February 26

Last week was a four days week, pretty nice. Practice went good until Friday, when I had to go home as my right food hurt. Don't know if I've stretched it or what I've done but I couldn't run. The foot has been bothering me the entire weekend, not too bad when I walk but painful when I run. Went to practice again today Tuesday, trainer taped my foot so it wasn't impossible to run. Tomorrow we have our first meet, don't think I'm gonna be able to run unfortunately.

Last Thursday there were exactly 100 days left of my exchange, 100 days until I'll be back in Sweden. Such a short time! today I have 95 days left, time goes so fast, it's crazy! Mixed feeling about that.

Friday night I went to the schools talent show. Around 20 students performed. They were singing, dancing or playing an instrument. Funny to watch! My friend Rhianna danced, she was really good :)

School and the student parking

Talent show

Talent show

Screenshot Thursday Feb 21

President's day

Today (Monday) it's presidents day so I've had the day off. Didn't do a lot of fun though since I had an english paper to write. Now I'm watching biggest looser and baking at the same time... haha. The cardamom cake is in the oven - swedish ICA recipe, hope it turns out good. Wanted to bake something swedish for my parents.

Friday Night I came home early from practice with cramps and a fever - luckily I felt good when I woke up Saturday. Saturday night I went to my friend Yaya's house for her birthday party. Was fun! She's from Italy so she made italian pasta with tomato sauce - soo good!
Spent the night there and then went for a couple of hours to Mette's house Sunday before going home. We spent the time out by the pool with ice cream tryin' to work on our tan...

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is a huge deal here in America compare to Sweden. Stores have been full of pink and red stuff since a month ago. You can buy all kinds of things: chocolate, flowers, school stuff, cute bags, candies, balloons and teddy bears in all the sizes.

At school today most girls were more or less dressed up. A lot of people wore something pink or red. Even the principal had a pink shirt on. There were gifts everywhere! People walked around with teddy bears as bis as themselves or bags and flowers. Earlier this week you could buy Valentine's day telegrams at lunch for someone. They got delivered during 3rd hour today. I got one from my friend Diane :) you got a card and candy. A Spanish class came in to my English class today and sang for us a Spanish love song. I got a card and a box of candy from my parents this morning when I woke up :)

Other than that track season has started now. Practice every day Monday-Friday. It's right after school for 2h. Coach put me in distance running. Probably going to do 1 mile (1600m). Don't know yet if I'll be varsity or JV. (Varsity is the higher division then JV).
Miss Hawaii!! 

Sofia 2 weeks ago in the at Fry's

The store before Valentine's day

What I got from my american parents

Mahalo Hawaii!

Mahalo = thank you, Aloha = hi/bye/love you, Ohana = family/no one is left behind, Humuhumunukunuku apua'a = name of the state fish, Aloha kaka iacca = good morning. That's the hawaiian I've learned!

Our flight today was at 8 am so we were on the first shuttle that left at 5 a.m. This morning. I started packing at midnight so I didn't get much sleep, but I can sleep some other time!
Had our last breakfast in Hawaii at starbucks before boarding our plane. Now I sit on the plane to LAX... Has been such an amazing, great, awesome perfect week and I don't want to leave :(
This has been one of the best weeks in my life so far -hopefully I'll be back in Hawaii some day.

It was also fun to hang out with other scandinavians again! I think we were 9 swedes and then a bunch of ppl from Norway, Denmark, Finland and then of course a lot of people from the rest of the world.

Some songs that I relate to the trip (we listen to them on the buss all the time):

-Somewhere over the rainbow - Israel Kamakawiwo'ole

-Thrift shop - Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

-International Love - Pitbull featuring Chris Brown

-All around the world - Justin Bieber

-Maraca - Mohombi

Sist men inte minst: Tack mamma o pappa för denna resan ni är bäst!!!!

Group picture! 

just landed in Phoenix, time to say goodbye...

Before boarding the plane in Honolulu - goodbye Hawaii!

Oahu from above

Breakfast @ the airport

Tired girls on the plane

Last day in HI

This was our last day on Oahu. Sad that we have to leave, Hawaii is awesome!
Today was my group's turn to go snorkling. We went to a beach were they don't allow big groups to go. So Belo (the travel agency) had arranged a system were we all got devided in small groups and went with small vans to the beach instead. Haha and then we weren't supposed to act like we new the other "small groups". Anyway the beach was pretty and there were lot's of fishes to see. Tried to take pictures with my underwater camera - don't know how they turned out though^^

