I'm getting an Exchange Student from Sweden next month.
I can't wait. I'm so excited to meet her. Are there any other
Sweden quilters here? She's from Stockholm. She's in for a culture shock. From a city of about 850 thousand to a town of 1,500. :shock: She knits so she's going to teach me to knit and I'm going to teach her to quilt. What are the fabric stores in Sweden like? In her profile for animals her favorite animal is Giraffes and Dogs. Thank goodness for dogs. I have a couple of Giraffe patterns I ordered for her. Any input for Sweden quilting would be great. Thanks :thumbup:

I have no input on quilting and Sweden, but you might want to locate a knitting store for her. I'm sure she'd be thrilled to go home with some good yarn she couldn't get (at least not cheaply or easily) at home. :)

When I was in junior high we hosted a girl from Okinawa, Japan. There was a pretty steep language barrier (and she was a little afraid of the farm animals), but she was so sweet and we had a very good experience. Have fun with your guest!

Thanks for your response. Yeah one of my favorite quilty stores in Spokane has lots of yarn. That will be our first stop :thumbup: It has every kind of yarn you can think of.
My sister has 2 or 3 girls from Japan at her house all the time.
Some stay for a couple of months and others a year or longer.
They are so sweet. We are avid campers so she takes them camping. They've never done anything like that. Its so much fun to watch them having the time of their lives. The 2 went on 4 wheelers last year and they had perma grin all day. Fun stuff. My Brother in law is the coordinator at the Community College there so they are really into it. I had an exchange student from Austria last year and she spoke great English. I hope this one from Sweden is that good with her English. I can't wait to show her around and take her camping.

Oh yeah my sister has a dog and alot of them have never been around dogs. Sad. Okinawa is where alot of them are from.
Most of them live in apartment like places with lots of other family members so no room for animals. No thanks.

You will all have so much fun :D You are so kind to open your home this way :D:D:D

My daughter is getting a exchange student from Sweden also. Talk about cultural shock. Comming from a city of 250000 to a town of 300.

Ha. Thats funny. One of the things Siri (thats her name) asked is how far to the malls. She's not going to like the 1 1/2 hours to get to go shopping. What town is she from in Sweden?

What fun. I bet she is a great knitter. you will learn so much and so will she.. Have fun

Thanks amma. I'll keep you posted on our fun. I can't wait.
I hope she gets here sooner than just before school starting.
Last year my Austrian got here and 3 days later school started.
she slept through the first week. Jet lag. And me taking her all over didn't help. I want to have fun with her before school.
It takes awhile to adjust to the 9 hours time change.

Yeah I told her I have 2 machines and 1 with her name on it so she was excited about that. And she likes to cook. Me too.
We'll both be learning lots. I can't wait. I want real Swedish Meatballs. :thumbup:

I'm fairly certain her English will be really good. I was friends with a Swedish exchange student in high school, and my husband's family hosted a Swedish student when he was a teen. They both spoke excellent English, and my friend told me English classes were required in Sweden. (Of course, this was 20+ years ago...)

I remember reading a story a few years back about a scam going on in Japan. People were calling the vets up to schedule their dogs for grooming and to get their hooves trimmed. The vets were flabbergasted - HOOVES?? Seems that the Japanese were nuts over poodles at the time, but poodles were not easily available. So some jerk advertised and sold lambs as poodles, and the owners didn't have a clue. :shock:

Thanks. I'm so glad to hear all the feedback. I'm thankful they know English. Last year my Austrian girl on a scale from 1 to 10 on English she was a 9. This girl from Sweden on the scale is a 7. It will be interesting. I've heard they do still have to take English in school. She has emailed me a couple of times and her emailing in English is good.
That is so weird about the Poodles. I did have to chuckle though. I've never heard that. I'll have to ask my sister about that. See if her Japanese girls know about it. Well atleast those lambs had a good home I guess. I wonder how well they poddy trained :shock:

Looks like they have more quilt shops there than what I found in Germany.
http://www.cosman.nl/maps/list_en.php?cn=se&ord=c

Thanks for the website. I never thought of doing that. I just went and visited some sites from there. They do have lots of shops. Yaaaaa. It was fun visiting. I'm going to go through more later. Thanks again :thumbup:

Kim, your package is on the way and there is something 'special' in there for you and even Siri if you so choose. You are just the greatest!!!

OHHHH I can hardly wait. Thanks. I'll let ya know when it gets here. No no YOU are the greatest. :thumbup:

I've seen their knitting.......it's so beautiful fair isle and the lot.

Have you read the Steig Larsson books yet? You will learn some about the country and enjoy a good mystery.

