First off, I am so so so sorry for not doing this sooner, but it seems like I'm always busy. Exactly a week ago I hugged my mom good bye and started my journey. This is definately the hardest thing I've ever done in my life and I know that of course I will see my mom again but a year is definately a long time away from her. So last Wednesday I flew out of Minneapolis to Philly, had Chick-fil-a for breakfast and then waited for my flight to New York City becuase it got delayed. Once I arrived in New York, I met up with 5 other AFS kids and we took a van to the hotel. We had tons of free time so I met lots of people and hung out and all that. That night we had orientation and had dinner and prepared for our year abroad. Everyone from America, and a boy from Guam, who was going to Northern Europe was at this orientation. There were 6 of us going to Sweden, 5 girls including me, and a boy (Annie, Amalie, Clara, Megan, and Reed). Orientation was a lot of fun, and I'm going to miss some of the people I met there even though I met them for a day. The next day, Thurday the 20th we took a bus to the airport in New Jersey on our way took a bus through NYC so I got to see the statue of liberty and the Empire State Building. It was really cool. Then we got to the airport and waited for 5 hours for our plane to take off at 5:20. The plane was really big, I think it held like 300 or so people. On the plane I sat by the window and Reed, who by the end of the flight lost his voice thanks to me. But during the ride we could watch movies and play games like Tetris. I played Tetris a lot and got really excited when I got to level three, while Reed was on level 13... I tried to sleep but it was really hard and my neck kept on hurting so I used Reeds shoulder for parts of it, poor guy. haha. We finally landed around 7 or 8 Swedish time. (We are 7 hours ahead of Minnesota here) & we went straight to the arrival camp. We were the first ones to arrive. We stayed at a hostel on the beach and it had a soccer field, volleyball, and basketball courts. Annie and I decided to go swimming when it was only 50 degrees fareignheight out so that's what we did when we got there. The water was realllllllllyyyyy cold! We had fika almost every two hours, and boy was I sick of it. Basically fika is a coffee break, but you can't just have coffee you have to have a snack with it like pie or bread. We also played Kubb, where you have to throw wooden sticks and try to hit the other teams blocks down. The rest of the time was pretty good there, we had more orientation and we had an Abba talent show. It was pretty funny, Sunday we said our good byes, and had a group hug (All 40 or 50 of us) and went to our host families. It was really exciting meeting Ulf, Anna and Jonas, and I think pretty soon I will feel right at home. Sunday after I got here we went out and walked around Gamla Stan (Old town) and it was really cool learning about all the history. Monday I hung out with Jonas mainly and walked around and watched the simpsons. Yesterday I met with a bunch of AFS people and we walked around and ate, and took pictures and did more touristy stuff. & today was a lot like yesterday only today I had Mcdonalds! Honestly, it was the exact same tasting to me, but I had to try it. I went to H&M today for the first time, and I can now say I know what it feels like to be in love. It was truely amazing, everything so cheap for Europe, even for America. Tomorrow night we are going to a fashion show, the spring collection. It will be quite the experience I'm sure. I took the subway for the first time yesterday, and boy it was scary!
Okay, now on to my observations.
- There is no please in Swedish, you say tack which means thank you.
- There is two kinds of milk, normal milk, and sour milk. Sour Milk is discusting.
- Mcdonalds is exactly the same, besides the Ketchup.
- Everyone walks everywhere, rain or shine, basically no matter how far it is.
- Apparently Swedes get really mad if you say the vikings have horns, I haven't tried that yet.
- You always take off your shoes when entering someones house.
- They eat a lot here it seems.
- It's always fika time.
- They aren't lieing when they say everything is more expensive in Europe.
- You can't just go to a store and buy tums or advil. You have to actually talk to a doctor person, and in my case they don't even know what tums and advil are.
I'm sure I will think of plenty more later, and many other things to say. Either in a little bit, or most likely tomorrow I will upload pictures and all that fun stuff.
OH! and they don't know what school I am going to yet, they should find out soon, but I guess it's really hard this year becuase a lot of the school that use to take AFS kids aren't this year.
Hej då
to do until I go out and take some new ones. I just posted yesterday a whole bunch, so I'm not going to say a 
lot now.
