Stockholm, Sweden

Last week we took a bunch of high schoolers to Stockholm for an International Church retreat. We headed out Wednesday and returned Sunday. We (myself, April-coworker, Andy-other youth worker, and Greg-pastor) took 16 kids. It was awesome. There were kids from Madrid, Paris, Stockholm, Bonn Germany, Oslo, The Hague in Amsterdam, Berlin -- I think that's about it. Most of the kids are American, but some have hardly lived in America at all. Some were from different African countries too, which was cool. The retreat was great-the theme was 24/7-Love God Love People-Nothing Else Matters-24 hours a day 7 days a week. Had talks on following Jesus, love, justice, wilderness, and unity. Good stuff. So Thursday we had a free day all day until we had to be at the church at 5 or 6, so the girls went to lunch and shopping after the whole group had gone to the Vasa museum. The Vasa is this MASSIVE viking ship that was built in like 1625-28 and sank on its maiden voyage. Didn't even make it out of Stockholm actually. Then it was pulled up some 300 years later in the 1950's! This thing was crazy huge, unbelievable. Anyway, shopping was fun, but Sweden is expensive!
Stockholm is so beautiful-the city is set over 14 islands, so you get lovely water views all over the place. My favorite part of Stockholm was Gamla Stan-Old Town. It was gorgeous! Tons of little narrow roads flooded with cafes and shops. Reminded me of Italy and France. The cafes were cool-you could go downstairs and they would have these seating areas that were sort of like cellars-bricked and sort of arch shaped, if that makes sense. I don't know how to describe it all! Friday all of the groups were broken up into mixed groups to play The Amazing Race, all over Stockholm. That was fun! If you've seen the show, you know what I'm talkin about. We were racing from place to place finding clues and doing little "roadblocks" (random things the team had to do before we could get the next clue). We got to use the buses and underground there, and the underground was really nice. Nicer than London's underground! Saturday we had more free time, so again the girls were shopping, but this time in Old Town. Other than that we spent a lot of time at the church for the sessions, and there was a mean game of Spoons (card game) going on every night during free time. I would like to say that I am a Spoons champion-only once defeated, but even then I got down to the top 2. Oh, I also am a ping pong hero-I went down to play ping pong on the last night-so I breezed in and beat everyone there and then left. It was short and sweet. But I beat this kid twice and then I felt bad so I left instead of playing him again. So I have found the 2 talents that I have-ping pong and Spoons. I'm not musically or artistically gifted, but at least I can hold my own in these two games! So that pretty much sums up our time in Stockholm. I would definitely enjoy another trip there, maybe in the summer.