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.

In exactly ten weeks I will almost be home in Sweden. I will probably be waiting for my flight in Frankfurt to Gothenburg. Ten weeks sounds both like a lot and nothing at all. Ten weeks is one fifth of a whole year! But in ten weeks it will be beginning of February which is so soon. It’s just December and January in between. I’ve accepted that I’m going home and I’m not as upset about it as I was on Thursday. But I’m not happy about it either. I totally understand what past au pairs meant by mixed feelings.

This morning I didn’t sleep well at all, I had a very annoying headache but I was too tired to get out of bed and get an aspirin. And I thought that if I just lay still it would go away. It did partly, but I still woke up several times per hour and decided to get up at 10:30. I’ve been feeling pretty crappy the whole day, feverish and my nose has been runny. So I stayed home, sorting through all my ebooks. I wanted to go and look at a new suitcase for my trip to Hawaii and home, but didn’t feel good enough. Maybe I will do it tomorrow. I know I have plenty of time to buy one, but Kohls have a really awesome sale on Samsonite suitcases ($200 instead of $400) and I don’t know for how long.

After my super relaxed day I went to German class. When everyone was struggling making up answers to the teachers questions I just sat there and smiled for myself because I thought it was so easy. I have such a big advantage compared to the Americans that I feel bad for them and I am mostly quiet in class. Today we read some texts out loud and I translated two out of three. That was actually really hard and many words I accidently translated into Swedish!

On my way home I stopped to do some grocery shopping and found a Coke bottle in the form of a ball. It was so cute I couldn’t resist buying it even if I’m not much of a soda drinker anymore.

It has been very nice with a day off and I look forward to another lazy day tomorrow. The family is coming home tomorrow evening.

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.

That was one of the best movies I ever saw! I went to Edwards in Mira Mesa tonight with Lovisa to see the sequel to The Hunger Games. I’m very often disappointed in the movies because they are nothing at all like the books. Like for example Under the Dome. I finished that book like a week ago and started watching the new TV series a few days after. 20 minutes into the first episode I was so disappointed. They changed everything! In the book “Barbie” is a good guy who has been in Chester’s Mill forever, but in the series he is an outsider and a murderer, but is still supposed to be the hero. They changed all the relationships, all the people’s work, and added husbands where there weren’t supposed to be any. It was a pretty simple story to begin with, why change everything except the Dome?? But these movies are exactly like the books and I recognized and understood everything. I want to see it again!!

Before the movie we went to Islands. They have amazing hamburgers, especially the Hawaiian one with pineapple and teriyaki sauce. Way too many calories, but today that was okay, because today was my goodbye to that place. If I am gonna leave this place in peace I have to say goodbye to everything and not go back wishing I would have gone to that particular place once more. I think I have to start to mentally prepare myself. It’s just 53 days until I leave for Hawaii!

My day before that was really nice. I stayed in bed while Chad went to the Sheriff shooting range to practice early in the morning. When he got home and woke me up we drove to Ponto and played a lot of beachvolley. It wasn’t very warm, but playing in shorts and a tank top was no problem at all. And I played really well today, even if it was a little bit windy. In the beginning could the tiniest of winds get into my head and totally disturb my playing. But today I didn’t think about it. I was just enjoying one of my last Saturdays playing beachvolley at the beach. Depending on the weather, I should have like 4-5 Saturdays left. But the weather is rather unpredictable this time of year. But today was nice, and I saw dolphins and I really hope that wasn’t the last time!

My hostfamily is in San Francisco now so I have the house all to myself until Tuesday evening. That also means that I have a four-day weekend now! It’s gonna be unbelievably nice to be home and just relax. No trips, just being home, reading, working out and sleeping. On Wednesday I have to work again, and then comes Thanksgiving. Another four-day weekend. Awesome! 🙂

My Steve Madden boots I ordered recently. They fit perfectly and I JUST LOVE THEM! Rainbow Loom is totally addicting! I made a “Starburst” for the boy and it took almost an hour. There were many tiny steps and a lot of rubber bands to keep track on. But I did it!

