Almost Home

It is really hard to believe that I have less than a week left here at Mas Bellpuig. It feels like I have been working my way up to this time for so long, that I can't quite believe it is finally here. Don't get me wrong, I am really excited to see my parents in 6 days, and to get back to the states where I understand what the people around me are saying, and to see all of my friends, but this life is also really wonderful. However, before I start getting too sentimental, let me tell you more stories since last time.

I'm getting used to the rhythm of life here and the cycle of work in the week. It's very pleasant, and the romantic aspects of farming come through very strong in all of the tasks here. That might not be totally clear, imagine with me getting up every morning before the sun is up (not a hard thing to imagine I'm sure) and quickly throwing more layers on before going upstairs to the kitchen, partly because you want breakfast, and partly because it is the only room in the house with a wood stove, and therefore infinitely warmer than the rest of the house. After taking your time with your coffee and muesli, it is time to work, and you descend old stone stairs into the cellar, which is home to not only the tools you will need but a shop stocked with beautiful fruits and veggies and preserves. As you step outside to begin work, the last blush of dawn is still painting the mountains across the valley a slightly rosy color, and making the green of the fields even more brilliant. The air is crisp as you grab a wheelbarrow and follow the boss down the hill to the whichever field needs tending today, and know that by the time two o'clock rolls around, you will be tired and dirty, but that a hot, homecooked lunch followed by a siesta await you. This is the romance of farming, and this is what this place has given me a taste of.

My favorite jobs are always harvesting things, especially the giant heads of broccoli we collected on Friday. For those of you who don't share my passion for broccoli, try to imagine your own favorite vegetable. But anyway, we went down to the broccoli fields this week to find that the 3 days of rain we had had put the broccoli into overdrive and some of these heads of broccoli weighed over a kilo (2.2 lbs)! That's a head of broccoli the size of a dinner plate that I got to cut myself and take up to the kitchen and enjoy. There is nothing better than spending an hour harvesting in the field and being able to look at the tower of boxes filled with fresh beautiful vegetables that you just collected. I will really miss having such a tangible product to my work.

We have been lucky enough to have a few other romanticized excursions, including a night of traditional Catalonian dancing. Gerard took myself and Marisa up into a little village in the mountains where about 40 people of all ages from the surrounds had gathered in a little pavilion to listen to live, traditional Catalan music and dance. The band consisted of three men, the leader of whom was an impressive musician who was often playing a flute with one hand and simultaneously a drum with the other. The other men played a mixture of guitars, flutes, drums, bagpipes (yes, bagpipes) and castenettes depending on the song. The dances also varied. Some of them involved the whole group dancing together in a circle sort of like a Spanish version of a line-dance, but others involved dancing in couples, for which Gerard alternated between dancing with myself and Marisa. Dancing with Gerard was really fun because he was not only a great dancer, but a great teacher. He taught me dances called "the Scottish" and the "mazurca" (there is little chance that I spelled that correctly), which were both simple to begin with but he complicated them with spins and twirls by the end. As we were driving home, Gerard also told me that I dance very well, which means I can die happy having been complimented on my dancing by a Spaniard.

Marisa and I have also been enjoying exploring some of the small towns in the area. Last week was Centelles, a really tiny but beautiful village in the mountains, and this week we went to the beach town of Sitges, a town about 30 minutes outside Barcelona by train. The beaches were wonderful, and we mostly just lay on the beach and read that afternoon before wandering around the city a bit that night and splitting a picher of sangria and some really wonderful tapas. Sitges had a quite a bit going on in addition to the beaches. There was a horror film festival going on (Jud I wish you could have been there to tell me if you had heard of any of the directors), which is supposed to be pretty legit, and we saw no less than 3 weddings. The weddings absolutely fit with the town, in fact Marisa and I were commenting on the fact that we wouldn't have minded getting married there. However, at the rate I'm going, my dream wedding would be more of a world tour with receptions in Gamla Stan, Nerja, Frigliana, and Sitges.

