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.

When the alarm went off at 6am this morning I couldn’t stop telling myself ”oh no, this was a bad idea…”. But I’m glad to say that it turned out I was really happy I had to leave the house early on a Saturday morning. I was a little bit nervous about the running because I hate running and haven’t even worked out in months!

I picked up Lovisa and we got there at 8, an hour before the event started. We waited in the car for a while because it was so cold. When I was driving to Lovisa it was 35F at its coldest and a new symbol showed in the car, I think it was like a snowflake. That is like 1C! So that explains why I also saw frost in the grass next to the road. This is California! It was a very beautiful morning though. The morning haze was so beautiful in the morning sun. No clouds and the silhouettes of the trees in the haze/sun were amazing so I had to pull the car over and take pictures. This morning felt like a Swedish fall morning.

We stood in the check in line for a long time and met up with two of Lovisa’s friends I’ve never met before. When we were first in line we realized that the check-in was for people who didn’t pick up the package yesterday. So unnecessary. So we placed ourselves in the line for the race. They released like 500-700 people every five minutes and right before we started racing, everyone threw their bags full of different powder colors in the air and everyone looked like neon rainbows after. And right when we started there was a color checkpoint where volunteers threw yellow color on everyone. Later on they had white, green and pink. I was afraid that we wouldn’t get so much color on us, but we sure did. We had color everywhere! I got a really big green dot right on my nose at the green checkpoint.

The first kilometer or so we ran, but then we all got tired and walked the rest of the way. It took us about an hour to finish.

After the race there was like a stage with music and people working there, throwing color bags to us. And after a countdown everyone threw the colors in the air and that was so cool. I wish I could have taken a photo of it but my phone would probably have died of color poisoning if I tried. Even if I was careful it still got a lot of color on it. But it was easily washed off.

After the race we went to IHOP (International House of Pancakes) for some brunch. That was also my goodbye to the place. I love it, but for some weird (and good) reason I haven’t been there so often. Today I had a regular combo, consisting of two slices of bacon, hash browns, scrambled egg and Raspberry White Chocolate Chip Pancakes. Thos pancakes were amazing. The chips felt like they were roasted and it was just so good! Super unhealthy and it was food for two days normally, but it was the last time so it was okay.

Back home and threw all my clothes in the washing machine and myself in the shower. The color was indeed easily washed off and I’m clean again.

The best thing about today must have been the weather. Even if it was freezing in the morning it was above 70F and probably like 80F in the sun. So amazing and today’s December 14^th.

When I took my sunglasses from my purse this morning they were broken and I looked in vain after the tiny tiny screw that held the thing on the side to the middle glass thing. So I reached for my inner engineering skills and came up with this solution. It worked perfectly fine! When I came home and lifted a long sleeved t-shirt I haven’t used in a week, that tiny tiny screw fell out of it. Isn’t that weird? Now my sunglalsses are working as they should again :). Before the run… … After the run.

Raspberry white chocolate chip pancakes. One of the best I’ve had when it comes to American pancakes!

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.

Last night was spent at IKEA with Lovisa and Chad. The Christmas food was good, but nothing like the real Swedish Christmas food. It was still a very nice evening with good company and good food. Chad told me he loves to try new things and was really excited about the evening. At the end of it he was glad he came and he was surprised about all the different fish there was. He was expecting pretty much just meatballs and mashed potatoes. He said he liked it!

When we came there they had printed our names on a reservation sign. And that was just hilarious! They misspelled my name. So my name of the evening was Alexander. But the most fun thing about it was that Lovisa, whose real name is Emma Lovisa (the same as mine, Hanna Alexandra Camilla) so she always calls herself Emma because no one here knows how to spell Lovisa. But this time they couldn’t even spell Emma right, but they wrote Eumd. Seriously?
Cati was supposed to be with us, but both her hostparents were sick so she had to work…

It was a very nice evening even if it took forever in the traffic. At the end I bought a bottle of Julmust for Chad to try and he liked it too. I think he would like Sweden, except for the cold weather though.