This morning I woke up and saw that I had 5 new emails on my phone. I thought that one of them has to be from FO Peterson about my thesis. I was excited and saw myself working there next spring, with my old co-workers. But no. Two of them (did they want to make sure that I got the same horrible information twice or what?!) were from Cultural Care telling me I got my flight itinerary for my flight home to Sweden… I hadn’t expected that information for at least another month and it came like a punch in the stomach. When you request a flight with Cultural Care you choose an interval of three days. I choose Feb 3^rd-5^th (the absolute latest available) and was hoping for the 4^th or 5^th or at least late on the 3^rd so I would have some time to say goodbye and mentally prepare for the departure. I will be back from Hawaii on Sunday Feb 2^nd at 8:20pm and I will leave for Sweden Monday Feb 3^rd at 6:15am. 10 hours between the flights. That’s gonna be tough, but I think it’s better to rip the bandaid of quickly instead of doing it slowly. So if I just pack all my stuff before Hawaii I will be fine. I will say goodbye to the family and Chad and skip sleep that night. I will have almost 14h in the air when I can sleep. It will take 17h and 35min in total with two layovers in Chicago and Frankfurt and will arrive in Gothenburg on Tuesday morning.

I knew I was leaving in the first week of February, but I was hoping I would have some time after Hawaii here in SD. So now I have to say goodbye to all my friends before Hawaii. And that is really soon! And I have a feeling I will panic, even if I feel that I’ve done almost everything I want to do already. But there are tiny things I didn’t think of before, like going to my favorite restaurants for the last time.

Me and Lovisa decided yesterday that we will go to Disneyland on Saturday Dec 21^st. I have a feeling Christmas as Disneyland will be slightly better than Christmas at Liseberg. I have to find someone who wants to go to San Diego Zoo Safari Park with me and ask Chad if he could take me to a shooting range. Maybe even this weekend? Then I have a beach volleyball tournament, my last LCC meeting, the Run or Dye 5k run and IKEA’s julbord. Not much time left after that. And since I have so much to do before I leave, I will be home before I know it. So even if eight weeks sounds like a lot, it’s really not… 😦

That also means only 8 more weeks here in San Diego. I feel ready to go home, because I’ve done everything I could that was in my budget and timeframe (except Hawaii). But I don’t wanna go home. Well, I do, but San Diego is so much more pleasant than cold and raw Sweden. But Sweden is home… Mixed feelings, oh yes! I know 8 weeks sounds like plenty of time, but it’s really not. In just 10 days December will be here.

Today was pretty normal. In my freetime I went to the gym and did one hour of spinning. I love  Wednesdays. The instructor has good music and a lagom tempo. But I think I need to have at least one more gear than he says, because it was pretty easy today.

For lunch I had my hostmom’s meatsauce leftovers from the weekend (when I wasn’t here). Words can’t describe what I feel about that dish, it’s my favorite food, maybe of all times! I love it!!

I picked up the boy and then the girl right after at one of her friends’ house. We went to Starbucks, we haven’t really been there lately because of weird schedules. Since I would go to Starbucks again tonight to study I just had a tea. I had no idea what they had so I just took something she recommended. It was just normal tea. Next time I take normal tea I will have the Passion Brewed Tea with hibiscus, lemongrass, rose hips, mango and passion fruit. It sounds really good. And zero calories. The girl tried Caramel Brulée Frapuccino. It was really good, so I have to try the Latte sometime soon. Starbucks has a lot of Holiday specials right now and of course I feel that I have to try them all. They have Gingerbread Latte, Eggnog Latte (I’ve never tried eggnog, so that will be interesting), Caramel Brulée Latte and Peppermint Latte. I’ve tried the later tonight when I went there to do my German homework. It was not good. It was okay, but I wouldn’t take it again, the Pumpkin Spice Latte was way way better.

In the afternoon I did a lot of homework with the boy and when he after that went to the neighbor for a playdate I read some while the girl was away on soccer practice.

Half the week is already gone and Thursday and Friday always goes faster than the first three days. Soon I will have a long weekend while the family is in San Francisco. I think I’m only working on Wednesday, maybe Tuesday too, next week. But I’m not complaining. It will be very nice with a little time off, just being here in San Diego, chilling :).

