I can’t believe there’s gonna be three movies out of that one book! It’s crazy. It feels like they’ve added a lot of stuff. I don’t even understand how there can be a third movie when the second one ended with Smaug attacking the Lake Town. And I can’t remember there being anything about Sauron and how he became the eye in the book? I think I have to reread it. It was a while ago and I don’t remember anything at all from it, I was 13 or something.

It was a very good movie anyway and I look forward to the next one on Dec 17^th next year!

This morning was spent at the beach again with Johanna and the beachvolleyball people. The day started with a bunch of dolphins in the water. It probably was like six of them. Then I played a lot of games with Chad and we actually won three in a row at the end. It was windy and it screwed my serves up surprisingly much. But in general I played pretty well.

After that I and Lovisa went to Broken Yolk for brunch. I feel so unhealthy. But I haven’t gained any weight after the Holidays. I’m still at 132lbs. Tomorrow we will head out to Escondido and The Cheesecake Factory again for Cati’s late birthday dinner. I will be unhealthy there too and take my favorite, the chicken in creamy sauce with roasted garlic and sundried tomatoes. And the cheesecake… I don’t know which one yet.
I saw the other day that I have accidently had one cheesecake twice, Chris Outrageous…

I’ve been at the beach almost every day this week and it shows. My tan is slowly coming back again. Not that I really need it (I’m still way more tan than I’ve ever been before), and I think 18 days on Hawaii will turn me into a gingerbread man again. I like being tan, it makes me feel fresh-looking. We’ll see how long it will last back in Sweden where the sun only exists a few days a year…

Having vacation in December in San Diego is awesome. I’m so glad the weather is warm and not as it was during the early December when it was only around 50F. Now it is 70-75 and it is no problem at all spending the sunlit hours at the beach. People are going in the water. But for me it’s enough just sitting there, reading and working on my tan. In December!!

No dolphins today though, might have been because I had my nose in my book (eReader) the whole time. But that’s fine, you can’t see them every time you go to the beach ;).

I read a lot today, don’t know how much to be honest, but I only have like 70 pages left now. Insurgent is really good!!

This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

This Second Day of Christmas was also spent at the beach. This time I picked up Johanna and we went to Moonlight Beach in Encinitas. It was like 75-80F and with the wind it was a perfect day to spend in the sand. We were there for a few hours and I think we might have gotten some color, but it’s hard to tell. The sun is weak now. But it was anyhow super awesome. We watched kids snowboarding on sand banks with boogie boards and some kids playing in the waves. I tried to read some, but for some weird reason I have a very difficult time reading on the beach. I keep falling asleep. It’s probably the sound of the waves hitting the beach and the wind caressing my body. Haha!

We saw dolphins today again and this time they were really close to the beach! I’m still really excited everytime see dolphins. It’s so exotic! And I just love them!

After that I had to do some errands, like buying a Christmas gift for my cousins on dad’s side and some extra rubber bands for my Rainbow Loom. I also bought some other stuff that I can’t write about here in case my hostfamily reads this.

I was expecting my hostkids’ cousins to be here when I got back but they weren’t. I wonder where they are. I was excited about meeting them…

I hope it will be nice weather tomorrow again. If it is I will totally be at the beach again. I feel that I have to spend as much time as possible there now, when I still have the chance. In the evening I hope I will go to the movies and see The Hobbit 2!

This looked really fun! It’s December and this is what it looks like on the beach! But I mean, if it is 25C, where else should one be? 🙂

I think there were four dolphins swimming really close to the shore!

This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

Dec 25th, 2:30pm

This Christmas has actually been one of the best I’ve ever had. Not just that I’ve had amazing weather (today it’s like 28C), but I spent it with amazing people. Everything has been perfect!

This morning I woke up at 8am. My hostdad picked up the grandpa and as soon as they got here soon thereafter it was time to unwrap the gifts. First everyone got their stocking and oh my god! Back home we get like one gift to open on Christmas Eve morning and the rest of the gifts are to be opened in the evening. But this stocking (the boy panicked about it yesterday because I didn’t have one and then got super relieved when they found an extra) was full to the limit with a lot of gifts! Some wrapped, some not.

Then we started handing out the gifts from under the tree and everyone got a lot of gifts. I was too occupied to be able to pay all my attention on the extremely happy and excited kids, haha. But I saw their faces when they opened mine and they loved them. The girl got a soap and body lotion from Bath & Body Works. The boy got Lego Minecraft and gave me several hugs after he opened it. They also got a book each from Sweden. The girl got one of the best selling youth books right now, I hope she can read it in Swedish. And the boy got a map book. I didn’t have a chance to take a look at it, but I don’t think it was a normal map book.

