Here’s a little update again. The last two days have been quite good. My plan after my last post to do a bit more work instead of lying around in the sun worked out really well. I was asked if I wanted to help at the rock climbing wall and belay (control the rope of the one that’s climbing in case he falls or wants to come down) while my Danish friends were trying to get to the top of the wall. As I haven’t done that in a while and used different equipment then I pretty much just sat in the hall for about two hours and had a look how everything worked. As I am not the tallest person either I couldn’t really help as the boys were a slightly bit taller and heavier than me so that would have probably just swept me off my feet. But I managed to convince the youngest one in the group who didn’t want to climb in the beginning to give it a go so that I had something to do, too. After this quite relaxing morning one of the highlights of the day took place. I got to clear a path in the forest with a kind of mini-lawn mower that you carry around and that cuts everything down that’s in its way. So there I was; standing in the middle of the forest with a helmet and ear guards fighting my way through the bush… I must admit it felt pretty cool ;) The thing was running on a little fuel motor that I couldn’t start myself in the beginning which is why I had one of the other workers behind me looking out that I didn’t cut down a tree by accident (I’m sure I would have managed that with that little beast haha) and started the motor again when it died. This happened quite a lot, especially in the beginning because there were just so many plants and they all just seemed to be there to get stuck in the blades. After a while it went really well though which I regretted a bit after a few minutes because I then started to notice how strenuous the whole job really was and that I am still allergic to pollen and grass and everything. But with sweat running down my forehead and scratches all over my arms I kept on going ;) Was a cool experience but I then decided that that was enough physical work for the day and continued to translate some Swedish texts to English (interesting stuff, I now know how to find Orion in the sky and how many light years the Northern Star is away from us … ). In the evening one of the kids got baptized in the chapel. The priest then announced the whole group to be godparents and the boy came to me after the service and said “cool, then I can even call someone in Germany now if I need help and then you have to come to Sweden” I thought that was quite cute :)

The day ended quite late as the leaders wanted to send their kids on a night walk and scare them a bit, so I helped them and stayed up until 3 am. These kinds of activities are a bit useless in Sweden during the summer as it should be really dark if you want to scare them properly, but even I could still see quite a bit and when we were done it started to get light again already, but the kids had fun anyway.
It took a fair bit of motivation this morning to get up at 8 am but I somehow found the way to the dining hall and ate some breakfast without having a nap in my cereal bowl.


It was raining a lot today so I spent most of the time in the little room with the activity boxes to translate the instructions in them and helped a bit to decorate everything for the confirmation-celebration tomorrow (emphasis on “a bit” as I was slightly tired). Today the first parents of the kids arrived and it’s been nice to see how they enjoyed seeing their families again after 3 weeks and how excited they all are about tomorrow. It stirs up some nice memories, as the atmosphere here is reminding me a bit of our last weeks at school. Even if I have only known them for barely a week, I can see that the kids here have been growing together as a group really well during their stay and it will be sad to see them part tomorrow afternoon. In the end it is always hard to leave a group in which you have been so close with everyone, regardless if you have known each other for 3 weeks or 3 years, the feeling of not knowing when and if you will ever see the others again is still the same. And you know that even if you all come together once more one day, it will probably never be the same unique atmosphere again.

But, as Idus Scott Taylor once wrote: "Do not look back and grieve over the past, for it is gone. And do not trouble about the future for it is yet to come. Live in the present and make it so beautiful, that it will be worth remembering."

With these words I say good night and wish everyone a happy 7-Eleven Day :) (if you missed it, don't worry it will come again on the 7th of november!)

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