Thursday, July 28, 2011

Departure Day

          I now know that I officially get to leave for Sweden this morning as an exchange student. My visa hadn't come until yesterday afternoon, which would have meant I would travel to Sweden as a "tourist" until I recieved my visa. With less than 20 hours before I left, my visa approval finally arrived.
          I will be living in the town of Karlskoga, Sweden while I am on exchange. The town of Karlskoga is located about two hours due west of Stockholm. There are about 27,000 people who reside in this beautiful lake town. Most of the town surrounds a lake, Lake Möckln, where people go swimmng in during the summer and ice skating on during the winter.
          During my stay, I will have a total of four host families. As of right now, I know three out of the four. All of them have childre, mostly girls, who are between the ages of 6 and 22. My first family is Olof and Lena Frisk. They have two children, Nikolina, who is 20, and Annalise, who is 22. Since they are older, I won't get a chance to see them very often since they are both going to a university. They also live 13 km into the country, which means I will have to learn the ways of public transportation very quickly.
          During my stay in Karlskoga, I will be attending  the school Möcklngymnasiet. My class consists of 21 students who are all in the Natural Science course. I look forward to meeting my classmated and being able to compare their education system to that of the public schools in the US. School begins on August 17th for me.
          When I arrive in Sweden, my first three weeks will be quite busy. My first host parents as well as one of their daughters, Nikolina, will pick me up at the Stockholm-Arlanda airport. From there, we will go to their summer home on the island of Gräsö, which is located just east of Uppsala. After we spend some time there, we will travel to my new hometown of Karlskoga, where I will get settled. I will then go to language camp in another town just north of Gothengurg from August 14th to the 19th. As I mentioned earlier, my regular school begins on the 17th. This means that I will skip the first few days of school while I attend my language camp. The following Monday, the 22nd, I will go to my very first day of Swedish classes.
         I am looking forward to meeting everyone in Sweden and I can't wait to start my adventure. I will do my best to keep this blog updated semi-regularly, but I'm not going to guarentee anything.

Kristi