Tess

Have had two extremely long weeks; long in a good way. We had J’s brother William here for a week and then the most awesome girl in the world, Bennie, overlapped W’s stay by a couple of days.J and W was mostly occupied doing their own thing while B and I had some of our own crazy times.

Right now the apartment is dirtier than ever and the pile of laundry is bigger than Mount Everest, so some serious cleaning is next on the to-do-list. (After the other ginormous mountain of homework, hanging out in the app. Just waiting to bite me in the ass later this week)

Anyway, I am writing a paper about the definition of happiness, so I am going to enjoy the little things (Like the 30 minutes that are left of my break before class)  right now and try not to make that huge mountain of homework a big deal!  I will appreciate and try to have as good of a time as I can get.

You only live once.

Ciao!

Finally it’s over, Christmas and New Years.  Had a great time, but I do miss Sundsvall.

Last Friday I spent with my lovely Aussie friend Jessie, she left me and the rest of America yesterday to go back home to Australia. Had a pretty good Friday night. We also celebrated Lucie’s 21 B-day. Fantastic!

Saturday I was hanging out with Ellis Pellis. She brought some Swedish snus, haha, and it is always super funny when an American is trying ‘Snusing’. Well anyway, we had a very entertaining night, trying to teach a few Americans some Swedish phrases.

Last weekend was stuffed with parties, and so is this weekend. This weekend it is actually Ellen’s birthday ( I’m not gonna tell how old you are I promise ;). This of course has to be celebrated. And this weekend is extra special since this is last weekend before school starts.. ugh.

Yesterday J and I finally bought a coffee maker, and the coffee is so much better. Yum!  We also got a mixer, so now I am living off of fruit smoothies and Oh my they are yummy!

I am also super exited that Bennie <3 is coming here very soon. I am super happy someone is visiting..

Today we are going to go on a Down comforter hunt, we’re going to try to find the best blanket for our bed, since we don’t really like the one we have now.

That’s all for now.

Ciao.

Had a great christmas, with lots of love from my friends. So we made that Swedish Christmas dinner that I must say, turned out pretty good! Pictures will be posted as soon as my good arm is back in use again.

Oh, and about that arm. On the Christmas day (25^th) we went snowboarding, with we I meant me, johan, brian and brad. We went to winter park. Ion the end of the day we are just taking it chill and about to go down our last run..  and guess what happens… I fell.. on my shoulder, lying there in the snow I could definitely  feel that something was wrong, I obviously could not move my right arm, it was just lying there. I was way too terrified to even scream, but it hurt like a M***** F*****! So johan was going to try to pull me up and when he did I felt my shoulder pop back into the socket.  So my shoulder had been dislocated. It was a very long time ago since I’ve been in this much pain. We go home and I try not to think about it, but my shoulder still really hurts.  So on Sunday after a whole night of excruciating pain, we go to the hospital, had some x-rays taken, and thank god I did not have any broken bones. But I did have some torn muscles and ligaments, so what they do here in America is, they give you the strongest pain killers you can imagine,  the once I got are called Vikadin. So I have literally been knocked out on the couch for two days now and in Sweden they would have given me Alvedon. My arm is stuck in a sling (mitella) which is super uncomfortable… so hopefully I can stop taking these pills pretty soon so I can get in shape for New years, I don’t wanna walk around like a zombie.  By the way, THANK GOD FOR INSURANCE!!

That’s a little update. And I also wanted to say that I miss Ellis Pellis a little tiny bit, and I think she should move her ass back over here from tingsryd! (ellen you should see what I look like right now, think you would find it very funny)

Ciao.

This weekend became a little crazy, started on Thursday with ‘Ladies night’, which included FREE drinks (champagne was included) for girls from 9.00pm til midnight. So you can only imagine how a group of 10 girls are going Bananas in this really cool lounge bar Lavish, very nice and classy place, I like it. We girls are going to try to make this ‘Ladies night’ a Thursday night tradition.

This week has been very productive, been to the gym twice and all together I ran 2.5 miles.. (4 km) per day. And I thought I was in super bad shape.. Maybe I am underestimating myself?

So last weekend, we had a few incidents, we had my friend Brads car pretty much almost wrecked (none of ours fault, thank god!) went to a few parties, none of them being that good. I also went shopping with Ellis Pellis on Friday, came home with a new pair of Levis jeans, a gigantic purple ring and a pair of earrings.

Yesterday I spent the day with Megs, we had a movie, girl time night. We also got some company later that night from Miss April.

