Volunteering at Fågelskolan, Hiking to Skryllegården and Bartending in Hallands Nation

This past week, I started volunteering at a middle school in Lund called Fågelskolan. For the rest of the semester, I will be working with a group of students (ages 13-15) who need extra help with their English. On Monday a couple of the students were sick, so I worked with a group of three girls (Herena, Cornelia, and Michelle). They were all really sweet but nervous to have a native English speaker working with them. First, Michelle read through a passage in their workbook and I helped with the words that she had trouble pronouncing. Then their teacher had me read the same passage, one sentence at a time, and the girls would take turns reading the same sentence after me. I was nervous that I wasn't pronouncing words right or that my accent would sound funny (I still don't even know if I have an accent).

Afterwards Michelle had to leave (it was the end of the school day for them), but Herena and Cornelia stayed to talk for a little while. Both spoke English very well and we talked about their siblings, subjects they liked, what they did for fun, etc. I learned that Herena had moved to Sweden three years before from Ethiopia and had learned Swedish during the first six months she was here. Already she spoke almost perfect English! I spoke with her teacher later (Susanna), who said that she was unbelievably smart. Cornelia had lived in Sweden her whole life and hoped to study in the United States - she said she thought high school in the movies looked great. Both girls also looked like they had walked out of fashion magazines - I'll be happy if I'm half as fashionable as Swedish middle-schoolers when I leave. I learned a bit more about their school system - their "middle school" goes from 7th to 9th grade, then they graduate and go to high school. Both girls would be graduating in the spring and moving to the high school (Cornelia had been going to Fågelskolan since 1st grade).

On Thursday I went to volunteer again, but this time it was a language café for all international students, so Izas went with me too. She went to talk to the students who needed to practice their Spanish and I was paired with Cornelia and Herena again, plus two other international students from England and China. This time, the girls showed us around the school and some of the rooms were unreal - they had an extremely nice kitchen for cooking classes, a room for sewing classes with about 20 sewing machines, and two wood-working rooms. All of the classrooms were in separate buildings, so you had to go outside to reach each one. I would have taken pictures, but some of them had classes in session and I wasn't sure if I was allowed to. Today I will go back again to work with the students!

 In my Swedish film class, we watched a movie called Hon dansade en sommar or "One Summer of Happiness." The title would lead you to believe it would be a happy film. Some of it was very happy - it was about two teens who fall in love on a farm, but they're constantly being criticized by the town's minister and the girl's family. In the end, they decide to be together and the girl dies in a motorcycle crash. Lately in my class we've been exploring the Swedish "youth culture" era - where films basically involved conflict between the older generation's beliefs and the more progressive beliefs of Swedish youth. This film in particular was supposedly very scandalous when it came out in 1951, because it includes a nude swimming scene. Also the only film poster I could find for it is the nude scene, so sorry.

It is starting to get dark much earlier here. My film class is from 4-8pm and now it gets dark about halfway through the class - it used to still be fairly light when I got out a few weeks ago. I think pretty soon it will be dark when I head to class :/

Linde and I decided to go hiking on Friday afternoon. We took the bus to Dalby without a real plan of where to go - we thought we could just walk around the town if nothing else. Luckily, we happened to run into a friend of Linde's on the bus who lives in Dalby. When we got off the bus, she walked with us about 15 minutes to the beginning of a trail - I don't think we ever would have found it without her. The trail was absolutely beautiful - all of the leaves are changing colors and the weather was a little chilly but definitely bearable.

So much moss everywhere!

Mushrooms!

After 45 minutes of hiking, we reached Skryllegården! We had wanted to hike here before, but we didn't realize it was so close to Dalby. There was an adorable little cafe/restaurant and we got fika (carrot cake, coffee, and tea!)

So cute - there were little vases with fresh flowers on every table and a fireplace!

We also found a little building that had information on the nature reserve (we got some free postcards too!)

I want this table for Spoletorp North

On the way back, we got a bit lost (of course) but we eventually made it! 

Tree markers to follow

Little questions along the way

Our attempts at leaf throwing pictures :)

I tripped and fell...

Back in Dalby we found some sheep! They walked over to us standing at the fence.

Linde had a nice conversation with them :)

Unfortunately, I hadn't thought things through very well, so I had to go to work at Hallands Nation about 15 minutes after we got back. Alice, Regina and I had volunteered to work in the Friday night club. When we got to Hallands, we met the forman I had been texting about working who said she had thought I was a boy from my name (thanks). Then five minutes into cutting up lemons for the drinks, Alice deeply cut her finger. We met another girl, Megan from California, and a boy, Daniel from Germany, who were working behind the bar with us as well. We got the bar all set up for the night, then "trained" on how to make the drinks and ring people up. This was about ten minutes of training for 20 drinks, but luckily the recipes were on the wall. We first served a "thank you dinner" for people who had worked the week before (and got to eat ourselves), then we got ready for the club to open at 10. 

Regina sneakily took a picture of all the nice alcohols behind the bar

Our great bartending shirts

I worked the coat check for the beginning and end of the night, and the club in the middle (from 11pm-1am). The coat check was extremely slow, but as soon as I got behind the bar it was a bit overwhelming. It was hard enough to hear peoples' orders with the music blasting, but it didn't help that half the time they were in Swedish. I was also terribly slow at making drinks at first, though I think we all improved the more we made them. I made a lot of Mojitos, Cuba Libres (coke and fancy rum), P2's (some drink with sour apple liquor), and Red Bull Vodkas. By the end, I could understand the drink orders for the most part even when they were said in Swedish (all you really need to know is "öl" - beer, and "dryck" - drink, plus numbers). It was very fun and very exhausting - we had to clean afterwards so we ended up being there until 3:30am (we had arrived at 6pm). It was definitely worth the experience though! 

Yesterday was an extremely rainy day, so Regina and I decided to bake apple crisp! We ate it right out of the oven with vanilla ice cream and it reminded me of home :)