Oh My God..

I have not updated this in ages. So much has been going on in my life.

1) I had a long week of exams before summer break (who didn't?).
2) I spent 4 weeks in Sweden and 1 week in Denmark. They were arguably the best 5 weeks of my life. Simply put, I could write a book about the trip.
3) During the two weeks I've been back in the US, my family has been visited by my Grandma, cousin (and best friend) Aimee, and my mom's old friend Melissa who, before last week, I hadn't seen since I was 4. Scary..
4) I GOT A JOB! And not just any job, I got offered a job at one of Atlanta's finest Japanese restaurants and Sushi bars called Sushi House Hayakawa and of course I accepted the job offer.. Only thing is, I'm the only non-Japanese person employee so I better start learning more Japanese. I can already read a lot of Japanese so I guess that'll help me learn the menu by heart (because it's mainly in Japanese).
5) I am getting my license soon! FINALLY! :)
6) I had to schedule classes.
7) I had to CHANGE my schedule due to my job.
8) I had to apply for student loans (After a week of worrying that I possibly wouldn't be able to attend Georgia State University this semester.

That's the last two months in a nut shell. I'll have to write more about Sweden though.. Until then, sayonara! :)

A State of Euphoria

This was the first Regents' Exam Practice essay I had to write but I figured I'd post it here because it can sort of give you an idea of who I am, or at least some aspects of my personality that are more obvious.

All my life, I have been greatly interested in photography, videography, and travelling, which are all closely associated with friends, family members and memories. I rarely leave the house without my camera, and I am glad; Always having my camera by my side has enabled me to successfully capture memories and portray the personalities of the people whom I hold dear to my heart. Video-editing is a great passion of mine, and after years of patiently and diligently cutting and dragging a million different movie clips onto a time line on Windows Movie Maker above various carefully selected songs, I have found that my current compilation of completed music videos is almost endless. Travelling and learning more about different countries is another great interest of mine, resulting from living in Sweden for six years. Living abroad truly opened up my mind and enabled me to look at the world from a broader perspective, and now I have the ability to successfully communicate with and reach out to a much more vast population than earlier in my life. If my house suddenly caught on fire, the three belongings I would not hesitate to save are my camera, external computer hard drive, and two passports; without them I would, in my opinion, lose almost all connection to my past, future, and the outside world.

I do not know anyone who takes as many pictures as me; No matter where I go, my camera is either in my pocket, or purse. That way, if I stumble upon an old friend, watch a rare historical event unfold, or just simply feel photogenic, my camera is always within my reach. After I take pictures, I generally edit the colors on Photoshop in order to make the pictures appear slightly more vivid, and then I upload them in an online photo album. That way, the colorful photos are always viewable, whenever or wherever I am, like memories that never fade away. Memories have shaped who I am; At times they govern my emotions, choices and my ability to dream and hope for an ever improving future, while I at the same time wish I could go back and relive my childhood once more. It is easy to say that, without my camera, I would not be who I am today. I would not feel the same strong bond with my friends and the rest of the world as I currently do, and at times, my life would feel rather uninteresting and dull rather than colorful and full of retentive memories.

In relation to making life more colorful, and finding things that govern my emotions and actions considerably, movies and music greatly inspire me. Whenever I have time on my hands, I tend to sit down and brainstorm different ideas for new music videos. Such creations require a lot of time, patience and effort, but when I finish a project, I feel very productive and proud. In addition to feeling like I accomplished something exceptional, I become more and more creative every time, which allows my next music video project to be far more complex. An increased will to be a creative individual allows me to excel in numerous aspects of my life, including activities I like to do on my free time such as writing stories, creating art or music from scratch on the computer, and more important skills such as getting to know new people, getting a good job, and writing essays or short stories for school. An even more rewarding result from being more creative is that I have been able to reach out to more people, and I have maybe even brought a smile to their lips through my videos. If it was not for my external computer hard drive, on which I store all of my movies, music, video-editing software and finished projects, this would be an impossible task to achieve.

The last belongings I would rescue if my house was burning down are my two passports, which I am blessed to have in my possession. One of the passports is an American one, given that I am an American citizen; however, I am also a Swedish citizen, and therefore, I have a Swedish passport as well. Without them, it would be extremely difficult to travel back and forth between the two countries as I please, and I would have no opportunity to move back to Sweden later on in my life. With my Swedish passport, I am also able to travel to numerous countries in Europe for extensive periods of time without trouble, which is something I have not taken advantage of yet. Living abroad for six years proved to me that being very connected to the outside world is important, and it enabled me to understand and enjoy other cultures and languages in a way that I never would have thought possible. That is a very important skill now that different ethnicities and cultures are spread out in a way so that the world has become a gigantic melting pot. If everyone had a more profound understanding of the world's people, cultures and religions, then foolish quarrels and disagreements would be more easily avoided, and the world would possibly be more peaceful.

