Tag Archives: winter

Skiing in Luossavaara

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Late last night, I came home to a cold Gothenburg. It was -9C and warm compared to what I had left behind. Today it was -10C when I left for work, I barely felt it. The sky was clear and the air crisp and dry. Really nice. Much different when I left work today though. It was only -5C, damp and windy, so I was chilled to my bones, it was horrible!!

On Saturday we woke up to a clear blue sky again and it was below -20C. The ski slope usually is closed if it is colder than -20 or when it is too windy. No wind, but really cold. Their Facebook page had not updated anything about it though so we walked the 800m to the slope from Malin’s apartment. The mountain Luossavaara lies on an old abandoned mine and only had basically two slopes going down. One lift. But it was really good skiing. I haven’t been on skiis in at least 8 years, but it went surprisingly well, at least Malin said it looked good for being 8 years since last time. The snow was perfect, one side of the lift was recently groomed (do you say that?) and no one had been on it. So nice!

My calves didn’t hurt, they were about to after the first try. But for some reason it stopped and never started. What hurt was my nose and cheeks from the extreme cold. But my calves didn’t. Well, they did afterward after being squished so tightly for quite a while. But I didn’t lose my sense of feeling in my feet at all, which I remember doing during each go last time. So that was a success.

We had waffle lunch, went some more and then the lift died so we decided it was time to go back home. Our faces hurt from the cold. But oh my, what a beautiful day!

The end of the day was spent in front of Melodifestivalen (the Swedish Eurovision) with homemade pizza. Haven’t seen it in forever and I feel like that was the right choice. Not impressed. But still a nice evening!

 

On my last day in Kiruna, we went on a walk in another super awesome day. Clear sky again, -26 when we woke up, -24 when we were out. We took a closer look at the church and then walked back. An hour outside was more than enough and our faces hurt again. We watched Hidden Figures before I had to go to the bus and leave for Sweden… I mean Gothenburg.

I am glad that I now know that Malin is having a great time up there and is doing really well. I can only imagine how scary it must be to move out of your parents comfort already as a 16-year old. Brave girl!

 

UPDATE 2018-10-06!

A couple of days in Sala

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It was a while ago now that I visited my grandparents in Sala (middle of Sweden). Dad, Karin, Jesper and I drove up there on Thursday and spent two nights and came back tonight. On Thursday it was extremely cold everywhere and when we arrived at 8pm it was -19°C (-2 °F). That was cold, it hurt in my nose when I breathed. The cold was still there the day after, so when we went for a walk around the lake it was -12 and the wind made it even chillier. It was not fun! The lake, Långforsen, was frozen over and people went skiing on it. With the snow it was pretty though.

We also took the car to show Jesper what was worth showing in the small town of Sala. The silver mine, obviously. A little bit of downtown, but that is it, nothing else up there, haha! I think Jesper wants to go there in the summer to go down in the silver mine. I kinda want too, it was so many years ago I was there.

The day ended with a good dinner, a burning fire in the living room and some time spent in their sauna.

img_20170106_132806 img_20170106_145601 img_20170106_145929 img_20170106_145947 img_20170106_150608 img_20170106_150834 img_20170106_151111 img_20170106_151122 img_20170106_151353 img_20170106_151707 img_20170106_152748 img_20170106_182435img_20170106_213016

 

Today was much warmer, only -2 °C. The sky was blue and the walk around the lake was so much nicer today. I was only cold after a while, and that was only my hands after taking too many pictures. So here are basically the same pictures as above, but with a blue sky in the background.

img_20170107_122425 img_20170107_123435 img_20170107_123446 img_20170107_125208 img_20170107_123525 img_20170107_123544 img_20170107_123959 img_20170107_124255 img_20170107_124325 img_20170107_125712  Jesper, me, dad, and grandpa.img_20170107_131835 img_20170107_125855 img_20170107_130255 img_20170107_130524 img_20170107_131541 pano_20170107_125421 img_20170107_153003 On the way home it was extremely foggy, sometimes it was impossible to see the road ahead. While the sun was setting it was sooooo pretty!

Party @ Chalmers

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I’ve attended my first Chalmers party in more than a year and it was so much fun. But before the party could start there was a student held department meeting. Normally those are kinda fun, but this time they didn’t allow alcohol at the meeting so I got really really bored. And when they talked about the year’s budget for about an hour it didn’t make it better. So I went down to “Buren” (translated into The Cage), our room in the basement. In the pause my grand-grandchild came down and gave me some pasta salad. Very nice of him to think of his elder!

At like 9:30 pm (the meeting started at 5) we were dragged up to the meeting again to vote for the new person to join the group. One quit…

The meeting didn’t end until I think 12:30am but as soon as it was over we all went down to welcome the new girl. We drank champagne and after some talking they brought forth the tray, caps, glasses and beer. It was time for keps! I’ve been missing that game so much in the US. I couldn’t play too long though. Sober for almost a year and keps is not a good combination so I stopped after four ciders. I was lagom drunk. And no hangover today, win!

But I slept the whole day. I came home around 5am, slept until 11am, watched some sitcoms and then fell asleep again and got up at 3pm to take a shower.

I should read through some documents for my thesis and for once I actually think I will do it instead of being a lazy-ass.

 

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!! ❤

 

SNOW This is my view yesterday morning. SNOW! But it only lasted a few hours…No SNOWWhen I walked to school it was actually a bit pretty. My camera isn’t very good with lights, but the sky was a peach color and it almost felt like California/Hawaii. Except that it was very cold…

The dentist

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I’ve been waiting for this day since October. I didn’t have my wisdom teeth pulled today, but I will be sent to the odontology specialist within a few weeks. Without any questions about it. I guess they understood how badly I needed this after my mom called in October and asked for this appointment. It is a bit scary though. What if that nerve gets in the way and I will have a lazy jaw for the rest of my life? Is it gonna hurt? Will I look stupid as a chipmunk?

I was inside the rest of the day because of the famous Gothenburg weather. Rain. Not much most of the day, but enough to not want to be outside. I didn’t start with that online course I have to take, but I will do it this weekend. Instead I applied for two scholarships and will apply for a third tomorrow and in the next few months two more will be applyable. I need every penny I can get.

The level of this blog sank a lot since I came back to Sweden, it’s not as interesting anymore because Sweden is simply put a boring country most of the times. But I will start with the preparations for my next big adventure pretty soon. It will be so much fun going back to Cali to study :).