We were also lucky enough to convince Gerard to let us take a Thursday night off and go to the medieval town of Girona which is also about an hour outside of Barcelona. It was a truly magical little town. The whole town is made of beautiful stone buildings with narrow streets and a balconied apartments with flower pots overflowing over the railings. And, much to my delight, lots of stairs. The old wall which once enclosed the city also still stands, and in much the same way as Castillo de Gibralfaro, affords really wonderful views of the city and mountains. Marisa and I went for a really lovely walk along this wall, which terminated at an archeaological garden. Basically, it was a chamber which used to be enclosed by the wall (though I don't know what it was used for), but is now home to lots of trees and flower gardens.

Well, some time has passed since I initially wrote this post, so I figure it is high time I posted it. I promise there will be more pictures and a final post on my end adventures (and there have been quite a few) in Spain in the next week, since I will be back home then!

Slowly but Surely

It is amazing how much one can learn in a week and a half. Having been in Vic (which is a beautiful town about an hour north of Barcelona) at Mas Bellpuig (Bell-pooch) for a little more than a week now, my Spanish has vastly improved. This is not to say that I can understand people speaking Spanish on the street, but if my host Gerard speaks to me slowly and uses very simple words, I can follow the thread of the conversation and make simple responses. Hooray for learning.

My time here got off to a rather rocky start because Gerard was away for the first two days I was here, and no one in the house spoke more than a little English. So I spent two days relying pretty solely upon charade worthy hand gestures and sound effects. However, now that Gerard is back and I have been joined by another American WWOOFer named Marisa who just graduated from Yale, as well as a really wonderful young German family, things have been a lot better. The house itself is really beautiful, and parts of the original structure date to the 12th century. Gerard's family has owned it for roughly 30 generations. There is no doubt that the house has the weight of history behind it, the finished parts are really beautiful with high ceiling and exposed beams, and the unfinished parts (aka zona de WWOOFer) have old wood and stone revealed, and make it feel like I am living in a castle. We just started to work on renovating and finishing zona de WWOOFer, which has been a very interesting experience involving chipping away at these old stone walls. I've been lucky thus far, and for space reasons, my room is in the finished part, and easily 3 times as big as the caravan in Nerja, and there is a chandelier hanging over my bed. Pure luxury. I really wish that, like the kitchen table in Bossgarden, this house could come alive and tell me stories of the things it has seen.

The work has been hard but varied and enjoyable here. The daily schedule is very relaxed and very Spanish. We start work at 8...or 8:15...or 8:30...or 9, and work until about 2 when we have lunch, which always takes over an hour, and then it is siesta time for the WWOOFers at least, and we are free for the rest of the day. We usually eat an evening meal at around 9 or 9:30, and then sit and chat until bed. My jobs have mostly been in the field and have included harvesting potatoes, different types of beans, peeling about 12 kilos of garlic so we can plant it, and planting fava beans. There are also a bunch of animals here, including cows, chickens, pigs (which always sound and smell just wonderful), cats, a big beautiful horse named Moreno, and a dog named Bobby. The food we have been eating has been really, really good, and I have had to be very diligent about portion control. We have mostly been cooking for ourselves, but every so often we get the leftovers from Gerard's parents or from his grandmother, and they can cook, let me tell you. I've been taking notes on good ideas to incorporate into my own cooking when I get home, but I don't think it will be the same without the garden fresh ingredients. One can hope though.

So far I don't have too many adventures to report. I have been into Vic twice, to get coffee and a tour of the city with Gerard and the other WWOOFers, and to go to the market which takes place every Saturday. The market is a pretty incredible scene. There is a big plaza in the middle of the city which vendor upon vendor squeeze into and sell everything from bread and pasteries, to live chickens and cheap clothing. I'm also pretty sure the entire population of the city squeezes into this market, such that the atmosphere is bustling with the energy of both shopping and weekly socializing. It is really exciting for someone who has never seen a market like this before, like me.

