Guess what Henrik & Cathy is doing now?

Stuff that have happened

2010-05-31T16:52:00.008-04:00

Hello everyone! Soon our time in USA will end and we will go back to Sweden after almost a year abroad! Time flies so fast it's crazy!

Since I haven't posted something for a while, I was thinking to use this as a random post with some random photos. Things that have happened at the stay in San Diego.

Oh, my Uncle Tommy also visited for a week all the way from Germany, his current residence. It was a fun time for me since Cathy have been back in China for 2 weeks for a wedding. I got some time to be a real tourist (after work of course :p) and see San Diego and it's beautiful surroundings.

In March? or Maybe February? Whatever, our work + the Swedish consulate + some friends went to Los Angeles to watch, guess who? The Swedish artists "Timbuktu", "Adam Tensta", LoopTroop Rockers with Promeo" play live in west Hollywood! It was an amazing weekend and the most crazy for a long time! We ended up in an exclusive after party in Santa Monica with all of the artists. The next day, we were at a BBQ party at a stuntmans home (both him and his girlfriend can be seen in LOST), with some cage fighter, one of the American Gladiator girls (Pheonix), a great musician and some other people. And the weekend just continued... Very fun!

We have also been hiking outside San Diego. It was a very sunny day and we hiked in almost desert! It was a beautiful view and in the bottom of the valley were an amazing waterfall, well worth the trip down! However the trip up from the bottom of the valley was another thing, I realized how untrained I was and that I really need to attend a gym...... in the future.....

Hmm.... what more have happened...

Oh yea, when Cathy was back for a few weeks, we went to visit her friend who lives in downtown LA. A very great location to live... maybe? whatever, it was at least great for a weekend :) we didn't do too much tourist stuff, mostly hang out. oh and in the evening, we went to see Robin Hood.. which was an OK movie, nothing more, nothing less... however not worth the money... But the most amazing thing happened. We were walking around staples center and the Nokia theater in downtown LA, when suddenly a woman appeared and offered us 4 free tickets (we were 4 people :p) to Ricky Gervais show that were just going to start in the Nokia theater, which happened to end just in time for our Robin Hood movie :) Only in LA... Only in LA!

I will end it here for now... but there is more to come!

Long time no see!

2010-02-24T01:58:00.002-05:00

Hello everyone! I know, I know, I've been a bad boy and haven't updated this blog forever... I lasted longer than I thought tough :p whatever, I just wanted to let you all know that I'm still alive, doing fine in San Diego, I haven't forgot about blogging and I will jump start this blog again! Check back soon and you will find more new amazing stories of ME! Wohoooo!

Halloween!

2009-11-01T21:04:00.008-05:00

Hello everyone! Long time no see!

Yesterday, the 31^st of October, America celebrated their famous Halloween. This was the first time that both I and Cathy have experienced a real Halloween. The Swedish version is not even close to the American, unfortunately, because it was a very fun experience. I think it would be even more amazing to be a child and celebrate Halloween, I saw very many children running around with costumes such as Spiderman and Batman, etc, with a BIG smile on their faces.

We already carved a pumpkin at Michelle’s thanksgiving, which was very fun. Now it was time to take Halloween to the next step, and how do we do that? That’s right, by going to a Halloween party!!!

But before the party could begin, we needed a Halloween costume! Earlier this week, we went around different stores looking for the perfects costume, which doesn’t include a pink bunny for me whatever Cathy says!

So now we had our costumes, can you recognize us? I dressed as the scariest thing I could think of! Which proved to be the scariest costume out there!

We went to a Halloween party at a student house not far from our home, were many of the exchange students, but also some Canadians, about 40 in total I think. It was quite fun to see everyone dressed up as the craziest things you can imagine… Here is a first look of the entrance at the party.

We fast figured out what Halloween is all about, POSE!! Pose, pose and pose, a little more pose, and pose! Drink some, and pose again :p It’s hard to describe the experience, but you can see some photos and judge for yourself, haha, fun was it…

Strangely enough, there were many men dressed as females, even more odd is that all of them came from Europe... hmm… did I miss a memo or something? :p

Later it was time going out in town, and guess what, ALL people is wearing a costume, even the police (if you know what I mean). It was quite amazing to see, and extremely funny!