My hostparents got a giftcard to the movie theatre. And I said that it was included that I would take the kids that night, if they have time to do it before I leave that is. They liked it :).

And then to the gifts I got. I’m not sure what was in the stocking and what was under the tree.

• A bag of skittles and regular M&Ms
• A Ghiradelli peppermint bark chocolate bar, and two small bags with peppermint bark and caramel flavors
• Neon colored pens
• A Christmas tree ornament with palm trees and San Diego written on it
• Three lipbalms
• A peppermint scented anti-bacterial handgel
• A beautiful heartshaped sterling silver necklace
• A soap scented with lemon verbera
• A scarf
• Fluffy socks
• Tiny Victoria’s Secret perfumes
• Two notepads
• Cute cupcake cups
• $25 from grandpa with a very sweet text in the card
• $100 cash from the family with also a very sweet text in the card
• And a Rainbow Loom of my own and two extra bags with blue and yellow rubberbands

I wasn’t expecting that many gifts and I feel so Swedish when I think that it was way too nice of them! I told them thank you so many times and that I’ve had one of the best Christmases ever this year. Not because of the gifts, but because of everything they’ve done for me. The super delicious dinner last night, the thankful-speeches, the cute card they wrote to me and all the small things they do to make me feel part of the family.

But I can’t help but feel sad at the same time. I only have three more weeks before Hawaii and I don’t wanna leave them.

After the gift opening we had a nice breakfast with Swedish Christmas ham, cinnamon muffins and rice pudding. And after that I spent the rest of the morning playing with the kids’ new things. Well, mostly with the boy because the girl got a Kindle I read on it. I played with Pokémon cards, but I think until next time I have to learn the real rules so I and the boy can play for real. His rules didn’t make any sense, haha.

Then we played together with my hostdad a game called Slamwich wich is a card came where you’re supposed to slam the pile in the center when different types of cards come up. It was very fun but can go on forever, haha!

It felt a little bit wrong leaving the amazing Christmas feeling in the house, but I was gonna go to Starbucks and Lovisa for a Christmas coffee (like a lot of other people too apperantly). I gave her my gift, three body/hand lotions from Bath & body Works and a tiny anti-bacterial handgel with Gingerbread scent. I knew she loved that scent.
Since it was Christmas I didn’t take anything non fat and I had whipped cream on my Caramel Brulée Latte. It felt good. And since it was so warm we sat outside for 1.5h just talking. It was very nice!

Back home where the kids were playing with all their new things. My hostmom was sitting on the floor looking through all the after-Christmas sales. I showed her what Chad got me last night and I am starting to think that he wasn’t joking about the emeralds, diamonds and white gold… He gave me a beautiful palm tree necklace and told me not to forget San Diego. How could I??

But my Christmas isn’t over yet. Now I’m heading over to Chad’s family to spend the afternoon with them.

Dec 26th, 10:30am

Now the whole Christmas is over and it was truly a magical Christmas. At Chad’s parents place we had apple pie and I got two gifts. I wasn’t expecting that at all. From his parents I got another scarf and from his grandparents I got three body lotions from Bath & Body Works. They really didn’t have to do that, but it was very sweet of them to think of me.

Later on Chad took me for a drive in their four-wheel thingy. It went fast, like 50mph, my eyes were runny and my hair all tangled up. It was fun, but I got a little nauseated after, haha.

I also got it confirmed that it was real gemstones in the necklace. I’ve never gotten anything that nice before and I feel a little bad for only giving him Björn Borg underwear… I don’t think jewelry is as expensive here as in Sweden though, but still. It was very sweet of him and I really love it. And it matches my tattoo :).

I can’t believe it is already over. Two days of Christmas was gone before I knew it. The next big thing is New Years and I have no idea what to do then!

Our simple but pretty Christmas tree. The world’s best hostfamily gave me all this ❤

This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

Apperantly it was Christmas Eve today. And I find that very hard to believe. I mean, I spent the afternoon at the beach in shorts and a tank top with a burning sun on my skin. It’s Christmas Eve and I was at the beach!! I’ve heard it’s only a few degrees above freezing with rain in Sweden. Not even my grandma and grandpa up in the “north” have snow which they always normally have this time of the year. I’m glad I have summer weather instead of that. Even if a Christmas is supposed to be white.

In the morning I skyped with my mom and her friends she spent Christmas with. It was nice, but I didn’t feel any homesickness. I’ve been looking forward to experience all the American holidays so I hardly even think about how it is in Sweden.