The best looking vegetable stand at the market

More views of the market, and Gerard's back

A street in Vic, the little spot is Bobby who followed Marisa and I for the entirety of our 6 km walk in


A view of the fields and mountains on my running route

Hejdo Sverige, Hola Espana

Hello friends I apologize for the long interval between this and my last post, I have been busy with work and play. I am currently writing from the town of Nerja, which is about an hour east of Malaga on the Southern coast of Spain. Life here is difficult, I am living and working at a Donkey Sanctuary which has a view of the mountains to one side and a view of the beach to the other. But I will return to this.

My time at Hornudden ended quite pleasantly. Judith and I became quite close with three English girls who came for two weeks, and ended up going to the Popaganda music festival in Stockholm with them. This was my first music festival and I had a blast. I had only heard of two bands that were performing before, Belle and Sebastian and Robyn, but pretty much every other act was really fun and entertaining and played really great music. If you like Indie/folk music I really recommend First Aid Kit, which is made up of two Swedish sisters with really nice voices. The Hurt and Hot Chip are also fun, but both more dancey. The whole trip was quite an adventure which involved getting rather lost, sneaking into hostels, and being stunned at how attractive and well dressed the Swedes are. I am sure that I will never again be surrounded by so many high cheek bones and blonde hair.

After Hornudden I took four days to take trains down to Spain. While this was certainly neither the most cost or time efficient means to make that journey, it meant that I got to spend the night in Hamburg, a day and night in Paris, take my first night train, and see the beautiful country side of Sweden, Germany, France and Spain which I otherwise would have missed. Spending the day wandering the streets of Paris, eating unreal cake and reading in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower more than justified any other inconvenience associated with that trip.

But on to Spain. I am loving my time here, though I cannot fool myself and say that I am getting the opportunity to immerse myself in Spanish culture. Unbeknownst to me when I made plans to come here, Nerja is a very popular place for British vacationers and has a very significant British ex-pat community. Thus the people I work with and for at the Sanctuary as well as most of the people who visit are British. My day begins at 9 AM by putting all of the donkeys, goats, and horses back in their proper pens after having let out to wander at night. We then feed and water them, and I usually take care of the making sure that the animals that need medication get it. At this point we begin the process of mucking out which usually takes about an hour or an hour and a half. It is more tedious than gross, I am happy to report. Once that is done we take a coffee break, and woven throughout this time we are helping visitors and telling them about the donkeys. At 1 the donkeys get fed again, and then we close (like everything else in Spain) from 2 until 5, during which time I usually eat lunch and nap. We open again from 5-6, which is just enough time to feed everyone once more and let them out for the night. From then on I am free for the evening.

During the evenings I have been exploring Nerja with Kerry, a 19 year old English girl. We have been having quite a ball discovering and sampling many of the tapas bars in town, which are wonderfully inexpensive and tasty. We can get a glass of wine and a tapas for about $2. The town itself is really cute and the right size to go exploring in. However, it has not seduced me in the way that a village about 10 miles away in the mountains has. I visited the village of Frigliana on one of my days off and was breathless. It is a white village, which means that all of the houses are white plaster, but the doors and shutters are brilliant turquoise-blue. Because the village is in the mountains, everything is very vertical and there are steps everywhere which are paved with beautiful tiles. The colors of the flowers against the white houses make them seem brighter and more vibrant, and combine this with the delicate scent of those flowers and rifts of Spanish guitar blowing on the breeze and wandering around this village really feels like falling in love.


My other big day off adventures have been a day trip to Malaga to the Castillo de Gibralfaro and a hike up the Rio Chillar in search of a waterfall. The trip to Malaga was wonderful. The Castillo was an old Moorish fortress initially built in the 800 high above the city, so walking around the walls gives impressive views of the city, mountains, and ocean. We also wandered around the old part of Malaga which has some beautiful churches and adorable backstreets. I am finding more and more that my favorite thing to do in a new city is simply wander the little streets and let it reveal all of its secrets to me. The hike to the waterfall was unsuccessful in terms of finding the waterfall, but we did have a really lovely hike up into the mountains and in a crystal clear stream through beautiful gorges. The river was never more than shin deep, and it was a really neat way to adventure into the mountains. Well, unfortunately my time here in Nerja is coming to an end. I will be leaving here on Friday morning to travel to Vic, which is about an hour north of Barcelona, and the location of the last farm on my adventure. It’s hard to believe it is already come to that, and I will let you know how it is!

