INTRO

Hi class,

My Name is Madelene, and I am a transfer student from Santa Barbara City College (and an international student from Sweden).  I am a communication major, and am lucky to have an awesome internship experience at ChicExecs PR department, a company run by ONLY women - Gilrpower!!!

During my free time I love to practice Yoga, go to the beach, hike, and go to Happy Hour for Margaritas, and explore new places :D  

Future goals: To become better at surfing and pay more attention to riding the wave than fighting for my life every time I get hit my by (what I consider) a big wave. 

Things I dislike: waking up early in the morning, morning classes, spiders and angry people. 

One of my absolutely favorite things to do is travel! I was super duper over Scholl when I graduated Gymnasium in Sweden (kind of, sort of like a mix High School & College), and took about three years off from school to just explore cool places and countries. I believe that people grow and get a better perspective of life when visiting other cultures and countries.  Therefore my blog will be a travel blog about Sweden.  I assume that most of you have not been to Sweden, so this will be your guide for both summer and winter seasons.  I will also include some fun facts about swedes that is actually pretty spot on!

Hopefully this will make you want to explore my home country, if not, you at least know where you don't want to go.

 
 
 

SWEDISH MIDSUMMER

Hello you all, 

Have you heard about Swedish midsummer before? It is definitely one of the most important holidays in Sweden.  As you probably already know, Scandinavia has very long, dark and cold winters and it is no surprise that swedes go nuts when the summer time finally arrives.  This is my absolutely favorite day during the whole year since all people are happy and go all in for celebration.  The coolest thing about this day and most of the summer days is that it never gets dark. I’m serious! You can walk outside at 3 in the morning and it feels like its 5-6 PM.  Although the sun is not up, it NEVER gets dark!  This is obviously the same for all Scandinavian countries.  It’s the longest day of the year.

So what do we do on this holiday? We wake up feeling super excited, and plan huge parties at peoples summer house’s, or any big house with a yard.  Then, you pick flowers and make head ornaments and then build a HUGE pole, with grass and flowers in it.  During the day you sing and dance around the pole.  If you get to experience this awesome holiday It is very likely that you won’t remember it the next day, because if you did not get it already, Swedes love to consume alcohol during all celebrations. The most famous song and dance around the pole is called “Små Grodorna” and translates into “Small Frogs”.  Then you jump around and look like these frogs while locking arms with the people next to you.  ALL ages celebrate this.  After this, everyone sits down at the table and eat dill potatoes, hearing, salmon, shrimps and drink a lot of Snaps (like shoots) while singing snaps songs.  You can only imagine how the rest of the night plays out.

 Fun Fact: The time of the years when most kids are born in Sweden is 9 months after this Holiday!

If there is any holiday you HAVE TO celebrate in Sweden, it’s this one. It is crazy fun for ALL ages, IF you know someone so you get invited to these parties.  People do not go to restaurants, bars or clubs on this holiday.  And again, the best is tha people is in such a good mood this day, it can't go wrong!

The first two pictures are from my last two midsummer parties.