School Excursion

The school organised a little excursion for all the students right after our exams. We were gonna visit a castle, take a boat, visit a few museums and even a plant nursery. Berit had informed us of the trip some weeks ago including that we were to bring our own lunchbox which to me meant PICNIC!

So I planned with a couple of girls in class to bring food so we could all picnic together. I decided to cook up some rice and a couple of Chinese inspired dishes. Managed to prepare garlic prawns, cashew nut chicken (without the cashew nuts cos I only like them as snacks) and black pepper fish. The food turned out EXCELLENT!

The day did not start exactly as I had wanted to with it raining in the morning and being gray and windy. I felt quite upset with the weather but what is one to do. At least the rain had stopped by the time I was ready to leave the house. I didn’t have to go Hallsberg but just had to walk down to the harbour in Askersund as we gonna take a boat to the castle!

As usual I was late and everyone had arrived with the school bus by the time I got there. I had just bought a BEAUTIFUL new tote bag that also acted as a chillbag cos it has aluminium insulation to keep things warm or cool. One such a day, I of cos took the opportunity to use it for the first time. My lovely bag got to go on a boat trip on its VIRGIN use.

We took the WETTERWIK across from Askersund to Sterjnsund castle, a beautiful summer castle visible from our small little town. The castle has the most beautiful view of the lake.



Hopping off the boat and right onto castle ground. But silly me forgot to just turn around and take a picture of the darn boat docked on the teeny tiny jetty nestled among tall weeds in the water. Oh well..

Me, my beautiful new chillbag, Som one of my first friends in school and my 2 lovely male teachers, Klas and Leif.
These are most of the girls in my class. You'll notice that most of us are from Asia. The only European in the picture is Irina from Russia. Would you believe that the lady with the yellow sweater is a mother of 4, the one in white jacket is in her mid 50s and I am the youngest in the group?
More ladies of my class and this time we have contestants from Bosnia (in pink), Iraq (to my right) and my eternally calm teacher, Berit.


And right after my nice little class picture, the silly boys from Group C started screaming 'Wait! Wait! I want in too!' So one by one everyone started joining the picture till we got to this big group which was all that the little piece of land we were standing on could take before we all fell into the ice cold lake.Finally a picture of our Wetterwik chugging away into the horizon. This is a view of the lake from the front of the castle grounds. How gorgeous is the view right?

Even on a cloudy and windy day, the sky is absolutely breathtaking. I just love how the clouds lined up here, both white and gray.

Here is Khaldoun, one of the 2 funny and cheeky Iraqi guys from my C class. They're fun loving guys that I can make fun of and who will laugh with me. Not too many of those around me right now so they are a nice comic relief. Khaldoun is 35 and single and interested in a Burmese girl in the C class tho he denies vehemently everytime we tease him. But we know the truth cos he can't stop grinning everytime we say her name.

THe castle front steps. It may not be a big castle but it is gorgeous both inside and out.

And here is Khassan, the other funny fella. He is my age and is cheekier than Khaldoun. We're standing right in front of the castle steps on the driveway that is raked every Friday.

Here we are in Motala, a larger town south of Askersund, where we finally had our little picnic. Don't be fooled, sunny as it looked behind us, every single one of us were freezing. Took us a while to get this picture what with the bloody cold wind blowing hair every way into our faces to getting the hungry ladies to finally put down their spoons for 2 seconds to smile to the camera.

This is what happens when I try to get camera shy Vlasta from Slovenia to pose for the camera with me. I get swept up in one of her infamously huge bear hugs.

Right after Motala, we headed for Göta Canal which is a canal that runs from Göthenburg to Stockholm, crossing the 3 largest lakes in Sweden. We went to one of the points where the boats pass through what is called slussar in Swedish. I'm not exactly sure what it is called in English but it is like dams built one after another to form steplike passageways for the boats to go downhill. I'm standing on one of the doors of these dams and what happens when a boat passes through is that the water will be let out of the passageway that the boat is in until it reaches the waterlevel of the next step. When the water level is low enough, the door will open and the boat sails through to the next 'step' where the same thing happens. Of cos only one door is open at any one time. But it is something I have never seen before and it is quite interesting.