All of us went to Dean Martini’s, a night club in downtown Windsor that we have been at before. I quite like that place for two reasons. 1, Both me and Cathy always seems to get in for free, every time. 2, they are dirt cheap at the bar. So why not? :D

Same thing in Dean Martini’s, people dressed as the weirdest things they could come up with….

The exchange students, FTW!

So that was the Halloween night, I really think we should import this tradition to Sweden, hey we import everything else right?

So until next time we have something to share… take care!

Ice skating and Irish pub

2009-10-19T18:22:00.005-04:00

Hello everyone!!!

Cathy has been visiting her friend from China that also study around here so I’ve been home alone L but I survived! I have been studying, watching movies and so forth. I were going to Detroit with another exchange student, Ard from The Netherlands but Cathy accidentally had my passport with her, so there were no Detroit for us, hopefully we will go next week.

Instead I and Ard went ice skating with the Windsor University’s VISA group which is a student organization that arranges activities for international students. It was a very long time since I last ice skated but I think it went OK, I didn’t fall once!!! Haha

However we arrived a bit later than the rest of the people so finding our size in ice skates proved to be a quite difficult task. As can see here on the picture, I’m fighting to get my foot in to a too small skate. And to another thing, if you look in the left down corner, you can see my new sneakers that I bought last time me and Cathy went to Detroit shopping. More on that later…

Ard on the ice, he skated better than me, which is a shame since I’m from Sweden… But when I come back to Sweden, I will practice!

At least I could stand on the skates and even move forward! (Sandra don't laugh :-()

AI don’t know what this Euro Hockey school have to with Windsor, but the Swedish flag is in the left corner :D I concluded that the European hockey leagues is much better than American hence the Americans want to practice like us, haha

After some ice skating (with too small sizes I want to remind you), we went to a downtown Irish pub, called “Mick’s Irish Pub”. However this pub showed to be no different than the usual pubs, beside some small green lights, se we didn’t notice what was Irish about it, but hey, the name was Irish :p

There were some band (Celtic Cross) playing some Irish/American songs, some songs were quite good, others you could hear the singer’s voice which proved to be quite bad when you are sober… but in the end it proved to be quite fun anyway…

Today Cathy comes back and the school starts again as we are in Monday today. The time goes by extremely fast, too bad though…

//Henrik

Thanksgiving time!

2009-10-13T23:33:00.007-04:00

Hello everyone, Thanksgiving time!

Yesterday (Mon 12 oct), Canada celebrated their Thanksgiving. This is a day were people think about what they are thankful for and get together with their family to eat a great dinner. The Canadian and American thanksgiving is on different dates but they represent the same things. Because we have our family many, many, MANY, like millions of centimeter away from us, Me and Cathy got invited to a traditional thanksgiving dinner at Michelle & Kevin’s place, thank you so much guys! We had a wonderful evening with great food as I will show in the usual manner!

On thanksgiving, people it turkey, they even have a turkey cooker like the Chinese have their Rice cooker :D

We were a few exchange students that were invited for the dinner which were very nice… look at all the great food!

Lets take a closer look at the food, shall we?

And if we zoom in even further, we see in great detail what thanksgiving is all about :p

See my happy face!

Cathy shows her appreciation in another more direct way!

And after the food, it was time for another great tradition, carving pumpkins!!! It’s soon Halloween here in America so people need to have pumpkins in front of their homes. It was a really fun thing to do because you get messy! Also you can design your own pumpkin which makes it even more fun.

This was one of those activities were playing with a sharp knife is a good thing!

Cathy is putting the last pieces together of our pumpkin….

Tada!! Woho! Our pumpkin is alive!

When we were done with emptying the pumpkin, it was time to carve, me and Cathy made our own COOL design!

Our finished pumpkin, or as Cathy calls it, “Our first child”…

Later in the evening we ate some apple pie and sat and talked. It was a very nice experience and it seems like a quite fun holiday when you are a child, we should adopt something similar in Sweden!

So that was it for this time! Good night people!