Tomorrow I have tons of work to do, not really work more like cooking work, tomorrow I am about to Cook a whole Swedish Christmas dinner.. every think from scratch. I even need to make the ‘Rodbetssallad’ from scratch.  Thank god I don’t have to grow my own potatoes or anything, and I also discovered that they have Wasa knackebrod at kingsoopers (mataffaren).  I will definitely have to post some pictures of the results.

Tonight I’m going to try to finish up my Christmas shopping, always out in the last minute, but that’s fine.

Wish me luck!

Ciao

After multiple requests from friends and family I have decided to start blogging again, or at least I am going to try.  The reason for blogging in English is because most of my friends where I am living at this point are Americans, and I do want to share this with them, as much as I want to share this with my Swedish and Norwegian friends.  I planned to start this first post with a wrap-up of the past year, 2010.

January, in the beginning of this year I had just returned back home to Sweden after working as an Au pair for a year. This month I also moved to Norway, to live with my wonderful Johan. We celebrated New Years eve in an amazing place called Gaustablikk, Norway, very pretty place but extremely cold.

February, I got an awesome job (I liked it, but I can’t say that I liked the pay check, it was definitely not big enough.)  It was at a Café, I loved it. Since I am a huge coffee drinker I must say, making coffee all day, all different kinds, I felt like I was in heaven. This is also when my little niece Wilma got baptized. 

March, This was the month where I decided I was going to apply for college. I thought it was going to be easy, but I can assure you it was probably the biggest pain in my ass out of all times.  I finally got all the papers done and I was about to mail it in the beginning of April and then the volcano on Iceland erupted, Eyjafjallajökull.

April, my application finally arrived, a little late. And I still loved my job; at this point I had met an awesome friend, Bibbi. And along came Nicklas. We did have a great summer. Bibbi was going to move to go to college in Washington, Seattle the same fall as I was planning to go to Denver.

May, I headed out to Bergen, Norway to visit my favorite Bennie. I had a blast, and if I could I would live no longer than 5 minutes away from you. ( By the way, I can’t say anything negative about Bergen and the weather, I had sun for 5 days straight)

June, I got a surprising letter which stated that I had been accepted to University of Denver Colorado. Now I only had a month to get my visa which meant 20 more papers to fill out and interviews at the American embassy.  I also moved back home to Sweden in the end of June, and I did love it more than ever. my parents also came out to visit in the end of June before we moved back home.

July, Gatufesten Sundsvall, do I even have to say anything else?  Always such a blast, a little bit too much partying, five days in a row is a little brutal, but boy we had fun!  I also got to see everyone I loved probably more than twice this summer.

August, Went to the interview at the American embassy which was probably the most nerve-racking, humiliating but surprising thing of my life. I felt like I had committed a crime and that I was getting interrogated for not going to jail. Pjuu! I got my visa and I was off back to Denver in the end of august.  We got back here to Denver, me and Johan, and I promise, apartment hunting 2 weeks before school starts…BAD idea. Very stressful times, but we did find one, not our dream one but it becomes whatever you make it into. This is also when the wonderful woman Megan entered my life, what I didn’t know at this point was that she was to become one of the most important people of my life.

September, first few week of college was BRUTAL. I don’t think I have ever felt that stupid in my life ever before.   I was almost about to move back home but I couldn’t  give up just because I had just found out I got a really good scholarship as long as my GPA was over 3.2 which felt like an impossibility at this time.

October, I had survived the first few weeks of college and finally things where starting to get a little bit easier. Not only that, me and Johan went to New Orleans, Louisiana, I love that place. If I could I would bring all of my friends there and celebrate Mardi Gras. We later drove over to Pensacola, Florida with Johan’s family from Norway. I’m only going to say IF I could I would live there.

November, No snow still and we took off to Seattle, Washington to celebrate thanksgiving with Johan’s grandparents.  Seattle is an amazing town, a little bit too rainy for me. (Reminded me too much of rainy Sweden) we went up the Space needle, and I got extremely nauseous, I think that thing is way to flimsy and wobbly to actually even go to the top, very dangerous.we also went to the first starbucks in the world, which was kind of cool.  November was also a very sad month, a lot of bad stuff happened this month, things that are not supposed to happened. I will always miss you my friend <3.

December, school is finally over and I don’t think I have EVER, never ever worked this hard for my grades in my entire life. I expected myself to finish this semester with an average of B’s (VG) but surprisingly, I have no idea how I did it, I manage to get straight A’s (alla MVG) and ended up with a 4.0 GPA, which means I still have my scholarship. I am so amazed by my own performance, I will pat myself on the back for that one, to pull of 4 finals(tentor), 3 of them in 2 days and end up with A’s. I never thought I could do it.  So here I am still here and I will probably go one more semester at college then I think my times is up here in Denver for a while.