This week has flown by! Monday Jill had to go back to work so Jessie and I just slept in and then took a bus to Kalmar. She took me to her favorite restaurant to go to with her friends and we just shopped around until Jill got off work. They have a lot of little shops and things so it was fun to look around. That night one of Jill’s cousins and her husband came to stay a couple of days, so we grilled out and had a nice dinner. After we ate we looked up my house and K-State on Google Earth, which was cool to show them where I live and go to school. I think they were most impressed by the size of our football stadiums parking lot, which did look really big.

Tuesday Jessie and I made another batch of chocolate chips, like I said I got them hooked!! Later we were watching the movie Daddy Day Care, and Jessie noticed they were making chocolate chip cookies too, she said “Does every household in America know how to make those cookies?” Today Jill had arranged for her friends, Eva and Helena, to take me to see another friend’s farm. So I took a bus and met them in Kalmar. The farmer’s name was Magnus, he has about 130 dairy bulls. In Sweden it’s a lot more popular to raise bulls for meat than steers. This is because they don’t have as much pasture land and they are required by law to keep their animals inside for the winter. With the bulls they keep them in small pins and never let them outside. They ship them at about 18 months. Magnus was very fun and asked a lot of questions about the states. We even ended up getting ourselves invited to pizza and movie night with several of his dairy farmer friends and their wives. Magnus’s house burnt down about a year ago and he had just recently moved into his new one so everyone was wanting to see his new house.

On Wednesday, Eva and Helna, took me to visit another friend whose family owned an estate farm. Their friends Elin and Lente have five kids ages, 9, 6, 6, 4, and 2 so they are very busy people and I appreciated them showing me around. Elin’s father bought the estate about 16 years ago. These big estates also come with a lot of history, if you remember Lars took me to see several back in Skåne. This particular one was built for a military general who was in charge of the battle between Denmark and Skåne. This battle happened back in the 17th century but if you noticed I’ve mentioned it a lot because it still seems to be a big deal! In fact they even have a club that meets every year to try and break Skåne from Sweden with a stick. Like the other estates they have several different sources of income. They own a forest to harvest trees,they have a lot of farm land for crops, and then they raise sheep, cattle, and chickens. The chickens were very interesting to see. They have two large facilities, each with two rooms, and one room can hold 40,000 chickens. If you do the math that’s 160,000 chickens. They raise them for 34 or 35 days, depending on if the feed is home grown or bought. Then they go to the very same factory that Robin (Jill’s son) is working at on Örland. The chicks were only 14 days old when we saw them. I’m not 100% positive about all the rules with this industry in the U.S. but here they aren’t allowed to put them in cages, they have to be free to walk around in the large barn, which is kept at about 95*F. The estate also includes an English Park, which is open to the public to walking in. There are a lot of rules to follow in order to be classified as an English Park, I learned. First of all this kind of park is to preserve nature and it not suppose to be very planned out or organized. It must also include several different displays, like a Chinese Hut, for example. I’m not sure I understood it all but it was a nice place to go walking! After my tour they invited us to tea and coffee.

Thursday, Jessie was in charge of me again. We took a bus to Borgholm in the morning to go tour the old castle ruins (which can be seen in my Facebook profile picture). I loved this! We had to pay to go in, but once in there we were allowed to climb up on anything and go in all the little nooks and crannies. We took a lot of pictures! In the afternoon we just shopped around the stores in Borgholm. Jill’s friend Annelie, who owns the stable we went riding at, made arrangements for me to go tour a dairy farm there in Borgholm, across the road from the ruins. In the 1500s this farm had belonged to the royal family. It was one of 4 on Örland that was used to experiment and teach new farming practices and also supplied the royal family with food. Today they milk about 65 head in a stanchion barn. The have a Red Swedish breed of dairy cows who are know for the butter fat in their milk. I think I enjoyed the visit a lot more than Jessie, who loves horses, but is scared of cows. I’ve really appreciated her taking me around!! That night I met a lot of Jessie’s friends and we went to a festival in Kalmar.

Friday I went with Jessie back to Borgholm to meet Annelie. Annelie also works as a police officer on Örland and is the head of security for the royal family when they are visiting their summer castle here. Jessie had been asked to take pictures of the King’s horse, who is also used to take tourist on buggy rides in the summer. So we got to go in through the back entrance of the royal families grounds. However, the royals had just left that morning to go back to Stockholm. We had to go through a security check point and Annalie said all the guards were really on edge when they saw her because she normally runs drills when the family is away. So when she showed up with a girl from Kansas they thought it was a test. The king’s horse, Svenske, was very beautiful and we even go to take a short ride in another one of the king’s buggies. That night Jill invited Eva and Helna over for a BBQ. It was a really nice night! We also played Kubb, which is very popular here, every host family I’ve stayed with has played it and we played it at the camp. It’s just a fun back yard game.

Today, Saturday, we had planned to go to the beach but when we woke up it was rainy and it continued to rain all day. So we just stayed inside and watched some movies and played cards. Tomorrow I’m leaving on a bus for Stockholm where I will stay with my last host family. I’ve really enjoyed my time here with the Hudlends and I’ll be sad to leave. I can’t believe I only have one week left in Sweden. I’m getting excited to see everyone back in Kansas and to have a cell phone again (which remember I lost so I no longer have any numbers).