Russell Peters live in Windsor

2009-10-02T23:24:00.002-04:00

Hello, everyone! Sorry for the late post, but it’s been a very busy week! We have a lot of school things to do and many exams to prepare for next week. However we managed to get some free time, and what did we do? We went to the live show by Russell Peters!!!!!!!!!!

For those of you who don’t know who Russell Peters is, I can tell you fast that he is possible the most funny and one of the most successful stand up comedians ever. He is a Canadian with Indian decent and he is currently doing Canada’s biggest standup comedian tour in the history, and he came to Windsor. This was a opportunity that neither me or Cathy wanted to miss (both of us is big fans) so we decided to see him.

To show some proof, of course I uploaded a few pictures!

Me and Cathy waiting for the bus to take us to the big arena, of course after first eating some nice Chinese food :D

The tickets!

We are sitting and waiting, apparently his tour bus were stuck in traffic, and he was 20 min late… fortunately, there were 2 incredible djs entertaining the masses whilst we waited.

Finally he arrived and he is really a genius! We laughed until we cried; the evening was funnier than we thought and it was almost two hours of it!

So there you have it, we saw a celebrity, yay! However it would actually be more fun if we sat on the first row because he made fun of the people sitting there, but it was still fun, so if you have a change, go and see him, or at least check out his clips on YouTube, here is a start:

And to continue: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=russell+peters&search_type=&aq=f

So until next time, have a good one!

Cedar Point, Roller Coaster park of the World!

2009-09-20T18:20:00.018-04:00

Hello everyone!

Yesterday, I, Cathy and 30 other exchange students went on an organized day trip to Cedar Point in Ohio, USA. For those who are not familiar with Cedar Point, it has been awarded as the best amusement park in the world, 11 years in a row. It has more rides than any other park (75) and most roller coasters in the world with its 17 roller coasters.

I have to add that I’ve never been on a big roller coaster in my life, and when people asked me: aren’t you afraid of going to the roller coaster capital of the world, I said, I can’t be afraid of what I don’t know…. Believe me, I had time to be scared when we had arrived, some lines lasted for 1 hour!

We left Windsor, Canada at around 8:30 in the morning and we arrived in Cedar Point at noon when they opened, we were in the park for amazingly 11 hours in a straight! In which we left around 23:30 in the evening.

Despite the 11 hours we had in the park, there are too many lines to actually have time for all the rides on one day, so I and Cathy went on 10 rides in total, of which 7 were roller coasters!!!

It was an amazing day which is hard to describe with both words and pictures but I will try!

On the way to Cedar Point, we took a break for some breakfast, and next to us were a car show. I just had to show a picture of this cool car!

We past a nuclear plant, and NO it’s not on fire (as someone thought) it’s steam from the cooling equipment.

We are getting closer to the amusement park; here you can see many of the 17 roller coasters that they have, some which are over 60 meter high and two over 95 meter…

Here was our first ride of the day, it was a relative small drop which gave 2 seconds of weightless, just as a warm-up :-)

Cathy is looking happy, believe me, I’m not!

One of the roller coasters that we went on, it’s really hard to capture the roller coasters on camera because they are soooo huge!

After we been on two roller coasters and had eaten some food, we took a little simpler ride, Cathy was SO excited to drive!

Me at the park.

It’s closing in towards Halloween, hence the park have started with Halloween theme, it was really cool in the evening when wherever you went there were monsters trying to scare you, it was so fun!

Cathy as a Mexican!?

Park picture.

Even Ghostbusters were there, with a whole Halloween parade!

Me underneath a roller coaster that is 130 meter high and the speed is 193 km/h (from 0 to 193km/ in less than 4 seconds) some Crazy ride!

This was the ride Magnum XL200, and was the most fun ride of the day! It is 62 meter high and goes in 120km/h.

As you can see, I wasn’t at all scared…

And then some calming down before going on the next rides! I have to say, I was quite good :D

One other ride that stood out was this one, it’s called Mantis and is a ride that you stand up in and have 4 loops! It feels really cool and different from the usual ones were you sit down in.

Getting buckled up!