Thanks to my three most cherished belongings, I am able to fully enjoy life and be the best person that I can be. I have learned so many valuable lessons, become more creative, more understanding, more appreciative and more knowledgeable about a wide variety of subjects, and I am ultimately able to be somewhat of an inspiration to my close friends and family members. I am able to talk to people from across the world about anything partaining to their lives, while making them smile and appreciate life themselves. Life is truly awe-inspiring, and all we have to do is stop, take a look around, and observe the world around us, in order to feel like we are part of something truly remarkable. With my camera, external computer hard drive, and two passports, I have successfully reached that state of euphoria, and I will not let any fire take that away from me.

3 Days.

3 days until Sabrina gets here. :) I can't wait. It's going to be amazing. She's going to be here for an entire month! So I've been cleaning & unpacking like crazy, trying to get this house cleared out before she arrives. I can't wait to meet new people and go new places. I have to figure out how to go places with the Marta busses and trains though.

I recently found out that the school I'm probably going to in the spring, Georgia State University, offers exchange student programs to Belfast & Newcastle in the UK and SWEDEN! I'm excited as I don't see why I can't go there, you know? And if Film and Video is going to be one of my majors then I might even be able to study in Italy for a while. We'll see what happens, but Sweden & the UK are at the top of my list. I lived in Sweden for years and the UK fascinates me. I'm actually almost full-blooded Irish and that explains why my hair always stays a reddish tint, no matter what color I dye it.

I want to do things that most other people don't do, so that my perspective on life, and the rest of the world, will be different. Then I might have the chance to make a difference some how. :)

Oh, and new South Park episodes start in a week! :D

Exchange Student in Sweden?

Today I babysat two boys and made some moolah, and in addition to that, I found out some great news. I have been planning on either going to Georgia State University or the Georgia Technical Institute (Georgia Tech) in the spring if I stay in the US. Georgia Tech is the one I want to go to the most because I am interested in possibly becoming an X-ray technician, and come to find out that Georgia Tech actually has an exchange program to a school in Sweden called Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan. I've even heard of that school, and best of all, it's in Stockholm! This might work! :)

Oh and about babysitting, I got paid for doing absolutely nothing. I played Guitar Hero with the youngest boy Austin, who's 8 years old (by the way he kicked my ass on Guitar Hero, and I'm actually not bad, so WOW), watched him play Halo and Harry Potter on his xbox 360, and watched Harry Potter & the Prisoner From Azkaban. Then I let their dog out a few times which took like 2 minutes each time, and I ordered pizza. I made $70 for 8-9 hours of that! Awesome! :D

Arrival in Sweden

Johannes, Matilda, pappa and I left the Atlanta airport at 8pm on July 8th, and arrived at the Stockholm airport, Arlanda, at 11:40am Swedish time (5:40am American time). The flight took about nine hours, and it all went smoothly except that a man had a medical emergency and needed to be seen by a doctor. Luckily, there was a nurse or a doctor on board at the time. During the whole flight I sat next to a man from Los Angeles; he was very pleasant to talk to and actually ended up talking way more than me, which was pretty strange. We talked about many different aspects of our lives and I found out that he is the boss of a company in Los Angeles and speaks many languages, including Spanish because he has to hire people with many different cultural backgrounds. I also found it interesting that his wife is from Sweden, and since she for some reason lives in Sweden, he only gets to see her every now and then.

When we arrived at the Stockholm airport, we were greeted by my Swedish grandparents and Sabrina. My Grandma gave me a few late graduation presents and then Sabrina and I had to hurry out to her mom’s car because she was waiting for us. About ten minutes later we stopped at McDonald’s and it was completely astounding to hear everybody speak and order their food in Swedish, after being used to hearing only English when going out to eat. They also served banana milkshakes and McFlurrys with the flavor of a popular Swedish candy called "Bilar" (which means "Cars"); that was interesting! We ate outside and I was amazed at how blue the sky was and how warm it was, but it wasn’t humid like it is in Georgia – the weather was perfect and I loved it. I wanted to eat fries and drink Coke but I couldn’t because of the gallbladder problems I had then, but it didn’t bother me. I was in Sweden and it mattered to me more than anything!

