From the 8th to the 14th of August, I --along with some other exchange students here in Sweden-- headed up to Sundsvall for a week long language and culture course. While it was a great time, not a ton happened, so this isn't going to be a very long post writing wise. However, I would like to share some pictures along with the stories that go with them to remember the trip.
When those of us who came by bus arrived in Sundsvall, we were taken to our hotel and given our rooms for the upcoming week. My room --the only girls room on the second floor-- was completely empty and if I had a roommate, she was no where to be seen. After a couple hours of going on walks with other students and being alone in my room I got a knock on my door. My roommate had arrived! Kirsten --an exchange student from Canada-- is living in Malmö for the year, but since she didn't get her visa in time, she missed the language camp for the kids in the south of Sweden. So she arrived by train later in the afternoon, and luckily for me, we immediately clicked and got along super well. People kept asking us throughout the week if we knew each other before we came on exchange (we didn't), so I think that might give you a pretty good idea of how good of friends we became!
The first night our instructors told all of us there was a lake just a couple minutes down the road. So of course, we threw our swimsuits on right after dinner and went to check it out. Out of over twenty students, only (pictured in the fourth photo from left to right) Emma (Italy), Tommaso (Italy), Kirsten (Canada), James (Canada), Zach (France), and I went swimming on the first night. It was so much fun. I wish I could figure out how to get the video of all of us jumping in on this computer, but the first photo is taken from that. After that we all changed and headed into town, but we quickly learned that there is nothing to do in Sundsvall after 9 pm. But it has some very beautiful buildings!
Before I continue with the extra activities we did throughout the week, i'll share a bit from the actual course. I don't have many pictures, but in the first photo you can see the whiteboard all of our different lessons would be written on every day. I really wish I could get my videos on here, because I have some pretty funny ones from the lessons. However, another highlight of the course was our daily Fika at 10:00. For those of you who don't know, Fika is a break taken in Sweden where people enjoy coffee, tea, pastries, etc. In the third photo you will see one of my many cups of hot chocolate. There was a coffee machine in the room we were studying in that everyone lived off of. On the second or third day, one kid discovered it had a hot chocolate setting. Needless to say the majority of kids quickly gave up coffee and chugged cups of hot chocolate instead. Some kids even got creative later in the week and started combining the two, but I stuck to the hot chocolate. The fourth picture is my newest obsession --morotskaka/carrot cake. It is so incredibly good here I could talk about it all day (Stephen even says I get a special look in my eyes when I talk about it lol). But I seriously can't stop talking about it... SO GOOD. We got many treats during Fika throughout the week, including kanelbullar/cinnamon buns pictured in the last photo.
Here are just some random and cool photos of walks into Sundsvall. Not much to say about them just wanted to share.
Back to our regularly scheduled program: daily post-dinner swims. Luckily many more people joined us, but there was not one night where a single person from the original group did not go swimming. I have some really great memories just from going out to that lake no more than an hour each night. We found many other docks around the lake, and our favorite just happened to have a platform you could swim out to and stand on (you can see it in the third photo). But it was so much fun because it was just nonstop pushing people off, trying to tip it over, and just having a good time. We were also always joined by ducks, music from Zach's speaker, and amazing sunsets. After swimming, showering, and getting ready for bed, we would always head down to the first floor game room and watch a movie --usually horror because it was funny to watch everyone react. But we didn't have a curfew, so we would always usually stay up for a while playing games and watching movies.
I'll end with one of the best ideas we had that took place on our very last night in Sundsvall: swimming at 1:00 am. We went and swam after dinner like we normally do, watched a movie, and instead of starting another movie or going to bed, we headed down to the lake. As you might expect, we were the only ones there and it was so nice. In the middle photo is me, Genevieve (Massachusetts), Kirsten, Marcela (Brazil), and Matilde (Spain). James, Tommaso, and Zach were there as well. There is no way to describe swimming that night other than the best. You had to be there to understand the --for lack of a better word-- vibe we all felt. The water was warmer than the air, so there was steam coming off of it. The stars could be seen so clearly, and it was simply such a good time.
So that's it for Sundsvall!
Bekah
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