My American Summer

As the days till my departure flash by as if through the window of a shikansen, bullet train, I thought I would share what I have been up to this summer. The summer after one graduates from high school is special time, often seen as the one last hurrah with school friends before everyone heads off their own separate ways. This summer was indeed special, usually for me summer is an idle time where not much action occurs but this summer was an exception. My summer was jampacked, starting off with my family's annual trip to 'the County' to celebrate Midsommar. Since my family is Swedish, in the American sense of the word meaning the predominate part of my ancestors came from Sweden, we celebrate a few Swedish holidays from St. Lucia's day to Midsommar. For Midsommar, we travel up to the Northern corner of our state to the town of New Sweden for their festivities. This year before we went all the 6 hours up to New Sweden we stayed with some friends on our way up for a couple days at their beautiful cabin on East Grand Lake. It was wonderful to slow down from the hectic school year and ebb some of the frenzy of graduation.

Maine is known as Vacationland for good reason!

Midsommar is a Swedish holiday celebrating the solstisc/midsummer. Complete with our flower adorned hair we watched people decorate the majastang, maypole, the 'little swedish dancers' perform their dances such as Danse al ering, and then joined in dancing around the majstag ourselves. This year there was a band and dance group that came all the way from Ourst, Sweden to dance and perform which was awesome. Usually my mom calls the Swedish dances but this year she didn't have to since the real swedes were here to do that.

Right after Midsommar I went to DC for YES Abroad's Pre-Departure Orientation which I detailed in the previous post. It was so great to be with all the YES Abroad Scholars. :) Then after I returned home, I started working at a summer camp set beautifully on a lake. Working there was really fun and I enjoyed meeting and getting to know the other counselors but it was hard since it was an overnight camp and I knew there was so much I needed to do to get ready to go to Ghana. I knew I would be away for a year and I wasn't expecting to start my away time so soon. After the summer camp, some of my family from Virginia came up. It was great to spend time with them around Maine, from our house to the cottage they rented on a lake to the Clam festival that has become a tradition to attend together. I love being around my relatives and especially love playing board games with them.

Cousins

One of the best things I did this summer was go up to my friend, Sammie D., camp up on the most beautiful lake I have ever been on: Lake Webb. I even got to waterski again which is one of my favorite things to do even though I have only done it when I am at Sammie D's camp.

                       


On the 4th of August, I went to my first concert. It was the Gentlemen of the Road's first stopover which happened to be right in Portland, ME on the Eastern Prom! It was the most spectacular thing ever to see my favorite band, Mumford & Sons live. And best of all, we got there so early we were in the front!

The next week was taken up by my church's Vacation Bible School which we call Summerfest. My mom runs it every year so I have been volunteering each year since I was too old to attend it myself. It was great to spend a week volunteering, spending time teaching children, and being around the people I have grown up with in my church.

After Summerfest ended on Friday, we packed our bags and headed out on a family road trip to visit our family in Chicago. It was extremely exciting to do so since we hadn't visited them for 4 years and the last 2 visits had been for my grandparents' funerals so we hadn't visited for an happy occasion in many, many years. My aunt and uncle had both bought property this past year so it was really exciting to see their new abodes. We stayed with my aunt in her new house in a beautiful suburb that had an amazing Polish bakery which Melody & I went to during a morning run-Great idea, right? We jampacked our visit with so many exciting, amazing things. We went to "Little India" and had a delicious Southern Indian meal at a restaurant and then walked around for a couple of hours, soaking in the atomosphere of this part of the city and I even bought an awesome Indian top.

"Little India"-Chicago, Illinois

 The next day we wandered around the city that my dad grew up in: Evanston, the first suburb north of Chicago. We started at the art institute where my grandmother used to paint and followed Lake Michigan up to Northwestern University. We then visited my uncle's apartment building he bought and is renovating, and then headed to a Korean spa called King Spa.

The Art Institute in Evanston which my Grandma painted at

My Dad and his sister, my aunt, Laurie in front of the Art Institute 

Lake Michigan with the Chicago Skyline in the Background

My Family <3

The next day we had a kayaked the Chicago River for 3 hours! Who knew you could even kayak on the Chicago River?  We then had dinner with some of my dad's best friends including the guy who I stayed with in Japan. It was really nice to see him and his two daughters again.

The next day, we visited Lincoln Park Zoo in the morning and had an amazing lunch of Falfel, which is probably my new favorite food. We then headed to downtown which I was so excited for since I had never seen Millieum Park. It is exteremely amazing! There is an aMAZing ampetheather there and most importantly that is the location of the Cloud Gate or as the locals call it, the bean. It is soo cool! We then walked down the Magnificant Mile and boy, it really is magnificant!

Sadly, the next day we had to embark on the two day journey back home. On our way home we took a different route, this one skirting Lake Erie. We were hoping to find a place to get to the water and sure enough we did! It was splendid! I had never seen Lake Erie before and it kinda looks like the ocean!

The next day we took a detour to see Niagara Falls! And we also visited a family friend in Vermont.

We arrived home at 2 in the morning and had to get up early to drive the to UMO, the University of Maine (Orono), for the Mitchell Scholar Brunch. It was so exciting to see Senator George Mitchell in person and meet the other Mitchell Scholars. Three other of the Mitchell Scholars had happened to be in my "town" at Girls State and it was really exciting to see them all again.

The next day my cousins arrived from Virginia. The next day we visited Maine's most famous lighthouse, the Portland Head Light, and then that night I had my going away party. It was so strange to say goodbye. 

