Home

I am home.

Not home home, but as close to home as I can get. I'm back in Sweden!

I found a great deal on plane tickets (thank you, SkyEurope) and am currently in my beloved Göteborg visiting a dear friend, Jenny.

I arrived in Copenhagen on Monday and then took two trains and a boat to Helsingborg (where I used to live) and met up with my good friend Johan. On Tuesday, I came to Göteborg and on Thursday, saw a very good friend of mine, Jonas. We haven't seen each other for five years, so it was great to catch up! We've kept in contact online, but it was like nothing changed (well, maybe except his hair!)

Nothing ¤has¤ changed in Sweden. The pick and mix chocolates still taste the same, the air is fresh and the stores still sell apricoskräm. Filmjölk doesn´t taste as good as I remember, and the packaging has changed, and I didn't see any coconut-flavoured yoghurt, but it feels like I never left.

Yesterday, while waiting to meet Jonas, I was sitting in McDonald's (yes, I swore I would never eat there again after getting food poisoning there last week) and started chatting with two Yugoslavian ladies sitting at my table. Neither spoke a word of English, but they have been living in Sweden for the past 25 years, and with their accents, I was able to understand everything! I was so proud of myself! It's been five years since I left and except for talking to Johan online and occasional calls to my old Swedish "ex" boyfiend, I'm managing quite well! I was going a little crazy in Helsingborg because I am not used to the Skånska accent, but here in Göteborg I am understanding everything!

On Sunday, I'm off to Skövde to visit my old host sister and my best friend Marcus from when I lived in Vaggeryd (AKA hell on Earth). Then I'm headed to Kristianstad to meet up with another friend, Roy. Then it's back to Helsingborg for some partying with Johan in some of my old favourite discos (sadly, the owner of my favourite place, Källar Krogen, died soon after I returned to Canada, and it has since been made into a Cayote Ugly-type place) and then it's back to Romania. When I get to Copenhagen, I'll meet up with another old friend, Rasmus, for breakfast, and then it's on to Budapest for a day or two before finally coming home.

In some days, it's like stepping back in time. I feel like I grew up in Sweden. When you're eighteen and nineteen in a foreign culture, you learn so much about yourself and life in general.

To summarise:
I started out living in the absolutely horrible village of Vaggeryd in the middle of Småland. When I tell Swedes that I used to live in Småland, most give me a look of pity. My school was supposedly new and state of the art, but the situation inside was so bad that most teachers refused to send their children there.

Nobody talked to me because I was foreign. I took SFI (Swedish for Immigrants) and while other Swedish students would talk to me if I talked to them first, the visible minorities in my class had it much worse than me. An American of Mexican descent would walk down the halls, and the students would part like the Red Sea. None of my classmates would willingly talk to me.

I made friends with a young Kosovar refugee. I was eighteen, she was nineteen. I came to Sweden to have an adventure, she came to Sweden because the Serbs burned her house down. She was shocked that at eighteen, I was neither married nor had children. I was shocked that at nineteen, she was married with a child. We would have long conversations on paper, me with my English-Swedish dictionary and she with her Albanian-Swedish dictionary. I tried to translate concepts such as "exchange student" to her and she tried to explain about the war in her city. She was learning enough Swedish to be able to work at the local factory.

My host family was horrible. My host mother would complain daily about me to my host organisation, STS (Student Travel School [which was an incompetent, ill-managed, irresponsible exchange agency...if you´re looking for an excellent exchange organisation, check out Youth For Understanding), who would then call my mother to complain about my behaviour. I'm sorry, but there are bound to be cross-cultural difficulties when hosting an exchange student. They never tried talking to me and asking "Why do you do this? In Sweden, we do it this way."

Instead, the host mother told my agency lies, such as that I was kicked out of school (in reality, my French teacher knew how miserable I was and asked if I'd like to switch schools), that I was a drug dealer (my friend sent me powdered caffeine as a joke, because I am allergic to caffeine), that I was an alcoholic (I never consumed alcohol) and who knows what else. These lies were faithfully repeated to my mother, who woulod then get the real story from me.

