thehanwho-blog

[thehanwho-blog]

[thehanwho-blog]

got carried away with life.

So much has happened since January. I saw my first ice hockey match and now I have a new favourite sport. I went to Lapland and fell in love with Sweden all over again. There was just too much to post. 

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enjoyed the services of SAS.

So I went home for Christmas, which was absolutely positively wonderful. But my luggage was misplaced, so it ended up in Berlin for a week. Thankfully, it arrived Christmas Eve, so just in time to wrap presents and save the pickled herring that I had bought for my step-dad (It didn’t explode, unlike a bottle of Glögg- Swedish mulled wine). I had a relaxing time at homes in London, Tewkesbury and Salisbury, and enjoyed a joint parent New Year’s Eve celebration, watching silly films and acting like little piggies. Of course I put off writing a book report until the last few days of the break, but thats the price you pay for relaxing and eating too much. The journey back was long, but uneventful. The semester finishes on the 14th and I may or may not have time afterwards to travel a little bit, but we shall see. I am back in my apartment now, watching snowflakes and birds fall from the sky. It is -14 celsius with a real feel of -26 so I don’t blame the birds. 

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Nu är vintern här!

So on Friday i experienced Sweden in the snow for the first time. It was pretty impressive. I have seen huge amounts of snow before, but i have never seen that much snow fall in such a short space of time. It did not stop snowing for 20 hours. Just in time for when I was celebrating Thanksgiving with my friends. On the Saturday I walked to a giant superstore to look for a Turkey. I bought one that was around 4kg. I didn’t think it would be enough to feed 15 people but don’t judge a Turkey by it’s skin....or something like that. Of course I walked to the supermarket during a blizzard. I ended up getting lost for an hour because i did not recognise my surroundings because it was a complete white out. I couldn’t tell where the road ended and the sidewalk began. I digress. I got home eventually with enough to feed an army and got straight to work preparing some of the food for Sunday. In the evening, I had a brass section party to go to and later on in the evening the whole band joined. Sunday arrived too soon. I was on my feet from 7.30-4.30. But i managed without a hitch. Until it came to serve my plate of food. I was the last to be served and I dropped my plate of food on the floor. Thankfully it wasn’t a lot. But I wasn't upset because I was so hungry that I did not have time for emotion :P

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IS OFFICIALLY STAYING FOR ANOTHER SEMESTER AT UMEÅ UNIVERSITY

If you don’t believe me, I have proof.

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finally started her course

So last week I finally started my course here, after weeks of just Swedish classes. I now have no time. I am up from 6am-1am almost every day and I am exhausted but I am loving every minute of it. But sadly it didn’t start too well. There was nothing wrong with the course, but it was the whole university bureaucracy. For the past 4 weeks I have been trying to apply for another semester here in Sweden, so I would be staying until June 2016 instead of January. During those 4 weeks I had been told yes I could stay, then no I couldn’t, but oh wait yes you ca. It was the constant flip-flopping that really got to me and stressed me out. But after weeks of trying to get a word out of someone, I finally had my answer. It was a no. But that was last week and I am over it.

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partied until she was purple

October 30th-31st

HALLOWEEN!!! On the Friday night I had my face painted to look like a sugar skull. It was pretty awesome. It is safe to say that it was the best night out I have ever had. At our local club, we could get in for free if we were dressed p so there was no way I could miss that opportunity. On the actual night of Halloween my friends and I dressed up again and we went to a corridor party. I was’t really enjoying myself there, so I went home, made popcorn an watched ‘It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown’ and had much more fun doing that!

(sorry for the blur)

[thehanwho-blog]

went on a very long hike

October 23rd

My friends and I had been desperate to get outdoors for a while and we finally ventured out this weekend. We woke up at 6am to get a bus at 7am to take us to Vindeln. We got there around 8 and started the hike at 8.30. It was -2. There was a lot of nice scenery, most of it repeated itself after while, but we got to a lake around 1 and had lunch there. One of my friends brought a mini camping stove with her and we made cheese fondue. We left the lake around 2 and tried to race back to the bus station because a) it was getting dark and b) the weather was closing in on us. My phone told me that we had achieved 31,556 steps, burnt 1222 calories (probably more because it was uphill), and walked 15 miles at an average speed of 3.19 mph. I was exhausted. I spent the next day in bed. Enough said.

