27.09.2007., èetvrtak
Last 2 days update
September 27 - 2nd CI day
Today was our 2nd CI day. I was continuing to work in museum. It was so much fun today. After lunch, we again went to see museum and this time we have seen how to get flour from windmill.
After CI we were watching Schindler's List movie in movie theater. After visiting concetration camp, it's really easier to take part more seriously in such kind of movie.
September 26 - CI day
Today was our first CI day. I was assigned for so called “Hugging tree” project which was actually landscaping project in windmill museum.
In the morning we helped building trails and after lunch we got guide who showed us whole museum and talked us about all items which are in the museum. It was really cool.
After whole day my host parents come to pick me up and today I met my host day for the first time. My host parents took me to have dinner in restaurant called Einstein which is really cool place.
God blessed day when I started to learn German as it’s really helpful to understand what is going on around me. :)
September 25 - Visit to historical place
Today was planned to visit the historical place. We took bus in the morning and we went to visit Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. It was 1 hour away from Uelzen.
My impressions of Bergen-Belsen are just indescribable. It’s hard to describe feelings as I’m still not sure if I felt angry or sad or something third…maybe the combination of all feelings together as it’s really not easy. First we saw movie about camp which was taken by British troops when they come to camp in 1945. Some of the pictures were really bad as we were able to see reality what was really happening in that time and only thing I can say about that is that how could someone be so inhuman and do such horrible things. I still cannot understand. Bergen-Belsen is concentration camp where also Anna Frank died from disease. If you don’t know the story about Anna Frank I highly recommend reading it. I still haven’t read it but I put that as top priority when I come home. She was first in Auschwitz and moved from there to Bergen-Belsen where she died.
What we could see in Bergen-Belsen was only emptiness. There was nothing but some woods and a lot of grave statues. All buildings were burnt to the ground because of risk of diseases. I felt really coldness of that place and how could someone do such things to human beings.
It was really hard walk on the ground where just 60 years ago was happening horrible holocaust. Past is here to learn from it and not to do the same mistakes from it.
After we come back to Uelzen, we had 20 minutes free time to put our impressions from camp on paper. It’s activity which really helps to get that heavy carriage from our mind. After that we had educational lessons about “Psychology of leadership” which was really interesting theme to listen to. I really loved it.
Our host family pick up was at 5.30PM and when I come home, I had nice dinner prepared and than I showed some of my photos to my host family and as well I saw some of their photos. It was really nice to share photos with my family.
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- 21:20 -
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25.09.2007., utorak
Vimmerby update
Here is Vimmerby update and what was happening last week there.
September 24 - Traveling day to Germany
Host family drop off today was at 7.15 an around 7.30AM we left Vimmerby. I’m really happy that I had a chance to visit that little charming city and I know I will return one day here, if not before that I’m sure to come back with my children.
First we were traveling to west coast of Sweden for 5 hours where we took ferry to Denmark. Ferry ride was only 25minutes long so we come back to bus and continue our traveling for 3hours to the south of Denmark where we again took ferry to Germany. This ferry ride was 45minutes long. And when we finally touched Germans ground, it took us around 4 hours to come to Uelzen.
We come to Uelzen around 8.30PM and major of Uelzen was waiting for us and greeted us. Than we got really interesting host family code where we had to wear some clothes we got in our bag. I got interesting hat and my host family managed to find me.
September 23 - Host family day in Vimmerby
I spend host family day mainly doing laundry and packing for new city. Emelie went with our host mum to church to sing, and Vanessa and I, we were responsible for laundry.
Around 4-5PM Emeile and Ellen, our host sister, returned home with lunch and after that we were packing to end and when Carolina, our host mum, come home, we all together went to visit our host mum’s sister. She is living around 100km far away and she is house keeper. She works as house keeper for one old house. House is build in 18th century and now that house is museum, but also you can have different receptions there like weddings, funerals, birthdays etc. It’s really nice place.
She took us to house to show us how house looks like and it is amazing. There are still a lot of paintings all around the house from 18th century. Some of the rooms are still untouched and it is amazing how house looks like. I love it.
As we were walking in some of the rooms, it seemed that everyone felt a little bit coldness and lady started to talk about ghosts from first owners. After that she went to show us their toilet they used and it is small room a little bit far away in one of the corners in the house. When we were walking towards to toilet, as we were passing by one open room, everyone looked inside and if they didn’t worn us about it, I would probably scream so bad. What was in that room? It was a doll of man and woman and as we were passing by that room really quickly and remember that we were discussing about ghosts few minutes before that, it was really scary to see that dolls just for minute. Really creepy. Toilets are really strange, but beautiful as there are a lot of paintings there. She told us interesting story how people were using that toilet. As it was really cold inside, usually servants went before to worm up the toilet, after that ladies come together to use toilet and they always went together (and you were always wandering why ladies always go to toilet together).