Got back to the hotel around 3 and at 4 we left to go to a "Hawaiian party" for our last dinner. It was a place at the beach (50 min from our hotel) were they had a lot of "typical hawaiian activities/events/food going on. We watched them dance on the beach at sunset (good weather = pretty sunset), their ritual to turn and lift "the pig" (what they eat for celebrations) and then the dances that goes with it. We all dressed kind of hawaiian style. I wore a dress and then my lei (flower necklace) and my hawaiian state flower in my hair:) We also got a hawaiian dinner we ate at the tables on the beach. During dinner they had shows with dances and music. We all got to dance the hula-hula dance and became "certificated hula-hula dancers". Dinner was a buffet, I ate fish, rice, pasta sallad and tufu bread (a purple bread made of a root from a specific plant). The fire show was really cool.
When we came back to the hotel it was time to fill in the trip evaluation and pack our bags. So sad I don't wanna go home!

snorkling beach

All the Swedes! 

My roomies :)

Pic with the lifeguard 

Pearl Harbor

The busdrive to pearl harbor was about 30 minutes from the hotel. The buss left at 8 this morning. First we went to the visitor center were you could walk around a small museum and see a lot of dirrerent missiles. There were also different memorials, giftshop and pictures to look at. Then we saw a movie that told the story about what happened December 7, 1941 (the day the base got attacted by Japan). Pretty interesting! After the movie we took a ferry out to the USS Arizona memorial. That's the name of the ship that had the biggest explosion when the Japaneses attacked pearl har or in 1941. More than 1200 people died that day. The memorial is place right on where the shhip sank, since the water is not very deep out there you san see the ship under the water.

For lunch we had panda express, think this is the first time I eat there and I really liked it!

After lunch break we went to see the battle ship USS Missouri. The ship is not longer used in the military since 1992, but is now avalible for visiting. The ship was used in WWII. It's an important ship as it's on that ship Japan came onboard to sign the paper that the pacific war was over in 1945. That's the reason the ship is next to the Arizona memorial - the beggining and the end of the war are next to each other ;)

Our group got a special tour since we did a service project on the ship. We swept the entire deck. So now I've done some community service in Hawaii :) I also bought a book from a guy who survived December 7th at pearl harbor, he's sat at the visitor center and signed them, so cool!

After visiting the ship we headed bach to the hotel and just hung out for a while. I went shopping and got ice cream with some ppl. Dinner was at the hotel tonight on the 21st floor so the view was pretty nice!
After dinner -more shopping and then sleeping... Feels like I'm constatly "hyper" during this trip haha!

Day 5 in Hawaii

Already the 5th day here on Ohau! Time goes by way to fast :o
It was raining early this morning so the sand was too wet to have breakfast on the beach, we had it at the pool instead. A guy was playing hawaiian music and a giril was dancing hawaiian dances:)

My group went hiking today. It was a 2h hike up a hill. The view from up there was amazing. You could see the intire Hobolulu and the different colors of the water, really pretty even though we were all sweaty when we got there. When we came down from the hill we all had shaved ice or in my case a mango smoothie before heading back to the hotel. Me, Sofia, Hanna (from sweden), Emilia (finland) and Karoline (norway) went out for lunch on the strip. We found a pancake place. I had one with mango, pineapple, strawberries, whipped cream and chocolate ice cream -yummy!

After that swim and tan on the beach. I think old ppl are tired of having us on the beach with music on by now haha!

At 5pm the buss left to go to a mall. Bought sunglases, ballerina shoes and a bag. Dinner was at Bubba Gump. The Bubba Gump restaurants are built after the movie Forest Gump. So they are kind of decorated after the movie and you can buy staff in their giftshop. It was a pretty cool place! I had a shrimp pasta with garlic/lemon sauce, super good!

Day 4 in Hawaii

Learned a new word in Hawaiian: Mahalo! (means Thank you).
Today has been a relaxing day at the beach. The buses left the hotel at 9 in the morning and the first stop for the day was a viewpoint with a beautiful view over the east side of the island. The next stop was in a small town were we stopped to buy lunch to take with us at the beach, we also got some Starbucks. My new "hawaiian drink" at Starbucks is Cool Lime. It's the perfectdrink her in paradise.

The beach we went to after that was so beautiful that there are no words to describe it. The sand was white and the water clear blue. Palm trees and coconuts were everywhere along the beach and the temperature was awesome. The warm breeze together with the few clouds in the sky made it perfect to lay on the beach. The waves were pretty big though so we were only aloud to swim at certain times, the lifeguard said it was to dangerous otherwise. We also saw a wedding on the beach - that's how I want my wedding haha!! The beach was called Waimanalo.

After a couple of hoursat the beach we returned to the hotel to take a shower and get ready for dinner. We saw an amazing rainbow on the way back. It was huge and the colors were so bright! And it was double! For dinner we had pizza, then shopping/free time on our way back. Has been an other awesome day!!!!!!! :D