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bumped into her mommy in Sweden

October 17th-20th

So mum came with two close friend on Saturday. It was so nice to see everyone. I wasn’t feeling particularly homesick, but seeing them reminded me of home and I missed it briefly. They brought me a bunch of warmer clothes and other greatly needed supplies, like 600 capsules of Vitamin D and pumpkin for Thanksgiving. On the Sunday we drove to a place called Åsele. I thought there was a national park there, but I was either completely wrong, or we missed it, but hey ho, the drive was nice. There wasn’t much to do there other than walk around the town and look into closed shop windows. On the Monday we drove north to Skellefteå and saw a beautiful church town, Bonnstan, where the wooden huts are over 150 years old and still standing (despite the cold harsh climate). We drove back and in the evening I took them to the lake hoping to see the Northern Lights. We had given up all hope after sitting there for a long time and not seeing anything, but as we were leaving they made an appearance for a few minutes. On Tuesday (departure day) we stayed local, and I showed them around the city. We went into some really cute little craft shops and had lunch at the art gallery. I then bid them adieu. 

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wrote and essay on what she had been doing for the past 6 weeks

So much has happened but also very little has happened. Let me start from the beginning. 

October 9th-11th: Vindeln

So that weekend was the student band weekend away. I was a little apprehensive as I was about to spend the weekend with complete strangers in a school house, in an area known as Vindeln, which is 40km away from Umeå. On Friday in the afternoon, I took the bus there with Freddie, who is also an exchange student, and he plays the tuba. So we arrived at an empty school house, not really knowing what to do. We were the first to arrive, so we got to choose the best sleeping spots in the basement. As more and more people arrived, the more fun it got. After a dinner of hot dogs and snacks, there was a mini ‘party’. I spoke to the conductor of the band, the Kapsyll, and he told me that usually someone drinks too much the night before, and they end up missing the rehearsal the next day. It ended up being him. Shhhh. The band had rented a mini sauna on wheels, so at around midnight I went into the sauna. We played silly singing games in there. I lost all sense of time, and I ended up being in there for 2 hours. BAD IDEA. On the Saturday we had mini rehearsals in the morning with our sections, had a lovely lunch, and then had a whole band rehearsal afterwards. We finished around 5. There were then various newcomer initiation ceremonies which we have vowed never to mention again. We then jammed until 3 in the morning, and it was the most fun I had had for a while. We then went home on Sunday morning. I took the bus back home with Freddie. What would normally take 30 minutes, took 2 hours. We got on the wrong bus but we thought, ‘we already paid for the ticket so we might as well enjoy the journey’.

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met an Elk

Sorry for the hiatus; I have been sick for the past week. The north of Sweden is not a place to be ill. The air is dry and cold and the wind is something else. The evenings are also bad as the sun now sets around 6.30. A week of drinking Hot Toddies and watching Audrey Hepburn films and musicals made me very stir-crazy. 

But yesterday I burst the bubble and went on a road trip with my friends to a town called Bjurholm (b-your-hom) which is where the Älgen Hus is situated, the Elk Farm. For my north American friends, the Moose, is actually the Elk. I learned that the Elk can weigh up to 1,000 lbs (450 kg) and that it looses it’s antlers once a year, so the size of the antler has nothing to do with it’s age, which is what I originally thought. It all depends on how much the eat and how lucky they are over the winter. I also learned that more people are killed by Elk each year, than are killed by Bears, Wolves and Sharks. There are around 6,000 road collisions each year, 700 of them being fatal. How? Well if you have stood next to an Elk you would see why. The rear end was higher than my head. The tallest one I saw must have been 6ft tall. My head was lower than its belly. 