The next day we headed to the beach. I ended the day by having a lobster. Thursday, I turned 18. I'm now officially an adult which means I can vote in the next election-even though it will be through an absentee ballot I am so excited to do so. I started my day in the best way possible; with breakfast and coffee with my dad at the village store just like old times. When I was young, my dad and I would have the Saturday routine of going out to eat for breakfast, going to the library, and the dump which actually is a redemption center but I grew up calling it the dump and I cannot shake that habit. 
My cousins left yesterday morning, forcing another goodbye and now I am writing this post. I have 10 days left before I leave. Time to get packing!

Graduation

As of June 9th, 2012-I am officially graduated from (American) High School. It was a very nice ceremony that was hosted at the Cumberland County Civic Center in Portland.
My high school is very unique since it allows us to choose who we march in with. (I believe most high schools have the students walk in alphabetically. )

 So I got to walk in with my friend Sam :)

It was a nice ceremony with wonderful speeches from our Principal, Valedictorian, and Salutatorian. Our Salutatorian even mentioned me-via saying people in this class were going as far as Ghana and when talking about what we were going on to, hopefully, become (diplomat). :) Yay! Thank you Grace <3 The principal also sort of mentioned me-his speech consisted mostly of quotes from student's college essays. It was fun to hear since they were all really good and I could pick out some of the quotes as certain people's. :) I have to say though when he said, "and as one student who wrote of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict stated..." my heart about stopped. Yup, that was mine and of course everyone knew that cause who else would talk about that except for me.

Anyway, I got my diploma :)

We had 3 musical performances throughout the ceremony, the best being this one by my dear friend Kyrie:

There was also an awesome rendition of What A Wonderful World performed by the talented Powell Twins complete with ukulele and accordion. We also had our choir, myself included, sing Into the West (the song from the Lord of the Rings) as well as our National Anthem at the beginning of the ceremony.

Then we sang our class song, Good Life by OneRepublic and then marched out wearing our shades:)

All in all it was a great way to end my time in the Gray-New Gloucester School System.

 This is a picture of my best friend, Sammie D. and our Cross Country Coaches.

"ZHOP* 4 Lyfe"

Cross-Country was the best part of my high school existence. This picture showcases most of my favorite distance buddies with our coaches. :)

*ZHOP=Zukowski House of Pain an accurate representation of our coach, Zuke's, workouts.

My Family <3

P.S. I am sorry for these long posts, I just thought it would be nice to showcase some of my American life in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, some people might be interested-possibly in Ghana (fingers crossed) about my American life? And just as an f.y.i. I'm in love with pictures so my blog will most likely be filled with them, if you haven't already noticed. :)

Oh What Happens on Runs in Maine...

So as you may know I am in love with running and I run all the time. That being said, the strangest/awesomest thing happened. So, I was running down my road and there was a deer off in a field. Me being Lydia, stopped to look at it and I noticed that there was a really tiny baby deer! I swear it was only a day or two days old. I decided I wanted to try to get closer to them, thinking they would of course run off, but only the momma deer did and the fawn just lied down and allowed me to approach it! Not only was I able to get wicked close to the baby dear, I was able to PET IT!!! I was so close I could stroke it's head and back! It was so cute when it finally bounded away to it's mommy :) I could not believe that it let me pet it! I wish I had a picture to show you but I was on a run so I didn't have anything with picture-taking capability.


But here it 2 pictures offline of what it kinda looked like. Super cute right? :)

The End of American High School

My American High School Experience ended yesterday. After 13 years in the MSAD 15 school district, I am done. Yesterday I had my last classes, counted down the seconds in the school office with my class, and then left the school for the beach. I still have a week of marching practice before graduation but that's besides the point.
I have to say, I am extremely grateful to everyone I have meet and got to know throughout the years. I have learned so much and evolved into who I am today thanks to all the wonderful people I have met and I the experiences I have had. Surely, life is life and it definitely had it's ups and downs but even from the downs I have learned such valuable lessons that I wouldn't change a thing. I have been so blessed so far in my life and cannot believe that this chapter of my life is over. It is so weird that I will be going to a place where I do not know a soul, besides the other YES Abroad people. I lived my whole life in the small town I was born in-which I love since I have been able to grow up with the same people. I have so many memories from when I was little and throughout the school years with pretty much everyone in my class. I have friends I remember playing dress up with as a child who I still am friends with now. There are so many people whose lives I have crossed and had a brief flicker of friendship or a long glowing fire of friendship. Senior year was the best year I have had yet, I expanded my group of friends, inherited my awesome nickname, PAPA Larson, and have had the best luck ever. I do not know how I have become this lucky, I got into my dream college, Colby College, and they gave me such a great financial package that it is cheaper than the state school I applied to, I received the YES Abroad scholarship, and I just found out the other day that I received the Mitchell Scholarship for college-which I am not sure if I can keep or not due to taking a gap year but I really hope I can. Not only does this scholarship provide me with money for college, I most likely will be able to meet George Mitchell, the creator of this scholarship, who is my hero. He is so amazing, he grew up in Maine like me and went on to change the world. He was a senator, a diplomat who helped create the Northern Ireland peace treaty, and most recently the special envoy for the Obama administration in the Middle East.

Here's some picture from my last day with some of my friends:

This shows off my American High school hallway :p The guy in the striped shirt is my XC & track coach who is the best. We are walking back to his room after we covered it is Go Zone posters :)

  Part of Zuke's board which we put up the XC shirt Sam, Randall, Mitchell, & I made and we also put up some pictures of us on his board.

My best friend & running buddy Sammie D. in our AP Bio class

 Some of my closest friends :)

 

My best friend, Sammie D :)

 

 My best friend Sam who has been my friend since kindergarten :) 

 

This is a picture of us after school at OOB. :) 

 We got photobombed and we didn't even know it.

 The people in the front are my French class-we have been in the same class together for the past four years.