Class Trip to Gothenburg

During the last few three days, me and my class have been on trip to Gothenburg (or Göteborg, as it is called in Swedish). I have to say, I had not expected much of this trip, even after months of planning and selling cookies to afford it, but it was amazing. It was a three hour train trip there and and back, and our activities included a tour of the city by boat, eating at various different restaurants, wandering around town, bowling, and a whole day at the a theme park called Liseberg. It was great! 😀

The second day was the best, in my opinion. That was the day that we went to Liseberg, and I didn’t quite know what to expect since I’ve only been on about two roller coasters in my life and that was many years ago. I didn’t know whether I would enjoy the rides or not, but when we got to the huge theme park, I was determined to try everything.

My first experience of terrifying rides was a ride called Spinrock, which is like a giant purple swing. My friend Elise and I stood in a queue for about forty minutes and in that time I worked myself up into quite a panic. It wasn’t as bad as I had thought, though. In fact, it was really fun. Probably the funnest ride in the whole of Liseberg! ;D

Other rides I went on was Balder: a wooden roller coaster with a seventy-degree drop, Kanonen (the canon): an incredibly fast roller coaster with a loop and a twist, and Atmosfear: a 146 meters high tower in which you are slowly brought to the top and then you fall. (Apparently its the highest free-fall tower in Europe. You could see the whole of Gothenburg from up there. It was terrifying, but AWESOME!) Another ride we did was called Kållerado, in which everyone sits in a round boat while bumping down rapids. We all got drenched, but it was so much fun and we laughed at each other all the way through!

Anyway, these three days have been wonderful. I hope I can go back to Gothenburg some time in the future! 🙂

Sun like Summer

Okay, okay, lately I’ve been slightly obsessive about the weather, but quite seriously, it is so warm right now it’s unbelievable. The sun is shining, the sky is blue, and it feels like summer. After the long, cold winter spring has finally come.

The days are really long now too! A few days ago my friends and I played badminton until like 9.30 pm and it wasn’t even dark. It was so much fun! 😀 I hope the weather continues to be like this until summer… which is in only a month away!

Spring?

Hey everyone,

So I just happened to notice (as did everyone else, probably) that it’s supposed to be spring but there’s still heaps of snow outside. Like what? It’s Easter holidays already and -7 degrees outside! What happened to global warming?

Anyway, lets look at the positive. At least it has been sunny for the last couple of days, so the weather is perfect for skiing. And snow does look nice in the sun.

Suki seems to be enjoying the weather anyway…

Still, I hope it gets warmer soon. Come on, sun, just get a bit warmer and melt the snow…

Painting ^_^

Yesterday I did some painting! Sometimes I get obsessive and paint for like three hours without stopping, which I did yesterday. This is the result:

Yeah, it’s not perfect but it was fun to paint. ^_^

Well, that’s all I have to say, so bye for now!

Happy New Year

And welome to 2013. At twelve o’clock I went out to see some fireworks. It was awesome!

The World is White

It has been a long, cold autumn. I was beginning to wonder if we would actually have some snow this year, but we were lucky. About a week ago it started snowing, and it has hardly stopped since. Though it has only been light snow, we now have quite a lot. The world is white, and it is amazing. Today was sunny, so I finally took some photos.

Snow and sun

Lamp post

Snowy trees in the sunset.

Tobogganing down the hill.

I love snow!

Swedish Autumn

I have now been back in Sweden for approximately three months, and in these three months the weather especially has changed dramatically. It’s funny how, in Australia, you can go from summer to autumn without feeling a drastic change in the temperature, while in Sweden it’s like something happens at the start of autumn and suddenly it goes from warm to freezing. Of course it doesn’t happen in one night, but it goes very quickly. Then again, maybe it’s just me.

Though it has been very cold and not very interesting weather, there have been a few nice days. As I didn’t have anything to do one sunny day I decided to go out and take some picures. And I have to say that autumn really is beautiful in the sun.

Autumn leaves

Swedish Forest

Here I am rambling on about nature. Most likely most people will think this post very boring, but for some reason I find the outdoor Sweden interesting.

God created an awesome world!

Back to Sweden

Wow. After a twenty-four hour plane trip, we are back in Sweden. We’ve come back to Swedish summer which is practically the same temperature as winter in Australia.

This feels totally unreal.

I’ve realized that I’m noticing all the little things about everything here.

The signs are in Swedish. Duh, we’re in Sweden. The TV is in Swedish. The milk is in cardboard cartons. The butter packets are bigger. It’s really green (trees). The houses are warmer. They write strange things on cornflakes packets…

The plane trip was actually quite easy this time, mainly because there was a free seat next to me so I could lie down and sleep. We were on British Airways and they actually gave us really nice food (with really nice dessert). Though it was of course very tiring, it was much smoother than last time, when our first plane got delayed so we missed the second one and lost our baggage.

Up in the clouds…

The yummy dessert – a kind of lemon cheesecake

I have to say, I am happy to be back. Yet also sad. It is so hard to have two countries, because there is always things you love about both of them. I love Australia for the warm climate, the environment like the Barrier Reef and the beautiful beaches, the schools and the people I’ve met, but I also love Sweden because of its cold, snowy climates, the beautiful forests, cycling, and the people I know. So basically it is REALLY HARD to live in one or the other.

And now I have been reunited with Suki! (My cat) Happiness! Then again, she seemed more interested in food than me when I first saw her. She looked up at me and then walked straight passed me and started eating… I still love her though!