One of the outer walls of Castillo de Gibralfaro

A view of Malaga and the interior of the Castillo

A tree in the courtyard of the Castillo which I thought was really really awesome



A view of Malaga and the port from the Castillo

The river we chased waterfalls up

Me, Lola (the goat) and David Villa (the donkey, not the footballer)

Kerri and I with Chica and David

Me and Conan, our resident BFG Andalucian Donkey

Me, Lola, and the teenage boy donkeys, who acted exactly as you would expect teenage male donkeys to act.

Shearing Chuletta, our very shy, but now very stylish sheep

Feliz, with a view of the mountains in the background. Ironically, this is the spot with the best view on the property, and also home to the manure pile.

The beach, about a 10 minute walk from work. I don´t know how I manage.



Frigliana

More of Frigliana, viewed from the rose garden

Hornudden

It has been a little while since my last post, and I have moved in the meantime, so I feel that a quick recap is in order. I am now living and working at Hornudden which is about an hour from both Stockholm and Uppsala. Hornudden is very different from Bossgarden, primarily because Hornudden is a commercial venture on the part of Mats and Karin, rather than a way of life, which Bossgarden was for Jonas and Sanna. Thus, Hornudden has more land, more infrastructure in the way of greenhouses, houses, and fields, as well as many more WWOOFers. When I arrived there were 14 (7 of whom were French) WWOOFers here, as compared to 7 when I left Bossgarden. I have also been picking tomatoes...LOTS of tomatoes about 3-4 times a week for at least 3 hours at a time. Apparently I am exceptionally good at picking tomatoes, hence the frequency with which I am assigned this job. Other jobs I have done include picking lettuce, zucchini, tearing out cucumber plants, packing herbs to be sold, and cleaning. My favorite job is without a doubt packin herbs because it does not require contorting into any strange positions, and the plants all smell so nice.

The people here are a very interesting bunch. The French group left a week after I arrived and were briefly replaced by a group of Germans and now a group of English girls. I have really enjoyed seeing the way each of these groups interact with each other, but it has meant that I have been the butt of quite a few American jokes. For example, last night 8 of us decided to play Scrabble. There were 4 Britons, 2 Germans, 1 French, and myself. Well, one of the Britons began to split the teams he said, "Oh this is perfect, we have 4 native English speakers, and 4 who might need a little help with the language". To which I responded with a rather rude French phrase that the French WWOOFers taught me before they left. My current room-mate is a 19 year ol German girl named Judith. I quite like her, but unfortunately my German is non-existent and her English is only just fluent, so that our communications involve quite a bit of pantomime (which means I would have dominated the family Charades game I trust occured at the beach last week).

In the time that I have not been working we have been swimming in the lake on which Hornudden is situated. The water is the perfect temperature, very cold and refreshing when you first jump in but you quickly adjust to it and it is perfectly comfortable. We have our own little dock which pokes out the reeds and a paddle boat which we are allowed to use to explore the lake. As of yet, the only place I have gone is the the aptly named "Crap Island" which is little more than a poop covered rock with a few trees growing on it. It's very pretty from far away. I have also been getting back into running, which has been really nice not only because it's a nice way to explore the area a little bit, but also because all of the delicious rich food has been catching up with me (Small side note: I found out exactly how expensive all of the food that is grown here and that I am getting to eat is. A type of salad green called portlack costs $50 a pound, which means the green salad I ate for dinner tonight cost close to $30!). I have also learned how to make bread, and according to my house mates, make a very delicious honey whole wheat bread (I promise to make some when I get home). On the weekends we have been taking little day trips to nearby Strangnas and hopefully Mariefred tomorrow. Strangnas is a really cute town on the water with a beautiful medieval cathedral sitting on the highest hill in the town. It is really beautiful inside with a similar style of painted ceilings as I saw in Stockholm and Ostra Gerum. The center of the city consists of a few blocks of very typical Swedish low, red, wooden houses each of which has a little enclosed yard, and ususally an apple tree. I could definitely see myself living there (at least in the summer), it's beautiful.

