3. Concert, birthday and military activities (English translation)

10 september 2019 - Boden, Zweden

Dear readers,

First of all I want to say that I really like to read all the nice and sweet reactions and compliments and it really motivates me to write more nice stories for you!

I really feel at home here and it feels like I’ve been here for months already, not just 4 weeks; I’m completely used to all the red, yellow, blue, gray and white houses, the landscapes, travelling with the bus (even though at first I would be afraid that the bus wouldn’t stop for me or would be really early so that it would mean that I missed the bus), my host family, my classmates, orientering, hearing a mix of Swedish and English all day long. But there are also a few things that I can’t get used to: the amount of salt, sauces and jam they eat with every meal, the amounts of milk they drink here, the fact that they weigh liquids in grams and measure solids in liters while cooking/baking, the fact that we have 4 freezers at home (2 for berries and meat and 2 for daily products), the fact that I’m EVERY DAY on time for school (25 minutes early) and that I don’t have to hurry to be in the classroom on time like I had to do every day in The Netherlands, the fact that I have 2GB of data on my phone and that I can listen to music on Spotify everywhere, use google translate everywhere to translate Swedish/English words, use Duolingo everywhere, the fact that they use Messenger instead of Whatsapp, the fact that our garbage container for bio-organic waste is brown and the container for residual waste is green and waking up so early (my alarm goes off at 6:15! on school days).

I didn’t really tell that much about the village I live in. The village I live in is called Unbyn, it has about 500 inhabitants and some of my classmates hadn’t even heard of Unbyn before or didn’t know where it’s located. It’s located in between the 2 cities in our area, Boden and Luleå, on the south side of the river Luleälven. In my street there only live families with young kids between about 5 and 13 years and all the kids always play with each other on the street. Some streets here have very cute/funny names: dvärgvägen (dwarfroad), sagovägen (legendroad), snövitsvägen (snowwhiteroad), trollvägen (trollroad), muminvägen (muminroad) and spökvägen (ghostroad). There are a lot of farms in this village and if you try to count all the tractors you will be occupied for a while. There is not really anything to do here, there are just houses, farms, a childcare and a primary school, all the clubs basically are in Boden or Luleå. I still have to fix my bicycle so that I can take some more pictures of the villages, I really miss cycling by the way! 

On Wednesday the 28th of August I had the concert at school where we practiced the whole first week for with our class and the classes above and below us. We sang 2 songs with the choir:'Seasons of Love' from the musical ‘Rent’ and 'My Desire' by Kirk Franklin. Together with ensemble (almost the whole class) I performed 'The Sound Of Silence' by Simon & Garfunkel (Disturbed's version) and 'Love No Limit' by Mary J. Blige. Everybody in ‘Love No Limit’ had a little solo part and so did I. I don’t think performing is that scary anymore and especially when we’re on stage with a big group, even though I didn’t know anyone in the audience and I’ve only known my classmates for a week. 

It’s going better with my Swedish, I don’t really talk it yet, but sometimes I try to speak a sentence in Swedish. During our first naturkunskap lesson (naturkunskap is a mixture of the subjects biology, chemistry and a little bit of physics) I said “Jag talar inte svenska’ (“I don’t speak Swedish”), the reaction of the class and the teacher was “But you speak Swedish very well”. Sometimes when I don’t think about what I want to say and sometimes I suddenly say something in Swedish, so sometimes I say “varsågod” (here you go or no problem) without thinking and then I would surprise myself about what I just said! But there are also moments where I don’t understand anything at all from the conversation and I’m really trying my best to pick up words I do understand, but sometimes I just don’t succeed. Those moments are really frustrating for me and can give me the feeling that all the Swedish I’ve learned so far is useless. But I know that it’s impossible to understand everything in a new language after just a few weeks and that sometimes the tempo is too high, people have an accent, there are background noises or I don’t know anything about the subject they are talking about. Luckily there are also moments where I understood a lot of the conversation and surprise my host family/teachers/classmates with it, or when I read something out loud in Swedish and my pronunciation isn’t even that bad even though I didn’t know 80% of the words and just tried something. 

It’s still going very well with orientering, on Saturday the 31th of August I finished first in my category again. My host family and club members are impressed that I’m doing so good and just started this sport a few weeks ago. At the next competition I want to do a harder course. I’m very competitive, I want to get a better time every time and I want to finish first. I don’t remember being this competitive in sports! Especially not in a sport that has to do with running. Today the training didn’t go that well unfortunately, I couldn’t find the checkpoints at all! I looked for the checkpoints at the locations for 10 minutes each time, but without success, even though I knew I was at the right place and didn’t get lost. I busy for such a long time that it started to become dark and sprinted back to the car as fast as I could. Later I heard that more people had difficulties with finding the checkpoints and Therese and I will do the course again together another time to see if we can find the checkpoints then. Hopefully I will something from that!