I moved in with a friend of a friend and had a great three months. I adored her family and I got to experience true small-town Swedish life. My best friend was half Swedish, half British and raised in South Africa and Mauritius. We both hated Vaggeryd and spent every available moment together, talking about music, life, travelling and life in general. And also our mutual hatred of Vaggeryd.

I couldn't spend my entire year in Vaggeryd so I called my exchange agency and asked to go to a bigger city. They wouldn't help me out, but gave me the name of a family in Helsingborg who had just had an Australian student. I called them, begged if I could live with them, and they accepted.

Things weren't great there either. I lived in a pantry off the kitchen. I tried to be as helpful as I could around the house to show my gratitute and was completely taken advantage of by the host mother, eventually becoming her slave. She was an au pair when she was younger, but I think she misunderstood the difference between au pair (hired help in exchange for room and board) and exchange student (another member of the family who pays to have a cultural experience). I don't mind doing chores, but when I have to scrub the family boat with a toothbrush alone (which I wouldn't step foot on due to my motion sickness) while my host brothers played with a water hose and my host parents nowhere to be found...I think that's a bit too much.

She complained that it was hard having me around because the family didn't have sufficient time to recover after their last exchange student...and then took in three "problem" children with ADHD. If it's so hard having me around, who does some of the cooking and most of the cleaning...why make things harder for yourself? If I was inside, she´d tell me to go out. If I was out, she´d tell me to come in. She would accuse me of not feeling like part of the family, and then take the entire family, sans moi, on a day trip to Copenhagen without telling me, leaving me to wonder if I dared risk her wrath and prepare dinner for myself, alone. She would scream and scream at me until I started to cry, and then two hours later, act like nothing had happened.

I still have nightmares about her.

All this was tolerable because I went to a wonderful school and made wonderful friends. I took art and spent the entire day painting, taking pictures, watching movies... I had an active social life, was invited to all the parties, took a trip to Prague with a classmate and our families...

All of my Helsingborg friends couldn't believe that I wouldn't hate Swedes after my experiences in Vaggeryd. Vaggeryd is a small, close-minded city. Helsingborg was wonderful. Great city, great people, lots of stuff to do...

I love Sweden. I love Swedes.

I feel home here. I understand the language, I like the mentality, I have friends here. The cities are clean, the food good and I love Nordic style. I know I say that about every city I live in, but I do truly love Sweden. I was walking down the streets of Helsingborg and it was like 2000 all over again. I'm sure I annoyed Johan to hell and back by commenting "Oh! That's still there!" and "Woah, that's new!"

I visited my old school and it was wonderful. I followed my old route, around the Maria Church, up the stairs, and to the huge old building. It was built on the site of an ancient monastry and when they were renovating the school, found ancient traces of the floor plan. When you stand on the top floor and look down, you can see the original layout of hallways, rooms and paths.

I met with Rolf, my old photography teacher. He remembered me! We also saw Christer, my film teacher. He recognised me right away and remembered that Citizen Kane is one of my favourite movies! We barely spoke the entire six months I was in his class, yet he remembers this about me! Sadly, Johan, my painting teacher, retired a few years ago.

I walked through the halls and visited some old classrooms. Suddenly, I was a wide-eyed naive nineteen year old again, instead of the hardened twenty four year old I am now. I look at some of the stuff I went through as an exchange student and know I couldn't put up with it today: bad host families, isolation, strange foods (smörgåstårta, anyone??). However, maybe this just prepared me for France and Romania.

When I was in Sweden, I lived with a family so I was fairly dependent on them for everything. In France, I lived in a dorm so while I was fairly independent, I still had people around me. I could cook for myself but if there was a problem, I knew I could knock on my neighbours' doors. In Romania, I am completely independent. I like it this way, although I've been here since AUgust and have yet to taste ciorba de burta.


I'm afraid of wishing my life away. I was waiting and waiting to come to Sweden, and now I'm here. I was with Johan and was looking forward to seeing Jenny. Then couldn't wait to see Jonas. Now I'm thinking about seeing Sarha, Roy and Rasmus. I'm only here for two weeks! I wish it could be longer.