Missouri Star Quilt Co family are of Swedish decent.
You could enjoy their tutorials. http://tutorials.missouriquiltco.com/
Also Alicia Paulson loves to quilt with Swedish colors.
So you could check out her blog site
Here is a sample of one of her quilts: http://rosylittlethings.typepad.com/...and-cream.html
She has one based on the colors used in paintings of Lars....somewhere on the site. You would have to peck around the site to find it. But this example is typical of the usual quilt style she uses.

Yall are gonna have so much fun!! Can I come play?

We've hosted 18 exchange students. Seventeen of them were WONDERFUL. Each one, including #18, brought new joys into our home. Even though we selected students with family compatibility, once they got here, and involved with other students, they did less of the things we thought we'd share. However, we shared their new things with them, and learned even more. It's a life enriching experience. Enjoy.

Great. I'll learn how to knit from the best huh? :D I can't wait to share pictures of my projects. :thumbup:

No I've never heard of it. I'll check the library here and see if they have it though. Thanks for the tip. :thumbup:

Thanks mcar for these websites. I put them on my desktop so I can get into and really check them out later. Alicia Paulson is interesting. And she has a cute dog. She is kind of up here in my neck of the woods. All great stuff. I'm going to know lots by the time she gets here. Thank you :thumbup:

You can come play anytime. That way I won't have to ship your Chocolate Covered Bing Cherries. There in the refridge now. Luckily when I ship them their in plastic. :-D It will be much funner (is that a word? :D ) with you here. All the sewng and knitting we'd get done :XD:

Swedes, urbanites especially, have been students of English since the time my Swedish grandparents emigrated to U.S. in the late 1800's. It's a relatively small country population-wise and you are so blessed to share your home and community with this student. Please keep in touch with us and let us know how you all are doing.

I have no input about Sweden but we had two exchange students from Brazil a few years ago, loved it. One now lives in KY and we keep in touch often. Have fun and enjoy. We also still keep in touch with the first one that went back to Brazil.

Wow you've had lots of exchange students. Cool. Where were they from? This is my second. Last year I had one from Austria and this year Sweden. The one from Austria was extremely lazy (has a maid at home) but other than that she was great. I enjoyed taking her on trips. She had a map and marked all the places we went. Even though we are in such a small town she made lots of friends and really enjoyed her stay.
I would like to get one from Australia but their school year is different than ours. I would have to get one in January (I think its Jan.) and they'd do a 1/2 year of one school year and be here all summer then to the first 1/2 of the next year. I have 2 spare bedrooms so I'm going to check into it further with my coordinator. Have you had one from Australia? I can't wait for Siri (from Sweden) to get here. I'm not sure when that will be yet. I'm getting excited. I have her on Facebook so its been fun chatting with her. We don't have other kids here so they are only children (besides my dogs) when they come. Norina (from Austria) enjoyed all the attention :thumbup:

I will do that. She is from Stockholm which is the largest town there. I couldn't believe the population there. I've been looking at pictures from there and it sure is beautiful. I might have to take a trip over there. I'll share pictures on this post when she arrives.

We've have a few others in town from Brazil and I really thought about getting one from there this year but this one in Sweden came up and she sounded really good. One of her comments was she's funny and has a great sense of humor.
How could I resist that :lol: You have to have a sense of humor to put up with me :mrgreen: And her favorite pet is dogs. She does not have pets at home so she'll be in for treat here. Thats great you keep in touch with your exchange students. Thats why I love Facebook. Easy to keep in touch.
:thumbup:

Several from Germany, all parts, including a couple from the former East, Croatia, Ukraine, Moldova, Poland, that general area. Our girl from Moldova is a boomerang. She came back to go to college. She'll graduate in two more semesters. She has stayed on the Dean's list, and is Phi Kappa Phi. Majoring in Political Science and Anthropology, thinking seriously about Law at Duke. (She wants Hillary Clinton's job, seriously - she could probably do it.) Missed the luck of the draw last week with the Green Card Lottery. She really needs a job for the year before grad school to give her mind a little break. Any kind of practicum in any of those fields would make her extremely happy. Something in International relations. The struggle we're all having is that she doesn't have that Green Card. But such a pleasure to see the girl we hosted, in High School, from a poverty nation, turning out to be such a professional young woman.

Went to Germany last summer for the marriage of #7 son, and visited with several of our other "children", meeting our "grand children" for the first time. Have an opportunity to go to a conference in the Check Republic in two years, which will give us an opportunity to see several of the other "kids" and their families. Conference - great excuse for a tax deduction.

I'm sure you will have a great time with your student. We had 3 Japanese students for a "home stay" program for 3 summers and we enjoyed getting to know them and taking them around Seattle to see the sights. Our son went over there under the same program when he was 15. He loved it.

This will be a great and rewarding experience for you and your family. As a former student coordinator for a Scandinavian exchange service I placed many students in our area for a school year. Almost all of the students and families had a great and rewarding experience.