A video of actually Me and Cathy on the first part of the ride we are standing up in, sorr for the bad quality, upload limit on the blog:

(Thank you Florian for the filming)

Again, the Halloween theme!

It went dark really fast, but that didn’t stop anyone!

A proud moment in my life...

After a few rides more, a part of the 6 people team, Henrik, Cathy, Mona and Ard (Johannes and Florian) rounded of the day with some nice food in a 60’s themed American restaurant, the decoration, waiters and music was 60’s themed and it was a nice finish of the day.

Overall I have to say it was an amazing day and Cathy agrees. I will definitely go back here sometime in the future to ride the rest of the rides that we didn’t have time with. And for anyone that is visiting North America around Ohio NEED to go to Cedar Point!

With this said, have a nice day/night/morning/evening everyone!

Niagara Falls

2009-09-16T23:20:00.006-04:00

Hello everyone! Today, I'm finally uploading the pictures from the Niagara Falls trip that I went on last Saturday. It was really well organized by our exchange coordinator, Michelle, thank you! I haven’t had time to post earlier because we have had our first week of real lectures and guess what, we actually have homework that I haven’t had for years! I also got to know that I’m allergic to Penicillin, the hard way :-)

Ok for what you all have waited for, the pictures!! I have a lot more pictures, but since this blog is quite hard to upload many pictures at once, I only post these 27 below, enjoy! ;-)

This were the bus we went with, it's the team bus for University of Windsors different athletic teams. Compared to Sweden, every University over here have their own sports team that comptes with eachother, quite fun actually! So we went with this bus at 7 in the morning and the ride took about 4 hours... But Michelle had some movies that we watched so it went really fast!

Now we have arrived to Niagara Falls, these are the falls on the american side, seen from Canada. If you didn't know this already, the Niagara Falls lies just between Canada and USA, so each side have their own waterfalls, however the Canadian falls is the most famous ones.

Me and Cathy making our amazing pose with the Canadian waterfalls behind, don't let the picture trick you that the falls are small, we are quite far away taking the picture.

For a second there, I thought we were in London, until I realised that we actually have nice weather...

The canadian falls, seen without me and Cathy, which is quite sad, will probably photoshop our pictures in :p

Are great "Uniforms", the are not bulletproof, but even more amazing, waterproof!!!

Cathy imitating either a Lemon or a Cathy after too much fast food...

Me, looking better than ever, Brad Pitt, you have competition!!!

We are just under the Canadian falls as can be seen by the picture, I really wish I could explain how cool it was with the Amazing heavy sound from the water, the spray of water in the face, the smell and so on...

Now we are actually under the falls, they are 600 meter wide, but the tunnel is only 200 meter, it was cold and dark but cool.

Here we are behind the falls, it was quite sad that we couldn't go closer, but it was something about "security" or something fictional like that :p

Beautifull Cathy with the american falls and the bridge connecting USA and Canada

The edge of the falls, it was soooo beautifull!

And of course, a picture is nothing if not me and Cathy are in it, so here we are!

Canadian falls!

a horse... don't know what that has to do with anything, but here you go... a horse...

The smurfs are preparing for an attack, be afraid! Be very afraid!

Yay, we are going on a boat, but not any but, the famous "Maid of the mist" that will take us out to the falls!

Closing in...

The falls! however, it was very hard to caoture the real experiance with a small digital camera, but I hope you get a glimps of how cool it was!!!!

We went even further in with the boat, but no good picture... We had water all over us, yay, free shower!!! But I forgot my shampoo :-(

The great France and Swedish team! Thank you gusy for a very fun day!

There were not only the falls to see, there were criminals too!!! The whole downtown were filled with fun things to do, like a huge amusement park.

Burger king, were all Frankensteins eat!

On our hunt for food, we eat at Hard Rock Cafe, and I have to say, I've eaten in Hard Rock Cafe, both in NYC and here, and it taste sooooo good! So I can grately recomend it if you walk past sometimes!

The decoration is great as always, here are REAL elvis stuff!

After the food, we went to the bus that took us home in the evening. It was a great day with great weather and great company, a very nice experiance. However it's a thing that needs to be experianced because it's so hard to show with pictures, but I hope I showed some part of it!

