International 4-H Youth Exchange

Wow! What a great host family. I just finished my stay in Kalmar. Itis a very large city on the east coast in southern Sweden. This was the first 4-H oriented family that I have had since I got to Sweden. That was kind of amazing to me. I stayed with Anna Lundqvist and Henrik Andersson. Anna has two kids from her previous marriage, Jennica, age 10 and Stina, age 5. Anna works at the 4-H farm in Kalmar. It is a beautiful farm. It almost looks like a zoo or something the way they keep it clean. It is open to the public and has a variety of animals on it. Henrik, Anna's boyfriend, works in Norway welding on ships and other projects. He works for 12 days, 13 hours per day and then gets about 9 days off. Right now he was not assigned any jobs so he was working in his spare time at the blacksmith shop at the 4-H farm.

The time with this family started out with a 4-H rally that is held every year. That was in Vaxjö. When I got to Anna's home I jumped back on a train the next day and headed for Vaxjö to join in the rally. That was quite an experience. This rally was a full weekend thing. Friday and Saturday night was dancing and getting to know everyone and also reuniting with friends from the camp. On Saturday during the day it was a car race. Each county in Sweden, or any of them that could make it to the rally, had a car and directions to follow. Along the way they had questions to answer and stations to visit. I was hooked up with the country coordinator, her friend, and another adult. We rode in a brand new Volvo. It was borrowed from Volvo because the other adult, Carina, worked for Volvo in crash testing. We made sure we "used" the car.

Other things that I saw while I was in Kalmar were castles. Kalmar is a very old town and had lots of old stuff like castles, rock walls, and brick roads. These castles dated back to the 14th and 15th century and looked really good for their age. It was very interesting because back then they didn't have some of the heavy equipment to assist them in construction of the building that we have now and the buildings were so high. I also got a chance to go over to the island of Öland to see more castle ruins.

Henrik is very interested in the medieval times and wants to build a Viking ship. One of the days that I was with this family we went down to the Kalmar County Museum to talk to the people there to see if they would help sponsor his ship building project. While we were there we got a chance to tour the museum. One of the exhibits there was a tribute to a ship, called the Kronan, that went down in 1676 in a war when Sweden and Denmark were fighting. Denmark wasn't even the one to destroy the ship. The captain in charge of this ship made a huge mistake. He wanted to turn the ship around and did it too rapidly causing the ship to start to overturn which caused the lanterns to tip and ignite the gun powder blowing up the whole side of the ship. Talk about a big mistake. It caused the death of quite a few of the workers on the ship.

I also learned several new games while I was here. The first game was disco. This game is just like golf except that you play it with a frisbee. The hole is about 40 to 70 yards away and you keep throwing the frisbee until you get it into the basket. That was a very interesting game. Henrik said the frisbees that we used are about $40 per frisbee. That is very expensive. The other game that I learned is kind of like Yuker. In this game you have to take the number of tricks that you bid and if you don't get that many tricks you get a plump (a dot) instead of points thus the name Plump. If you get the number of tricks that you bid then you get ten plus the number of tricks that you took. If you want more details about this game let me know and I can explain it more. The final game that I learned is kind of like Klutor except that you have a "king" in the middle and you cannot knock him down until the other pieces are all knocked down. Whoever knocks the king down at the right time in the game wins the game. If you knock down the king before you are suppose to your team looses.

There were several more activities that I was involved with while I was living in Kalmar. One of the days the 4-H had a full day event over in Gothenburg. We went to the Viseby Amusement Park. I have never been to one so that was quite an experience for me. On another day I visited a ceramic shop and a glass blowing shop. Those were very interesting to tour. I also spent a day with Henrik at the blacksmith shop helping him make things. He wanted to raise the anvil so that he didn't have to bend down every time he wanted to use it. We made a new pad that was going to be placed under the anvil to raise it. I also got an opportunity to talk to an English class. Henrik's friend, Malin, is in college right now and wanted me to come to her English class to talk to them about the myself, the USA, 4-H, and the IFYE program. They were very interested in hearing me talk. It gave them a good opportunity to practice their English. After I got done talking we had an assignment to complete having to do with countable and uncountable nouns. I felt I was back in high school again with this assignment because that is what we learned in high school. Another day we visited Henrik's stepfather. He was a mechanic for the "pilot" ship. The pilot ship was a small ship that took the large ships in and out of the harbor. A pilot is required to be on board the large ship both in and out of the harbor so that it doesn't reck on the way in/out. We had to take a lumber ship out to sea. That was very cool to watch.

Henrik was very interested in music. I learned some new things about music that I didn't know before I came here. Henrik's favorite kind of music was reggae. He also loves Bob Marley (the reggae king like Elvis Presley was the rock n roll king), which is someone that I have never heard of. I guess I have lots to learn about the different artists. As a reminder so I don't forget about reggae and Bob Marley. Henrik, Malin, Anna, and another girl that I worked with at the 4-H farm (Annelie) gave me two of his CD's.

I had an exciting time with Anna and Henrik and learned lots about the Swedish 4-H finally. I really liked the 4-H farm that they had there. It really allowed the people of the community to learn how to take care of animals. That is a very good learning experience.

From this point I am on my vacation time. I am going to be visiting a friend of mine who was in my school four years ago. After that week then I am meeting my mom and grandparents in Copenhagen and will be in a tour bus touring Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. My next newsletter will be published about the middle of October. I will be living in Laholm during that time.

Jason Fouks