Christmas in Vermont

Hej,

So I realize it's been almost 2 months since my last post, and it's probably time that I update this thing once again.  The last time I posted was early December, and a good amount of stuff has happened since then.  After retuning form Olso, it was only a couple of weeks until it was time to head home for Christmas.  The day before I left, the first member of our little group, Jackson, headed home for good.  He has class starting at the beginning of January and wanted to be home for Christmas, so he headed back to Canada about the time I headed back to the States.

The trip back to the States was just one complication after another.  For starters, my flight left first thing in the morning out of Copenhagen, and none of the trains from Vaxjo got there early enough in the morning, so I headed to Copenhagen on the last train out of Vaxjo the night before and spent the night in the airport. Before leaving that night, I had so many people to see and say goodbye to, and I had dinner with Mike, Chris, and Christoph and also sadly had to say goodbye to Jonna and Sari, not for good, but for quite some time, as they would be gone when I returned from Christmas and it wouldn't be until spring that Mike and I will go visit them in Finland.  So I ended up not having time to pack until I just about to leave, and I ran around like crazy throwing things in my bag and rushing out to the bus stop to get there in time to make my train that night.  The once on the train, as usual, I set my alarm to wake me up a little before the time we were scheduled to arrive in Copenhagen, but not before getting my ticket checked and asking the ticket collected (even though I heard her say the same thing to the guy behind me) that this train was going directly to Copenhagen with no need to change trains.  She assured me that it was.  So I went to sleep, and woke up in a pretty much empty, stopped train.  The only people in my cabin were myself and another exchange student from Vaxjo.  The conductor was saying something in Swedish that neither or us understood, but soon came out to tell us that the train was stopping and that we had to leave.  The train, as it usually does, switched controlling companies half way through the ride, and apparently the first lady I talked to was mistaken.  We were clearly not in Copenhagen, and it didn't take me long to figure out that were not far away, but that we had stopped just before leaving Sweden for Denmark.  I figured that we were only a few minutes from Copenhagen and worst come to worst, I could get a taxi to the airport.  But after running into the train station and talking to the first worker in sight, I learned that there was a train leaving for Copenhagen across the station in about 10 minutes, and booked it outside and through the snow to the other side of the station just in time to make the train.  There was no way that I had time to stop and make sure that my ticket still worked on this new train, but that was the least of my concerns.  Sure enough Copenhagen was just a couple of stations away, and I ended up getting there with no problem.  I ended up saying up all night upstairs in the airport watching movies and tv shows on my laptop since I didn't feel comfortable leaving my luggage out in the open if I were to sleep, but I figured it would be no problem to sleep for the entire flight once I got on the plane - and staying up would help me to adjust to the time difference anyways.

The next hiccup occurred with my flight from Copenhagen to my layover in Frankfurt.  There was a huge snowstorm in northern Europe that weekend, some of my friends weren't even able to leave Vaxjo and go home for Christmas at all, and as a result, the airport was backed up and our flight from Copenhagen to Frankfurt was held up for a few minutes on departure.  They assured us that the delays were happening all around, and that flights in Frankfurt would be delayed too, so making connecting flights shouldn't be a problem.  When I got to Frankfurt, late of course, and found the gate that I was supposed to depart from, there was nobody there, and at the gate beside it, I learned that the flight had already left.  Apparently, the international flight were given higher priority, and mine had not been delayed as long as my flight from Copenhagen had been.  The airline rescheduled me for the next flight to Chicago, my next layover, and comped me a hotel in downtown Frankfurt, as well as taxi fare to the hotel and back, and lunch, dinner, and breakfast in the morning.  I thought it wasn't a completely bad thing, I had three weeks in the States, and spending an extra 12 hours in Frankfurt would allow me to see some of the city and head out in the morning.  The biggest problem was that my luggage was checked all the way to the States, so all I had was my carry on luggage.  Though my backpack was mostly full of Christmas gifts, luckily I had packed an extra change of clothes in there for emergency situation like this.  So after splitting a taxi to the hotel with a very nice Finnish couple, I left my stuff there and went out exploring.  I only lasted for about 20 minutes, before I realized that I hadn't slept in a very long time and all I wanted to do was go back to the hotel and fall asleep, and that's just what I did.  The city really wasn't much to see anyways, but I think I walked around probably the nicest part the city had to offer, judging from looking around during my brief cab rides.

I don't know exactly was this was, but it looked pretty cool

I have no idea how this tree came to be so bent?

The path I walked down next to the river

I really liked the way the industrial center is framed in this one.

But the next day I got up early, had a huge breakfast and got to the airport and took off with no problems.  Of course, my luggage wasn't in Chicago when I got off the plane, but I had no problem making my flight to Vermont after a long layover in Chicago.  It turns out that the snowstorm in Vermont almost turned back my flight into Burlington, but I didn't know that, and had no problem getting home that night.

Just playing around with the camera to entertain me on the flight

This one came out kind of cool

I like this shot of the Chicago skyline just visible through the fog.

My luggage finally got delivered to the house a few days later, just in time to wrap the few gifts that I had left in my check-in for Christmas.  The next two and a half weeks went by just like that.  I spent so much time seeing friends I hadn't seen for so long, doing things like snowboarding or playing hockey that I didn't have the gear to do back in Sweden, just enjoying the beauty of Vermont, and, of course, spending lost of time with friends and family for the holidays.  I don't have any of the pictures I took, as I used the DSLR whenever I could, having used this little point and shot for the past 5 months, and unfortunately, it never occurred to me to upload the pictures from that camera before I left, but I do have a few holiday pictures that other people took on the camera I did bring back here.  In fact there are so many that I'm sure all of them wouldn't fit up here, so I'll just upload a picture or two of the people I have pictures of here.

Mom's usually operating the camera, but I did find a nice shot of her

A rare shot of Dad posing for a shot... since it took Mom about 5 tries to get a shot without shaking the camera

Crystal starting to open the stockings

And I was there too, as were Mame and Grandpa

And what would a Christmas montage be without at least one tree?

Another Christmas the next day at Mame and Grandpa's

With most of the busy, crowded shots from this day, I like this one for it's quiet peacefulness 

Of course I needed to include a shot of Mame wearing around the ceremonial
 Christmas ornament, along with the first great-granddaughter

And about 2 action packed weeks later, I returned back to Sweden to spend the last little bit of time with the friends who were about to leave.  The 3 weeks I was gone flew by like it was a couple of days, but it was still nice to get back and see the guys.  And after all the adventures of flying back to the states, the flight back to Sweden was strangle uneventful.

It turns out I have more pictures than I thought, and although I could probably squeeze them in here too, it might as well make a new post for my trip to Stockholm, so check for another post after this one.

Hej-hej