I'm going to bed now, have class tomorrow so need to be rested. On saturday, we are going to Cedar Point, which is the worlds biggest amusement park which is located in USA. More about that later, good night people!

The school introduction

2009-09-10T13:15:00.005-04:00

Tuesday was the day for the school introduction. It’s a small ceremony for all first year students to listen to the dean speaking and also to show themselves as a group. Of course the exchange students are not first year students, but we were still a part of this which was a good experience.

All the students had different shirts depending on in which program they belonged. These were the business students which on their shirts had the killer slogan “We’ll become your boss”!

The exchange students!!!! Woho!!!
I had to show some Swedish spirit!

I have no clue what’s on his head and why, but they were engineers, do I really have to say more?

The important people walking in, they all had their own color of their garment depending on what they presented.

How come it always take a very long time to get all the people together, whilst when something is over, it takes about 30sec until everyone is cleared out…

So this was the welcome ceremony, during the week there have also been some “kick-off” activities, however nothing even remotely comparable with the Swedish Kick-off week!

New home!

2009-09-04T22:27:00.002-04:00

As promised, here are a few pictures of our new kingdom called "Henrania" (don't tell Cathy about the name). It's hard to show the whole room and bathroom, but I have to say that it's quite nice despite it's size. We also found our first bug inside our room today, it was very big, ran fast and had a lot of antennas, really creapy looking like the alien from Man in Black!

Ok, so for the pictures, here are 3:

Shopping day!

2009-09-04T21:54:00.003-04:00

Hello again! I’m currently sitting in my floors lobby waiting for the food to finish. Here we have a 50inch TV with 70 channels to chose from so we have some things to do while we wait. There are genuine wrestling on TV, quite fun to watch actually.

Today my and Cathy took our bikes that we rented for our stay here and biked to our little shopping center. This was because the brand store “Columbia” that sell outdoor clothes have their only outlet in Canada here. And to make it better, they had a sale! So we went there to find a winter jacket for Cathy.

As you can see, Cathy is prepared for the extreme cold Canadian winter! (She also found some shoes)

After this, we went to the fast food chain Wendy’s just next to the Columbia store. And if you look at their logo, I think it really, really assembly “Pippi Longstocking” which I think is quite funny!

Cathy also wants to be Pippi!

After this refreshing meal, we found the most dangerous place in Windsor!!! You guessed it, the DOLLARSTORE!!! You walk in there with 1 thing you need to buy, and suddenly you come out with 10 times more stuff, because they are so cheap! Very dangerous place, however quite fun and there are a lot of stuff that is needed.

Me after a long day of shopping!

One more day accomplished, the time fly so fast when we have fun! Good night people!

Many things accomplished!

2009-09-02T22:12:00.001-04:00

Hello again people! I’m now sitting in front of the computer at 9:40pm drinking some tea and just relaxing. Today we managed to accomplish a lot of things and we are both very proud of ourselves despite a terrible nights sleep (for the not snoring one of us). But let me now take you back to the beginning.

Both I and Cathy woke up at 6am in the morning, I blamed this on jetlag, but I’ve never had it before so I’m not sure. We realized at the same time that this room that we have rented is not our soul mate; we don’t connect with the room and the room probably didn’t like us either. The location of next to the parking, entrance door, reception, hallway door, first floor and sharing bathroom didn’t help either. So we did what all real heroes do, upgrade!

Now we have a room on the third floor (much, much more quiet) own bathroom and a mosquito net by the window. Cathy loved the bathroom, I was quite fascinated by the mosquito net… pictures of this new kingdom that I call “Henrania” (despite Cathy’s complaints about the name) will be up shortly.

After moving, we went out on a scavenger hunt for food! We found a little place called “Rock bottom” which I still don’t get what it referred to, the people that goes there or the place itself, however they had quite nice food there.

Cathy ordered a salad, good Cathy!

Haha just kidding, this was Cathys meal…. Bad Cathy!

I wasn’t worse...