I'm not sure there is actually much more to say for the moment. There have been some really nice moments here, and plenty of little anecdotes which were funny at the time at least, but they are tough to replicate in blog form.

Our dock and paddle boat

No matter how far from home you go...

Interior of Strangnas Cathedral


Looking up at the cathedral

Houses in the center of Strangnas

P.S. I lied, I have one more story I have to tell because it just happened right as I was finishing this post and was one of those experiences I want to always remember. Judith looked out our window and saw that the night was beautiful and clear, and there was a full moon. Upon discovering this, we all decided to go down to the lake and go skinny-dipping in the moonlight, because the reflection on the water was really amazing. So there we went six girls who had only know each other for a matter of weeks or days and we just swam and floated looking at the stars and the moon from a lake in Sweden. The water was quite cold, but I am so glad I did it.

Give it to the Pig

This was the week of strange purchases here at Bossgården. The first was the arrival of Buta, a 45 kg pig. We had spent the morning thinning out the carrot patch (a back breaking job I might add), which meant that we now had around 15-20 lbs of carrots which were too small to be sold, and so another solution had to be worked out for them. Jonas immediately suggested they should go to the pig...if we had a pig. He has also been making a cheese a week, which produces about 8 liters of leftover whey for each cheese, which is also very good pig food. So we all agree, yeah if only we had a pig, and start listing all of the recipes we can think of for carrots; carrot cake, carrot bread, carrot soup, roasted carrots, etc. No one noticed that Jonas has disappeared at this point until he returns about an hour later and proclaims "I've just bought a pig! We need to go pick it up this afternoon, and before we do that need to make a pen for it, get the mill working for its food, and make a transport case for it". This was greeted by blank stares from the rest of us for a moment, until Aki (a ten-year old WWOOFer) excitedly asked if she could come up with the name for the pig (As a side note, this began a rather humorous discussion of the possibilities, as the owner of the farm this pig came from was also the leader of the local conservative party. Jonas, being a liberal and holding a political office in town, was more inclined to name it after its previous owner). At any rate, the pig arrived, and was given the name Buta which is Japanese for pig. As we were heading off to bed Jonas commented that he had no idea when he woke up this morning that he would have a pig when he went to bed. Best impulse purchase ever. The next strange purchase came a few days later when Jonas ran up to me and said that he had just sold some vegetables in exchange for 100 clay roof tiles, and I needed to take the wheelbarrow and go retreive them. It was my first experience with true bartering and rather interesting meeting the man who drives a van around with a few hundred roof tiles in a trailer.

Besides the strange purchases, there was quite a bit of commotion surrounding the pub night that Jonas and Sanna organized in their pub, The Golden Pig (so named because it is housed in a refurbished pig pen, actually a really cool space with a kind of grotto vibe). One of Jonas's good friends, David, who had recently moved to Uppsala to study psychology, came to perform some songs with witty lyrics and simple melodies. Though most of them were in Swedish (and apparently quite funny) the few that he performed in English were also very humorous. What I liked most about the events surrounding this evening, however, was the dinner that Jonas made for his friends and the WWOOFers the night before. He cooked an amazing stew with all ingredients that he had grown on the farm, and had pulled out the nice china and set a beautiful table on the three hundred year old table that is sitting in his kitchen. Even though the discussion was mostly in Swedish, I had an overwhelming sense of being really and truly welcomed into this family's life and being a part of it. I took that feeling with me to the pub night the following evening as I looked around the room at the community that had gathered and realized I already knew a few stories about each of the thirty people there. I just felt extremely lucky to be able to have an experience like this and become a part of a this tight-knit community for a few weeks. And that is really what I wanted this year to be all about. This way, I feel like I am truly experiencing part of Sweden, instead of just looking in from the outside as a tourist.

Jonas's sheep which graze on 1000 year old burial mounds in Dimbo, which are also the site of my first blueberry picking adventures. They are so fluffy.