Today Mario (our other cat) came back too! (He’s been missing for weeks.) It was really surprising when he just walked into the house at seven o’clock in the morning. He ate as though he hadn’t seen food for weeks, (which may be the case, who knows) and then went and fell asleep.

Anyway, that’s all I have to say for now. Hello Swedes and I’ll miss you Australians!

Green Island Reef

The reef. It’s like a totally different world under that turquoise surface. I’ve never seen so much colour and life! It was amazing!

The day started early. We got up at about six and watched the sun come up from behind the sea. It was amazing!
Then we set off to the reef. For half an hour we sat on a boat watching safety videos and listening to the very annoying theme song coming from the TV. (This was when it wasn’t showing videos of how to put flippers on and adds for the reef – YOU. CAN. DIVE. TODAY. was replayed about a hundred times (no exaggeration) in English and Japanese. It started getting tiring to look at after a while.)

Then we arrived. At… DUH DUH DUH (dramatic music) GREEN ISLAND!

After getting our equipment (flippers, snorkels) I took my trusty camera, (not really trusty at all) sealed it in its underwater camera case, and walked (awkwardly because the flippers were very hard to walk in) into the reef. I decided not to take the camera the first time in, and I both regret this and am relieved about it.

My mum, Sam, Isak and I swam along, looking at all the spectacles of the reef. It was amazing! We saw transparent fish with a little gold dot (it looked like it had a little golden heart inside it) swim past, strange, triangular looking black fish, a blue starfish, white coral tipped with blue (it looked like it was glowing) and a terrifying sea snake that looked like a long worm. Already, on the first swim, we had seen so much! 

The second time we swam out I brought my camera. We were lucky enough to see a giant blue clam before the tide went out and it was too far away to see. We saw colourful rainbow fish, more sea snakes (eek!) and coral.

Picture: A rainbow fish (Don’t know if it’s really called that.) Looks like there’s a flower around its eye. 

Picture: One of the sea snakes.

We saw all sorts of things after that. I was swimming by myself close to the reef when I saw these tiny little swordfish. Sam insists they weren’t swordfish, that swordfish have to be bigger and they’re not colourful like these ones were, but they had long pointy noses so I’m going to call them swordfish.

We swam out and saw a turtle. LUCKY LUCKY! I feel sorry for Isak who decided to stay at the beach. This turtle sitting at the bottom munching grass. Calm much!
 

Picture: Turtle munching grass.

I was a little far away from everyone else, snapping photos or a fish or something, when I saw a stingray. It was gliding along the bottom with it’s “wings” flapping up and down and looking very evil. Totally terrified, I swam as fast as I could until I reached my mum.
‘AGHLABAHGALH.’ This is how everyone sounded when they tried to talk with their snorkel on. Of course nobody understood what I was saying, so I took of the snorkel. ‘STINGRAY!’ We both looked down into the water, and just then I saw the tail of the stingray disappear under some coral. A random fish swam past.
‘See, I told you,’ I said.
‘You know stingrays are flat, right?’
‘Yes!’ I was so annoyed. Obviously she hadn’t seen it. ‘It was there, right under us.’
Nope. I was the only one who saw that stingray. And it made me even more afraid of the reef (I had already been creeped out quite a lot by the sea snake.)

I saw the most interesting thing at the end though, when a random, normal looking fish came speeding into the view of the camera. I snapped a picture before I knew what I was looking at. Then I stared at the sand. It had looked like the fish was chasing something, but I could see nothing. And then… I saw it.
Right there, totally camouflaged, was a fish. It was flat, and it’s back was decorated like sand. I had only noticed it because it had been chased by the other fish. It was AWESOME.

I gotta say, after all this, I consider myself pretty lucky. I saw most of the best things you can see at Green Island, which is only a small, less significant part of the reef. Next week we are going to the outer reef – and then I’ll have real reasons to be scared! I’ve heard about poisonous fish, giant fish, two and a half meter sharks…

Anyway, the reef trip was very fun. I hope we’ll go there again one day.

Picture: A giant clam. About a meter tall and wide. 

Ps. The pictures aren’t amazing, probably because my UNTRUSTWORTHY camera kept fogging up, plus the fact that the sand was getting stirred up all the time.

Arriving at Cairns!

On tuesday the 26th of June, the Holford family went to Cairns. Starting in cold Tamworth, it was quite a surprise when we came out of the plane in Cairns. Though the weather was cloudy, the temperature was warm. It was like coming back to summer – but that was winter in Cairns.

We drove through Cairns in a rental car that my dad had rented. He had already been here for a week, working so that we could get free accommodation.

When we arrived at the flat we were renting, I didn’t expect much… I was supposed to sleep in an alcove (like, a corner at the end of a corridor) and I was NOT HAPPY! The alcove had a sofa bed and that’s all. In fact, I was pretty unimpressed with the whole flat, which has tiled floor through the whole house and doesn’t let in much light.
BUT, here is the good thing. The flat is about fifty meters away from the beach. In fact, you can see it from our little veranda, which also happens to be right beside the pool. So we can just wander over to the beach, run around, watch the kite surfers (there are always some there), and then come back and swim in the pool. How lucky is that?

Anyway, so far, so good. The weather has been cloudy at times, but mostly sunny and warm. (Then again, it was warm when it was cloudy too.)And I’m going to be here for two whole weeks more!

The view from the veranda.

 Kite surfing seems to be super popular around our area.