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.

No bad luck today for me. First of all I could move back into my room. I didn’t have time to do it, but I have my sheets down here now and I will start unpacking on Sunday. Nice! It is very nice!
This means that they today started on the upper floor and it will be chaos! It was okay when I was the only one in the guestroom because I’m the only one who sleeps on the first floor. I don’t know the logistics about the upper floor, but I hope it will be done soon!

First on today’s agenda was to end my gym membership at LA Fitness. A sad moment, but if I have to be honest with myself, I haven’t been there in a long time…

Next was to pick up the packets for Run or Dye 5K tomorrow. When I was standing in line in the sun it felt like a warm summer day. More of that please!

In my bag I had a yellow color and in Lovisa’s bag was a purple. We got a t-shirt each, a number thingy and some other tiny things. We are probably gonna walk the whole thing tomorrow, but it will be fun! 🙂

When I was waiting in the car for the kids’ school to end I read, as usual, and today I finished Clockwork Princess. The ending was perfect and I almost cried because of the character’s happiness. That series was one of the better I’ve read. I think it was better than the Mortal Instruments, but I haven’t read the end of that one yet, so I can’t say. My next reading project is the Divergent series. I’ve heard that one is really good too!

Now I’m just waiting for time to pass. I’m hungry and in two hours I will be at IKEA with Chad, Lovisa and Cati to have a Swedish Christmas feast!!

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.

Lucia isn’t until tomorrow, I know, but the kids at the Swedish School only meet on Thursdays so we had an early Lucia today. Lucia is a Scandinavian tradition. A train of people sings songs and have white dresses on and a lot of lights to light up the darkness at this time of year. Eleven nights before Christmas.
It was so beautiful! The girl was the Lucia and she was so pretty, the boy was a “starboy” with his starry cone on his head and big golden star in his hand. All the songs were in Swedish and even if all the kids there are part American it sounded like a real Swedish kid’s Lucia train. The boy have trouble speaking Swedish, that’s known among my (9) readers I think, and he really tried singing and that made me so proud, because he really tried. And some songs he said he was singing along with. I love my kids!

When I came home I was hoping that I could move my stuff back into my room, because today the guys finished the whole first floor!! But we have to clean it first so the guestroom is still occupied by me. In the afternoon they started with the stairs, removed the carpet and told us to wear shoes when we walk on it because of nails and splinters. When my hostmom called me to tell me they were going out for dinner the boy reminded me to keep the shoes on when I came home after my Starbucks date with Lovisa. The Prius’ has a phone integrated so everyone in the car could talk to me. He is so cute!

In my freetime today I was feeling very bad, well, in the morning too. My head hurt like hell and as soon as I moved I almost got nauseous because of the pain. So I just lay in my bed, I skyped with mom, read and tried to sleep for a while. I’m almost done with my book now, only 40 pages left. And it is so good!! All of Cassandra Clare’s books are awesome! The Clockwork Princess is the last one in The Infernal Devices triology and after that there’s only like two more in the Bane Chronicles and one in the Mortal Instruments which will be publiced in March. Can’t wait for that one. She is gonna write a sequel series to the Mortal Instruments (the Infernal Devices is a prequel).

Tomorrow’s finally IKEA’s Julbord! It will be so nice with some “real” Swedish food. I’m also happy that Chad is excited to go with me, Lovisa and Cati.

This is what fall looks like in Cali, in December. Very beautiful!

35 days until Hawaii!! 🙂

35 days left in San Diego… 😦

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.

