Hello Sweden!

Well, here I am in Stockholm, Sweden. I am sitting at a computer in my bedroom at my host's house. David dropped me off at the airport at 9:30 PM on Sunday after he and Katia provided me with cookies and books for the plane ride. So after a three hour delay out of Salt Lake making me leave at 2:30 AM, I arrived in Newark where I had to wait another nine hours before my flight to Sweden. However, with the help of Dave and Katia's cookies and books, I finally got to Arlanda Airport this morning at 7 AM.

I met Julie, another girl in my group, at the airport and we waited until our director, Chip Oscarson, came to meet us. We all then took a bus ride into Stockholm where we got our bus/metro passes and met up with Madeleine. After dropping our stuff off at our respective housing locations, Julie, Madeleine, and I went into the old city, Gamla Stan, to eat lunch and look around a bit. We ate sandwiches and got some pretty good ice cream (glass) and then walked around and saw St. George slaying the dragon (a statue of it actually :) ), the Royal Palace, a few different churches, and walked along the water. Since Julie and I were both so exhausted what with jet lag and not having slept much on our flights, we called it a day at about 3:30.

Julie and Madeleine rode the metro with me a little ways, then took a bus back to their host family's house and I rode the metro a bit further and after buying some apricots for dinner and breakfast along with Dave and Katia's last cookies (which will be fine until I can go to a grocery store), I walked about a mile up the road to where I will live. My host is Irene Karlsson and she lives here with her 18-year-old daughter, Emma. They both seem really nice and my bedroom, which I will share with Brittany, is very cute and comfortable. I tried to stay awake, but alas, I fell asleep reading and just woke up a half hour ago at 9 PM after a 3 hour nap and I am not very surprised to see it still light at 9:40 PM. Hopefully, I will be tired enough to sleep well tonight and get my body on this new Swedish time schedule.

Sweden is very beautiful and so green. It's kind of fun to fit into the population. With my blonde hair I can fit in as a Swede (unlike Jerusalem where it just got me cat calls :)) and it is fun to have the people start talking to me in Swedish before I ruin the fun and tell them I do not speak Swedish yet. I have started learning more though by just being here one day, so I'm hoping I will be able to pick it up pretty quickly hearing it all the time. Now I'm going to go eat dinner and make myself stay awake until my roommate, Brittany, gets here at 11 PM.

P.S. Sorry if this seems disjointed and rambling. I am still running on very little sleep and am only half awake after my nap. :)
P.P.S. Despite my best attempts, I cannot figure out how to get pictures on this computer. Since everything is in Swedish I can't really resolve the problem, so I will have to wait until I can use Brittany's computer to post some pictures.