During the 18th and 19th centuries, the Elk were almost extinct in Sweden as they were over-hunted. So regulations were put in place for the species to recover. But then, there were too many, which made it difficult for drivers. So in the 1980s more regulations were created. Nowadays, only 100,000 Elk can be hunted and killed each year. Enough of the history lesson.

On a separate note, I am amazed at how fast the transition from summer to autumn is here. One week it is above 20 degrees everyday and the next, all but a few of the trees are yellow/red/orange and everyone is wearing hats, scarves and gloves. I have never seen trees with leaves as golden as the ones here. It is magical :3

And we also made friends with a cat on the way home from the Elk farm. We had the car doors open, turned our heads for 1 minute and it was in our car. 

[thehanwho-blog]

had a 2 hour Skype homework date with her bestie.

I spent half of yesterday outdoors playing Brännboll, which is a mixture of rounders/baseball. The differences; you throw the ball to yourself, three strikes and you get ‘burned’ (you lose a point and the other team gains that point) and have to go to the first post. If a fielder catches a ball, then their team gains a point, and if the person who is the ‘burner’ catches the ball and shouts burn before you get to a post, then you are burned and you have to go all the way back to the first post, and you lose a point. In total, there are 18 buddy groups. I am in group number 1. My group didn’t expect to win any games as we had only practiced once, so we didn’t bring the vitals; water, food, warm clothes. We ended up being in the finals. We didn’t come first, which was great, because you know how the rhyme goes. ‘First the worst, second the best.....’. The tournament started at 12, we finished at 5.56. You also know the other saying, ‘no pain, no gain’. When a fellow player hit the ball, I started to run from 2nd to 3rd base. So did the fielder to my right, to catch the ball. He was 6 ft 5 and weighed a lot more than me. I ask you the question dear readers, ‘What happens when a car hits another car from the side?��� Speed x Velocity = Me. I have bad whiplash in my neck and a suspected bruised rib and a new nickname: Tank.

I woke up this morning with more bruises than I went to bed with. I went to bed at 8.30. Woke up at midnight, arranged a Skype date with my bestie, fell asleep again, then woke up at 9. I then chatted with Annie for 2 hours whilst doing my homework. I then had Fika at five then Sushi at seven. 

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‘Fika-d’ out.

Is it possible to have too much Fika? NO, methinks. I was feeling slightly down this morning, but it is amazing what friends, Fika and food can do to lift your mood. And second hand markets. I purchased a nice scarf for 20 SEK (£1.50) and got a free bag and had a spoonful of the most delightful carrot cake in the world. 

After ‘Loppis’ I went home and started to prepare my dinner. It wasn’t meant to be anything spectacular, but it ended up being one of the best things that I have made. It was actually palatable.  While that was in the oven, I had fika with my friends, where we guzzled gallons of tea and coffee. I now have a taste for Rooibos tea with a hint of Vanilla. Immigration and Refugees were todays hot topics. And Bernie Sanders. 

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This is the R-rated version of what I ate today.......

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_haw_YDC_zo) 

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couldn’t stop smelling of fish.

Today I went to the Umeåsmakfestival today and ate a lot of delicious local food. I ate Surströmming the proper way (with mashed potato, red onion chutney and flatbread). Tomorrow, I shall be trying it the stupid way (with nothing). For those who do not know, Surströmming is fermented fish. According to a Japanese study, a newly opened can of Surströmming has one of the most putrid food smells in the world. I think it is worse than Durian fruit smell. I was apparently eating the best you could find in the world. To be honest, I smelled the fish before I even got to the stall where they were serving it and I was 10 metres away. Think sewage, ruminating in 30 degree heat. They chefs made us laugh as they played dramatic music while we ate it.  

I also tried an amazing stew, which consisted of Reindeer, Deer and Moose meat. T’was delectable. I also had some of the best Ice Cream outside of Italy and Cirencester. It was Blåbär (blueberry) and Liquorice. I also bought some Reindeer salami which will be consumed before the end of the weekend. And after having all of this other food, I still could not get the taste of Surströmming out of my mouth.

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Photo courtesy of Made Hannes- Nydala Lake- 10:22 pm (I WAS THERE!!!!!!!!)