Aaahhh, weekends are great. Not that my work sucks or something, it's just that you have so much time to do everything in weekends. This weekend was particularly great. Here's what I did:

Friday 22th of September

Went swimming with Greta at the pier. It was terrifying, because there were jellyfish everywhere. We went swimming from the pier to the wooden island, about 10 meters away, and back. I almost got a heart-attack, because the jellyfish-infested water was quite cold, and we wanted to get out of the water as fast as we could. The jellyfish don't sting here, but touching them is not exactly really great. Stupid wobbly animals.

Saturday 23th of September

On Saturday, Greta and i walked to Kleva, a little town that's about 4 kilometers away from Mörbylånga. We walked along the seaside, through swampy fields (which was quite funny) and green forests, until we reached the wonderful nature of Kleva's surroundings. There we ate bananas.

When we got back, we helped our American friend to make puppets for the Konstnatt-parade next Friday. Konstnatten (art night)  is part of the Skordefest, which we think will be a lot of fun. I'll tell you about it in my blog later.

In the evening we went, as usual, to Kalmar, because the brother of the tutor of Israel (who works at a music centre) had a concert. It was a really sucky concert, but it's always nice to visit Israël, Emmi and Ronja (the fierce Rövardotter, who is always kind and friendly, and likes to draw pony's on other people). Slept at their house.

Sunday 24th of September

Greta, Emmi, Ronja, Israël and me went to a film festival in Emmaboda, where we would meet Maria and Liza, two of our friends from Växjö. We have seen a lot of nice and less nice short movies, documentaries, a silly film noir, a wannabe thriller and more things. It was nice, especially when the award show came. Our music video making friend who we met on the way to the festival won the award for Best Music Video! Yeah! We cheered our lungs out, left the building, sat for hours at the train station and then we went home. It was really nice.

Weehoooo, the on-arrival training (Stockholm, från 11 till 14 september)  was sooooo nice! I made a lot of friends there with the other foreign volunteers (for pictures: click 'MyMedia' and then 'Friends'), I had a lot of fun and I've learned some things as well. For instance: High Rope climbing is nice! For our teambuilding or something, we had to get up in the trees for about 7 meters high, and get from one tree to another by walking on ropes, wooden logs and stuff. And at the end you had to jump to the ground, which was quite scary, because... well, 7 meters high! but luckely, we weren't smashed into little pieces on the ground, but we flew through the air with a 'rodel'-line. Muy fun.

Next to doing adventurous things like rope-climbing, we had a lot of group activities like going into the city (the training was in Stockholm), attending quite boring classes about being a volunteer and finding your inner goals and playing Halli Galli, the game that will someday conquer the world, I'm sure. Ooh, it was so nice. And now, greta and I have a lot of friends to visit everywhere. Hurray for that! To give you an idea of the new friends I've made, I will give a list of the people who I will meet most regularly, and who are already my friends:

Greta Egle (From Vienna, Austria). My roommate in Mörbylånga. She's really great and kind, and you never get bored with her. She even has the same musical taste! No fights with her yet.

Emmi Lindqvist (From Esbo, Finland). If you want to have a laugh, go to Emmi. She is SO funny. And evil, in a funny way. Lives in Kalmar with Ronja and Israël.

Ronja Zahradnikova (from Göttingen, Germany). Little funny girl. Is really in touch with her inner child, and giggles a lot. Likes Terry Pratchett and horses. Lives in Kalmar with Emmi and Israël.

Israël (Taco Taco Burrito des Nachos) Gallardo Martinez d' Albeinz (from Basque Country, Spain). Oldest one (25!). He has a good taste in music (although his main music style is metal), and plays the Spanish guitar. His English is not the best, but he'll manage.

But I won't forget all my friends back home! It's not nice to not be able to see you. I'm, starting to miss you all!

And the music tip is, once again, not Swedish. It's especially for Heit and Jeroen (who probably knows them already, but anyway): the Mars Volta, from Puerto Rico. Heard it from Israël, and it's music for the both of you, because it's a bit Zappa-esque. Have fun listening to it!

 I really bloody hope that the above picture works. Otherwise: click on ' my media'  and find the one picture of the map of Sweden. This is where I live. Mörbylånga! But now I'm actually on on-arrival training in Stockholm. More news later!