It’s been really cool. After when we come home, Caroline prepared nice dinner. First we ate cheese cake which was really good and after that Swedish specialty lake “lobster”. It was really good.
September 22 - Our show day in Vimmerby
First thing in the morning, Vanessa, Emelie and me tried to figure out what should we wear as it was announced that we are going to have funny rehearsal today so that we should all wear something like Pippi. We found some solution and we put all unmatched clothes together and we were ready to come. Everyone was laughing when we come. It was so funny.
Around 10AM BTS crew had to leave for BTS show. BTS stands for Back Track Show and we were supposed to do BTS in center of Vimmerby to invite people to come to see our show. I was selected to be in BTS also. So, we went to center of Vimmerbe to do the small show and it was really fun. I could never imagine in my life that I would do such thing and by that I mean that I would perform during daytime in center of some city and that people would watch us performing. It was a little bit cold, but once we came on the stage to perform, I didn’t have feeling for cold at all.
After BTS we come back to show facility to have lunch and to prepare ourselves for rehearsal. Out staff team decided to give us fun rehearsal so we were all wearing fun clothes and we rehearsed or show songs in different way. Like instead of doing normal rehearsal for some songs, we had to dance in rock style, or we were practicing techno version of calm songs etc. It was so much fun.
After fun rehearsal we had dinner, than green room and than the show. Show was really good and I loved to be back in the show. It’s so much fun to be on the stage again.
After the show, I was signed to do interviews again and this time I was in team with Dave. We were sitting and discussing about everything and finally after some time, they announced that they don’t need us as there are not so many people for interviews. I went to see if they need me on the strike and I helped a little bit there. We finished with strike and everything even one hour earlier so we just hang in the gym which we found out to be really fun playground for us. Some of the people were doing some gymnastically things and me and some people practiced free climbing on artificial climbing place. It was so much fun and I loved it. They had 4 different climbing places considering how good you are in climbing and first I went on harder one as I didn’t saw easier one and I couldn’t climb at all. When I discovered easier one, I just fall in love in that sport so who knows, maybe one day I will start practicing free climbing.
September 21 - Last day of CI
Today was our last day of CI project. In the morning when I came to facility, I found out that very good friend of mine had to leave us. It was really hard for me to accept that. I felt big loss. It’s hard not to feel about every cast member as one big family and when people are leaving us, it’s really hard for whole cast. I already miss you...
Life goes on and I just hope that we will meet one day soon.
After morning meeting, we went to place near Astrid’s birth house, just next to lemon tree. There we had our guest speaker who talked to us about Ground tree, an organization who connects young and adults. It was really interesting speech and I liked it that we were in park, not in indoor environment. After speech we were part of little ceremony where they mixed salt and dirt from other part of world and spread it all around the tree. It was really interesting and I’m really happy that I was part of that ceremony. It made me feel really special.
After that, we come back to high school as there we had gust speaker Eva, an alumni and lady who work in Ikea. She talked about Ikea’s environment statement and it was really interesting. I loved it.
After that we moved to show facility and we started our rehearsal for little show we had and for Youth Conference. Whole thing looked like first 1-2 songs from show and than presentation of each group. It all lasted together for around 45 minutes and it was fun. It’s good to be back on the stage. I missed that feeling really much and I’m really happy to be back. I remember first show when I was afraid to come out on the stage, and now I couldn’t wait to get out.
After show I helped admission team with interviews. I was in team with Johnny and this was my first interview experience. To explain what does that mean, after every show admission team had presentation about the program and after presentation, people who are really interested and want to do an interview, they can do it immediately after show and that’s where we jump in and we help in with interviews.
After that, we just had some free time to chill and it was fun as we played some games and we eat really good cake we got for dinner. It was really fun.
Our host mum prepared us nice apple cake so I enjoyed also in apple cake after coming home. I think I started to eat too much, but I enjoy good food and I cannot help it.
September 20 - 2nd day of CI
Today’s day was really hard day. I’m feeling really tired and emotionally tired. Today we were mainly working on our project for tomorrows Youth Conference presentation and we had to finish our presentation today. Our topic is Lifestyle, food consumption and trade. Yesterday it seemed to be really easy discussing and it seemed that everyone are on the same page, but today when we started to make presentation and when we started collecting ideas about presentation we concluded that we don’t have right solution and that we kind of went away from our mail topic and it was really hard to return on the right track. I was feeling so helpless from time to time and I just didn’t have any idea how we can fix the problem. It was so frustrating from time to time. At the end we agreed and we believe we have right solution for tomorrow’s conference. It’s going to be challenging present our solution as we only have 5 minutes to present.
