School, another birthday, and "Wiking CAMP"

WIKING CAMP! (Sept. 16 - 17)
I spent the past 2 days at a Rotary camp with the newbies, oldies (people who came in January), and a few of the swedish returnies! We met at a golf course near Västerås (a city about 30 minutes drive from Eskistuna) Saturday morning at 10 a.m. After waiting for a good hour for all the exchangers to arrive (we're all on foreign time : )) we had a fika because any get-together is nothing without fika!

We then spent a few hours laying around preparing some very ... interesting skits which no one but us could possibly understand! I don't think the Rotarians really had any idea what was going on for most of it! (i.e. I'm a wiking, do you want to follow me?, it's going to be wery wery funny!, J(Y)ELLOWWWW!!, Ulaf my man, will you dance with me?, being all alone on the bus, etc...)

After walking a km to the viking camp, we were introduced to our 2 professional viking leaders! (Yes that is correct, they're professional vikings, they even have viking families who came to visit later on well exept for our friend from Stockholm with the yellow zipper jeans!!!)

Here we have me and Rodrigo (an oldie from Brasil).
There's me practicing my pro archery skills (unfortunately I didn't practice enough... I was the only one on the team to NOT hit the target even once... OOPS!)

After archery we had some intense double-sided axe throwing (which was more than a little scary believe me!)

Next we headed to the Viking boat where my amazing rowing skills came in handy! Note the very attractive orange life vests! Exchange students at their best! (Marianne-France, Grace-Canada)

This is the super-cool viking boat hehe!
This is Pete cutting my head off with the Viking sword.... a scary moment...

After our evening of viking games, we headed back to our Viking cabin where 30 exchange students / former exchangers froze to death for the rest of the night while watching some extreme candle shaping, listening to music, and drinking juice! It was a really fun weekend all in all!

Above is a picture of me at Sara's birthday party Friday night (Sara's a Swede in my class). The others in the picture are mostly all in my class aswell. It was a really fun, silly night of playing games and just hanging out : ) It was just what I needed after a long week of working hard at school hehe! On the bad side this week, all the exchange students were asked to leave photgraphy class this week to make room for students who actually need the credit... go figure lol! On the bright side, we found a Swedish teacher for the exchangers, and I'm now taking dance class at school! Sadly all the other options are still full which means I have to sit through hour upon hour of lessons in Swedish without ever being able to participate (it sounds relaxing but after a day or so it becomes the most boring thing in the world!)

Thanks everyone for taking a few minutes to read my blog. I hope you enjoy hearing about my adventures in Sweden! I want to specifically say thanks to the Gateway club for being such a great club and really supporting me!