Author Archives: Alexandra

Sangria and taco night

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I had such a lovely evening with my girls Andrea, Emma and Julia. We were at Andrea’s place eating tacos (and I thought them that it is possible to put pineapple in it) and drinking homemade sangrias. We talked about everything and nothing for several hours and later in the evening Andrea’s boyfriend and friend joined us. They told us they were having a blast. Two guys who could participate in girls’ talk was apparently fun.

Andrea had her last day of work today and on Saturday she is going to Greece for a week. After that we decided to have another girl’s night where we will go out after a typical girl’s preparty. I look forward to that!

Work today went on fast. I only had 6 hours of work. I had a couple of hours at Höjdskräcken, a couple at Helix and one hour at the end at Balderado. So far I’ve been at Balderado five full days, one half day and three hours spread out over three different days. I chose Ponnykarusellen and Kristallsalongen for my last hour. So awesome!

At my one break there were cookies and candy in the break room because three different people had their last day today. It is always a bit nice when people have their last day and put out cookies and stuff but it is also very sad. I am gonna bake chocolate muffins when I have my last day in two weeks.

10 hour day

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This morning when I got in to work I got a special assignment from one of my supervisors. I got ten minutes of extra pay for going around to all the attractions at Balderado handing out new schedules. It  was hard finding the right way to both Balder and Kållerado, but I managed. So my first few hours of the day, until lunch I was at Balderado, and after lunch I was at Berget. It was perfect with that combination on such a long day.

I have been extremely tired today. Five days in a row of working late and closing attractions is getting to me. And this day’s ending was even worse than the rest. I was at Helix and the OP forgot to tell me that I could go home at 11. Everyone else got off at 11:20. That meant that I missed my tram home and got home at midnight instead of half past eleven. That sucked. We also had to close down Helix very sudden because one of the mechanics called and told us to absolutely not send another train on the tracks. It was weird.

Now I need to go to bed. I have to get up early tomorrow, work until 6pm and then have a cozy taco evening with Emma and Andrea :). I really look forward to that!

1 month left

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I can’t believe I only have one month left in this country. In exactly a month (1am on September 13th) I will be a few hours away from Los Angeles. This summer went by so fast. Well, to be honest, the past couple of years just disappeared. I have mixed feelings about going back to Cali. It will be a great experience being an exchange student at an American university, and my English will improve so much. But I have more to miss in Sweden now compared to last time. So many new friends, a boyfriend.

The EDES 406 class worked out. I tried to enroll in a new class last night but it didn’t work. So I emailed the person I’ve been on contact with for the past months about everything, and she said that as long as I’ve talked to the professor of the class everything will be fine. I’ve chosen to believe her. No point in being worried.

At the end of this week I will decide how I will go to SLO from LA, probably with a rental car. And then I will need to book a bed at a hostel in SLO for my first two nights. And that is it, except for packing which I will start doing in September. I want to live normally for as long as possible.

 

Yesterday the weather was craxy here in Gothenburg. I think it is the fall that is coming. One moment we had sun, the next it was pouring down, and all the time it was extremely windy. Almost too windy to operate the attractions up on the mountain. The sky was dark and it looked like a thunderstorm would start at any moment. But it never came. It was gone before anything happened.

I had a pretty rough schedule with just hourly passes. One hour at Höjdskräcken, one hour at Helix and so on. SOme half hours are nice. During my last 1,5 hours at Helix a guy asked me to take a selfie of them while they were sitting on the Helix train. I should have taken a selfie of myself. But the point is that he used to word selfie instead of photo which was weird. A selfie is when you take a photo of yourself, while taking a photo of someone else is just taking a photo. Today’s youth!

 

Five out of six days this week I work until closing. It takes a lot of energy and not getting enough sleep is getting to me. I’ve been so exhausted today! I should probably go to bed now, but I think Chad’s parents wanted to Skype, that would be the first time. Exciting, but I could probably be a betterm e when I’m not this tired.