Last week Tuesday I had my first class of music theory, there are different groups on different levels for that subject. I was placed in the hardest group because I’ve had piano lessons for 11 years. When we started the lesson I immediately noticed that I didn’t understand anything they were doing and that I didn’t learn the things they were talking about or I already forgot it because it’s been such a long time. When we had to write the notes and rhythms the teacher played, I freaked out and didn’t know anything. The teacher later explained how I had to do it and said that you need to practice it a lot and that it’s logical that I couldn’t do it if I’ve never done it before. I was transferred to another group that’s more on my level, my classmates said that they used to suck at some exercises until now, so that was quite relieving for me! Last week on Tuesday I had my first piano lesson in school and there we practiced a few things I didn’t understand before during the music theory lessons. The way my piano teacher teaches, is very different than I’m used to and it feels like I’m taking a step back: before the summer I used to play pieces from Chopin and now I’m practicing chords and scales by heart… But I think it’s fun to do something different at times! 

On Wednesday we visited the military base here in Boden, it was a day specially for high school students. We could talk to soldiers from different regiments, look into military vehicles, try on army outfits (carry heavy bags, try on helmets, hold guns, etc.), look at the dormitories and practice CPR on a doll. The city of Boden is a military city, a lot of people that live in the area are in the military. There is a museum about the military base and it’s not unusual to see men or women in uniform or to see a military vehicle on the streets. 

Garnisons dagAmbulance

On Thursday the 5th of September it was my birthday and I turned 18!!! In the evening I made delicious sushi together with Therese, I’ve never made sushi myself before and really wanted to do that for a while. It was a big success and hopefully we will do it again. On Thursday morning I was sent away during class… Now you might think: “Roos was sent away?? This is a joke!”, nope it’s true. I wasn’t on the attendance list and the teacher said that the class was full and that I should choose the subjects my classmates from estet all choose… A bit later she even took my book as a sign that I really wasn’t welcome there. We still haven’t found a solution yet, but it looks like I will have 2 free hours in the morning. I can use that to sleep or play piano or guitar. 

Sushi makenSushi makenSushiSushi

On Friday we didn’t have any lessons but we walked/ran the ‘garnisonsmilen’ with the whole city (and school). I believe that in the first place it’s a military activity, but a lot of “normal people” also joined the race. The distance for everyone is 10 kilometers, one Swedish mile. I walked with the biggest part of my class, it took us exactly 2 hours. Along the way I looked at the surroundings, took a lot of pictures and talked with my friends. Sometimes I was really annoyed by people that would play bad music and sing really loud and off-key with it. At the finish we got a “kanelbulle” and after that we drank coffee in Boden. After that we went to Sanna’s house (one of my classmates), but I didn’t understand that we would go to her house in 2 groups: with the cars and walking/cycling. Nobody explained the plan to me in English, so there was chaos when I found out that there wasn’t enough place in the cars and that the other group had already left. Luckily everything ended well, but this was a lesson for me (and maybe also for the group) that I should check if I understood what the plan is…

Groepsfoto (+photobomb)GarnisonsmilenGarnisonsmilen

On Saturday I celebrated my birthday with a few friends and some girls from Unbyn that I never met before. Therese and Rein baked some delicious cakes: a princess cake (one of my favorites) and a meringue cake. First the girls from Unbyn came over, I’ve never met them before, so that’s why we thought it would be a good idea to invite them separately from my friends from school, so that I could get to know them better. Some girls I already saw on the bus or at school, but I’d never talked to them before. They seemed really kind to me and it’s nice to know some people in the village as well, so it’s easier to meet on the weekends or in the evenings. After that my friends from school came. My brothers really liked meeting my friends and especially to meet the boys. Hannes thought it was amazing that they played on the guitars we have at home and he liked their hair. Hugo thought it was fun to play foosball with everybody. We also played some card games and I learned them the Dutch card game ‘pesten’ (almost the same as Uno) and I learned them to say “laatste kaart” (last card), most of them said something that sounded like “last card” which of course is almost Dutch… They taught me the game ‘vänd 10’, one of the most well known card games. I was really happy with Isacs present, he bought me a book to learn to play the guitar and I started playing the guitar the next day!

PrinsessentaartTafel gedekt

Yesterday Kaisa, Karl-Eric and Veera visited us. Veera is the exchange student from Finland who lives in the same area as I do with her host parents Kaisa and Karl-Eric. Kaisa is my ‘area representative’, that means that I can talk to her when there are things that I don’t want to discuss with my host parents. She has to let YFU know every month that everything is okay with me, so that’s why they came by. 

It’s really starting to become fall here, the trees start to change colors, sometimes we have night frost and it’s cloudy a lot of the time. I’m curious in how many weeks we will see the first snowfall. 

This weekend I will probably join Rein during moose hunt and next week are the auditions for the school musical, so fun things to look forward to! Don't forget to look at 'Foto's' to see all off the pictures I post here.

Lots of love, Roos

1 Reactie

  1. Yvonne Bakker:
    28 september 2019
    Hi lieve Roos, wat geweldig om dit allemaal te lezen en volgens mij heb jij het enorm naar je zin!
    Beetje laat maar alsnog van harte gefeliciteerd met je 18e verjaardag!!!🌹🍀⭐ liefs Yvonne