Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Barbeques and Quiz Walks

Hej! Guess what? It's finally becoming spring here in Sweden! Yay! We've gotten to enjoy the outdoors some more, though it is still a bit chilly and rainy some days. I am REALLY looking forward to a beautiful Texas summer and days on the boat with family and friends! But until then, here are some pictures of the last couple weeks in Växjö. 


We met some friends for a picnic at the lake before some geocaching and this cute duck kept following us around! He had come quite a ways by the time I started recording - too cute!




Jonathon and I went to meet some of his friends at a grill near the lake for a barbeque. We got to visit the vegetable market in town that morning, so I made a beautiful kebab :D he, of course, had to have hot dogs. Haha. 



We've been training hard (ish) haha, for the upcoming half marathon. I had to stop and take some pictures of the forest while we were out practicing the course! Look at Jonathon and Sinead go ;) the race is this Friday, ahh! 


My beautiful self-portrait pizza ;)


Jonathon's lovely portrait!

It seems like everything we do revolves around food...so We had a Picasso pizza night: self-portrait edition! Our buddies and some friends on the floor came over and we each made our own pizzas. They weren't so cute...but they tasted yummy! :D 



Photo credit: Jonathon Orwig

Sunday we went on a quiz walk in the woods with our friend family. It was a cold, drizzly day, but we ventured into the forest and tried to decipher Swedish quiz questions. I've never seen this done at home, but basically you go on a 3k or so walk and look for questions. You're given an answer sheet and you record your answers to the trivia questions, then walk until you find the next one and so on. A friend that we made got all of the questions right, whoa! I only got 7/12 haha.


Beautiful trees on the way to town!

Everything in Växjö seems to be blooming; there are colorful flowers everywhere and blooming trees as well!

While most of our experiences here have been great, we have had a couple of not so fun ones. Last weekend my bike was stolen out of the bike cage, and then this weekend Jonathon's was! We've both gotten new ones since, as it is difficult to get to class without them.

In a couple days it'll be Jonathon's birthday! I know he's missing his friends and family, so if you see this, please send him a nice birthday message :)

In a week we will be headed to Norway on our first big travels here so far! After that we will go visit my sweet roommate at SNU in her hometown of Bremen, Germany! I'm sure I will have lots of pictures and separate blog posts for those travels. We are definitely excited for them!

We are getting ready to come home, as we miss all of our friends and family. Only one month and a little less than two weeks! I hope we'll be ready for the Texas sunshine ;D

Sincerely,
Laura. 

Sunday, April 12, 2015

(Half) Marathon Training and Kanelbullar Baking

Hello again from Sweden!

How are you? I hope well :)

These last two weeks have been full of reading at the library and studying... Sounds like a lot of fun, right? Ha, not really! See, the school system here is focused on "self study" which means that the professors expect that you spend about 20 hours/week studying for each class. :O Wow. You also only have one grade per class! That means you better ace it, hence the studying. Okay, enough with the boringness! I did a few fun things amidst the nose-in-a-book times :) 

I had a couple fika breaks with my fantastic buddy and another lovely friend. Those are always great! Maddie and I have been taking turns baking for our fikas together, so that means lots of lovely scones and coffee cakes! Mmmm! I think my scones have gained a fan club too ;) we have a group getting together to learn next time I make them, yay!

I went into town with Maddie to explore a little bit and came back with some great souvenirs. We visited some cute Scandinavian shops, a paper shop, and a coffee shop! The paper shop was so whimsical! They make paper onsite; it's got a wonderful texture, but what is even better are the beautiful cards in the shop. The cards are each handmade by special needs people in the shop and are astonishing. We also got to spend some time talking to the coffee shop owner and smelling coffee beans :) ahh. Haha! He helped me pick out a wonderful coffee and after taking the freshly grounded beans home my whole room smelled like heaven. 



Maddie, Jonathon and I got together for a cute dinner with pasta and chocolate cake! 

I promise we do more than just eat and bake, though... Have I mentioned that me, Jonathon and some floormates of ours are training for a half-marathon? Yes! This will be all of our firsts, and we are so excited! We've been training here for the past couple months. It's easy to want to run here, aside from the icky weather that sometimes shows up. So many people run; you see them running around the lake all of the time! The paths here are very well-kept and are all beautiful, whether you're running around a lake, in the woods, or both. 


This Saturday, Jonathon and I got to do our long run around Södra Bergundasjön - it was gorgeous and challenging!

Okay so back to food... Haha! I got to end my week by baking the amazing Swedish kanelbullar (cinnamon buns) with Antonia! It was quite a task; we kind of were extreme bakers. If you know me well enough, you know that I can't really do anything in a clean matter... So, after dropping some dough on the ground (eww) and getting butter and flour all over myself, we were well on our way to having freshly baked buns! We also watched Mulan while waiting for it to rise! :D (Mulan is one of my favorite movies. Yes, I sing along annoyingly.)



We had to take at least one serious "we're intense" picture, then of course smiles.

They turned out so yummy! It's going to be a struggle to not eat them all tonight... Wish me luck.

Oh, and here's a picture that sums up how I think Swedes raise their kids: 


Start them out young, right?! People here are so fit! :O 

I guess they have to counteract the fika with being so active! I seriously wish home was like this! Haha, by the way, I really miss home! I'm not sure how I still have two months (exactly) left; I feel like I've been in Sweden for so long now! Oh well :) I'm having a good time here and am cherishing the moments I get with the wonderful people I have met! 

Thanks for reading my posts :) I appreciate you! Have a wonderful week!

Sincerely,
Laura.