The new Cheesecake Factory up in Escondido has been open since November 26th and today I went there finally. I picked up Johanna and we actually got there before all the stores open, because the restaurant is in the Westfield North County mall. My bad. So we sat down at Starbucks for like an hour and talked. Her debut there, congratulations! Then came Lovisa and we pretty much went to the restaurant right away. It didn’t open until 11am so we had to wait outside for a few minutes. Inside was very similar to the one in Mission Valley, the same orange-brown interior but it was a little bit more fancy with cool designs on the lamps and stuff. What’s also very good about that place (except that it is much closer) is that it was divided, so it won’t get so loud. I liked that place, even if the view we had was over the stores.

I had my usual, the Roasted Pear and Bleu Cheese Flatbread Pizza. And for dessert, and my 16^th cheesecake, Chris’ Outrageous Cheesecake (A Cheesecake Factory Original – Layers of Moist Chocolate Cake, Chewy Brownie, Toasted Coconut-Pecan Frosting and Creamy Chocolate Chip Coconut Cheesecake). We all three shared it and it was as delicious as all the others I’ve tried.

Right after I dropped Johanna off and picked up the kids from school. The girl spent the afternoon at a friend’s house doing a history project and I and the boy did some grocery shopping. Then homework and I cooked tacos for dinner. I don’t have many Tuesdays left to cook so now I have to do all the favorites, so next week I will do the fishpudding again. And after that I only have to more Tuesdays in January, I don’t think I have to cook on Christmas Eve and the week after I’m not working, because that’s New Year’s Eve.

This morning when I was waiting for the boy’s school to start I was almost freezing to death. Last night after my class it was only 38F (3C)!! And this morning was like 50F, but the sun wasn’t warming at all. It was so cold my nail broke when I touched it. Brrr! And ouch!

And this afternoon when I was waiting in the car for the girl’s school to end, well, not just this afternoon, almost every afternoon. I laugh at all the Americans who try to parallel park with their humungous cars. They are driving back and forth so many times and it looks so funny. It reminds me of those funny movies of people who can’t park, haha.

This woman was driving back and forth like this at least four times!!
Johanna’s first Starbucks! Skinnylicious Roasted Pear and Bleu Cheese Flatbread. #16 Chris’ Outrageous Cheesecake.
My super amazing chocolate Advent Calendar my amazing mom sent me 🙂 <3. Sweden is becoming Americanized. Why not just say “pepparkaka” instead of “gingerbread” and “öppna” instead of “open”? I don’t think we will speak Swedish in Sweden in the future… This was by the way a real favorite with the kids, they loved it!!This car again! I don’t know if you remember that I saw this car like in the spring and laughed about it? In Swedish it reads “F(h)järta saker” (=fart things), haha!

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’ve now finished all my compulsory 6 credits. I am really glad that it was part of the cultural exchange program. It was a nice change of scene in my normally amazing everyday. I’ve been very satisfied with both my classes I took (Advanced Pronunciation and Fluency was the first one). And this last motivated me to want to continue with German. I wanna be able to speak a third language well and it would be such a good thing to have on my resume. I hope I have time to continue with it when I go back to Sweden. I had my final tonight and it went really well I would guess. I was done after 15 minutes, had a lot of time to look everything through and after handing it in I sat with my phone for a long while. We also got our tests from last week back. And I got another 100%!! I’m afraid I won’t get an A+ anyway, because I’ve had a lot of tiny stupid errors on my homeworks. And I know for sure that I misspelled Abendessen tonight. I added the Swedish S AbendSessen. But maybe I won’t get a minus for it, the teacher was really nice. I hope I will get an A at least as my grade.

This morning I spent in bed, studying for my final, reading and sleeping. When I went to pick up the kids from school I saw two packages outside the door and both were for me!! I didn’t even have to read who it was from, I recognized my mom’s handwriting. The contents according to the note on the packages were Christmas Gifts and Candy. After my German class I opened them. I was so happy when I opened and saw what she had sent me. First of all, Swedish Christmas Candy like Juleskum and tiny chocolate Santa Clauses. She also sent me gingerbread Gifflar from Pågen and saffron gifflar from Skogaholm. So yummy!  She also sent me real Swedish Fishes, and I guess she did that because I wrote about the American Swedish Fish, haha :). She also sent super cute santa clauses decorations for my hostfamily and a tiny glass angle for me. So very sweet of her! And last but not least, the chocolate advent calendars. One for each child in this household :). I was afraid that this year would be the first year ever without one of those, but now I have one and the best part is that I have to eat all the nine pieces that’s already been! Homesickness welled up after opening and I really miss mom now. But in just 8 weeks I will see her again!! Well, eight weeks and a couple of hours.

