Holidays...

Following another week of school I have now found myself with a week of holidays. The snow has already melted and the river is thawing and I can finally walk around town without freezing or slipping over on ice. There is however mixed feelings amongst the locals as some believe that the weather will turn cold once more before spring properly sets in.

I have joined Ängelholm's Waterpolo team and have been training twice a week at the local pool. I have been keeping myself busy socialising having fika left, right, and centre. Fika is a swedish term for coffee break derived from the old swedish word 'kafi' (meaning coffee) by switching the syllables around.

I have visited my school friend David who lived by himself in an apartment in Skälderviken and today I met a school friend Maja and a team mate from my waterpolo team Axel at the local café, Piece of Cake for Fika.

 (Piece of Cake)

(Traditional swedish building in the centre of town)

 (The road to school a week ago)

 (Carl Ejlertsson, my second hot brother Chill-axing at school)

(One of the commons room at school featuring ping-pong table in the corner)

(Henrik Ejlertsson also relaxing)

As we're approaching Easter it is very common to find Easter specialties in café's and bakeries such as Semla (see picture below), a sweet bun filled with whipped cream and Marzipane. In the last 4 weeks I have eaten far too many of these buns.

(Cia's homemade Semla)

 (Niclas and Cia enjoying Semla and coffee)

As a treat this week, Cia prepared a special desert for us; Toblerone fondue with strawberries, apple, and banana. This was accompanied by Ängelholm Glass (locally made ice cream).

(Toblerone Fondue with strawberry, apple, banana and ice cream)

 (Cia and Victor)

On Tuesday Niclas, Victor, and I travelled down the coast to the city of Malmö at the southern tip of Sweden. This trip was primarily to finalise my Visa but that didn't stop us looking around and having a lovely swedish lunch in the dungeon basement of one of the magnificent old buildings in the centre of the city.

 (Malmö town square)

(Victor and Niclas)

(shopping central)

 (the door to the Restaurant where we had lunch can be seen to the right of this building)

After Lunch, Niclas drove us up to the city of Lund where he had some business to take care of. He left Victor and I in the care of Cia's parents who were keen to show us around Lund's University.

 (the main administration building of the University)

 (The stunning Entrance Hall of the University)

 (the bulding was being lit for a function the next day)

 (the Main Hall of the Admin building)

Tomorrow I am off to Helsingborg again to meet Niclas for lunch and have another look around.

Back to good old Ängelholm

(-8 degrees on our last day in Helsingborg)

To finish off our last night in Helsingborg, Rotary took us out to dinner and then 10-pin Bowling before our lovely host mother Lena picked us up and took us to a friend's place, where she had organised for us to use her friend's jacuzzi. This turned out to be quite an experience as the jacuzzi was a balmy 38.5 degrees Celsius whilst the outside air temperature was -11 degrees resulting in just a minor 49.5 degree difference between my head and the rest of my body. The walk back to the house across the cold stone footpath wringing wet and in nothing but board-shorts could only be described as painful but the jacuzzi was well and truly worth it.

It has now been 3 weeks since I arrived here in the majestic land of Sverige and my English skills are starting to disappear. I think my brain is slowly switching over to Swedish but leaving me in a sort of Language-less limbo for the time being. My understanding of Swedish is improving; I can now start to discern words and give a general contexts to things being said around me but still can't construct complete sentences.

Arriving back in Ängelholm by train, I was greeted with 5 days of school finishing with a Rotary meeting on Friday, lunchtime. This turned out to be quite enjoyable as the speaker for the meeting was Lars Linström an Aero-consultant who spoke to us about all sorts of cars that he had been involved with throughout his life. He reminded me of my cadet captain Peter Marosszeky through his mannerisms and the way he spoke to the room. He was really quite entertaining given I really didn't have a clue as to what he was saying.

(down at the beach at Skälderviken, The water completely froze 2 days later)

 (Sunrise on my way to school. My headphone cable got in the way)

(Swedish foosball except instead of soccer you play Ice Hockey)

After 3 weeks it has finally snowed.

 (view from my room this morning)

 (we got a good inch and a half of snow)

 (tree looks better with snow)

(snow capped Audi A4)

Helsingborg

So without any real warning I have been temporarily moved to a new host family in Helsingborg, a town 20 km south of Ängelholm. This is due to the language camp that I only found out about on Söndag (sunday; pronounced Soon-dog) and started at 10am on Måndag (have a guess which day...).

Arriving at Helsingborg station at 10am, I was introduced to 4 fellow exchange students from New Zealand; David, Alessandro, Melissa and Kimberley. First thing we did was walk to the nearby school and have lunch followed by a few hours of ice skating...

(The view from Niclas' office)

(An arch at the base of Helsingborg's castle. You can see Niclas' office in this pic, is on the first floor of the corner building overlooking the harbour)

Then came the best part; After an exhausting day of ice skating the other two boys and I were picked up from the school by a wonderful lady by the name Lena. The first thing Lena did was drive us to the movie store where she bought loads of chips and coke and told use to fill a bucket each full of swedish lollies and chocolates.

She then brought us to her home, a beautiful 4 story house, surrounded by snow. Inside we met her husband Morgon and beautiful daughter Isabelle.

Lena then proceeded to spoil us, letting us watch TV with coke and chips before a lovely dinner of Swedish pan-beef and a variety of chocolate, blueberry cakes and glas (ice cream). The three of us were given the attic bedroom which looks out over Helsingborg and across the water to Denmark (yes I am looking out the window at Denmark as i write this)

(Denmark in the distance)

The next night David, Alessadro and I enjoyed the Sauna before jumping on the families trampoline soaking wet in our swimmers at -5 degrees C (to the obvious shock of the neighbours). In retrospect the ensuing snowball fight really wasn't a good idea.