4our days in Sweden!

Dear Blog

I'm glad to be writing to you again from Sweden. It's 1:00 AM, and its probably going to be darkest as it's possibly going to be tonight. Sun will probably start coming out in about an hour. It's just insane. Anyway, as always, I'll tell you about my day.

Well, everyone woke up so that we can do some shopping and checking out of the area around where we are currently staying (Tanumshede). We left our nice red house and our first stop was the second-hand store. It was a place where my mom and Ximena have found many plates together. It's really cheap for very nice expensive plates. For example, we saw one plate for 50 Kr at second-hand store, and it was 150 Kr at a tourist shop (7.6 Kr / Dollar). I also saw a glass from New Orleans!

After the second hand shop, we decided to go to Norby Shopping Center (a mall here in Sweden where Jerry works). So it was really cool. There was lots of stores, including one of the biggest candy stores I ever been too. Wow, they had candy as big as my torso (well maybe half as thick, haha). Then we saw Jerry in Dressman, but by the time I took this picture, he was already out of his work clothes.

From the mall, we went to the lake to have a picnic. That was a nice trip. Andre and I decided to do a little exploring in the forest. When we got back, the both of us stripped to our underwear and we jumped into the lake. This was the first time in my life I ever jumped off a rock (or any surface) into water not knowing how deep it was. Took a lot of courage from me, because I was scared to death. But luckily Andre was scared too (I think), which gave me the courage for the both of us to experience something like that. Excellent trip. I was soo suprised how Ximena was able to navigate the forest part between the water and the car. It was bumpy, rocky, woody, holey, everything imaginable, and Ximena just marched through everything and made it to the lake and back (while pregnent!).

Then Jerry and Ximena thought it would be nice that they would take us to rocks with paintings from the Bronze Age (1800 - 500BC). It's great to know that age old culture exists everywhere. In one of our stops of viewing culuture, I learned that the ants made hills 100 times bigger than those I've seen in New Orleans. Seriously! Check out the picture with Jerry and Andre, and behind them is an actual ant pile. It is more than half of a human size. Amazing.

After seeing the paintings on the rock, we went to a small viking resort with viking houses and structures. It was really cool. We actually saw where vikings stayed, and it was almost livable as is (if you could do without electricity, and make you own fires, and kill your own animals). But still awesome.

We got hungry, stopped by the fisherman's market for shrimp, and bought 2k shrimp and 3 loaves of bread for about 200 Kronas. We made sandwiches with a mayonnaise, garlic, lemon sauce (shown in purple tube). Fresh bread, shrimp, and this sauce... yum yum! Maybe we should make some in New Orleans in a restaurant. Or maybe we already have it... I don't know

As it is late, I think I will go to bed while the sun is still down (but it's still light enough to see). Good night!

- ET