Nature Walks and Fireworks

Hej hej! Today marks exactly one month until we come home! We’re definitely excited to get back home, but we still have so much exploring and adventuring to do here. We’ve made some great friends and I know that it will be a bit difficult to leave. 


These last two weeks have been kind of a blur, because we've had so much going on! This blog post will be a short one about our week in Sweden before going to Norway, then I will post another for Norway shortly after, and yet another for Germany by next week. Ready for this? :D


On Thursday night, April 30th, we celebrated the start of spring with the Swedish holiday Walpurgis. There was a gathering in town where choir groups sang and ceremonies took place, though I’m not quite sure what they said – sorry, not fluent in Swedish yet ;) ha, not even close. We then followed a bunch of children holding a fire :O towards the lake and lit the bonfire! There were beautiful fireworks on the lake, and so many people came to view them. It kind of reminded me of a mini version of the Fourth of July at home.

Photo Credits: Jonathon Orwig

The next morning, Jonathon, Sinead, Greig and I all ran our first half-marathon! Whoa! It was about 35 degrees Fahrenheit with rain and wind the whole way, but we all finished in under two hours, woo! It was a difficult race though, and I’m not sure I want to do that for “fun” again xD

Photo Credits: Sinead Broderick

Even though our hardcore run left us sore the next few days, we went with a friend of ours and her friend family to a nature walk with some of the other families. (Insert fact about Smaland being the rocky place of Sweden) I guess Swedes love their quiz walks, because we did another one while on this nature trip. Then, of course, we had to finish with fika! Mmmm. 

Exploring the Swedish countryside

May 5th was my sweet Jonathon’s 21st birthday! Sadly, it rained all day, so we got some Chinese takeout and celebrated inside.  

Sweden has been fun, but the past and next couple weeks we have been/will be traveling around Europe; we are SO excited to see all that it has in store for us! Next up, a post on Norway!
-Laura.