The WWOOFers of Bossgarden after picking blueberries in Dimbo


The view from the burial mounds

The swimming lake

Making a hook in the smithie I helped restore. The hook is less than beautiful, but will hold a towel as well as anything

Exploring this area on bike has also been a true pleasure. Because the sunsets about 10 PM here and there are a few hours of beautiful light around this time, I have taken to going on a 15 km bike ride on nice nights. The light on the barley and wheat fields is really unbelievable. It's funny that I had to come to Swedent to really get the essence behind 'for amber waves of grain', but no one grows anything but corn back in PA. I've also found some really beautiful spots like Kvarndammen, which is a small spring-fed pond in the woods surrounded by wild blueberry bushes, and Gerumsmansteln, where they found the remains of a man who had been murdered about 3000 years ago. It doesn't look like much when you get to the spot, but the bike ride up to it is through what I would describe as an enchanted forest of tall trees and a thick mossy forest floor. It looks like the perfect place for elves to hide or bed down and nap. Today we also visited a 900 year old church which is about half a mile up the road. The whole experience is neat, as I needed a note from Jonas to ask his next door neighbor if we could borrow the key to the church because she only spoke Swedish. After a lot of gesticulating and confused looks all around, we walked up to a small church, made of stone and plaster. The outside is very plain, so I wasn't expecting much from the interior, but was pleasantly surprised to find that the ceilings had been spectacularly preserved and painted with reds and blues. The pulpit and altar piece were also intricately carved with figures of important saints. Because it was so small and quiet, the experience was very peaceful and intimate. I would have loved to hear the stories this church has to tell, as it was built around the time that Christianity first came to this region. Amazing.

The interior of the church

The 900 year old church in Ostra Gerum

The pulpit

A few hours after picking blueberries (below), I transformed them into this pie, of which I am quite proud (It made Jonas cry after all)

Blueberry picking at Kvarndammen

Hej Hej

That is Swedish for "hello hello" and also represents about the extent of my Swedish knowledge. However, I have just added 'thank you', 'your welcome', and 'I do not understand Swedish' to my vocabulary. All very important phrases.

Sweden thus far has been absolutely breathtaking. I really enjoyed my time in Stockholm, which already seems like an eternity ago. I spent the majority of my time simply wandering around Gamla Stan and looking at the buildings. They are beautiful, and not at all what I expected from Sweden. The wonderful pinks and oranges and yellows that they are all painted make the city feel almost Mediterranean. I have to keep reminding myself that this is July and the weather in January is not so enchanting to convince myself that I do not actually want to move here. Unfortunately I am on such a tight budget and everything in Sweden is so freaking expensive (i.e. my dinner of spaghetti bolognese and a beer in a 'cheap' restaurant cost about $25) I didn't go into very many of the main tourist attractions like all of the museums and the Royal Palace, but I did get into the Stockholm Cathedral. Princess Victoria (the crown princess) had just been married there, so everything was beautifully restored for the occasion, including a huge ebony and silver altarpiece.

To be honest, with only three days and medical school applications to do, not being able to afford many things was a blessing in disguise, because I was able to really just enjoy the atmosphere in Stockholm more than trying to hit all of the tourist spots. It also meant that I jumped at an opportunity to see the first annual Stockholm Street festival, which I might not normally have done. This was a wonderful show that took place in Kungstradgården which is a beautiful garden in Stockholm City. They brought in all sorts of street performers from all over the world and had them perform their acts to a backdrop of the sunsetting on the buildings. It was truly a magical experience, especially because it stays light here for so long and the sunsets routinely last over two hours.

Gamla Stan at night

View from the bridge outside the parliament building. This picture was taken at 11 PM.