It was really hard day as I’m feeling a little bit helpless and I miss a lot of familiar things and people. Well, I have to learn how to deal with this as it’s not easy at all. That’s all about U with People that every week you change environment and you have to learn how to fast and what it is the easiest way to adapt to new environment.
For all people to whom I still didn’t have chance to reply to their emails: if you think that I don’t think about you, I do, always. I just don’t have so much time to write you all as my schedule is pretty busy and it doesn’t allow me, so please, be patient and keep reading blog.
After whole day, our host mum took us to meet hers parents. They are so nice people.
September 19 - Half way through
Today is our ½ ways through the program. We still have to finish ½ and than in 2 and half months we are going to say goodbye to each other. Only question now is if people see this as glass half fool or glass half empty or if I translate into UWP language if we experienced half of things and we are happy about half which are still waiting for us or if we only have half left and soon we will say goodbye to each other. I rather chose glass half full as we already experienced a lot and there are still so many things that we can really looking forward to and it’s just going to be great.
I slept this night so good that I woke up a lot of minutes earlier than my alarm clock would turn on. It was good thing that I went sleeping really early yesterday and that I had some time to catch a little bit more sleep than all other days in past few weeks.
After breakfast we came to high school Gymnasium and our CI day could start. Funny thing happened before morning meeting. I went to grocery store to buy some water and similar stuff and I bought also hot chocolate and I managed to spill hot chocolate on my nice cloths. I was so mad at that moment that I decided that I will never ever buy hot chocolate on machine. When I came to high school, I went to wash my skirt and everything went off so easily and I’m happy that my skirt is saved.
After morning meeting high students joined us and our CI project was about to start. This week I’m working in Youth Conference where we are going to discuss more about environment and ecological issues. First we were watching movie “The Planet” about environment and human affects to environment and if you ask me, it was the best movie I have seen on that topic. Truly recommend to everyone. Movie was full of facts and interesting things and what most affected me was when they were talking about that it is so hard to save big animals with which we can see their emotions and how are we going to save small ones like butterflies or bees if we cannot save bigger like monkeys or tigers.
Movie really affected a lot of people and I’m really happy that we saw that movie. After watching movie we went to eat lunch and we got pancakes. I haven’t eaten that for a while.
After lunch we got guest speaker Kristina, who is UWP alumni and she asked us some tough questions about environment like how to make people to move from thinking to actions? I think a lot of people struggle when it comes the environment issue. Everyone are thinking how great it would be to do something for environment and when they have to move and do something, than they just forget everything and stay in their comfort zone. Like recycling… please, admit. How many of you do really recycle? Even small change like personal change is a big thing and it can help saving planet and maybe your change will inspire others to change also. Put your thoughts into action.
After guest speaker we were split in 5 groups and we got our topic on which we started discussion and we are going to work on our topics discussion tomorrow and in Friday we are going to present our solution on topic. So, my group’s topic is “Lifestyle, food consumption, trade”. We started out discussions and it was really interesting to hear what people think and we really had discussion full of passion. Our assignment for today was to find question which everyone can ask to make people think about our topic. At least we come to question: How do consumption and trade affect your lifestyle? Please, think about it and if you find some nice answer to it, send me an email and I would love to continue also discussion with you.
It was really hard day today especially as we are working on something that I’m really interested into and I’m really happy to be part of Youth conference on that topic. I mean, as an icebreaking game we were playing “Have you ever?” and one of the questions were “Have you ever recycle?” and there were a lot of people who were standing outside of circle which means that they never recycled. This is good opportunity for them to learn about planet and continue spreading learned knowledge in their communities.
When we come home tonight, first we went into the woods to walk the dog and it was so nice, so calming just walking in the woods. I love it. Woods smelled on mushrooms as there were a lot of mushrooms around. After nice walk, we had Thai dinner and this Thai food tasted much better than real Thai food in Thailand. I think I will start to love Thai food but our European or American version of it.
September 18 - Memories of Astrid Lindgren
Today we spend whole day in learning about Astrid. In the morning we had educational workshop with Cindy on topic catalyst and achievers and it was really nice to hear from people who they think is a catalyst in their life.
After that workshop we had first guest speaker and lady was talking to us about Astrid’s life. For people who do not know who Astrid is, Astrid is author of the world famous children story about Pippi Long stocking. She wrote big number of different children stories and of course, everyone knows her for Pippi Long stocking.
We heard about Astrid’s history and also we went around exhibition place to see Astrid’s house where she was born and where she was raised. She was born in small red house and at the age of 11 her father build new bigger house just next to the small one and front porch of the house she used as idea in some of hers books. Also, next to the yellow house is lemon tree where she used to play and now that tree is famous tourist spot for taking photos.