Tomorrow I have a 10 hour working day. Noon to 11pm.That will be a tough day. I don’t think I will get up earlier to study like I have all the other days this week. I think I need the sleep! But I have felt really good about myself for solving one problem each day before work. On Friday I will sit down most of the day while the pulled pork will be cooking in the oven. The same on Saturday. And Sunday morning, and all the other days until August 27th.

Sunday

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Yesterday I had my 5th day of this summer season at Balderado. I had Spinrock the whole day but that was great. Spinrock is fun to work at and especially when you are two people. The day went by super fast and I was home before I knew it.

Today I was at Berget again where I only had one hour passes which is kinda slow if you have it the whole day. One hour at one attraction is a lot of time. Half hours go by so much faster and the variation makes it easier to keep the mood up.

I was in a very good mood today, but my tiredness made it tough to keep it up. I did have a nice day in general though.

My tooth, or the lack of tooth more correctly, is okay. It hurts a tiny bit, but I could eat almost without any problems at all. But being careless probably made it worse by the evening. Now it hurts when I swallow and it feels like I have a sore throat. But I know better, it is the hole. I should probably be more careful, even if it feels alright, because it probably isn’t alright just yet. It has just been three days!

I closed Höjdskräcken today again. So awesome. No stress, you get closer to the guests who actually come and you can relax before going home. Love it!

 

I found out a couple of days ago that I need to enroll in a new course at Cal Poly because I am currently on the waiting list for the environmental class that is mandatory. I was certain that I would get that class because of an email from the professor a while back. But I am second on the wait list and to meet the requirements of my visa status I need to enroll and get accepted to 3 more credits. I’ve found another class that might be similar, Sustainable Environmental Engineering. But I will also enroll in German 1. I have to get one of those three classes and will have more options. I really hope I get Sustainable Environments, my first choice, but if I don’t I will have to take that class when I am back in Sweden which will suck, but it would work. So tomorrow night at 11pm I will enroll in new classes. Cross your fingers for me that I get my first choice!

A third tooth pulled

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This weekend went by without my realization. It wasn’t a very good weekend, but I won’t go into the boring details about that. Instead I can tell you that my third wisdom tooth is now gone. I got it pulled two days ago. It only took 15 minutes, and I got an anesthetic cream on my gum before the syringes which was great. But when the dentist was pulling it out with some kind of pliers, it pushed against my lower jaw where I could feel everything and that hurt so much I almost started crying or asking them to stop.

My mom was there with me the whole time and I am so glad she was. Even if I’m a veteran when it comes to pulling teeth out right now it is still scary. She drove me home after we went ice cream shopping. Not that I needed it. I took a couple of painkillers on the day it happened but when I woke up the day after, yesterday, it didn’t hurt. I mean I could feel that something was different and I had a hard time chewing and opening my mouth, but I didn’t need any painkillers.

It doesn’t hurt today either. Last time I was in pain for four weeks! Great improvement.

Now I will eat some breakfast and then study until I have to go to work. I am at Balderado today with a very nice schedule. Sure, I have 4 hours at Spinrock out of my 5 working hours today, but I also have two 30minutes breaks which is not normal for a short day like this. I am not complaining.

Hard Rock Cafe Gothenburg

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Finally! My hometown was number 12. The California burger was good, but not as good as it normally is, it was a bit dry and heavy and 189kr for that was a bit much. But the atmosphere in there was the same as in all of the other Hard Rock Cafes I’ve ever been to. It was nice. 12 glasses is now showing on my shelf!

Today at work was my Friday, I had a long day, almost 10 hours of work. But it wasn’t too bad actually. After lunch just disappeared. First I had 2.5 hours straight of work, then 30 minutes break, 1 hour of work, 30 minutes break and 30 minutes of work before I got off at 9:30pm. The best ending on a day there is, perfect! And the day started with supervisors from two different areas fighting over me. There had been a misunderstanding and I was supposed to be on Balderado for the first couple of hours and then on Berget. But I ended up on Berget anyway. They were literally standing over me while I was sitting down, handing me papers on two different attractions and fighting for me.