After that I wanted to go to the beach and thought at first that I would go alone and read. It was such a beautiful day, about 22C and not a single cloud in the sky. Then I remembered that Johanna was off too, so I picked her up and we went to Ponto Beach. Before I left home my hostdad asked me if we were gonna do the typical “Christmas at the beach” pictures and I didn’t even think about that. So I packed my santa hat and both of us played model and photographer. It was really fun and we got some really got pictures!

And that wasn’t all. We sat there talking for a long while too, and we didn’t just see a lot of surfers out in the water. We saw some dolphins kinda far out for once. And the most exciting thing we saw was WHALES! I’ve never seen whales before so I was so happy when I saw the big water fountains on the horizon. And that’s not it, I actually saw the fin of the whale and the back when it was coming up for air. It was just so cool! I can’t wait until I see them upfront on Hawaii on that whale tour I’m going on.

When I came home I helped with preparing the big feast and then we ate it. Everything tasted exactly the same as in Sweden and it was so incredibly delicious! It really felt like Christmas, and with that big Christmas tree in the background too. It was just so nice. My hostdad made a video and asked us all what we were thankful for this Christmas. The girl was thankful for that she didn’t have a fever, just a cold, the boy was thankful for his family and the food and then he added me and baba (grandpa) too. My hostmom was thankful for her family and that I was there celebrating Christmas with them and that made my eyes water. My hostdad was thankful for family and the food too. Then the girl made him add something untraditional like that he was thankful for his unsassy daughter from that point on. Haha! I said that I was thankful for this amazing opportunity I got to come here. I hope they realized that I meant to come here and stay with them for this year. That thankful-question came out of nowhere and I wasn’t really prepared to answer it. But I am extremely thankful for my hostfamily, they have been the best possible and because of them I’ve had the year of my life. It will be really sad saying goodbye to them in a way too short time…

For dessert we had risalamande (sv: ris a la malta) which also was really good. The only Swedish thing I missed today was the rice pudding this morning because I was sleeping. But that was fine, it was nice sleeping until 9:30am.

I can’t say anything else than that I had an amazing Christmas Eve!

The last piece of chocolate was gigantic for once!

And here come some of the Christmasy photos from today. A lot of ego, sorry… but I couldn’t choose just one.
If you look very closely in the middle of the horizon you can see something tiny above the water. That’s part water spray, part whale. It was much clearer in real life, but this was the best picture I got of it, haha. Sometimes I wish I had a good camera, but then again, I wouldn’t want to carry that big thing around all the time, so my phone is good enough for almost everything. It actually takes surprisingly good pictures for a phone, don’t you agree? (All of the photos on this blog has been taken with my HTC One)

This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

I can’t believe it’s Christmas Eve tomorrow. The magic of Disneyland have unfortunately disappeared. But that is okay, it’s not gonna be a normal Christmas anyway. I look forward to it a lot though. Seeing the faces of the kids when they open all their gifts on the 25th and the Swedish smorgasbord tomorrow. We are going to have it at 5pm tomorrow, so no more food/candy from now on until then :).

My day was long but nice. The morning was a lot of wrestling, beach ball passing and monkey in the middle. For lunch I made Swedish pancakes for the whole family except me, I tried being healthy by eating a salad. In the afternoon the girl had a friend over and they baked super cute holiday cupcakes; winter wonderland with tiny fondant christmas trees, wreaths, gifts and snowflakes. I and the boy went to the library. He was really upset about it at first, but his parents wanted me to take him and they made him stop crying and then he was really excited when we were there and he picked up several books to read at home this winter break. Kids are weird.

He wanted a playdate in the afternoon but no one was home of his friends so the two of us spent the afternoon together playing a lot of Wii, like boxing. Oh my, I was sweating after that, haha! Then I started on a new Rainbow Loom bracelet for the boy, a hexafish. It’s easy but it takes time. I didn’t finish it, maybe I will do that tomorrow.

The floor was finished today! It took more than three weeks but now it is finally done. My hostparents are up right now cleaning and putting everything where it’s supposed to be. A lot to do, but the house feels new and refreshed now and the floors are really pretty.

Now time for some reading!

This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

Yesterday was a really magical day. It was spent with my two blonde Swedes, Lovisa and Johanna, at the happiest place on earth; Disneyland! This year I’ve had to have the responsibility of a grownup while taking care of the kids but yesterday my inner kid was brought forth.

The original plan was for Lovisa to come to my place with her car and then we would pick up Johanna and then go to the car rental place and go from there to Anaheim. But Lovisa’s car broke down and had to be driven by her hostdad to my house. But we were on schedule and got to Hertz in Carlsbad right when they opened at 9am. I was afraid that we wouldn’t have enough time at the park but it turned out to only take a little more than an hour to drive there. We were walking on Main Street U.S.A in the park at 11:30am. We parked the car at a huuuge parking lot and had to take a shuttle from it to the park.