When we finished our meal we drove through Stockholm and I gazed upon the astonishing old buildings and beautiful bridges that passed us by. Stockholm must be one of the prettiest capital cities in the world with all of its old architecture and its many lakes and harbors, but most importantly of all, that is where I spent 4 years of my life, and passing through the city brought back so many wonderful memories that I had forgotten until then. When we finally reached Tumba, the city Sabrina and all of my other close friends live in, I felt this breathtaking feeling I have never felt before. Everything looked the same as I had left it, yet at the same time, it looked so different. Right now, as I am writing this, I feel almost as happy as I did then, and I realize how wonderful of a feeling it is! As we drove up Storvretsbacken (the long, steep hill leading up to the part of the city where Sabrina calls home, and where I lived five years ago) I still had an incredibly hard time realizing that I was finally back in Sweden, after all these years. For four years I had dreamt about being able to travel back to Sweden, the country where I still truly believe I belong, and for four years I had tried to envision what it was feel like to see everybody again – but I never thought it would feel as incredible as it ended up feeling. :D

When we arrived at Sabrina’s house, I was greeted by her dad and her two dogs, Iron and Nemo. They actually remembered me, after all these years. They were wagging their tails as if they had long anticipated my return and it felt great! Normally the dogs will bark at people ferociously but they jumped up and started licking my face like crazy.

Sabrina’s dad helped me bring my two suitcases inside and once I had set them down in Sabrina’s room and taken off my shoes, I went inside the kitchen to get something to drink. My heart was racing with excitement realizing how close I was to my old friends, distance wise, and I was hoping it wouldn’t be long until I’d be able to go see some of them again. Most of them did not know I was there, and I figured that those who knew did not know I was already at Sabrina’s house. Suddenly, I heard knocking on the door. My first thought was that it was one of Sabrina’s friends who wanted to say hi, so I slowly moved towards the door to greet them. When I finally reached the hallway and saw who was standing there I thought I was going to faint – right in front of my eyes stood Axel, a good old friend of mine. It felt completely surreal that for the first time in four years, he stood right in front of me again. The only thing I could do was jump almost straight up in the air and give him a hug! It was crazy! At that precise moment I felt like nothing could ever go wrong in my life again.

After catching up with each other, Sabrina, Axel and I played a game called "Kubb". I have no clue what it is called in English and if any American who has never been in Sweden even knows about the game. It’s fun though, and Sabrina and I (who were on a team) actually won once, which was amazing considering how tired I was from the trip and from being jetlagged. After the game, Sabrina sent Axel home because we had to eat and later on we went over to his house to watch movies. His whole family was out with their sail boat which was too bad considering that I really wanted to see them again but I figured maybe I’d have the luck of seeing them again before going up to Northern Sweden to see my own family.

I do not remember what movie(s) we watched; all I know is that I managed to get Axel back for tickling me, which was awesome! :P I mean, he wasn’t ticklish but it was a nice try anyway. When Sabrina and I left Axel’s house to go to bed and walked the three minute path to get back to her house, I still couldn’t believe I was back in Sweden. I’m sure somebody out there knows what it is like to leave a place you love with all your heart and return there after several years? It is incredible.

Kittens Born!

So, my cat Kiki finally had her kittens yesterday (6/21). For a few hours yesterday afternoon I was wondering where she was, and I kept saying, "Maybe she's in labor?" That night, my mom found her in my brother and sister's closet, and she felt wet kittens and carefully carried them and the mom out of the closet and set them down in a huge toy box that looks like a huge plastic basket. They're beautiful. She had 4 total, and we think 3 are males and 1 is a female. The female is a black, brown, orange and beige and white taby/calico/siamese and she's beautiful. Two of the males are orange, one being your typical orange looking cat (he's also the runt meaning he's tiny but he's so cute), and a really light siamese/calico that has small patches of brown, orange and beige mixed with black, so if you don't look carefully it just looks like he has patches of black or dark brown.

In addition to that, everything is going well, and my lunch with Fabian went very well! :) We talked for about 2 hours even though we barely understood eachother! I tried so hard to speak Spanish though and I have already noticed an improvement in my Spanish speaking and understanding. I'm going to the movies with him tomorrow to see the Hulk, and it should be fun.

My 18th birthday is in 14 days and I'm going to Sweden in 16 days! I'm so excited. My plane leaves at 8:30pm on July 8th and arrives in Stockholm at 11:40am their time, which is 5:40am in Georgia, USA. It feels like a dream; I haven't seen my Swedish friends in almost 4 years, which feels more like 10 years. I can't wait to see them. :)

EDIT: Two out of four kittens, my two favorite ones, ended up dying. To this day, we still do not know why.. :(