After the meal, we went to the University of Windsor for the first time and meet with Michelle, our exchange coordinator, she was very nice and helped us finding some great kitchen supplies, Cathy fell in love with a rice machine which we had to bring home…

We also found this old building on campus when we were looking for the place to get a student card. We still don’t know what this building is for, but old = important so I guess I have to sneak in later to check out what’s inside…

What is a town without its own Eiffel tower? NOTHING! Hence we found Windsor’s own Eiffel tower. Or you can use your imagination of what you think it looks like ;)

We were in dire (thank you Sandra) need of a pillow and a cover which actually is not called cover but something in French (that I just can’t remember) which made asking the sales staff so much harder. It took us a long time to get her to understand what we actually wanted.

She tried and convince us that the absolute cheapest (what I call cover) costs 40$. This didn’t stop me and Cathy going through every cover in the store…

And indeed we found us each a cover for only 19.9$, maybe we should work there instead? :p We also found pillows for 4.9$. I haven’t tried any of these yet, but Cathy seems to like it, sleeping as I write this.

On the way to the store and home, we walked on streets filled with houses, the strange thing was that 80% of them were closed shut with wood in front of windows and doors and 10% were on sale, very creepy to walk there…

I also wanted to show you guys were we are living, so this is UPlace, a student corridor with 24h reception, security, entertainment food and more! A little better nighborhood compared to the place above.

Cathy looks so comfortable in the new bed stuff, so I will also go to bed now and try the new bed stuff. Tomorrow we will go to an outlet store selling winter jackets which is having a sale and hopefully be a bit more like a tourist. But until then, peace and shout, Henrik signing out!

Sweden to Canada!

2009-09-01T21:59:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone!!! I can proudly state that I’m writing this from Canada and yea it’s Canada and not ”Canada as in France” ;-) So, to start from the beginning, both of us (Me and Cathy) woke up 6:40 to rush to the airport. We flew from Copenhagen trough Paris and Landed in Detroit, from there we took a airport shuttle to Windsor. The saying goes "A picture is worth more than thousands words" so here it goes!

Cathy newly awake :D

A cool thing we saw in the Copenhagen airport was a self playing piano, as you can see; the notes are pressed down, amazing what technology can do!

Then in Paris, we found these amazing chairs, you can’t even image how comfty they are, whished we had those at home!

Then we come to the usuals, every trip need a travel mate, a partner that stands beside us in both good and harsh weather, and here we have it. However we have not given it a name but we hope it will come soon.

Both I and our travel mate are having a good time on the plane from Paris to Detroit.

A lot of that good time was because of the wonderful computer system they had at every seat, games + game controller, movies, TV-series, music and more, everything to your choosing. I watched Terminator Salvation, a very touching movie!

Image my reacting when I just turned around and saw this:

Here you can see Detroit to your left and Windsor to your right, and as you see, it’s very close to each other.

We even found a phone we could call our shuttle from, +it was free, AMAZING!

Leaving USA and crossing the border to our new home, the country were actual polar bears roams the streets (Contrary to the beliefs that Sweden has these phenomena).

Our first wild animal sighting in Canada, not the can… the Squirrel (or fluffy rat as some people call it). Later we found two giant spiders outside our window... not as fun...

We arrived to our new home for the coming four months, we’ll see if both my handsomeness and Cathy’s beauty can fit together in this small room… at least we have a mini-fridge!!!

To first meal in Canada is…… you guessed it, Chinese!

Our neighborhoods own “down town”, honestly, it's a bit creapy!

Ok, now it’s almost 4am in Sweden and we have had a long, long and long journey so I’m very tired! Plus I don’t feel very well in my throat, same as before I left Sweden, not the best timing to get sick, but hey it could have been worse!

Tomorrow we will probably check our surrounding a bit more, but now it’s time to SLEEP!!! Good night people!

First post!

2009-08-31T12:53:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone, I'm Henrik, the 22 year old University student that is going to exchange for one semester from Jönköping University in Sweden to University of Windsor in Canada. I will share this journey with my girlfriend Cathy which is also going to study abroad at the same place.

I invite you to join this exciting trip experience by following my new blog here at followhenrik.blogspot.com and don’t forget to bookmark it!!!