I thought I had my last au pair meeting today but my LCC changed it from Jan 19th to the 5th so I have one more meeting. Not that I have to attend that one, because I’ve had all my 12 now, but it can still be fun. Today at the meeting we were in Bueno Vista Park, we took a tiny walk and then played the Christmas gift game White Elephant. I didn’t get my gift, I could’ve but I was to curious so instead of stealing it, I decided to open the last gift and end the game. That was a bad move on my part. I ended up with a super blue longsleeved top from H&M. That kind of blue is not my color and I don’t want any more clothes. My suitcases are already full!

I spent the afternoon at Chad’s reading with two chihuahuas in my lap. Those two dogs love me and I have no idea why, maybe I have a hidden dog magnet inside of me somewhere. Chad was studying next to me while watching football. After 11 months I’m still clueless when it comes to the rules of that game.

The evening was spent in the guestroom reading some more. Then the whole family had a very good dinner. Potato gratin, roast beef and salad. For dessert we had chocolate pudding with whipped cream. Sunday luxury!

Seriously?! 11 months down, one to go? I find that very hard to believe. I don’t feel ready for Sweden. I do however feel ready for Hawaii, which happens in just 39 days!!

My eleventh montheversary has been spent studying for my finals on Monday, a little bit of reading and dinner at Stacked with Lovisa, Cati and the new Swedish au pair Johanna. We had a very nice evening and even if I know that my stomach doesn’t like ice cream I couldn’t resist having an ice cream sandwich with one White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookie and one Snickerdoodle cookie and pumpkin ice cream in between. So darn delicious! Why don’t we eat pumpkin in Sweden?

For dinner I had my usual when I go to Stacked, a salad with grilled chicken breast, dried cranberries, bleu cheese, caramelized pecans, avocado, red bellpeppers and a cranberry/walnut dressing. Yummy! Probably not healthy at all.

Now I’m heading over to Chad’s, we are gonna watch The Smurfs 2 and tomorrow I have my last LCC meeting. I wrapped my gift and with the wrapping paper I bought it became very pretty though simple. We are gonna do a Christmas gift game called White Elephant and I really like the contents in mine so I might try to get it myself.

It is only two weeks until Winter Breaks begin. The kids are tired of school after one week and can’t wait until Christmas. They are a bit sad though that they can’t have a Christmas Tree as early as they usually have because of the floor changing. But I’ve been told that the first floor will be done in the middle of next week. We have Christmas decorations outside of the house but non inside yet.

Today the floor in my room was laid. But I can’t move in there yet because they have to put up the baseboards. It will be very pretty when it’s done.

I finished Clockwork Prince today and started on the third and last book in The Infernal Devices triology, Clockwork Princess. It is a very good series!

It’s still very cold so today I actually started wearing a jacket over my sweater. Much better! But it’s still cold in the house, well, the guest room where I’m sleeping.

This day was a very happy and important day for my weight loss. In a month I’ve lost 11lbs which is 5kg!! And with my new 132lbs I’ve officially dropped below 60kg again. I’m so happy! I don’t have a specific goal, but 10-15 lbs more would be nice.

This weekend I have a lot of plans. Tomorrow I will play my last beach volleyball tournament (if it’s not raining) and after that go to Winter Nights at Balboa Park. I’m not sure exactly what to expect there, but I’m sure it will be nice.

On Sunday I have my last LCC meeting. That will be sad…