We started our big adventure with lunch at a café. I and Lovisa shared a Chicken Waldorf sandwich. Then we started walking.

The park is divided into small themed parts; Main Street, USA, Adventureland, Frontierland, New Orleans Square, Critter Country, Fantasyland and Tomorrowland. First we went to Adventureland where we went on a jungle cruise watching surprisingly lifelike animals move around. Then we walked into tarzan’s tree house.

New Orleans was small, but looked like the real deal except for all the Christmas decorations. We ate dinner in New Orleans Square and on stage was a band throwing beads at the audience. We went on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, which was probably the best one we went on. We only went on a few rides, it was about 1h waiting time on each attraction. Except the Many Adventures of Winne the Pooh where it was five. That was a very cute ride.

At Critter Country we went on the ride Splash Mountain. Exactly like Flume Ride at Liseberg in Gothenburg, except that this went inside a mountain and had a lot of moving figures in it. I didn’t recognize it at all, but it was nice. Except that we got wet… Johanna was worse, she was in the front of the log and got so soaked. I felt bad for her. My feet and thighs got a little wet, but nothing compared to her. Good thing the sun was up, not a single cloud in the sky and about 18C.

We had a fika after that, three hours had passed since we last ate. We bought 3 pastries and shared them. After that I think we went to Tomorrowland where we walked around for a little while, while waiting for the big parade to start at 5:30pm. That parade was one of the better things at Disneyland. It was so beautiful and Christmasy. My holiday spirit came to me when I saw that parade. Seriously, it’s Christmas Eve tomorrow!! That parade also reminded me a lot about  Chalmers Cortege which I was a part of 2011. I miss my university, not the studying, but the life at campus.

The parade was 40 minutes long and right after that we had dinner, warm creamy corn chowder soup in a sourdough bowl. That warmed. We had no idea about the other small shows they had in the park but we timed the lighting of the Sleeping Beauty castle perfectly. It was so beautiful! But I have to admit that I was very disappointed in that castle. On pictures it looks so big and majestic, but in real life it was tiny! But when it lit up and then when it was right under the fireworks at night, it was really amazing and I forgot about the size.

Our next awesome timing was “it’s a small world”. It was like a big wall of lights. It was very striking from very far away in the dark. When we came there it just started with a lot of moving pictures projected on the walls so it looked like a lot of different buildings, like a gingerbread house and such.

The last ride of the day for us was Matterhorn Bobsleds. I was afraid of going on it because I know I nauseated I become after rollercoasters. But I agreed to join them. I got the front seat and the seats were single. So it felt like I was totally alone in that dark mountain on a fast bobsled. It was scary and I got really afraid when I saw the pool of water at the end of the ride. Fortunately I didn’t get wet and I didn’t feel bad at all after.

One hour left until the big show and we walked around in souvenir shops for a while. I bought three things to bring home to Sweden as reminders of this happy place. A refrigerator magnet and two key chains. One was actually a bracelet charm but it fit perfectly on my keys, so now I have an American flag mickey head. The other one was an A with a mickey holding on to it. It was very cute.

The big firework show started at 9:30pm and I think almost everyone in the park wanted to be in front of the castle watching it. You can see it from the whole park, but we felt that we had to be in front of the castle though a bit away. But my photos of it are okay and you can clearly see it.

Our last destination of the day was Space Mountain. It is a rollercoaster in completely darkness with some pumping lights. Sounds scary so I was very relieved when it was broken when we came there.

I drove all the way home too. First dropping off Lovisa and then Johanna and then returning the car. I came home after 1am and I was soo tired. But I could sleep until 7:45am instead of 6am.

Main Street, USA. Reminded me a lot of Jul at Liseberg.
New Orleans Square.

Splash Mountain. The Adventure of Winnie the Pooh. A Christmas Fantasy Parade. Sleeping Beauty Castle! “it’s a small world” The big firework show was amazing. It felt like the Bellagio fountain in Vegas but with fireworks and Christmas songs instead. At the end of the firework show they had tiny snow cannons. It felt awesome with snow, even if it wasn’t much. It probably was so nice because of the ~50F (10C), instead of the below freezing degrees that is normally associated with snow.

It was a very magical day!! ❤

No more school for the kids this year. Christmas is right around the corner and all my gifts are bought and wrapped. The floors aren’t done, so they are gonna come in tomorrow and finish it so we can get the house clean and ready for the holidays. Hopefully I will be out playing beachvolleyball so I don’t have to be awoken by them.