I found out last week that I am qualified enough (because of my internship last fall at the construction company) to do my thesis before I finish my last year at Chalmers. That made me so happy because that means that I don’t have to wait forever and ever with writing it (I’m not gonna be able to write it if I do the exchange program here in USA). So I have a partner and now we just have to do all the preparations via FB and e-mail, first of all find a company (cross my fingers for the one I worked at last year). If we do that we are good to go right when I get back to Sweden. I’m not sure how much time of the week that would take, or if I have to get a part time job at the same time so I can earn some money. Or if the thesis and that class I’ve failed twice and need to retake, will be enough credits for CSN to give me allowance and loans. CSN is so confusing, but I need all the money I can get when I get back so I have to figure it out somehow. I sent a new e-mail to the program director asking how much time per week this thesis thing will take. If I have time over I probably need to get a job, which I should apply for pretty soon.

Why is everything so complicated?? If I get accepted to this exchange program thingy I will have a lot of work with that next spring too. I will never be able to rest.

Today was a hectic day. I thought it was gonna be pretty much like a normal Tuesday. But no. The boy have early release day every day this week, so instead of picking up the girl first I have to pick him up first, and the girl really doesn’t like it when I have to pick her up with her brother by my side for some stupid reason. Today was fine though, hopefully she realizes that it’s only two more days of that. Because tomorrow they get out of school at exactly the same time and since I can’t be at two places at one time (which btw, would be awesome if I could) a friend of the girl’s mom have to pick her up. Anyway, then the soccer coach of the girl changed the practice from yesterday to today and I had to pick up another girl for carpooling and then drive to a completely new place. And then there was dinner. I had dinner with the boy, the girl had already eaten at practice, and at the end came the dad and after us came the mom and ate some. For dinner I made a chicken/bacon stew with apple cubes served with rice. It was really good and I hope I will remember this recipe for later occasions!

It was a crazy day and my guess is that the rest of the week will be pretty much the same.

After dinner I wrote an e-mail to my former employer at the construction company asking if they have something for me to do. My partner will read it through before I actually send it. I really hope we can do the thesis there. It would simplify my life so much!

Now I will go to bed and finish the last (there’s gonna be three more before the end of the year) novella I have in the Bane Chronicles and then start reading The Infernal Devices, a prequel to The Mortal Instruments. Reading is awesome!!

Today was very long. The kids were off from school for some reason. The morning was pretty mellow and after lunch both of the kids had playdates over. That meant while keeping an eye and ear on the kids I could read. So I finished two of the Bane novellas and I will probably finish a third now in bed.

My German class was pretty hard in the beginning and there was one time that I was asked a question and I couldn’t remember how to change a question from simple to more complex. Spielst du gern Volleyball? -> Gefällt es dir, Volleyball zu spielen? Now my head is tuned to German again and I am excited about the two tests coming up in two and three weeks. Feels wrong to say it, but I am.

I started my third week of 5:2 today with one of the 500 calorie days today. No problem! Last week I didn’t lose any weight because I had some serious troubles with my stomach, but now it’s working again and I hope to lose some more lbs this week.

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 has been a very calm day. I stayed in bed until like 4pm reading while Chad was studying. I finished the first Bane Chronicle novella, started and finished the second, and started on the third. I will probably finish that one when I go to bed later.

Last night we watched The Croods. I just love that movie, it’s so funny. And the night before that we saw Monsters University.

After my reading spree I went to Cheesecake Factory with Lovisa and Christin. I had my favorite, Farfalle with Chicken and Roasted Garlic. It’s so delicious!! For dessert I wanted to take the Red Velvet Cake Cheesecake but they didn’t have that one tonight so I took the normal Carrot Cake. Nothing special, just carrot cake.

Number 13 at Cheesecake Factory (even if it wasn’t a cheesecake it still counts), Carrot Cake.

I like kids. I definitely want to have kids in the future. But I’m not gonna let them have big birthday parties. Oh my god… The girl have 15 girlfriends over and I was supposed to help. My first clue it was gonna be a tough night was the fact that I had to make tacos for them all… It took me two hours to cut up all the vegetables and fry the beef. I wouldn’t have minded doing it if my stomach was okay, but it hurt really bad. It got better eventually. So when the girls arrived they played games. First they did karaoke and then a big boardgame with themselves as pieces around the house. That was  horrible. They were screaming so much and loudly about ridiculous stuff like who in One Direction is the most handsome and ugly. My head hurt and I was scared of what the rest of the evening had to offer. It got better though. While I heated the beef and tortilla breads the girls played the murder game. The girl who got the king from a card deck was the murderer. And then they were all gonna shake hands and the murderer tickled the one she shook hands with. That person, three handshakes from the murderer later dropped dramatically dead and then the game’s goal was to find the murderer.

