May 15th, 2011

Sadly, today we had to leave Tove and friends in Lund, but they showed us an amazing party time in Sweden. I don't know if our bodies could have handled anymore partying and lack of sleep though. We gave our hugs and said our goodbyes and headed toward the West Coast of Sweden.

Anna, Martin, and Tove saying bye to Harald, Henning, and I

Our first stop was in Halmstad, where we had lunch with Kristina's brother Per, his wife, Elsa, their two kids, Olle and Siri and Kristina's mother, Gunnel. We had Salmon and potatoes and coffee and chocolate for dessert. We left around three because we needed to continue on to Göteborg or as we Americans say it Gothenburg (I think it is so funny that they change the way they say things so that Americans can understand it).

A field of Rapeseed flowers that produce a cooking oil that many Swedes use in their kitchens

Here we had dinner with Kristina's  brother Hendrik, his wife Liselot, and their 3 kids. They live in a really cool house, it used to be an apartment building with 7 apartments in it and now it is their 4 story house. We had crawfish and shrimp for an appetizer, I had never had crawfish before so that was an experience. They give them to you whole on your plate and you have to crack the shells and pick out the meat (like our crab except they don't gut these). Then we had our main course of, guess what! SALMON!!! We had a lot of salmon in the passed two days, but fortunately it has all been delicious. We had great conversations with the whole family. The boys Jacob and David were both really smart and were very good at English, I think they were around 12 and 14. They both really liked rubics cubes and could solve them super fast. Jacob was going to be in a competition in June. He can solve a  3x3 cube in about 30 seconds. It was really impressive. I didn't really get to connect with the 6 year old daughter because she hadn't learned english yet. Tonight was the World Championship Hockey game between Sweden and Finland so we watched that. It was a really good game up until the end when Finland had shot after shot after shot go in. The final score was I think 1 to 6... Pretty big upset for the Swedes. For desert we had coffee and tea and white chocolate panna cotta with berries which was DELICIOUS!!! Then after a long day of traveling we decided to go to bed because in the morning we had some more traveling:)