This day was really short, I got off work at 2pm already and since then I’ve been wrapping all the gifts and reading. I’m really tired for some weird reason, so I had to stop reading and now I don’t know what to do, maybe watch a movie instead?

When I dropped off the boy at his school it was crowded with marines. After reading a lot of dystopian books recently it made me feel a little bit uneasy having them standing on the playground just looking around. Some of them were playing with the kids and that made me feel better, that made me smile actually. The reason they were there was because the kids at that school have been donating a lot of food and toys to the marines, and today they were picking it up (it was a huuuge mountain of canned and dry food) and were taking a part of the flag salute the school has every Friday. I didn’t stay for the flag salute, because of my short freetime today. I’ve been present on other Flagsalutes though and it is so patriotic it feels wrong to be there as a non American. If we would behave like that in Sweden we would be called rasist, for sure.

I didn’t have much freetime today because of the kids’ early release day. But I spent those two hours with Chad eating brunch. When I picked up the girl I tried the drive by lane and it worked okay. It felt wrong letting the engine stay on for that long though, not very Swedish of me but a necessity. So it’s both a good and a bad thing that I only have one more day working when the kids are in school, my last day in this family.

This weekend will be very nice! Tomorrow I will play beachvolleyball for the first time in a while (I hope it’s  not the last) and on Sunday I will first have a skype date with my whole family and after that me, Lovisa and Johanna are going to Disneyland! I seriously can’t wait!!

This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

Today I finished reading Divergent! An amazing book that is very similar to The Hunger Games. The movie is coming out in March so I thought I should read the books before. And besides, if I don’t finish this triology before I leave the girl is gonna spoil the end. So of course I already started on the next, Insurgent and am right now very eager to continue to read it.

It’s been a normal day, the guys are working hard on our floor and it will probably be done by tomorrow. Might be a few tiny things to fix on Monday. It will be nice with an empty house again, except that I don’t have any more mornings alone… Well, one, Jan 14th, but I will be at the hairdresser. The floor is very nice, and it looks like a whole new house inside.

It’s been very bad weather today. There was a drizzle when I left home to pick up the boy and when I picked him up it turned into a shower. We got soaked through and I was cold in to my bones. A tea at home helped me with that fortunately. The girl and my hostdad went to the movies to see Catching Fire again, so I was alone at home with the boy. We had a really nice afternoon together. I was afraid of doing the spelling today because of his bad temper about it yesterday. So we started the afternoon with hot cocoa for him and then I made him a Rainbow Loom bracelet and the spelling after that went awesome! He’s gonna do great on the test tomorrow :). The bracelet I made for him was a Sailors Pinstripe. It looks advanced, but it was actually pretty easy. And as I’ve said before, it’s very relaxing doing those bracelets.

Both parents were gone until late tonight so I had the boy until seven. We were curled up in the couch watching Spongebob and I made toast pizza as his dinner. We had a very nice afternoon indeed!

Later I met up with Lovisa at Starbucks for a two hour talk. It’s nice sitting there just talking about everything between heaven and earth.

A huge rainbow was the result of the rain shower/sun today. And it was super close. I could see that it went down in front of that hill in the background which is like 500m away. That was pretty cool.

Rainbow Loom. Another bracelet for  the boy, a Sailor’s Pinstripe.

Another day just completely gone. It feels like I wake up, work for a while, and then it’s time to go to bed, and then up the next morning to work again. I can’t really say it is a routine though, everyday now in the floor change chaos is different but that is a good thing. A change of routines is good.

I finally answered some emails during my freetime. I’ve been so bad at answering them this year… I took a long nap after that and I think I actually could sleep for a while even with all the noise around me. My hostdad picked up the girl after school so I just had to pick up the boy. At home I tried doing some spelling with him and it didn’t work at all today. Some days he doesn’t misspell a single word. So we took a break, played that Star Wars Lego game I bought for him a year ago (which by the way is really fun, kinda like chess but with more action and killing) and after that he did really well on the rest of the spelling for the day. He has a big test on Friday so I’m trying to prepare him as much as possible, he forgets so easily. It’s hard trying to get a seven year old to do something well when he really doesn’t want to do it but still does it. My patience is pretty awesome after this year!

Tonight I sent in a part time job application to Cultural Care. I’m not sure they are looking for a recruiter right now in Gothenburg, but I might as well ask them if they have something. That would be such an awesome part time job while I’m doing my thesis!

It’s a week left until Christmas today and I really can’t believe it!! I didn’t wrap anything today, that’s tomorrow’s project.