Tacos for dinner was good and the meringue cake for dessert was even better. But after that I got some serious stomach cramps and had to lie down for a while. I missed the present openings but that’s fine. I helped taking everything away and now the girls are watching a movie, Brides War. And soon I will head over to Chad’s place. I don’t wanna wake up here tomorrow when 15 girls (I don’t know if some are going home tonight) are jumping in the room above mine way before I want to wake up.

The other big thing that happened today was that I finally finished Under the Dome. An awesome book and all Stephen King lovers should definitely read it. It made you hate it but it was sooo good. Now I will read the Bane Chronicles. It’s 10 short stories about the warlock Magnus Bane in The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare. It will be nice with short projects now that I just finished a 800 pages brick.

Tomorrow I don’t have anything planned except eating dinner at Cheesecake Factory with some girls.

Today’s big thing was me and Lovisa’s trip to IKEA. We walked around, pointed out our furniture we have back in Sweden, had lunch and then walked through the first floor too. I didn’t have the meatballs for lunch but I had a Waldorf Chicken Wrap which was really good, and healthier than 15 meatballs. In Sweden you can choose a smaller portion if you want.

I miss Sweden…

Back home I took a quick shower and then picked up the kids. The boy went to the kid next door and the girl made bracelets with the Rainbow Loom while I was reading the conclusion of Under the Dome. I still have no idea what’s gonna happen, but since I only have 50 more pages, the end must come after this big visitor event. Exciting!

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 is the 11th birthday of one of my hostkids. She got breakfast, and by breakfast I mean a big cupcake and hot chocolate, in bed. In school she got like 6 Happy-Birthday-balloons. In the afternoon she wanted to take it easy, so she did a little homework, read and watched Doctor Who. I love it that she also love that show! Me and the boy did a lot of homework during that time and then we made Rainbow Loom bracelets. That is like therapy. It was really nice sitting there in the couch with the kids making those rubberband bracelets.

For dinner we had Swedish oven pancake and cookies and cream cake for dessert. It was okay, the cream was really good, but it was too much of the chocolate “cookie” part. I love chocolate in candy, but when it comes to cookies and cakes, I’m more of a vanilla person.

In my freetime I skyped with my adorable cousin Ella for two hours! We haven’t skyped since the beginning of the year and she has grown so much! I remember last time when she all of a sudden said goodbye because she was done talking to me. Now we just kept talking. They grow up so fast! The reason for the skype was because she had her 9^th birthday on the 9^th of November and she wanted to thank me for the gift I sent her. She was so happy about it! I sent her a pretty glitter card, an “E” key chain from Hollywood and an arts and crafts book. You take out the piece of paper, follow instructions and fold them into a 3D chic boutique. It made me so happy that she thanked me and was so happy about it. I already figured out what to get her (and her brothers, I think they would like that too) for Christmas. Not sure I will send it though. I will probably bring it when I visit when I’m back in Sweden again. It will be much more fun seeing her face in real life instead on Skype.

I didn’t have too much time after that, so I just had lunch, read a little and then picked up the kids. That book is just too awful. I was a bit hopeful, I think it was yesterday, but then the bad guys survived and now all hell is loose with just 150 pages left…
Stephen King is awesome!

It was very nice weather today. When I was sitting at the playground at the boy’s school this morning I had leggings and a sweater on and I was burning up. It’s been like 88F. That is around 30C. In November! This is just too crazy. Next time it’s that warm I will hang out at the pool. Unless it’s tomorrow, because tomorrow I will spend my freetime with Lovisa at IKEA. Hello Swedish meatballs, mashed potatoes, lingonberries and a little bit of home!

Every kid here in SoCal are doing these rubberband bracelets now. And there are so many different designs to do with like a million different colors, including self glowing.