Right after work I went to Hard Rock Café to meet up with Chad, Nicole and Nicolai. Nicole is a German friend from San Diego who is doing a roadtrip in Scandinavia with her boyfriend and they are staying here with me in Gothenburg for a couple of nights. Today they went adventuring in the city alone while I was working and tomorrow we will go to Liseberg for a while before I have to leave them there to go pull out a tooth. They arrived late last night.

 

Yesterday at work was a crazy crazy day! So many people for no apparent reason. Huge lines everywhere. The day before that was the complete opposite. No lines at all. The line ran out at Helix even! And when I closed Höjdskräcken I did 7 rides during the whole hour. Normally you can do 18-19 in an hour.

Yesterday was fun because of a challenge the supervisors gave us. We were supposed to find guests who travelled from far away. And the person who found the guests from the furthest away got an extra break on the schedule someday in the future. You had four tries to ask guests and I got so lucky on my first on; Los Angeles. I felt confident after that. I also got China, Germany and Spain. When I handed in my paper to the supervisors they said they had Philippines and Brazil as well, and I could see my extra break be removed from the time table.

 

I am so tired now, so I will be boring and go to bed actually. Me, Nicole and Nicolai will go to Liseberg pretty early tomorrow so I need my rest I guess. Or I probably will just sleep for the rest of the day when I get back from the dentist. As the two times before, mom will be there to be my support! ❤

Hard Rock Cafe Göteborg

Mega thunderstorm

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Today was as much opposite as yesterday as it can be. So calm and nice and quiet. It was sticky though, you could almost feel the moist in the air and it was kinda disgusting. I also had a bad stomach ache the whole day which wasn’t particuarly fun either. The crazy thing that made this day interesting was the huge thunderstorm that rolled in over Gothenburg in just minutes. Normally the rain goes on and on an on and it is just a drizzle. But today it was sunny at one point, and five minutes later the sky opened up and poured down tons of water and hail and thunder and lightning and it took out all the power in the park for a while. Berget had a nice break for an hour, but I was on lunch for that whole hour. When I just sat down to eat it started and when I walked out it was sunny again. So weird!

The day was over so fast, 6 hours isn’t that much. And the park closes at 10pm on Sundays. So nice to be home before 11pm! And now I think I will go to bed and read some. I have to get up pretty early tomorrow to study…

Storm at LisebergThe view from the employee cafeteria. It was way worse than it looks like and the lightning bolts were lightning up the whole sky and the thunder came at the same time. It was scary!!

Snoop Dogg @ Liseberg

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Such a crazy day at work today! I am glad I was at Balderado instead of Berget because I heard it was the worst up there. I only have KristallSalongen, Ponnykarusellen and SpinRock at Balderado and they are all very calm attractions. Ponnykarusellen is for tiny kids, Kristallsalongen is just a house of mirrors and SpinRock is busy, but nothing crazy and it is reliable. But at the end of the day when I was closing it with a colleague it went amok!! Balder was on break because some people had climbed the structure. And half an hour before everything closed Kållerado also went on break (those two are the big attractions in the Balderado area) so everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, came to SpinRock which is a big swing that spins at the same time. Right before we were closing the gates so we would start the last ride at five to eleven, twenty minutes of extra queue walked in. And more people were jumping in so our last ride was a quarter past eleven! And apparently it was the same on most attractions.

During the day people were smoking weed in the queue at Helix and all over the park. I understand why no one else wanted Snoop to give a performance at their place. The whole of Liseberg turned to drug lover’s paradise. I don’t understand how Liseberg could agree to that with so many kids around. And most of it were ignored by the guards because they had more important things to do than tell people to stop smoking. People were also climbing on roofs.

