Arrival In Sweden
I have never been a fan of traveling – long waits, crappy airplane food, and worst of all ear popping. However, my travel to Varberg thankfully contained none of this! Security was a breeze, with no wait at all in O’Hare. Once through security I went and sat at my gate to wait for the plane. While sitting I was surrounded by tons of Ethnicities speaking languages I had never even heard of before. That was the first time I had that happen to me, being in America we are so used to speaking only English so not being able to understand what the people around me were saying was quite strange for me. Things got even weirder once on the plane and over the intercom the pilot spoke in Swedish, Norwegian , and even Danish. I find it very interesting that while each Scandinavian country has its own unique language that they are all able to understand each other.
While on the plane I sat next to a nice mom who was from Norway. I had a fun time practicing my very minimal Swedish on her. Once air born, we were treated with a very nice meal made that consisted of a salad, roll, warm roast beef with mash-potatoes, and finally a lemon cheesecake for dessert (Dad you would of loved it, especially the roast beef 🙂 ). After wolfing that down, I was exhausted. Unfortunately, the row over from me sat a plane riders worst nightmare, a sobbing baby. Sleeping would have been impossible, if it were not for my awesome aunt and uncle who armed me with noise canceling headphones and an eye mask. Thanks again Uncle Ben and Aunt Colleen! I managed to get a few hour sleep, and was pleasantly awoken at 630 to some yogurt and granola for breakfast. The last hour was a breeze and before I knew it I was landing in Copenhagen.
I had a rather long lay over in Copenhagen, but I did not mind because in the airport were not only stores such as Burberry, Marc Jacobs, and Gucci, but also about 100 different food options that ranged from seafood, to salads, to Vietnamese rice noodles. It was also very fun going into all of the little food kiosk things and looking at the different types of candy they have there. Needless to say I did not have a hard time occupying myself.
Getting food was a little difficult because while this may surprise some, but I am not very fluent in Danish, so I had no clue what a lot of the food was. After taking a few laps around the different choices, I decided to play it safe and go with a little café that served sandwiches and salads. I got a type of tuna salad, which would have been very good, if not that the dressing tasted just like horseradish – not my favorite thing. Bright side was that it came with a roll that was very good. Before I knew it my time in Copenhagen was up and I boarded my last flight to Gothenburg.
We landed, I got my bags, and then I was off to meet my host family! I saw them immediately upon exiting and was greeted smiles, hugs, and some awesome signs made from my host sisters. Once a few pictures were snapped, we darted out through the rain to the car, which was surprise surprise a Volvo!
We had nice ride to the house, I had fun looking out the window and seeing all the different types of stores they have here in Sweden. Although it was very dark so I cannot wait to see them in person today! Once we got to the house, I quick ran took a shower than came down for a lovely candle light dinner. For the first course we had a salad with a type of egg salad, cucumbers, and shrimp. After polishing that off, we enjoyed some tomato soup and garlic bread. Once done with dinner, everyone rushed in to the living room to watch the exciting end of the Sweden vs Finland Ice Hockey finals. They were still tied after the third quarter, I really wanted to see who won, but I was exhausted and decided that it was time for bed. The second my head hit the pillow I fell fast asleep. I was wiped out after all of the traveling and excitement.
This morning unfortunately I did not sleep in as I hoped I would; in fact, in true Hannah fashion I woke up at the crack of dawn (around 4 am). That was figuratively speaking of course because in Sweden the sun doesn’t rise till about 9 right now. Anyway I tried to go back to sleep in vain and once I realized it was impossible I got up and began cleaning up and organizing my room a bit. Then I proceeded to watch some Netflix, before deciding to do a blog post. It is almost 7 now so hopefully some of my host family will start to wake up soon!
Not quite sure what we are going to do today, I know form 1-4 we are going to volunteer at a soccer tournament then maybe go for a walk in a near by park if weather permitting.
Ill be sure to post more soon, sending my love to everyone back in the states!
-Hannah
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