After surrounding tour, we went to see exhibition of Astrid’s life and it I can say that I was really impressed with exhibition. It was so cool. There was also big closed box where was dragon Katla who represent everything bad that may happen and it’s locked in that box so that it cannot run away. Whole exhibition is a little bit strange but in a positive way.
After exhibition we had one more guest speaker and he is CEO of Astrid L. Word which is a playing park for children. He was talking about how the park is running and what we have for amusement there. It was quite interesting.
Astrid Lindgren World paid us a lunch at their place so we went to Astrid’s world to have a lunch. Lunch was really good and I loved it.
After lunch we went to visit park and from what I can say, it was really nice experience. I found my childhood there. Whole Park is made for children and houses are small. If I would be kid, I know that I would enjoy park really much. Whole Park is big playground. Manuel and I, we went into houses and it was pretty challenging to get inside as we were too big for small doors, but we managed and it was really fun. I loved it. I will bring my kids one day for sure to Vimmerby to visit Astrid’s park.
After great time in park we went to High school to have one more educational lesson. This time we had to draw our dream house. After that we were split in groups and we whole had to draw our group dream house and after that we were drawing whole cast dream house. This was hard but we managed to do it. It’s hard as there are so many different opinions among every each member of the house.
September 15-17 - Show day in Sodertalje
Yesterday it was a show day here in Sodertalje. We had our show in Taljehallen basketball court. From the morning it was really busy as we had really a lot of thing on ours mind.
In the morning, we had to take care that BTS and promotion team reach right place. BTS is small show for certain audience and only few people are performing in that show. So, our BTS was taking place in Sodertalje center as part of Fashion show which was taking place in center of the city. I wasn’t there so I don’t know how it was and how everything looked like.
I was taking care of the Taljehallen facility and it was really busy as everyone needed rooms for tonight and we had to figure out where to put certain events happening after and before show so that everything can logistically work out fine. Soon after that came the lunch time and it wasn’t much work with that as we got donated sandwiches from Nancy’s so they just had to take sandwich.
After lunch, it’s been busy as our VIP backstage tour was starting. VIP backstage tour is tour for potential students in Up with people who have an unique chance to go backstage, see how things work backstage and spend whole afternoon with cast.
We also had guest speaker Tommy Spaulding, CEO of Up with People as our guest. It’s been really good to hear his speech as that’s what we needed at that point.
After the backstage tour, our children choir came. They are in the show with us in 2 songs.
When we took care of all of that, it was already dinner time so it was our responsibility to take care of the dinner. For dinner we had past with tomato sauce from PastaHuset. It was really good meal and cast was really happy to get that.
After dinner things went really fast… Green room… guests… show… From the dinner to show, everything is a little bit blurry to me as it was happening so fast. Green room was awesome and I missed it for this 3 weeks. It’s good to be back in the cast.
Show was awesome. I almost cry when I saw my cast standing there and performing. As Faith and I, we were in advanced work; we didn’t have to participate in the show. We watched the show and we were so proud of our cast.
After the show I met girl coming from Bosnia. It’s ironic as funny thing happened yesterday morning when Faith and I started to prepare ourselves for show day. I was standing in bathroom, after just wakening up and I was washing my face and question just popped out of my mouth: “Kaj planiraš obuæi danas?” She was looking at me and than I realized that I spoke Croatian language with her and that I have to correct that so I asked her again: ”What do you plan to wear today?”
Life is so unpredictable and sometimes I think that life is playing with us. Sometimes things happen that tried to worn you of some things happening in near future and this things are the things to watch out for as they can really be precious. In my deep mind, life tried to tell me that I’m about to meet nice girl from Bosnia and that I’m about to speak some Croatian language today. And I didn’t realize that until I met her and when she introduces herself in Croatian language, not English. That was moment to remember.
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- 18:20 -
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24.09.2007., ponedjeljak
Greetings from Germany
Here I am in Uelzen, Germany. We were traveling all day today and I just finished dinner with my new host family and Í am preparing for sleeping. Tomorrow is new hard day as we are going to visit one very interesting place.
Updates from Vimmerby are comming soon.
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- 21:59 -
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18.09.2007., utorak
Back on the road
I'm back on the road finally and I'm in Vimmerby, Sweden at the moment. We are staying here for one week and my new roommates are Emilie from Sweden and Vanessa from USA. We live like 10-15km outside of Vimmerby and it's really nice wooden house in quite place.
A lot of things happen last 2 days. As I'm not using my computer and I don't have access to photos from last 2 days on this computer, I will only say in short notices what was happening last 2 days.
Sunday I spent with my host family. Around 2PM I went with my host brother and his friend Rodolfo to Tom Tits Experiment museum and I really had great time. If you ask me, it's better than any amusement park. It's museum of different science experiments and we went to try how force will affect us. It was so much fun, but my stomach felt really bad after that.