I didn’t notice any of this though but I can imagine my colleagues at Berget did. Crazy day! 45 570 people during the whole day!! (A normal day is around 20 000)

Tomorrow I work from 3pm to 11pm, a nice 6 hours, and probably at Berget. I guess I really need to go to bed now, I am so tired…

Camping and sambo

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Two long days are at its end and I could probably fall asleep standing if I just let myself. Yesterday after work me and Chad went to Landvetter to camp for a night. We found a nice spot right next to a lake, put up the tent and everything and then went in the water before the sun set. It wasn’t cold at all in the water but I didn’t want to stay in for too long, it would have been very cold when the sun was gone. We had dinner after that, some cold cuts and a tuna/bacon/pasta salad which were both really good. And when you are camping you have to make a fire, so we did that too and sat by it until we ran out of firewood. Spent a short while on the beach after that and watched the starry sky. We even saw a few shooting stars. Very romantic!

I slept until 9am and I couldn’t go back to sleep so I read for an hour until Chad woke up. We slept very comfortable on two air matresses tightly put together and with a sheet on top of it it looked like a real bed. Surprisingly comfy.

Landvetter campingThis was the view over the sunset from our tent. Sweden is so beautiful!

After that our big mission was to get all of his stuff to my place. So first we packed the last of his things, rented a van and drove all of it to my place. It didn’t take that long but it was rough. And especially in this heat and with his heavy couch that we put in my basement. I am gonna be so sore in my arms and hands tomorrow.

The whole evening we have been unpacking and I have packed most of my clothes. I am just gonna stay in Sweden for a little more than a month so I might as well pack most of it now when he needs somewhere to put his clothes too.

We aren’t completely done yet, but we’re getting there. It probably will be done tomorrow, at least I hope so. I think I will go to bed now, I am starting to see double…

“Thursday”

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Today was a good day, not as warm as it has been, but still warm enough to wear shorts and t-shirt all day and evening. I had 8 hours of work but it felt like less. Lots of people though. You never know how man guests there will be during the summer season days, some days there are not even 20 000 people. Some days there are way more than 30 000.

I’m sure something interesting happened at work today but I can’t remember right now. I guess my whole body is tuned to sleep. But there were things I really needed to do. Like get one of my hostkids a birthday gift. I knew that his birthday was on July 30th, but I haven’t been very good at keeping track of time lately, it’s been hectic at work and I’ve been trying to enjoy the summer while trying to study so I am not surprised I didn’t remember to take shipping in consideration. I hope he will be happy a week later anyway. I drew him a birthday card and made a rainbow loom charm. He’s too young to read my blog (I think), so I will post a picture of it because it is so cute and I put A LOT of time into doing it. It is supposed to be Olaf from the movie Frozen. I will try to send it tomorrow but I’m not sure I have time…

Rainbow Loom, Olaf from "Frozen"I really hope he will like it! 🙂

I have also been packing tonight. Not for my upcoming move across the Atlantic in 45 days (!!!), but for mine and Chad’s tiny camping trip tomorrow. Mom was nice and let us use the car but I need to bring all my things to work and I really hope my packing fits in my locker.

The day after that Chad will move in here so I guess tonight was my last night alone in my apartment. Exciting to have a sambo (sambo is the Swedish word for a person you’re living with) again :).

 

I am having very weird dreams. First of all, the music at Helix is in my head when I am in my bed trying to fall asleep. It is loud too! And then when I fall asleep I feel like I need to stay awake because I need to operate attractions and I am just taking naps while the ride is going, and I do that in my bed because the attraction is right outside my bedroom. When I open my eyes I see that it is dark outside, check the clock and tell myself that the attractions aren’t open after 11pm and I get back to sleep and redo that routine a few times before going into deep sleep. It is really annoying! Funny though how much work is clearly affecting me.

Let’s see if the same thing happen tonight. Goodnight!