Our family has hosted 2 Sweedish girls for a school year as wells as 2 Russians and one Costa Ricaian for 2 week periods. The Sweedish girls spoke excellent English as they take English startng in 3rd grade.

My best advice for you is keep your girl busy. Take her to as many places as you can and let her experience as much of America and our culutre. I live a small town of about 300 so we also had a 45 minute drive to a mall. As time went on doing things at school and with their friends was more imporant that shopping at the mall...especially since we were behind Eurpoe in fashion. (At least our local mall was.)

Good luck :)

Holy cow. What a great story about your Moldova girl. I love to hear that someone can come from such a background and want more out of life and goes for it. She went full steam ahead. I hope she does get Hillary's job. Sounds like she'd be good at it. Wonderful. I'm so glad you get to go to Check Republic. My Austrian girl was about 1/2 mile from that border.
What fun. I've not been there but maybe someday. I'm in Washington State so it would be a loooong flight. Wish I could go with ya. :thumbup:

HI Linda. Where are you in Washington? I have family in the Seattle area so I'm going to be taking her there. Beings Snoqualamie Pass is such a mess we will go Chinook Pass to see Mt. Rainier. My mom lives up the Chinook Pass out of Naches up by Whistling Jacks so of course we'll have to stop for a visit there. I'm really hoping she gets here early before school starts so we can work all this in before it starts. I'm really liking this exchange student stuff. Its so much fun to take them sight seeing. I wish gas prices would go down. Lots of travels in the future. Glad you had such a good experience.
Are you going to do it again? My brother in law is the coordinator at Green River College in Kent. :thumbup:

Thanks sewing grammie. I sure plan on keeping her busy. Thats what I enjoy about this. When my Austrian girl came it was nice to go to all those places around here that are here but when they are so close you never go. I grew up around Mt. Rainier but hadn't been there in so long it was nice to visit again and take someone there that has never been. I didn't make it to Mt. St. Helens with her but plan to with Siri. She did go there at the end of her trip here with her mom though. Her mom came and spent 5 days here before leaving. Good to know they learn English at such a young age. Thanks for the info. :thumbup:

Will look forward to sharing all of your adventures and experiences.

I have a friend who is from Sweden. She lives near Stockholm. I met her on a message board years ago. She, along with her SO, came to vist us in 2003. She spoke good English, where he was more limited & required her to translate for him. They loved it here. They had visited Florida in the late 90's.

Knitting & crocheting are a big craft thing in Sweden. My friend doesn't sew, so no quilting. I taught her to make Dream Catchers while they were here.

Their country is small, about the size of Texas. Many do allot of water sports, trips on cruise ships, etc. They do 1-2 day cruises allot. When my friends came we had pre-chose things to see & do. Things they would never see at home, like take an Amish buggy ride, tour the Harley Davidson factory, etc. We toured as much of our state as we could in 9 days. We put 2600 miles on my car! We did do a down-day so they could get over the jet lag. Their flight here was a good 10 hours long.

Some foods they loved, while others they hated. I think her SO tried about every soda, juice, sports drink we have, LOL. He loved to try new things. Oh one thing to keep in mind.....we have words for things that are the same, but the thing is different. So before letting you student order food at a restaurant make sure she understands what it is she is ordering.

They mind the heat, so your student may require a fan or AC.

My friend brought us a book on the history of Sweden. They have a little red horse as part of their culture. You could maybe take that & use it in a quilt, placemats, ornament.

Info on the "Dala" horse:
http://www.svenskhyllningsfest.org/dala_horse.htm

http://itotd.com/articles/599/the-dalahaest/

Thanks Feather3. Some great info. I'd not heard of the Dala Horse before. Quite the article on it. I'll see if I can find a picture of it to print for quilt blocks. What a great idea. Her favorite animal (besides dogs) was Giraffes. I ordered 2 patterns of Giraffes so I could put 1 on her bedroom wall.
My last exchange student took my Bargello American Flag so of course I better make another for Siri. Or wait so she can make her own. I just hope she wants to learn how. She said she did.
I hope she doesn't mind the lack of water here. There are seas of wheat fields. :shock:
Maybe I should come visit you. I'd love to see Amish country.
I helped a guy on a Harley a few years ago and beings I rode motorcycles he lived by the Harley factory and sent me all kinds
of stuff from there. That would be fun too. Sounds like you gave them quite the site seeing trip. Something they will always treasure. 10 hour flight to you will be 13 here. :?
Well thanks for taking the time for all the info and I'm going to go play around in all these wonderful sites.
Thanks and thanks to everyone posting and taking the time out to help me. I think I'll be well equiped now. :thumbup:

We have Norwegian friends and the prices for many things are much cheaper here now that there...that is why she wants the mall! They come here and stock up on as many things as they can carry home.

It sounds like you will have a lot fun together...that will be a great learning experience for both of you! ENJOY!