After that we tried bunch of other experements and I loved it. Thankt you Johan and Rodolfo for taking me to Tom Tits.
Dinner we spend at home with family and Alva, my host mum prepared really nice dinner.
After dinner, Faith and I finally started to pack and in the morning it was time to leave.
Our bus left Sodertalje at 9.30 and we come to Vimmerby around 3PM. It wasn't a long drive. We had cast meeting with Tim Lane and after that our host family pick up.
It's really good to be back in the cast and on the road and I already miss my host family from Sodertalje. I spend with them around 3 weeks and I had a chance to really get to know them better as well as my roommate Faith.
New city, new experiences and new things are in front of me. I'm open for everything.
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- 07:25 -
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16.09.2007., nedjelja
Show day in Sodertalje
Yesterday it was a show day here in Sodertalje. We had our show in Taljehallen basketball court. From the morning it was really busy as we had really a lot of thing on ours mind.
In the morning, we had to take care that BTS and promotion team reach right place. BTS is small show for certain audience and only few people are performing in that show. So, our BTS was taking place in Sodertalje center as part of Fashion show which was taking place in center of the city. I wasn’t there so I don’t know how it was and how everything looked like.
I was taking care of the Taljehallen facility and it was really busy as everyone needed rooms for tonight and we had to figure out where to put certain events happening after and before show so that everything can logistically work out fine. Soon after that came the lunch time and it wasn’t much work with that as we got donated sandwiches from Nancy’s so they just had to take sandwich.
After lunch, it’s been busy as our VIP backstage tour was starting. VIP backstage tour is tour for potential students in Up with people who have an unique chance to go backstage, see how things work backstage and spend whole afternoon with cast.
We also had guest speaker Tommy Spaulding, CEO of Up with People as our guest. It’s been really good to hear his speech as that’s what we needed at that point.
After the backstage tour, our children choir came. They are in the show with us in 2 songs.
When we took care of all of that, it was already dinner time so it was our responsibility to take care of the dinner. For dinner we had past with tomato sauce from PastaHuset. It was really good meal and cast was really happy to get that.
After dinner things went really fast… Green room… guests… show… From the dinner to show, everything is a little bit blurry to me as it was happening so fast. Green room was awesome and I missed it for this 3 weeks. It’s good to be back in the cast.
Show was awesome. I almost cry when I saw my cast standing there and performing. As Faith and I, we were in advanced work; we didn’t have to participate in the show. We watched the show and we were so proud of our cast.
After the show I met girl coming from Bosnia. It’s ironic as funny thing happened yesterday morning when Faith and I started to prepare ourselves for show day. I was standing in bathroom, after just wakening up and I was washing my face and question just popped out of my mouth: “Kaj planiraš obuæi danas?” She was looking at me and than I realized that I spoke Croatian language with her and that I have to correct that so I asked her again: ”What do you plan to wear today?”
Life is so unpredictable and sometimes I think that life is playing with us. Sometimes things happen that tried to worn you of some things happening in near future and this things are the things to watch out for as they can really be precious. In my deep mind, life tried to tell me that I’m about to meet nice girl from Bosnia and that I’m about to speak some Croatian language today. And I didn’t realize that until I met her and when she introduces herself in Croatian language, not English. That was moment to remember.
Florence(ourCRC), me, Johan (host brother), Rodolfo, Faith
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- 11:09 -
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14.09.2007., petak
CI days
So, how did you spend your last 2 days?? Me?? Well, I was working really hard. Last 2 days were pretty much the same. Both days were community impact days and cast was working with high school kids on different working shop activities. All of the kids that were there had really a lot of fun, especially playing football at Football arena. Football arena is actually the biggiest football stadium in Sodertalje area and it was amazing staying in the actual field, not on the seating places at arena.
For me, both days pretty much looked the same. I had to work on both days and I wasn’t involved in CI activities. My job was mainly to see if everything is working fine and arranging lunch for people and planning for the next day what has to be done. It was amazing to be part of organizational team and see how things work when you are not actually involved in them. For change, it was fun, but still, I missed more interaction with people and with students.
Today we had 3 guest speakers. Emma, lady who worked in immigration office of SodertaljeKommun and she talked about immigrants coming to Sodertalje. After that we had refugee from Iraq (and don’t ask me to write his name as I would probably misspelled it and I don’t want to do that) and he talked about how it was for him to leave his home country and his home and family and come to live here in Sweden. He came to live in Sweden in March and he said that it was really hard for him to leave his home, but it was also really unsafe for him to stay there. It was hard to hear his story and here how is actually to be refugee.
