Marcela’s Journals

October 31, 2024

Spooky or Changing Season?

Oktober is always an eventful month regardless of where in the world you are. Here's a bit of how I spent this busy month i Sverige.

For the first half of the month I lived with an alternate host family, this since my original host family and I were in the process of moving and there was some construction happening at our new place, so I had the fortune to have a “bonus” family! Adapting to their lifestyle dynamic was not a challenge as it was fairly similar to the one my family has back in the States. Since they live on the outskirts of the city, I got to experience what is it like going by buss (bus) to school. The journey I had to do to get to school was lengthy, but t hat gave me time to wake up and appreciate the beautiful fall-colored sceneries.

In Sweden, school clubs and extracurriculars as such aren’t as big here like how they are in the States. Instead of clubs and school sport teams there are smaller student associations and committees run by students for the rest of the student body. In my school I helped some friends to organize the cultural committee of our school, Latins Kulturutskott (the name comes from Malmö Latinskola).

Since I'm already across the world, I decided to take on activities I've never tried before. That is how I ended up at a dance group at the Skånes Dansteater (Skåne's dance theater). It's super super fun! There are people from all backgrounds and cultures that get together to dance and there's a unique beauty on that. There I befriended a group of Persians who were intrigued by what they call the "Western world ways" and I had a couple of experiences where I was introduced to their other friends and sometimes even families and so I was asked to give some short presentations or simply explanations on cultural aspects that they were interested about knowing further. 

And just like that another gathering for the students in district 2395 happened, this time for the annual district conference. We got to share in an interview how life in Sweden differs from our lives back in our home countries and other interesting facts about being an exchange student. After a weekend of interacting with organization leaders, speakers, journalists, and many others, us students spent the last evening of the conference exploring the wilderness of the area where we were staying. It was nice to explore the countryside as someone living in a contrasting city.

Whether it would be for the kulturutskott, school, my host club, or friends and hosts, I have gotten more used to give short presentations in my still improving Swedish. Maybe my grammar is not spot on, but I consider it a success when people understand what I'm trying to express. I still have to work on my skånska (scanian dialect) r's and slang vocabulary, but that will come in as time progresses. 

Bu! Det är halloween! It's not as big as how it is in the States of course but it is a nice excuse for some people to dress up and party, which is really what happens at most during this dates of Oktober (besides theme parks being decorated for halloween).

Oktober winded down with a week off of school due to a fall break, which is a nice way to move onto the next chapter in this exchange. November will be literally a dark chapter as we’re now in the vintertid (wintertime schedule). I still have to get used to the darkness at 16:00-- you’ll soon hear how that’s going!

Jo då så att eh let’s move on to album recommendations! By The Radio Dept, today we’ve got the album Passive Aggressive. Jag hoppas att du gillar det! (hope you like it!) signing off for today, as always take care and stay safe!

Vi ses till nästa månad!