New Year, New Semester

Hello, 2016! Hope everyone had a great holiday season. Christmas and New Years were definitely special this year because I got to come home to celebrate with my family after being apart from them for the whole semester, but I'll get to that later! I haven't written a blog since before Thanksgiving so there's quite a bit to catch up on . . .

• Thanksgiving: Luke and I decided to try our best at giving our friends a traditional American Thanksgiving. We had vegetable pot pie, green bean casserole, tons of mashed potatoes, rolls, and our friend Emma brought a traditional Swedish holiday ham. Our group had a few vegetarians, so the turkey wasn't missed. For dessert, we had apple pie and a black forest cake from our German friend, Sabrina, whose family is from the Black Forest (shout out to Mariko for helping Sabrina bake!). It felt a little weird not to have pumpkin pie, but we looked around for canned or real pumpkins and there were none to be found. Apparently, Swedes don't like pumpkin very much anyway, and a few of them seemed to reeeeally dislike it, so it was probably for the best that we couldn't find any. It also felt strange not to be with family for Thanksgiving, but having all the same foods and being with such good company made it feel just like home.

Our Thanksgiving crew, from left to right: Lina, Saki, Mariko, Zuzana, Isak, Nikita, Marco, Emma, Luke, and Alex

• There was a lot going on in December with the end of the semester and the start of the holidays, so we began the festivities with a gingerbread competition (link also talks about celebrating Lucia, which is two bullet points down). Our group's idea was to make a lighthouse (credit to Zuzana), though there was another great idea to make a UFO (credit to Marco). We were able to cut out the dough into the shapes we needed, so we tried to be as accurate as possible, but of course, some difficulties arose which led us to create a beautiful lighthouse being attacked by aliens, and a Moomin (Finnish cartoon character) in the Moominboat coming to save it. It's beautiful!

Our gingerbread making team
Top row: Sara, Zuzana, Luke, me
Bottom row: Saki and Johanna

• The next night, we went to a hockey game! A nearby team, Huskvarna's HV71, was playing a home game against Örebro. My first hockey game ever! There was such energy in the stadium like I'd never seen before, with so many people happy and cheering before the game even started. We sat next to the most motivated cheering section, where large, bearded, young men were being led into chants by other large, bearded men beating a drum and screaming. It was awesome. Once the players got onto the ice, it seemed like nothing could keep them from winning. We all held little paper clappers to beat along with the rest of the crowd, which carried on almost nonstop throughout the entire game, making the atmosphere all the more exciting. And of course, HV71 won the game, 7-2!

• The day after that, we celebrated Lucia! St. Lucia is believed to be a martyr in the 3rd century, where she brought food to persecuted Christians hiding underground in Roman catacombs. In the Lucia tradition, girls and boys wear long, white robes and red sashes, while holding candles. One person is picked to be Lucia, and that person wears a head wreath of candles (I read that this tradition came from St. Lucia wearing the wreath of candles so her hands could be free to carry as much food as she could). This year, our friend Saki was chosen as Lucia! She perfectly embodies Lucia, with her kind, good, and gentle spirit. The ceremony was beautiful, as the Lucia procession walked into the auditorium singing pretty hymns. The only light in the room was from all the candles, which created such a calm, almost church-like atmosphere. I remember my grandmother having a doll all dressed in Lucia's clothing during Christmastime, and I never knew the story behind it or even what Lucia was, so it was sort of nice to finally come full circle from that to this amazing journey I've been lucky enough to go on.
  

  

  Saki in front as Lucia
  Beautiful photo credit goes to Zuzana
  (Link to her blog and her Facebook page where you can find more amazing photos)

• A few days before the semester ended, we had the traditional Swedish "Julbord," or Christmas table. There were so many different foods, like cheeses, vegetables, fish, sauces, meatballs (though I've become vegetarian here, I must admit I had to try a Swedish meatball!), and so many others that I can't even remember because there was just so much. We were told that it's customary to go up to the Julbord seven times or to have seven plates full of food. Everything was so good, I can understand why people would get seven plates of it!
  
  

  

  Photo credit to Mullsjö Folkhögskola Facebook page

• I learned that Swedes celebrate Christmas in the best way- by singing and dancing around the tree! After meeting Santa and singing Christmas carols, everyone went to the gym to dance around the Christmas tree. Though I was told this is usually for children, everyone was so enthusiastic with Christmas spirit, it seemed like they were more than happy to participate. Each song gave you silly things to do, like hold hands, put your hands on the head of the person in front of you, jump up and down, make animal gestures, run to the middle of the circle, and lots of other wacky stuff. The songs were in Swedish, so I had a hard time following along, but someone helped us figure out what to do and we had a blast. Here is a link from the school website with pictures of all the Christmas celebrations, including Julbord and the dance. 

• Our photography class put up two really great shows towards the end of the year, a student portraits assignment, and our best film photo. Everyone's photos turned out so great and I think it was satisfying to see what all of our hard work amounted to. The portraits were a bit of a challenge for everyone, because taking a portrait of someone is harder than you would think. It's important to make a connection with the person, and to make them feel comfortable around you. It's more of working with the individual to get a nice photo, instead of just using them for a photo. The film photos were challenging in a more technical way since I am very much a beginner in analog photography. It's tough figuring out how to get the type of print you want when you can't undo or change something as fast as you can in Photoshop. At first it was frustrating, but now I really like working in the dark room and I can't wait to learn even more about analog photography.
  
  

  

  My analog print- sorry for the really terrible quality of this photo! 

Hanging of our analog photos

Hanging of our portraits

• It was hard to say goodbye to everyone for the break (especially Zuzana, who won't be back for the Spring semester!!), but I was so excited to see my family and everyone back home. I've missed them so much! It was such a great moment to finally see them in real life at the airport instead of on Facetime on my my computer screen. While I was home, I ate tons of pizza and donuts, met the new family cat, drove my car as much as possible, and most importantly, spent time with family and friends. Two weeks went by so fast! Now I'm back in Sweden, and I'm so excited to see what other adventures are in store for this semester. A billion thanks to everyone who gave me well wishes and support while I was home, I really can't thank you all enough.

Hope to write again soon. :) Hej då!