Our last guest speaker was Hans, the owner of organic farm. He works on organic farm and 4 of ours students had a chance to stay in his farm with his family for this week. That was so exciting to hear how the farm works and girls (our cast mates) told us what they were doing. It’s actually farm without animals and any kind of automatic tools. You have to use medieval way to grow vegetables and for me that’s so amazing.
Last 2 days seems to be really long for me. It seems to be like Denver days as we wake up really early around 6 and we go to sleep around 11PM. And we work all day really hard and in the evening we are so hungry that we could eat everything what you put in front of us, even thou I had really nice breakfast and kind of decent lunch.
Dinner with our host-grandmother (our host dad's mother) who is 90 years old and likes surfing internet
Local newspaper announcing Up with People coming to Sodertalje on the front page
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- 22:41 -
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12.09.2007., srijeda
Welcome Cast C to Sodertalje!!
You have no idea how happy I am that cast is finally here. I have really rough day behind me and it all started from the morning.
In the morning, first we had problems with breakfast as we wanted to bake breads and we did everything right, but when we wanted to take breads out from the own, we couldn’t open the own. It had children safety lock and I didn’t know how to open it and we ended up calling our host dad to help us out and finally after that we had breakfast.
After that we rushed to office and since we came into the office, there was always something we had to work on so I ended up being without lunch because of too much things to do before cast coming.
At 4PM we left office to go to school where we had to wait for cast to arrive. Cast arrived around 5PM and it was so nice to see everyone. I missed everyone so much and I’m soo happy that they are finally here. Amazing.
Considering the logistics, everything went smoothly and we didn’t have any problems. Only problem we had was that 2 girls didn’t catch bus in Stockholm, so they had to come with the train to Sodertalje, but they managed to do that and everything was great.
Some of the host families were really innovative with host codes and I liked that very much. Everyone is with their host families at the moment and I’m happy that everything worked fine. I was manly responsible for host families during last 2 weeks so now when cast is here, I’m happy that it worked fine.
After everyone left building, our host dad took me and Faith to meet his mother. She lives in center of Sodertalje in nice apartment and read slowly and pay attention… she is 90 years old and she likes using computer and internet. Wow… that’s amazing. She is really special woman and I liked her very much. She cooked us nice fish soup and desert and it was really good meal. I still cannot believe that she is 90 years old and she does everything by herself.
This was very long day for me and this is going to be first day probably when I will go to sleep earlier that 10PM.
Photos will be hopefully uploaded soon. I just don’t have time to sit and upload from my camera to computer.
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- 22:21 -
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0 days left
I’m really sorry for not writing for few days but it was really crazy life. Cast is finally coming tomorrow and we had to take care of a lot of things lately.
In Sunday we worked mostly on host family meeting information and arranging host families. We found few hours free to go with our host dad to visit his daughter and it was really nice to meet the host family.
In Monday we had our host family meeting with host families so we had to arrange everything with this to work fine and meeting was great. Most of the families came to the meeting and we talked about everything that is family concerned.
At the evening I worked on our Schedule booklet which every student get when they come to city. I wanted to make booklet perfect so I worked till 2 in the night. It was hard night but nothing that I cannot survive.
Today I had to wake up early in the morning to bring booklets to copy store so I was only sleeping 4 and half hours. Morning was really busy, working on last graphical preparations of the booklets. Booklets are awesome, and I’m not saying that only because I was working on them, but from the start I knew that we don’t have budget for booklets so I made a piece that we are not going to have any kind of fancy booklets, but it turn out to be really nice and a little bit fancy. After that, I worked on host families again. Faith and I, we also had to allocate students to host families and it was hard job to do it, but it worked fine.
So, now is 00:20 and we just finished working on allocating students in host families and I’m not going to tell anything… Let’s keep the secret till tomorrows, or better say today’s meeting at 18.00.
I cannot wait to see the cast. I really missed them. It was really nice to be here in Sodertalje on advanced work and I would do it one more time, but at the same time I miss cast and group of people around me. Tomorrow’s day is going to be really emotional. Finally they are here :)
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- 00:24 -
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08.09.2007., subota
Working Saturday
Knock…Knock…Knock…
And I finally opened my eyes and realized that my host brother is knocking on my door. He and his girlfriend and host mum Alva left today in the morning for Turkey to have vacation. I barely woke up after hearing knocking and I went to say good bye to them. It’s not good bye forever as they are coming back next Saturday so we will still have 2 days to spend with them.
I hugged them and said goodbye and than I went back to sleep. It was hard for me to fall asleep again so I just chilled a little bit more and than I start working on my computer. I uploaded some cool photos again and I realized that I didn’t upload any photos from San Diego, so I did that today that you can see how it was in San Diego for us before going to Thailand.
