had a Rotary conference last weekend, and one weekend I went to my families winter house at a ski resort to work on it to get It ready for winter. Other weekends I’ll either go to a club with my friends (which almost seems like going to prom), playing Fifa, watching soccer, watching a movie at someones house, or hanging around with friends and have coffee and eat some kebab (which a lot of the Swedish guys here are obsessed about). Kebab can be a variety of different kind of meat and can be served in a sandwich, with fries, or on pizza with this red and white sauce. All of them are all really good. Most of the food is really good, I’m a little surprised that I haven’t more fish but I think I’ve had a lot of mushrooms because my host mom loves to go into the woods and pick mushrooms and that’s a Swedish tradition in the summer and fall.

                I’ve been keeping busy visiting with my host family, hanging with my friends, and trying to learn Swedish, doing various different activities, and having some great experiences. Other then that I’ve been doing great, I really like Sweden and the Swedish people and my friends. The only problem is that things are really really expensive but luckily money is the only problem.  I’m not really home sick yet but I do miss Farmington, my family, and friends.

Tim