Beaches and Castles: Hola Spain!

Hola! :) So.... when you realize you have a free weekend and the town airport only flies to two cities, what do you do? Um, you hop on a plane to Alicante, Spain! That's how Jonathon and I spent our weekend after getting back from our wonderful trip to Bremen. (PS, I'm sorry about how late this post is! Life has been pretty hectic, and I'm actually finishing this post from an airport on my way home :) ) 

When we got on the plane in Växjö we were wrapped up in our warm raincoats and shivering while waiting to get onto the plane. A couple hours later, we were on the sunny beaches of Spain. No coats needed! 

We spent our first day in Alicante exploring the beach and city. Well, that was after it took us about an hour to find our hostel, haha. Streets are confusing without a data plan on your phone! Yes, I am definitely spoiled. Traveling without the internet has been difficult, but maybe I'll learn how to navigate better :) maybe.... 

Jonathon took me on a secret adventure to go look for this church that I had admired on a painting :) 

On Saturday, we got to spend a whole day doing nothing but laying out on the beach and soaking up the sun. It was wonderful! (My pet peeve about Sweden is the weather - I miss the Texas sunshine!) I attempted to go for a little swim several times, but it was cold and I'm a weenie :O 

We explored the streets and there were waiters outside of the restaurants vying for our attention. One of the guys talked us into lunch, so we sat outside with a view of the ocean behind us. It was stunning! Then we got to spend all day on the beach, with our toes in the sand and ice cream trips on our mind.

Saturday was a bit chilly for the beach, so we explored the city. It was a lot of fun, and we got to do some bargaining on the street. Our next adventure of the day was to climb up to the castle that you could see from the beach! It was great! 

We had a wonderful time in Spain! Below are some more pictures from the castle:

Well, that's it! Thanks for reading this blog post :) I actually have quite a few to catch up on, so.. If you like Sweden, Italy and France, be on the lookout ;) 

Sincerely,

Laura.

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. 

Castles and Crafts

Hello! 

How's it going? :) It's been a cold and dreary week in Sweden, but we didn't let that stop us from having a good time. We went adventuring and learnt new things.

We ended last week with a geocaching excursion. It was much colder than the beautiful 50 degrees that we had the last time, but it was still fun! 

Antonia's first find! Woo! We spent so much time on this one. 

My super cute fiancé with his find. 

Greig's first! Adventured to "Bee Paradise" for this one. 

Yay, I found one too :) 

 We got to end the day with some good ol' fika at Vallgatan. 

Växjö is nice, but Jonathon and I decided that we needed to go explore a new city. We took the train to Kalmar, a town on the east coast by the Baltic Sea. The train rides here are an adventure in themselves, as everything is in Swedish. "Jag talar inte svenska!" (I do not speak Swedish. :) )

Yeah, that's a real castle! The first foundations of the fortress were built in the 12th century when they constructed a round tower as a lookout. The rest of the castle was produced in the 1500s by King Gustav Vasa. (Wikipedia) It wasn't open, bummer, but we still got to view it from the yards. It is located on its own little island, with a moat and land moat as a defense system. There are four round towers covering the corners of the island. 

Kalmar Domkyrka - the cathedral. 

This island, which still has remnants of an ancient wall, was a vital part in defending the castle. 

We also spent time at the Kalmar Läns Museum. There was a whole floor dedicated to the warship the "Kronan", which capsized and exploded right outside of Kalmar during the Battle of Öland. Over 800 men died due to this tragedy. The ship's ruins were rediscovered in the 1980s, and volunteer divers have been bringing up artifacts ever since. The water is very cold and the ascent back to the surface takes a whole thirty minutes. 

We also visited the Ben and Jerry's (; we had to, right?! So yummy ice cream was also part of our Swedish adventure for the day. 

Today after church, our new friend and translator Jörg and his wife Annette had some of us international students over for lunch. We were blown away by how amazing the lunch was! He worked all morning to create this wonderful three course meal. Everything was complicated and served beautifully, from the starter Thai soup to the homemade coconut and lime ice cream. He also had a couple massage chairs... let's just say I spent some time on those. We had a wonderful time getting to talk with everybody and learning about everybody's cultures. It was also so nice to be in a home!

The lovely main dishes! Photo credits: Jonathon Orwig

From lunch, I met Antonia for a crafting experience in a restaurant's basement. Haha. It was interesting! We made our own tea bags. Mine were quite ugly, but hers turned out nice! Then we went for yummy fika :) always one of my favorite parts of the day haha. I tried a kardemumma muffin, which is super yummy! It was great to get to talk with her and have a nice, relaxed time. :)

I'm hoping this next week will have plenty of wondrous moments in store, as this one was great! I hope that everybody at home is doing well :) I miss and love you all. I'm definitely jealous of your weather, too. 

Sincerely,

Laura.