Another Welcome Party

I am horrible at saying goodbye. I either ugly cry or just try to get it over with as fast as possible. I’m only halfway through my year but I’ve already had to make it through many goodbyes. Hugging my friends and family goodbye was the first challenge, but now I have to say goodbye to people that I may never see again. Most exchange students arrive in their countries at the end of summer, but those that come from Australia, New Zealand, and a few other countries arrive in January. This is because the school year in those countries starts at the end of January and the students who are finishing exchange need to get home in time for the start of their school. Because of this, when those students go home, we are forced to say goodbye to those who helped us through our first half of exchange. It was difficult hugging them and wishing them safe travels home, but all of the students who still had six months left had something new to look forward to. New exchange students! And when we get new exchange students, which we like to call “newbies,” we get welcome parties! When I first arrived in August, we had our own welcome party complete with scavenger hunts, yard games, and awkward introductions. The other exchange students and I greatly appreciated it because it really gave us time to get to know who would be our best friends for the next year, and hopefully beyond. We were all excited to be able to help with this welcome party for our newbies. Everyone in the South of Sweden, and one other district, above Skåne was invited. We had ten oldies and three newbies to introduce. Two were from Australia and one from Botswana. The day of, I hopped on a train from Svedala to Malmö and planned on going straight to the restaurant where our party would be that day, but I ran into one other exchange student who was also on her way. She was waiting for the three boys from the north of Skåne so I waited with her in Espresso House, Sweden's equivalent to Starbucks. Only two of the boys actually showed up because one got on the wrong train, but as we were waiting for the bus, the third ran up and caught us! Apparently, he just took the faster, but later train to Malmö. From there, all five of us surprisingly found our way to the restaurant without outside assistance. When we got inside, we were greeted by the rest of the exchange students who were busy making sandwiches for lunch. The activity for the day was cooking dinner for fifty people as part of the party. We used one of the exchange student’s family restaurant so we had space for all of us in the kitchen. When we all heard that the activity would be making dinner, we were thinking something along the lines of pasta, but were surprised to see that we would actually be making fancy restaurant-grade dishes! We would have five hours to cook, which seems like a long time, but by the end it was quite stressful. After eating our sandwiches, the group was divided into three groups. My group was in charge of the sushi, the chicken and bacon for the giant caesar salad, and the melon carpaccio. No one had even the slightest idea of what melon carpaccio was, but we were all given detailed instructions on how to make the food. Sure, the instructions were in Swedish which made things a little more difficult, but the challenge made the day more lively. The other two groups made the rest of the caesar salad, bread, shrimp soup, giant shrimp skewers, and for dessert, two giant trays of tiramisu. We had our work cut out for us. My team got to work making the rice by rinsing, rinsing, and rinsing it again until it was deemed suitable to go into the hefty pot on the stove. After the rice was cooked, we had to scoop it into a bowl to add the rice vinegar. I take no blame for the one guy who actually managed to burn himself on rice while helping me. Out of the whole day, that was one of the very few injuries received. One would expect more people to get hurt considering we were a large group of teenagers crowded in a kitchen. Luckily, no fingers were lost or anything like that. After a few hours, the kitchen was filled with wafts of shrimp soup and cooked bacon. We all would’ve been starving at that point, but people kept finding ways to “sample” the foods they were making. All was going well and it seemed that we would be finished by our deadline. Near the end, when there were fewer tasks to do, teams started to integrate as we looked for more things to do. On my team, when it was time to roll the sushi, many other teams’ members came over to help. Originally we were supposed to make fifteen rolls of salmon sushi, and five rolls of vegetarian, but with the amount of rice that we made, and all of the extra materials, we made closer to forty rolls of salmon and twenty vegetarian. At five o’clock, we had cleaned our work spaces, made final preparations put on our blazers and were ready to welcome in the host families. Around five thirty, everyone was called over to the buffet to “Oo and ahh” at our hard work and each team took turns explaining what they had prepared. When it was time to eat, we the exchange students were allowed to serve ourselves first. I noticed that most of us frugally picked at the food and took modest portions. This was not surprising because we had all filled up on so much extra sushi, chips, and candy before hand. Nevertheless, we had to try everything that we had worked so hard on! After everyone had eaten, Mariana (from Brazil), Caleb (from Canada), and I did a presentation I had titled “Sweden For Dummies” to help introduce the new exchange students to the very basic things they should know about Sweden. For example, they got a short lesson on ABBA, a famous Swedish pop group. We also explained fika, and a few other things. At the end of our presentation, we surprised the audience with a quiz about what they learned using Kahoot. For those who don’t know, Kahoot is an online website where teachers, employees, and anyone who wants can make a quiz and then put the questions on a screen for everyone with a device, be it phone or laptop, to answer. All you need is a code and you can join in. The site keeps track of who is in the lead which makes it particularly fun and competitive. When the quiz was finished, the chefs brought out the tiramisu and we all suddenly had space for more food. The next hour was spent talking and laughing as we told our newbies stories of when we too had just arrived. At the end of the night, a large bag was passed around with cheap toys for all of us as gifts for coming. I grabbed a small puzzle which I plan on completing soon. Other gifts included bubbles and stick on mustaches. When it was time to go home, we all hugged goodbye, which has been a long standing tradition, and promised to visit each other soon. It’s crazy how fast this year has been going by. I was warned by many that it would be over in a second and all I can say is they were right. It feels like I was at my own welcome party last week, but I’m more than halfway done with my exchange. All I can do now is take full advantage of every opportunity thrown my way and appreciate every minute I have here.

#Cooking