Before you leave on exchange, one of the things that you hear the most is, “practice your language before you leave!” In the six months that I was preparing to leave, I must have heard it at least sixty times from numerous people, but being the numbskull that I am, I put it off. Of course I worked on Swedish, just not nearly as much as I should have. I kept telling myself that it would be easier once summer started and I wouldn't have to compete with my Spanish class to fit in some Swedish every day. Once summer did start, I started working harder every day on my Swedish and I thought that I sounded pretty good, and was prepared to speak Swedish with everyone that I met. Boy was I wrong. When I first arrived and was actually able to introduce myself, I had to repeat myself every single time because my accent was so atrocious, and when someone said anything to me, even the simplest sentence, I would have no clue what they had just said. After a week of listening to everyone around me talk and laugh, I couldn't wait to go to language camp. In all of Sweden, there were two language camps. One for the Northern half, and one for the Southern half. I went to the one in the South along with 25 other students. Our camp was held in the small town of Ädelfors. With a total population of 723 people, there wasn't much to do. The actual language camp was held on a public college campus. Because the school year hadn’t started yet, we were able to stay in the dorms. To get there, all of the other students from the Malmö district took a two hour train ride, and then a forty five minute bus ride to the campus. We arrived and had lunch while introducing ourselves. After, we all went to the classroom where we would be having our Swedish lessons every day for the next week and listened to a speech in which we were welcomed to Sweden. After, we had fika which I will soon explain, and did some get to know you games. One of the main themes of camp that we all noticed was the food. We ate so much. Literally every hour and a half, we would have a break. The Swedes are very fond of something that they call fika. Fika is basically where you take a break and enjoy most commonly some coffee and pastries. Our schedule was packed with fikas and meals. To start the day, we would have breakfast, then a Swedish class, fika, then class, lunch, class, fika, class, dinner, activity, fika, free time, then finally, we went to bed. By the end of the week, our brains were wired to be starving after just a hour of work. I now know what everyone meant when they told me that I would gain weight on exchange. Every day we had a similar schedule, with three language classes, then a group activity, then free time, but the days never got boring or repetitive. On our second day, the students who went on exchange last year, which we call rebounds, were in charge of the group activity games. They came up with a competition in which we would all be put in teams and would have to compete for a bowl of Swedish candy. The first challenge was who could eat a candy noodle the fastest with no hands. There were other games, but the one that stood out the most and was obviously a favorite was the milk carton challenge. In this game, each team would send in one representative for each round to pick up a milk carton with just their teeth. The difficult part of the game was that nothing but your feet could touch the ground. Each round the carton was cut shorter, and each round it became more difficult. To win, you had to be creative with how you picked it up. At the beginning, the easiest way to pick it up for most was by doing the splits and then grabbing it. As it got shorter, it became more difficult. When it came down to the final two contestants, tension was high. On one team, we had HoBum, from South Korea, on the other, we had Jake from the US. They had managed to stay in the game long enough, where the milk carton was as small as it could possible get, so the judges had to be creative. We decided that whoever could pick up the cartoon in the least amount of tries from a sand pit, would win. The eventual winner was HoBum who managed to do perfect splits, without falling over, and still being able to pick up the milk carton. Chaos reigned as all of our minds were collectively blown. After all the games, each team got to pick a bowl of candy to share. Other than Swedish lessons, we had more activities that were all fun in their own ways. On one day, after some difficult classes, we all were driven out to a nearby lake to go swimming. Almost everyone jumped off of the high dive into the cold water and after, we played some more get-to-know-you games on the lawn. A few days later, we went on a trip to the Kleva Mine and spent the better part of an hour learning the history of it while walking through the freezing cold tunnels while bumping our helmeted heads against the low cavern ceilings. One of the most personal activities in my opinion was where we all had to paint our hopes and dreams for our futures. Every painting was beautiful and unique and when we were done, we all had to explain what they meant. I don’t have very secure plans for my future right now, but I knew that someday in my life, I would like to have a small farm where I will be able to grow my own food and keep animals. I thought that the thing that would make the most sense for me to paint would be a goat, so I did.
My absolute favorite activity of the week though was the talent show. We all were told a least a week in advance about how we would each need to perform something, but many people were still caught off guard. I knew I wanted to sing something but I didn’t know what. Luckily, I was invited to join a group of three other girls to sing the cup song that is performed in Pitch Perfect, and I partnered up with a boy from Brazil and sang “Dust in the Wind,” with him on the guitar. The other performances were amazing. There was a dance group where they choreographed and performed their own dance with only two days to prepare, a hilarious cooking skit, card tricks, a fencing demonstration, and many musical acts. Because of the large number of performances, we had to fit the talent show into two nights. Throughout the week, we all got to know each other better and bonded over our dislike of waking up every morning for breakfast at 7:30. We spent our free time playing pool and ping pong in the rec room. Our love of ping pong was evident as a few of the students put together a tournament for the entire camp to participate in. I personally didn’t join in and chose to watch instead because when I try to play, it looks more like I’m playing a game of hockey with toddlers than a game of pool with teenagers. A couple times we went to the sauna that the school offered. For many of us, this was our first time saunaing so we couldn't stand the heat nearly as long as some of the others, but we still enjoyed the heat. We sang, ate, and enjoyed getting to know each other for the few remaining days of camp. When it was time to go home, we were all reluctant to say goodbye to each other. We would each have to start school soon which is a challenge in itself when you don’t know the language and that was nerve wracking. In just one week we had become family. As we waved goodbye, I had to remind myself that I would see each of them many times in the coming year on trips and voyages through Sweden.