Kastlehommen

A door in Gamla Stan that I especially liked

The band which performs at the changing of the gaurd

A street in Gamla Stan, I really liked the mail box on the handle bars of the bike

The view of Gamla Stan from Af Chapman

(Because I am not very good at formatting with this program, there are more pictures of Bossgarden to come in a later post) Bossgården has also been amazing so far. Jonas and Sanna own the farm and have a truly adorable 14 month old son named Alvin, who is as stereotypical a Swedish baby as you could ask for with straw blond hair and blue eyes. I have been doing all sorts of interesting things from tending chickens, to tending vegetables, selling vegetables in a village market (for which I made the local paper), to blacksmithing. A typical day begins with breakfast at 8 am which is usually homemade bread, butter, filmjolk (imagine something the consistency of really thick milk that tastes like yogurt), and meusli. We start work around 9 and work until 11 when we stop for fika, which is a coffee break, and then back to work until lunch which is sometime between 1 and 2. Work stops at 4, and we have been going to a beautiful lake most afternoons for swimming. It's about 80 over here, but I am told that that is extraordinarily hot. The thing that has been most incredible about this experience is cooking with all of the incredibly fresh ingredients. There is a HUGE difference between store bought eggs, and eggs that you collect yourself. Similarly, going outside to pick the ingredients that you will be using for dinner is incredibly satisfying and makes for really wonderful dishes. A German guy named Timo and I made lasgana with homemade pasta and garden fresh vegetable for lunch one day, and the experience was life changing.

This place is just so idyllic and peaceful, it's hard to properly describe it. Everything is beautiful rolling hills of barley which has turned a gorgeous yellow and sets off the red houses. Hopefully some pictures will help, however, it will be a little bit until I can get those up. Well because of the way their schedule works, this is a Friday night for me, so I'm going to go to bed to prepare for what I hope will be an exciting 'Saturday'.

Aboard the Af Chapman

I had a realization that if the hostel I am staying in was not moored to the dock in Stockholm, I could officially say I had made use of the four major forms of long distance transportation today; car, plane, train, and boat. The Af Chapman is a 19th century 3-masted ship which has been turned into a really beautiful youth hostel. As I write this, I am sitting on the upper deck watching the sunset behind the Royal Palace, which is just across the river/canal. Life is hard. So far, everyone had been surprisingly nice. I don't mean that to say I didn't expect people to be nice, but they are nice and heplful in a way I'm just not used to as an American. I have yet to encounter the slightly defensive or annoyed attitude that can begin to bubble up in people if you ask a lot of questions, which I have been. It is a welcome change.

Considering that it is 7:30 over here, I think it is time for me to go to bed. I have big plans for Gamla Stan (the Old City) tomorrow.

The sitting area on the bow (where I wrote my application for Mt. Sinai)

With the Royal Palace in the background

A view of Gamla Stan from the window of my room

One Week Left

Well, it's hard to believe I'm almost on my way to exploring 3 of 27 countries that start with "S" (hence the title of this blog). For those of you who don't know or don't remember, I will be wwoofing in Sweden and Spain from July 10-October 23, and then my parents are going to meet me in Spain and spend a week with me there. After that I will be coming home to go to lots of medical school interviews in November and December, if all goes well. Finally, I'll be leaving for Cape Town, South Africa in early January and will be working in a physical therapist's office there for six months. I'm getting my job placement there through a group called Experiential Learning International. These are my plans as they stand, I will try and keep up to date as I figure more things out.

As my time at home with my family begins to wind down, I'm getting very excited about this trip, but also more and more nervous. This is the first time I have ever organized a trip of this magnitude on my own, and my parents have done a wonderful job of putting the fear of God (and Russian sex traffickers) in me. Beyond the physical risks my parents are worried about, these four months are going to include a lot of "me" time, which I'm little nervous is going to drive me nuts. Hopefully, I will instead come back with a new found understanding of myself and self-assurance.

I'll warn everyone reading this blog, I'm not the best journal keeper, so I cannot promise consistency or deep insights, especially not before the rest of my medical school applications are done. But keep with me, and I promise to reward you with some interesting tidbits along the way. Part of this experience is that I get to learn about organic farming and organic lifestyles, and I would love to pass the knowledge along to anyone who is interested, so feel free to let me know if you have any questions I could ask my hosts on your behalf. Even if you don't care one bit about organic farming, I'd love to hear what is going on in your lives. See you in Sweden!