Today was my third and last day at the adventure camp. I worked every day from around 10.00 to 15.00 at an 'adventure camp' for different new classes of the high school in Mörbylånga, a camp where they get to know each other. Every day I had a new group of about 25 youth of the age of 13, 14. The children here are really polite and great, but they are a bit quiet. I was shocked today, because one of them actually asked me how old I was; that is a big step for a Swedish 13-year-old. I said ' jag är nitton är' or something, which means 'I am 19 years old', if you pronounce it correctly. I'm picking up all kinds of words already, but my conversation skills just go to saying my name, my age and where I live (jag buoouou y Mörbylånga!). I can count to ten already, but I still can't pronounce seven, which is a bit like blowing and then all of a sudden saying ' gjouuooeuou' .

Anyway, the adventure camp. I had very important functions: giving spaghetti to children for a spaghetti-cooking-on-self-made-fire-and-than-tying-a-knot-in-it-competition, participate in a dreadful name game (where you have to say the hard Swedish names in a long row before you and than your own name, and after each name a strange Swedish word which starts with the same letter, like ' An Anka, Jonas Juuuuglbuuuuuu, Daniel Dinosaur, ..., Albert Ananas), and taking pictures of the different activities. This work was a cooperation between the Mörbylånga high school (with 600 pupils) and Zokker, where I will be working tomorrow and the rest of my time here, so I had to work with a lot of teachers. They were really nice, and quite young. I also had to work with Rickard, from Zokker, and he's great too. Ah, the people here are so nice. My boss is Barbro, and she is... well, nice. The only not nice person I met was the bus driver, but I didn't expect a bus driver to be nice.

Yesterday I went to the city of Kalmar, on the mainland, by bus. Greta and I were visiting Emmi, a Finnish volunteer from Espoo, who lived there. And well, she's nice too.

Monday, Greta, Emmi, me and the other volunteers that are yet to come, will go to our on-arrival training in Stockholm, and meet other volunteers in Sweden. You'll hear news about that later.

Well, Time's up now. No Swedishmusic tip today, because I still haven't heard great Swedish music, but I heard some great Danish (or Islandic?) music: Efterklang. Great. hej då!

Wow, I know how to login to my EVS account now, in the Mörbylänga (pronounce it like ' Meurbielongggga') library. That's great, because there's a lot I have to tell you already!

First: my house. I share it with Greta from Vienna, she's really nice and we have a lot of fun cooking dishes like ' wentelteefjes' for each other and play tablesoccer and Halli Galli with eachother. She has te same musical taste as well, so if we get a cd-player of some sort it would be really fun! Well, anyway, the house: it's big and blue and wood and really Swedishy. It has got three floors, but the first two floors are from a nice family who rent the upper floor to tourists. I will put pictures up here later, if that is possible. I've got a room with 4 beds in it, so if someone wants to pay me a visit, it would be nice and possible!

I work at a youth centre in an old sugar factory called Zokker, but I haven't worked there yet, because I just arrived 2 nights ago. But tomorrow I will go with 13-year-old people who are going to high school to an adventure camp for an hour or 4, 5. I will tell you about my work later, because I'm just as curious as you at this point.

Mörbylänga is really nice too, because you can swim here (well, if you don't mind the cold water. It's like this small, he Daan?) and do your basic shopping in the supermarket, and every weekend they show a movie in the school. Greta and I went there yesterday, to the Swedish movie ' heartbreak hotel', but we didn't understand it so we made up our own story. It was really nice.

Today we went to Kalmar, the big city on the mainland (Öland is an Island), 30 km away, to get a bank account and meet Emmi (volunteer from Espo, finland! I was there once, so that's a big coincedence), Claudia (the coordinator of Evs projects around Kalmar) and Mathias (Claudia's help, who picked me up at the station of Kalmar Saterday). They were very nice. I let them believe we put spaghetti sauce on our pancakes, because my friend Anouk from Enschede has made a list of things to do, and this was one of those things. Another thing was giving music tips, but I can't do that, because I haven't heard any good Swedish music yet. So for today: listen to The Noisettes from London!

Well, I really miss you and all, but I think I'm going to like it here. Please react to these little stories of mine, I'd like that and then I have the feeling we still have contact, haha! My computer time is running out now, so goodbye!