today, i am babysitting

and i don’t have much else to say besides that. it’s really, really nice outside so i should probably go get ready and go out for a while before i have to babysit. i don’t have any other plans for today though.

five favourite songs right now:

x Strange & Beautiful - Aqualung

x Stellar – Incubus (i realize it’s old, i’ve re-fallen in love with it)

x It’s Not The End Of The World But I Can See It From Here - Lostprophets

x If It Kills Me – Jason Mraz

x and this is just embarrassing, but Can’t Be Tamed – Miley Cyrus. this is the third song of hers i have enjoyed. it’s a GOOD SONG. TT.TT

yeah.

 

epic graffiti in Spain in case you are wondering.

España #2

sorry that i didn’t blog yesterday or the day before ): i was kind of busy and i just completely forgot about it somehow. anyways, the second aspect of the trip to Spain that i’d like to cover is the Midsummer-ish festival that is unique to the city of Alicante. the festival itself wasn’t at all like Sweden’s traditional Midsummer celebrations, i’m just comparing it to that because the purpose is pretty much the same. it takes place over a few days in June, with fireworks and parades and outdoor eating and things like that, but the main night is on the 24th.

the most outstanding thing about the festivals is the bonfires. these, ladies and gentlemen, are not any regular bonfires. for a week or so before this holiday, there are large sculptures made of paper-mâché in different parts of the city, around 40 total. they are painted as well, and very big, and are ridiculously intricate and detailed for the purpose that they serve.

these are some of the sculptures before they met their fate:

the interesting thing about all of these artworks is that the entire purpose of their creation is to be burned down. at midnight there is a single firework, which signals the beginning of the festival, and from that point on sculptures are set aflame all over the city. fireworks shoot from them at the same time as they start burning, and it’s absolutely crazy.

the first one we watched was really big and had an absolutely giant crowd of tourists watching it. it was in the water and was absolutely giant.

before burning:

everyone was starting to get impatient waiting until it finally started burning down…

       

as you can see, it’s kind of terrifying. the fact that the sculpture featured a freaking clown and some masks did not help at ALL. it was really apocalyptic, my mom and i thought, because as this was not the first one to go off there were giant billows of smoke coming from several different places and completely smoking up the sky, and there were giant fires in different places, and people all over the place. it was surreal and freaky and really, really cool.

i might mention that before it burned fireworks shot from it into the air, and there were little firefighting boats spraying it to make sure it didn’t burn down some boats or something.

the next one we watched was actually cooler. it was more true to the culture and real, instead of being photographed by swarms of tourists.

before burning:

 

i didn’t get any pictures of this one burning, only a video.

this one was extremely freaky. and also very awesome. it was like the other one except instead of all the tourists there was a group of screaming Spanish people getting sprayed by a firefighter with a hose, the guys waving their t-shirts above their heads. also, as well as a giant billow of smoke pouring into the sky there were craploads of embers and pieces of burning cardboard pouring down from the sky. we all got little spots of ashes on us, my mom actually got burnt… we had all like run back to avoid being hit by the embers but i mean you couldn’t avoid it.

it was also funny to put into perspective how completely not allowed that would have been in the us. this giant fire was located DIRECTLY by a tree, and between buildings just in the middle of a regular city block. the massive amounts of safety hazards would have already completely made it not even something to be considered. my mom and i think that also there would be the issue of sensitive parents being offended by burning sculptures replicating human figures, and bringing in issues like 9/11. just because they do things like that. it would just not happen there. for many different reasons. cultural differences ftw.

it was a really cool thing to get to see, though. the dates for the trip just happened to fall perfectly upon the time of this holiday. we tend to have luck with that sort of thing.

in other news, today i went on a massively long walk all the way from my apartment to my old school and then past there to Haga and around it, and then back to Odenplan and then i took the train home. all of this in very hot, sunny weather. it was really fun. i love going on long walks.

my summer is going swell :D swell-ly? i don’t think swell is an adverb.

oki doki byebye <33

España #1

so my trip to Spain was two weeks long, which is a long time, and i don’t really feel like going into extreme detail about it cause i mean that’s over 14 days to write about. i’ll give an overview of the trip and then focus on two of the more important aspects of it.

before going to Spain we had an overnight layover in England, which was fun. we drove to London and went to the Madame Tussaud’s wax museum and drove around. in Spain, we stayed at a couple’s apartment in El Campello… it was actually more of their vacation home or something, their primary apartment is in Valencia which is nearby. the apartment was quite nice, and there was a really pretty pool downstairs that we were in quite a lot.

