Week 13 At SVF

November 12th - 18th

A thin layer of frost finally started to cover the earth as the weeks went on. I was eagerly waiting for the day that snow would fall. I had gotten so used to clear christmases and warm winters that the thought of snowfall made me giddy. Sunday (sondag) was cold and wet. Mostly people stayed indoors and worked on projects and schoolwork. Sunday Axel and I decided to work more on our project for Comparative Politics that would be due on Tuesday. After we had worked for a little bit, Jack and I decided to start watching more of Stranger Things. Monday (måndag) we started learning about food words and how to describe animals in Swedish. We were also given a play to read through called Miss Julie for our Scandinavian Culture class. After our afternoon classes, Kajsa wanted to go down to the city to shop for a little bit and then come back for dinner. For our Monday night Swedish class, we met in the meeting room of the dining hall and had discussions in Swedish with the Swede that had accompanied us for this class. There were more Swedes than international students but this was okay because there were more people to talk to. After class, Kajsa wanted to watch the rest of the Twilight movies because it was her birthday. So we went to her room, ate the ice cream we had bought earlier that day and finished the movies. After the movies there was still some homework I needed to get done so I went back to my room and finished the homework for Swedish. Tuesday (tisdag) was the day Axel and I were supposed to present our research on Colombia. However, because the other groups took a little bit longer to present, we would be presenting the following day first thing. For our usual meetings with the college line, we had Charles (from North Park) come and talk, mainly to the Swedes, about opportunities for activities while in Chicago. We had talked about going to see Hamilton. After this we had another meeting with just the Americans. We were asked to present something during Chapel on how Americans celebrate Thanksgiving. We decided to go to some of the English classes and talk about how we each celebrate thanksgiving with our families or friends. We discussed how we would be in charge of Chapel and what we would talk about. After the meetings Jack and I went back to my room to watch more Stranger Things before dinner. After dinner, Axel and I wanted to do more touch ups on our project for our presentation for Wednesday (onsdag). It took us a while to get everything in order but we finished. Wednesday came around and Axel and I were both jittery thinking about our presentation. We went to our religion class where John (professor and Chaplin) asked us to discuss goals and decisions on how to get to those goals. When John came up to my group, him and I had a long discussion about this topic. I loved talking about this with him and wrote down some things to remember in my phone. From the lesson I wrote down "We must constantly be working towards something permanent. This is the meaning of life. Everything, except God, has an expiration date and if you are not working towards some goal of permanence than the decisions that you make don't have real effect on your life." After religion class we went to Fika and then Comparative Politics. Axel and I were the first to present and most groups were supposed to only take around 20 minutes each to present their country however, because the Colombian system is extremely complicated and because there were so many questions from the class, our presentation took around 40 minutes. We ended up receiving a perfect grade with no marks lowered. It was wonderful to have this stressful project off my shoulders and to replace it with a 100%. After lunch, instead of having the Swedes in their Intro to U.S class, there was a school wide meeting about fake news and how to tell if a news source is reliable. It is rather hard to understand everything in these meetings because they are not translated so Marianne has to give us headsets and translate the entire thing. After the meeting, Kajsa wanted to go shop in the city again, but I was rather tired and wanted some time to sleep. Jack, Kajsa, Olivea and Rachelle went into town and went shopping. Thursday (torsdag) Scandinavian class we had another presentation on famous rulers in Scandinavia (especially Sweden). After this class we had fika and the Comparative Politics again where more people presented their countries and their political systems. After creativity, Rachelle wanted to meet with Axel and I to discuss our presentation and give us the next country to present on. We met with her and she had only glowing things to say about our presentation which felt really good. We had agreed to research South Africa as our next presentation. After this meeting, I wanted to spend some time with God and just read the bible so I went into the prayer room and reach through the book of Matthew which I have been slowly studying through. After I was done in the prayer room, I went to dinner and then Jack and I decided to read through the history chapter that we had to read through for tomorrows Mediterranean history class. Friday (fredag) we had P.E and we played badminton for the first half and then ultimate frisbee for the second half which was really fun. After P.E we went back to our rooms to shower and get ready for our Mediterranean history class. In our Mediterranean history class, we were given groups and questions to discuss and answer. We spend the class in our groups answering the questions based on the presentations that we had done in the past week. After this class we went to lunch. I had needed to go to the store and Jack was leaving this weekend to visit family so we decided to walk down into the city together, him to get to his bus, and me to get groceries. David later decided to join us and come with me to get groceries for dinner. While we were in the store, we decided to make dinner together and with Axel and Jonaton. When we got back to campus we brought the food to herrgården where we played mario kart and then made dinner. After dinner, we decided to just stay in this weekend as everyone seemed extremely tired. We watched a Norwegian film called Troll Hunters. We couldn't find a version with English subtitles, and could only find one with Swedish subtitles so this was my chance to practice reading Swedish. After we watched this, David went back to his dorm and Jonaton went to bed. Calle showed up and the three of us (Axel, Calle and I) decided to watch the Purge: Election Year. However, we didn't get to finish it because we all fell asleep. We decided to cut the movie short and finish it another time. Saturday we all woke up late to the sound of drums directly below us. We found out later that there were people in hemgården who were recording a song. They practiced and recorded this song pretty much the entire day. I spend the day pretty much just in my room as I had not had a lazy day since we got back from Fall Break and needed some time to myself. That night, however, Jonaton and I decided it would be a good idea to go play capture the flag in the gym so we texted the group but only a few people responded. Kajsa, and David responded and met up with me at the Gym but Jonaton and the rest of the group never showed up. It was okay though because the three of us got to pass the frisbee around for awhile. After we all left the gym, I went back to my room to watch a movie when I decided to call my little sister Kate. We talked for a really long time and then I went to bed.