Quick Update

Friends and Family,
Only 1 more month until I am home! Unbelievable! This post is a mix of trying to catch up on the last month or so.

I'm sorry, here are 2 of the long waited for pictures from Dover last month. It has a little known castle but it was definitely worth the visit in my view! The castle played a very key role as a military command center during WW2, esp. with D-Day (since France is just across the Channel). I prayed for a beautiful clear day so we could see the coast of France and the Lord answered my prayer! It was so cool and I really enjoyed the trip!

the castle

(you can see the only signs of all the underground workings for the military by the 2 arches and windows in the white rock)

on top of the infamous white cliffs of Dover! =D

While we were in London I was also able to get to see a second musical on the West End (London's Broadway), Carousel. I was able to get a discounted ticket right before the show began and enjoyed seeing another musical (I could see tons more if my budget allowed!). =)
The front of the theater was under construction so this doesn't look all too impressive, but the inside of the theater was a pretty art deco style of architecture.

OKAY!
Now that I've caught you up again, let's get back to more up to date photos in Sweden!

So I flew from Barcelona to Stockholm a day before school started so I could see the city. I flew on an airline called Ryanair which has great cheap flights for around Europe. Unfortunately, since they are such a cheap airline, you have to pay lots of fees. If you wish to take any checked luggage you have to pay extra, and they have an extremely small maximum weight of 15 kilos (only 33lbs)! They charge an outrageous amount per kilo if you’re overweight…so I wore many layers of heavy clothing and was glad there was no one I knew at the airport to greet me because I looked ridiculous. =)

I stayed at a hostel on the night of April 2^nd and explored the city on the 2^nd and morning of the 3^rd. Then I took the train to school which was about a 4 hour ride. I passed through lots of beautiful farm landscapes. One thing I automatically noticed was that most buildings we passed were painted barn red! I later asked why this was and found out it’s tradition that started because of all the iron content in Swedish soil. The iron was a really cheap way to make paint and it created a red color for many buildings were painted red and although this way of making paint is no longer used, the tradition of red buildings remains.

Most of the countryside I passed on the train ride looked like this.
If you want to look me up on a map, the school is outside a small town in the south called Vetlanda.

Here's the main building of the school which contains the dining room, library, and girls' dorm.

Here's me and my 2 roommates (only 2! compared to Capernwray's 6). Meagan from Canada is on the left, and Daniella from Germany is on the right. Both are very sweet.

So I am now halfway through my spring school term in Sweden. I'll upload more pictures soon since they communicate so much more powerfully than words, but the internet has been having problems for the last few days here, so more pictures will have to wait for another day.

This week we have a man named Bob Scott lecturing, he has been on staff at other Capernwray schools around the world and he preached our Sunday morning sermon today. Last week we had a great guy named Tom Mason who spoke on Mark. His classes were really interactive which I appreciated, and he would do magic tricks at the beginning of lectures and taught us some that we could as an evangelism tool! pretty cool, huh? =)

This week we've been focusing on the persecuted church and reading a story of persecution before lunch every day the last week and praying for them. Today our evening service will be all focused on the persecuted church and I'm looking forward to it. All i know is that we're eating outside on the lawn and each family group had to provide a dessert so my group is baking a cake! =) yumm

Last night we helped with a youth outreach and they had some of us students from Holsby introduce ourselves. I was the last one to introduce myself and i decided to try it in Swedish. I can barely say anything but I introduced myself in Swedish and all they kids thought it was really cool and cheered! haha. It was hilarious. Just goes to show how much people appreciate when you try and speak their language, even if you do it badly. =)

Love to you all,
Sarah

Spain and the beginning of Sweden

Greetings and Happy belated Easter to everyone! Our Savior Jesus is risen! =)

I am now writing to you from my school, Holsby Brunn, in Sweden. I am here for the 2 month spring term (and yes, I’m be returning home after this in early June) and we are now beginning our 3^rd week of school here!

I am very sorry I have not written this last month, I’ll try and be better over the last 6 weeks! =)

After I traveled in and around London, I flew to Spain where I visited our friends the Wells. They are missionaries from our church who have lived in Spain for 13(?) years. I enjoyed staying with them for an entire week. It was nice and relaxing to see them again (the last time I saw them was maybe 2 years ago).

One day we went to the coast and it was beautiful! It was so picturesque and in some ways, just like what I had pictured. The town was called Tossa del Mar.

me and my host Annalisa

I'll write more about Spain, but for the moment, here's a bit about school in Sweden so far:
I've been here for 2 full weeks. Things are different from the Capernwray in England and yet the same. (the school here is part of the family of Torchbearer schools and students often attend one location for one semester or term and another location for the next.)

Everything is smaller here. There are only 45 students here (as opposed to Capernwray's 170) which at first felt really small and now just feels nice. When I tell people there were 170 in winter school they can't understand that or why I'd want to go there! =) They really enjoy the smaller community here and I understand why. We only have 5 lectures a day but have daily duties that take longer since there are fewer students to complete tasks. We have work friday every week instead of every other week at Capernwray! Every room here only has 3 or 4 girls in it which felt especially small for me at first since i had a room of 7 both terms at Capernwray...there's also small things that i like better about Cap. and i find myself thinking why dont' they do things this way, etc.? I realized I had been Holsby Brunn (the name of the school here in Sweden) to be exactly like Capernwray because they are both Torchbearer schools. It now turns out to be a wrong expectation. =) So life here is different but not a ton. I think it's almost harder to get used to small differences since I hadn't thought about it and assumed everything would be the same.

So that's just a quick update! I'm sorry there's not more yet, I'll write more about Sweden soon.
In the mean time, I have uploaded a lot of pictures on facebook that you can check out. Each of the following links are links to separate albums so there are a lot of new pictures for you to see!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=100775&id=720019947&l=443b8c3cba
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=100841&id=720019947&l=30884e744a
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=103562&id=720019947&l=5eeb3169e3
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=105954&id=720019947&l=6518e00fb1

Sorry if that's an overload of links for you, I just feel bad for not posting in so long! I'll post more pictures in a bit.

Love to all,
Sarah