After Faith woke up, we had breakfast with our host dad and than we decided to go to center to shop a little bit and around 2PM we met Ulrike and 2 more alumni friends who decided to help us. We went to Ulrike’s house and we started to work on finalizing Sodertalje for cast to come. There are so many things we still have to take care of and in few days they will be here. We worked most on host families and some logistical stuff and also hotel and food. I cannot believe that in few days we will see cast again. I miss them all so much already and I’m really happy that they are coming.
When we come back home, our host dad prepared us nice dinner and we eat dinner together. It's been a little bit quite since Alva and Johan are not here. We'll be missing them.
Now is Faith’s and my job to continue working on stuff for our cast so that we can finish our job ASAP.
Here are photos from Sodertalje(last week):
Here you can find the rest of the photos from Sodertalje.
Here are photos from San Diego:
Here are the rest of the photos from San Diego.
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- 21:10 -
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07.09.2007., petak
2 months away from home
Today is exactly 2 months since I leave home. 7th July I started traveling with Up with People and I feel that it’s been even more than 2 months. Is it because I learned so much so far or is it because I visited so many different places and meet so many different people, I don’t really know the right answer to that question. Only thing I know is that I have time of my life and I’m for sure enjoying it.
So, what happened yesterday? Yesterday was all working day. At 1PM we had an interview with local newspaper. Interview went great. It was more relaxed interview and I didn’t felt any pressure. I think I’m kind of getting used to popularity.
We left our work at 5.30PM to go to Stockholm to see music show with our host brother. Our host mum got a ticket for the show and she gave tickets to us. It was really fun show. It was a lot of music and a lot of jokes which we didn’t understood as they were all in Swedish, so we just enjoyed in music and movements.
It was really fun night especially as we spend it with our host brother. Spending time with him is such a fun. We came home late as we had to travel from Stockholm by train.
Today was a little bit different day. We had 2 presentations in the morning in high school of arts where students learn dancing, music, photography, film etc. It was really fun. I received question from one girl and she asked if we miss home. I didn’t even thought about that question before that. Do I miss home? Well, of course I do, but being with host families and other cast members, you just don’t have time to feel home sick. There are times when I feel home sick but they are so rarely.
After coming back from schools we continued working. Florence and I, we went to see FootbalArena one more time and we went to arrange hotel for our staff. It was fun trip as the guy from SodertaljeKommun doesn’t understand English, but he drives us around and we always laugh as he is really funny guy, no matter that we don’t understand a thing what he says.
In the afternoon I was working hard in arranging host families. We really deserved some rest and nice dinner which was waiting for as at home. Our host brother and his mum are leaving for vacation in Turkey tomorrow so we had kind of good by goofy dinner thing. We laughed and we really enjoyed just spending time together. They are luckily coming back next Saturday so this is not good bye. :)
Few minutes ago my host brother teaches me how to play piano. It was really fun. I didn’t even realize that it is so easy. I mean… I was afraid that because of so many keys, playing piano would be really hard and learning chords would be really hard, but it’s actually easy. I know few chords now and I will continue to study that a little bit more.
Funny thing happened the other day. I think it was 2 days ago when we had presentation at Nature High School and when we were doing crossing the line activity. That day, before entering the school, as we were passing close to some girls, we realized that their language sounded exactly like Thai. We weren’t sure, but I really wanted to know if they come from Thai and we asked them and of course, they were from Thailand. We talked a little bit but we were really impressed how Thai language comes into our ears and we could really easily recognize it.
Well, it’s been a long day and long evening. I think I will go to sleep finally.
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- 23:58 -
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05.09.2007., srijeda
Tough working day
Today has been the longest day since we came to Sweden.
We woke up early in the morning and after breakfast we started to work. We had to leave house around 11 to catch bus in 11.30 to go to visit one of the schools and make presentation.
It’s been really tough presentation. We had small class of 30 different students and first we made a presentation about Up with People and after that we worked on 2 activities. First activity was activity to show them that no matter that we are all in the same classroom that we are all different. It is an activity with piece of paper.
Second activity was Cross the line activity. We had some tough questions for this activity and students responded differently. All of the students were part of cross the line activity but most of them didn’t want to discuss about the questions we asked them. It was just too hard for them.
I don’t remember if I talked about issue here in Sodertalje. Big issue here are refugees and it’s a big problem among students in high school or any other association.
After finishing workshops in school, it was already 3PM and Faith and I decided to take lunch, but we got message from Florence that we are going to visit Football stadium where our CI project is going to take place.
It is really nice stadium.
After visiting stadium we come to office to continue working and soon we had meeting with Mohamed, guy from SodertaljeKommun who is working with us. We had to discuss about what is going on our CI project and how everything is going to be.
After that meeting I worked more on setting the host families and at the end, Faith and I finished our work at 6.45.