 

the trip was really good and really nice overall because it was really chill; we weren’t running around doing tourist-y things, mostly just hanging out on the beach or at the apartment or shopping or whatever.

so the first important aspect of the trip was the beaches. we spent many an hour lying on the beach, tanning, sleeping, reading, and/or listening to our iPods, or going on walks, or looking for seashells, or going in the water. the beaches there were unbelievably pretty, some of the most amazing beaches i have ever been to. the sand was perfectly clear and soft and white, and the water was really blue and see-through and warm.. and it was always very warm and sunny, which was of course nice.

we went to very many different beaches. there was a really pretty one right down the street from where we were staying, but we only ended up at that one a couple times because we tried out a lot of difference ones. we ended up having many picnics on the beach, too, which was really fun. the striped blue pad thing you see under my family in one of the pictures below was used very frequently. we still managed to get sand all over our clothes and the apartment, though. we were always getting sandy, salty, and sticky from sunscreen.

but there’s much less to say about it than there is to show, now <3

 

i also might just mention that i got a darker tan than i’ve ever had before.

well, crap.

i said i was going to start blogging about spain today but i forgot and now it’s almost midnight so i am not doing that now. i will do it tomorrow. this time i promise.

today i hung out with my wonderful friend jasmine for the first time in a long time and it was very fun :D we walked around a lot and got mcdonalds and talked a whole bunch ^^

i plan to do stuff like that, meeting up with people and getting out as much as possible for the rest of this summer so as to take advantage of it as much as i can. summer will go by very, very quickly. unfairly quickly.

i don’t have much else to say. i shall blog much better tomorrow.

the final countdown

hello there blog, i am back! how i have missed you.

yesterday was the official day marking the one year countdown of my time left in sweden before we move back. i realize that we've had countdowns for this kind of thing many times but this time we actually ARE leaving. we will not decide to stay at the last second for another year or 6 more months or whatever again. no, seriously. this time we mean it.

haha. no, but seriously, this is it. we really can’t stay any longer than this. so 364 days left, i guess.

i have a goal that i am actually ripping off of my mom, but her doing it too is good because we can keep each other motivated. what i want to do is blog every single day that i have left in sweden. if i have to miss a day here and there because i’m traveling or whatever there’s not much i can do about it, i guess, but the idea is that i blog every day. it will be hard, but i’ll think of it as a daily task and i think i’ll be able to pull through.

my mom is an excellent blogger, and her blog is interesting, so if you’re reading this you should go to her blog as well, and follow it. it’s on the list of blogs i have on the right-hand side of this blog, but anyway here is the link.

http://livinginstockholm.blogspot.com/

i will write about my trip to Spain in two different pieces, starting tomorrow. i just got back a couple nights ago and it was a veeeery fun trip.

but for now, here’s to the beginning of the end.

shopping med min mamma

my mom is awesome. i enjoy doing many things with her, including talking about things for very long periods of time, and being philosophical with her, and then also shopping. shopping with my mom is fabulous because she and i like similar things and know what each other like and know what looks good on each other, like, better than anybody else in the world. so we make very good shopping partners.

we also both really like thrift store shopping, which is nice. but anyway, right now we’re getting ready for the 2-week-long Spain trip we’re leaving for on Tuesday – we’re doing a home exchange thing with some Spanish couple, so they’ll stay in our apartment and we’ll stay in theirs – and it’s taking a lot of work. we have to pack away a lot of the stuff in our apartment so it’s not all cluttery and in the way for them, and we have to clean for them, and we have to go shopping for summer clothes for us. so that’s what my mom and i did today and yesterday, is shopping. i’ve gotten many many of the things i’ve needed including sunglasses, shorts, a denim skirt, and dresses.

dresses, dresses, dresses. my mom and i have been kind of dress-happy lately and really freaking like them right now for some reason. do you know how many cute dresses there are in the world? i didn’t, until recently. today we were at a thrift store we both like for quite a long time, and i found 3 of possibly the cutest dresses in the world. and for that reason, i am happy.

also, i was looking at the cds there just like, hmm these are mostly really crappy Swedish cds but maybe there’ll be something good in here, you never know. might as well look. and then i just happen upon motion city soundtrack’s album commit this to memory, with the wrapping still totally on the cd. for 20 kr. i had a mini-heart attack. and made my mom buy it for me. best cd find in a thrift store EVER. omg.

an afi cd and an angels and airwave cd were in there too but my mom already has both of those, and they’re much less exciting anyway, so yeah.

it’s just so WEIRD XD why would i find THAT cd at a secondhand store in SWEDEN XD

but it’s awesome.

my mom and i have decided that secondhand shopping is a really good solution to the expensiveness issue that Sweden has. my mom for example got a dress for like 60 kr and the tag from the store it was originally bought at was still on it, saying that it was 250 kr or something. it’s much cheaper to do it like this. plus, you can find really unique things that aren’t in H&M and Bik Bok and whatever, and it’s actually really fun to dig through it all, in my opinion.

in other news, tomorrow is my LAST DAY OF SCHOOL <3 this school year was fairly uneventful and it’s really weird that it’s over already, but i’m very happy that i don’t have to deal with going to school for a few months. i plan to take advantage of my last summer in Sweden as much as i possibly can. i’m only gone for two weeks of it which is nice.

anywayyyysss i’ll maybe post pictures after tomorrow <3 byeee ^^

finally.

finally, finally, finally.

the leaves and grass are the same Crayola green. the sky is blue, the clouds are white, birds are singing all the time, and bugs are all over the place. people are wearing sundresses and shorts and sunglasses and tanning out in the amazing sunshine.

THIS is what i’m thinking about when i say i love sweden.

finally.