December

Wow...Where do I begin? This has truly been an amazing month! I know I have not been very good at blogging the past month, but once you hear what I've been up to I'm hoping you'll find it in your hearts to forgive me.

Well I suppose the best place to begin is at the beginning and that would be 1 December, World AIDS Day, and the official launch of my project ImPATCHit! Arriving back from Kiruna on the same day made things a little difficult and added a lot to my stress, but it was all for nothing as my friends really had my back and the launch of the project went off with a bang! There were close to 300 people at the launch party, most wearing red to show their support for the fight against AIDS. Everybody had a great time, the club looked amazing and we were able to sell over 300 patches on the first day alone.

The next two weeks we devoted all of our lunch times to selling patches in the student building and it was not difficult to reach our first target of 500 patches. This is enough to support  2 Gogo's for a year each! There has been a lot of interest from the students and I hope their enthusiasm will continue in the new year when I hope to launch phase 2 of the project and really get it on the map! None of this would not have been possible without my friend's help and if you guys are reading this then a big, big thank you...I owe you big time!

Of course December is also the festive season and one of the advantages of having so many international students friends was being able to see how all the different countires celebrate. I went to numerous Christmass parties including a Dutch Sinterklaus, a German Christmass party and of course a Swedish Rotary Christmas lunch.

One of the really nice things that one can not help, but notice is how the Swedes decorate their homes. They all have special candles in their windows. As December is the darkest month of the year, it is a beautiful way to make the darkness more bearable! It also has something to do with the festival of light or rather St Lucia that is held on the 13 December. Choirs dressed in white sing in the dark with real candles in their hair to symbolise that the winter is ending and that the days will now start getting longer. The singing is very moving and is a wonderful thing to experience. Yet another perfect example of how the Swedes have adapted to living in such a harsh climate.

Another highlight was the visit of Loria, a friend from Potch who is currently studying in Belgium. It was really fun showing her around and being able to discuss how different things were not only from SA, but also Belgium. We explored Linköping and did the winter lights tour. Certain parts of the town have been lit up by special lighting effects and its really nice to walk and see all them all. (Again coping with life in the dark!)

Our visit to Stockholm was amazing as we got to see the famous Christmas markets, we visited the Nobel Museum and even found places where we were the only foreigners! The weather was very cold and it was a little bad until it started to SNOW and made it all worth while. It was the first real snow of the season and we were like little children running around trying to catch snow flakes on our tounges. I swear the people must of thought we were mad! It was an amazing experience and Stockholm became even more beautiful (I did not think that was possible).

After Loria's visit things started to get a little sad as all the Erasmus students also started to leave. They are only on exchange for one semester and many of my good friends will not be coming back to Linköping. So a lot of time was spent saying goodbye with a lot of people holding farewell parties, dinners and fika's. I had no idea how many close friends I'd made until it was time to say good bye! Luckily I'll get to see them all on my tour of Europe in June and July.

One funny thing to come out of everyone leaving is that I'm now the proud owner of 8 bicycles! I've been given a lot of bicycles to sell on behalf of their owners and some of the money will go to ImPATCHit!

After all the goodbyes I was glad to be spending Christmas with Birgitta and Thomas in the south of Sweden. They live in probably the smallest village in Sweden called Gummemåla, only 5 families, right in the middle of what is called the Kingdom of Glass because of all the glass works in the area.

Christmas is mainly celebrated on the 24th with a special smårgasbord called a Julbord. Which is a kind of buffet with a variety of herring, salmon, gammon, special sausages and a potatoe dishes. Their daughter and her boyfriend came over and we had fun eating, talking and of course drinking schnapps (you always drink it with herring).

Lunch was followed by another Swedish tradition that is now 40 years old. That is to watch an hour of Donald Duck and other cartoons at 3 o'clock. All festivities revolve around this show and the entire family, both young and old, will sit and watch it. There are some traditional skits, but also some from more recent cartoons.

Donald duck is followed by the opening of presents and then generally just relaxing and enjoying the snow outside from in front of an open fireplace. Later we enjoyed a viking bath which is a hot tub outside in the cold accompanied again by rolling in the snow and jumping back in the bath! There is another tradition at supper of rice porridge with cinnamon accompanied by gammon and mustard on bread...very yummy!

The days after christmas were very relaxing and I was able to do a lot of reading in front of the fire. We also had the governor and my hosts from the conference, Lena and Bo, over for dinner one night, a salmon braai in a special braai hut, and it was nice to be able to see them all again.

No trip to the Kingdom of glass is complete without a visit to a glass works and it was amazing to see how they hand make these beautiful works of art. I also had a chance to try some glass blowing and even though everybody said I did very well, I don't think I'll be changing occupations anytime soon.

My time in the south was really relaxing and I look forward to returning in May when I plan to give some presentations. Thank you again to Birgitta and Thomas for making me feel like part of the family.

I spent New Years with some German friends in Norrköping. We had loads of fun and it was the perfect way to end one year and start another. The combination of snow, fireworks and friends really made it memorable.

So ended my 2009 and looking back on it now it will be a year I will always remember.

I hope you had a "god jul och gott nytt år" and that 2010 brings you all amazing blessings.

Hej då

PS: Sorry for the extremely long post, I'll try keep up to date in the future =)

The Kiruna Dozen

I hope you enjoy this video. I thought I would try something different this time, but unfortunately it has taken me a little longer to complete than usual. I tried my best!

It is just a random collection of photo's and videos documenting some of the things I did while in Kiruna  with some friends at the end of November. Kiruna is a city in the far north of Sweden about 200km above the Arctic Circle. Most Swedes have not even been there because it is so far away (approximately 1500 km from Stockholm)

It was cold, it was dark, but it was loads of fun!

Hej då