Luckily, our host mum prepared us really nice dinner and thank her and whole host family to take care so well about us.
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- 21:51 -
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04.09.2007., utorak
Working hard in Sweden
Last 2 days we’ve been working really hard here in Sweden.
Yesterday we went to Stockholm in the morning as at 11.30 we had meeting with Rotary International Club in Stockholm to talk about Up with People coming to Sodertalje. It’s been really nice presentation and we loved it. President of the club, Rita, was really nice and she said that she will try to help us.
In the morning we had to take train to Stockholm and it is only 45 minutes drive with train. From what we could see in Stockholm, we loved it and we really decided that we are moving there in future. If you ask me, it reminds me to Riga, Latvia which is in a way reasonable because both cities are northern Europe cities.
Around 2 we returned to Sodertalje and we continue working in office taking care of the rest of the things.
Today we continued working on setting the city for the cast. We had another presentation but this time in High school and we had to present in front of more than 350 high school students. It has been challenging experience as it’s hard to keep everyone quite but we managed to do it. After that we come back to office and continue working there as it has been raining from time to time all day and it would be hard to walk around. We still don’t have show posters so we in a way feel that we miss things, but we are still working hard to promote show in the city and area around.
Our host mum prepared us really nice dinner for both evenings. Yesterday was also hers “name day”. Her name is Alva as Alva Edison and she celebrated her name day yesterday. Also, we met her daughter and her grandchildren yesterday. That was really cool.
Weather is a little bit freezing here in Sweden. It’s been raining and wind is blowing all the time so I’m still having hard time with weather, but I’m getting used to.
My host family in Sodertalje:
Rest of the photos I managed to upload you can find here.
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- 23:06 -
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02.09.2007., nedjelja
How did the first weekend in Sweden pass?
This weekend was very interesting and I thank very much to my host family that they made this weekend so unique.
My host family took me and Faith to their summer house in the woods. It was sooo cool. I loved it.
Yesterday morning Faith and I spent at home in Sodertalje working and catching with all emails we didn’t answer during our stay in Thailand. Around 3PM our host mum picked us up and took us to summer house. First she showed us little town near by where they used to live and she told us some great stories about it. She also showed us their old house in that little city.
We reached summer house around 6PM and I fall in love with it. It’s small house in the woods far away from traffic. It is just perfect. They showed us little guest house where we were sleeping last night. When I say small, I really mean small but perfect. I took the top bed and Faith took the bottom one.
Dinner was ready around 8 and outside it was a little bit freezing but we still decided to eat dinner outside. They turned on warming machine so it wasn’t so cold. Evening and dinner was great. I loved it, with candles and jacket on myself.
After dinner we went to watch Spartacus, but we were tired so we called off the movie and went to sleep. It was great night sleep as it was so quiet.
I woke up around 8 and I felt great. It was sunny nice day. I worked on my computer till 10 when Faith woke up and together we went to eat some breakfast. After breakfast, our host parents decided to go to the woods to hunt mushrooms so I decided to go with them. Faith wasn’t feeling very well so she stayed at house and watched Spartacus.
Woods were awesome. Trust me, woods here in Sweden looks like woods from fairytale and only thing it was missing was little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf. Amazing! As we were walking, I felt like walking on the carpet as on the bottom it was a lot of that wooden plant, I don’t know the name. In Croatian is “Mahovina”.
Our mushroom hunting wasn’t successful at all. We found one undeclared mushroom so we took it with us to define what kind of mushroom is that. Woods were really dry so we couldn’t find anything. We found tree where moos was sharpen his “top on the head” part and we also found moos shit. We found while mushroom which was considered to be the poisons mushroom and also my host parents told me a story how Vikings used mushrooms to get angry for fighting.
After we come back we were watching High Jump World Championship in Osaka and Blanka Vlasic won the first prize. If you haven’t heard, Blanka is Croatian best high jump sport player and she jumped 2.05 meters in Osaka and won gold medal. I’m so proud to be Croat.
After that, we had mushroom soap for dinner. Of course, not from the mushroom we found. And after that we start packing and return back to Sodertalje.
Here in Sodertalje, I spend the rest of the day playing guitar with my host brother Johan and just enjoying the dinner with whole host family.
I uploaded all my photos from Thailand. Here you can find the rest of the photos. Whatch out for new photos from Sweden soon.
My host family day
My Community Impact project I was working on
My traveling day to Bangkok and night spent in Bangkok
Here are some photos:
Me looking at 3 beautiful beaches at the back
Drinking coconut milk
Last host family dinner - barbique in front of the house
CI project - sunshine village
Children from Sunshine village
Daniele and me driving in tuk-tuk in Bangkok
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- 22:15 -
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01.09.2007., subota
Some photos uploaded from Thailand
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