Go Go Team Latvia

This is long long long overdue, and I'm so very sorry about it.
You could say I've had a very busy last 3 weeks? last month? (oops)
Let's just say I've seen a "bit" of Europe since the last time I wrote to you. I'll start from the beginning I guess.
Sweden:
Three weekends ago(?) I traveled to Sweden with three other exchange students living in Latvia and Guna, the person responsible for us. The other three exchange students are all wonderful people two girls from the US; Katie from Illinois, and Anne from Missouri. (representing the midwest for sure) Then the last member of our party would be Felix a very nice boy from Germany. We all met in Riga (the capital of Latvia) and flew from there to Stockholm, it took just over an hour. Once in Stockholm we had a little over an hour and a half bus ride to Soderkoping, which would be our final destination. Atfirst the bus pulled us into a campground (at the time none of knew where we would be staying), all you could here from the back of the bus was gasps of, "No way," and "you've got to be kidding me!?" Well the joke was on us I guess, we had in fact pulled into the wrong place...Our actual home for the weekend would be a youth hostel down the road.

Now the word hostel might provoke images of dirty rooms where things are falling to pieces with total shady characters renting out the rooms around you...but to put aside your fears European hostels are actually very nice and this one was completely rented out to the Rotary. When we arrived we were greeted by the head of the Swedish district we share, Jaun Eric, we found out then that we had the hostel to ourselves that night because the Swedish kids wouldn't meet up with us until the following day at lunch. After explaining to him that we were virtually dieing of hunger (okay not dieing but we could cry wolf a little bit), he offered to go out and buy us Chinese. So that was dinner and my first Swedish experience, "Swedish Chinese", need I say more?
The next day at lunch we met up with the 21 other rotary kids, who were all as hungry to speak some fast English as we were. The group was made up of mostly Americans and Australians, do you know how nice it is to not worry about using the wrong words which could lead you to explain the word needy for half an hour? (oh it is so nice) There were kids from else where as well: Japan, Taiwan, Brazil, Switzerland, Canada and France. Because our Latvian group was so largely out numbered by the group from Sweden we were deemed "Team Latvia" and referred to as a group more than individuals the remainder of the weekend.
After lunch we headed off to work on our acts for the "talent" show that would be performed at the next meeting. To give you the idea of the "talent" the boys decided they would like to all do a ribbon dance to Dancing Queen by ABBA, ABBA being the most cultural thing about it...but it was really funny to watch them prance around with toilet paper. The evening included bowling, dinner (which was very tasty), and then free time. They told us to not leave town and try not to get back to the hostel to late, so the group decided to hit a Disco, which in the end put us back to the hostel just shy of two in the morning...and led to us all sitting in the kitchen talking until right around four in the morning...We all agreed the next day that our bodies hated us.
After the refrigerator turned to be just full of cheese, sausage and bread Taylor(Arizona), Katie and I headed out to find some "Corn Flakes"...We found our cereal, danced with it across a bridge, we were then unsuccessful in locating any hot chocolate and so headed back to the hostel to enjoy our find.

It was really hard to see all the kids head out their separate ways, I guess it was kind of like a home away from home for a weekend. We really really enjoyed ourselves, the company was truly amazing. You really realize how alone you are in Europe having 24 less exchange students around you the next day.

And that was my adventure to Sweden, a whole lot of good good fun.
Until next time.
From Latvia with love