Fashion Days?

God kväll mina vänner! (Good evening my friends ;) ) 

Just to catch up on my recent events, two days ago, Anita and I met Ernie and his employee at a place called Montanas Restaurang, or as Gabe's host dad calls it "The Dirty Table Cloth", for lunch.  I've been anxious to try some Swedish pizza, so Anita suggested I get a pizza and she'd get one for herself.  (Okay, I think to myself, individual serving sizes.)  I order a Hawaii and we sit down. When the food is brought out, I find a large pizza-looking thing in front of me with the most peculiar purple/pink slivers of ham topped with out-of-the-can pineapple.  I had one slice of the thing and was content.  Anita suggested that we "forget" my boxed leftovers.. I guess every meal can't be as divine as I've experienced.  

Afterwards, Anita took me to an Indian store I've been anxious to see.  If you've ever been to It's A Beautiful Day in Westport, KC, this store was nothing like the place.  Sadly, Indiska was another fashion store that simply sold clothes made in India.  However I found some delightful clothing in the 1/2 off section.  Thus the beginning of my European clothing transformation.  

Yesterday, once again Anita and I met Ernie and his employee at another- higher quality- restaurant.  I'm not sure the name of it, but it was a buffet in the middle of the "best maintained garden in Sweden." Yes, it truly did receive an award for that, which makes sense because I thoroughly appreciated the beauty of it all.

With a view of the garden, here is Anita, Ernie, and Ernie's employee/co worker Kalle (whose real name is Karl, which I thought was humorous..).

And here Ernie is messing with the camera. However I did think that the table decoration in front of my face was cool- curly grass...

Anita decided to take of the advantage of the marvelous weather by walking home, while I chose to bike to Ernie's work and around town after being dropped off back home.  It was the first time I really biked around the city on my own, so that was a thrilling aspect, and yes, I did get lost trying to find Ernie's work, but all the more fun, right?  Ernie is a photographer and started his own photography studio/company (Spectrovision!), and he has Karl and one other guy working for him.  After taking a tour of the quaint studio, Ernie decided to take photos of me.  He dolled me up with his little make-up kit, and the shoot began! I don't think I've ever had quite as much fun being photographed as I did then.  Just so you have a proper idea, here's Ernie:

Haha. But shoot, he knows his digital photography.  He could edit photos more than I thought possible.  For example, he showed me a picture of a girl whose eye's were particularly... misaligned. The next photo showed a flawless girl with perfectly aligned eyes. The pictures he took of me were taken after biking through sprinkling rain and sweating for half an hour, and I was even kind of delighted by the result. It was fun :]

Later on, Gabe and I made plans to go to the women's soccer game, being held at the stadium two minutes from my house... Unfortunately the sky decided to vomit out all the rain it could muster, so we chose to stay home for a bit.  We talked about my newly formed opinion of September 11, 2001.  I'm not going to get too into it because, let's face it, there's nothing that can be done now and whatever I find/believe by myself isn't going to matter to any of you.  Ernie is, probably safe to say, obsessed with the event, and he's got me convinced that it truly was all a conspiracy.  But I don't have any other information to give, I'm just commenting... Anywho, the rain slowed down a bit and Gabe and I went biking around close to where I live.  Eating ice cream from a gas station, attempting to visit Svampen (the big mushroom water tower here... it was closed), and riding out in the rain turned out to be quite a time. Overall.. Fun day. :]

Today I woke up in time to eat breakfast, take a shower, and meet Gabe for pizza at 1.  Round two for Swedish pizza.. you could say.  We ended up walking around shopping for two hours before even finding a pizza place, but it was worth it.  While at a store called Carlings, we started talking with a girl, working there, who had traveled abroad in Canada when she was in high school.  She was the most enthusiastic Swede I think I'm ever going to meet.  Minna-Linn was here name, and she said that Swedes are just naturally shy, and when we go to school, we should expect to have a tough time making friends at first.  It has to be us that get them to talk back.  She had a lot of interesting insights, and was also so enthusiastic to hang out with us, meaning Facebook names were definitely exchanged.  

When Gabe and I finally found a pizza place, it turned out to be not as tasty as I'd hoped.   (Final opinion of Swedish pizza: no bueno.)  After eating dinner with Gabe's family, we built up the motivation to run the 5k path close to their house.  Andreas (Gabe's host dad), Gabe, and I ran probably the fastest 5k of my life. Not really, but I'll just say I felt great after running that.  My intentions are to prove Rotary wrong: I will not gain weight while I'm here. How's that for motivation!

(We passed a guy performing with a banjo on the way home; he was really good! Other than that, I know nothing about him, haha.)

All in all, another good day.  I hope the weather continues with the sunshine.  :] 

For now, Vi ses! (See you later :])