Student Vecka

This week I graduate from high school in Sweden! Tomorrow actually.
In Sweden this is a really big deal, meaning lots of partying! I already wrote about Vårfest (spring party), and this week has only brought more parties. This week means from last Wednesday to tomorrow, as you party for the whole week before graduation here. The first one was last Thursday, called Lärarmiddag, which I also already told you about and put up pictures, I can put some more here:

Starting from the left: Hans (my unghäst instructor), Maria (another riding instructor), 

a Smurf (also a teacher), Jenny, Annette (stalltjänst instructor) and another jenny

Friday my mum came down so I went to Lomma with her to wait for my brother. Saturday morning Seb arrived in Lomma at 6 AM. That day we went to Copenhagen for the day, here are some photos from Copenhagen: 

A 7/11 in Copenhagen, in an old building     Seb snuggling with a dragon outside city hall

I thought it was cool looking                                                                  .

I have more photos on facebook

That night we went out to a club in Malmö with a few of my friends from Bollerup. I don't really have any photos from that, I figure some things don't need to be photographed.

There was a party at Bollerup on Sunday but it was mother's day here and Seb got a migraine so we skipped that one in preparation for Monday night. Monday night was what they call utsparken (the kicking out). It's basically the kicking out of the 3rd graders from Bollerup. I know that parents and close relatives will be reading this so I will not get into too much detail but there is a lot of drinking involved, rolling and dunking in really disgusting stuff and lots of singing (as it is here in Skåne). Pretty much everything smells terrible today, I'm cleaning my room thoroughly today because I can't deal with it. The clothes that I wore yesterday are either out the window, lost or in the washing machine. I also left my camera at home for this one which was really smart because it was hard to keep track of items of clothing and I spent much time worrying about whether Seb still had my phone and keys!

Today we are taking the night off because tomorrow is Student! No one wants to be hungover on graduation day. I will be taking lots of photos tomorrow, as will my mother I'm sure. There will be even more stories to tell but for now I am heading off to lunch with my mother, brother and mormor!

Vet and Riding

Even more is happening now!
These last weeks here are blowing by like crazy! I have not had many classes so I have mostly been working at the stables with the horses, and when I'm not there I spend time at the vet clinics!

Most recently I have been working with Tigris and a new 3 year old named Helix. Tigris is almost ready to go out to the field for the summer, which is a great thing considering how we started. We have done canter on both reins and ridden outside. It's great riding him now because he is not tense at all in his body, just unfocused at times, which is totally understandable for a 3 year old. He is injured himself actually, yesterday, so he is lame at the moment and we hope to sit on him one more time before letting him onto the field for the summer
We started with Helix last week. He was started in the fall but twisted his leg strangely when he moved and ended up injuring himself so he has been off. He is super cute and willing to do anything, the opposite of Tigris. I have been on him 3 times and we are already trotting off the lunge line, something that took weeks to do with Tigris (once we finally got on). I'll have pictures soon.
I also have been working with Linda quite a bit, feeling great about my riding! I've been doing a lot more riding and getting more instruction from Linda and Hans and really feeling great about riding. I got my marks from my classes: MVG in riding and unghäst! MVG is the top mark you can get! =D

Other than that I have had a few parties, which is nice. I had vårfest on Saturday, a party for not just Bollerup students. It was nice to meet people from other

The picture above it what I wore to the party

Next was the lärarmiddag (teachers dinner) last night. It was a dress up party, unfortunately I found that out a little late so I didn't really have a costume. Here are a couple photos of those crazy swedes:

 

We've got Pippi                                          And me with two girls dressed as boys

          .                                                       Can't quite remember what the story was

And me with a troll

It's all been fun a games here!

I've also done some time at the vet clinic here. I was at the small animal clinic last weekend, checking out a milk tooth pulling on a young dog as well as looking at x-rays on an older dog that is having trouble peeing. I've now done 6 days in the horse clinic and still loving it. Last time I was there I realized that my stomach is a little weaker than I thought when we had to cut off extra skin from a wound on the horses leg. Much more blood than I'm used to.

Recent Update

So last time I posted I had just finished the week with the practice 3 year olds test and had had a good week with the horses.
It's been a while since my last post and everything has been going just as well! Jasmine achieved her jumping diploma at the 3 year olds test! She was one of only 3 Bollerup horses to get a diploma at the 3 year olds test. I'm training Jamarra to canter and it's also going really well.
Tigris is going great under saddle, possible going to canter this week! He will most likely be done for the summer by the end of the week and my teacher has asked me to help him with one of the other 3 year olds that hasn't had much work done yet.
I switched school horses to another horse that is a much better fit for me. She is much less complicated and so I can focus a lot more on my self in riding. I recently found out that I got MVG in jumping, top mark and VG in dressage (not sure that that is my final grade for dressage) which is not a bad mark. Marks here are IG (inte godkänt meaning not passing), G (godkänt or pass), VG and MVG.

My first ride on Wera

I've been working with Linda almost everyday the last few weeks, starting at 7 30 AM and working with her until at least 12. Then I usually work with Hans and Tigris in the afternoon. That means a lot of riding and lungeing and working with a ton of horses. Once a week we trailer out to another stables to jump a couple 4 year olds. Really nice horses they have here!
Over the weekend I went to Flyinge to see Saluhäst 2011, where Flyinge and Bollerup show their horses for sale and allow people to test ride them.

A couple weeks ago I went to the ball, a traditional prom.
Here is a couple photos:

Where we had the ball, an old cloister

It's been a really great few weeks again! It's crazy that school is almost over. I will be here until June 10th and then travelling with Sebastian around Europe!

Feeling great about the horses!

So last week was a great one for me! All my horses went really well.

On Monday I spend 14 hours at the stables which was great! I thought I was going to work with Linda, one of the young horse trainers, but she forgot that she was switching horses out at Flyinge. I instead helped out Hans the whole day. We were preparing for Tuesday, which was the rehearsal 3 year olds test.

The 3 year olds test is a 2 day event where the 3 year olds are judged on their free jump, their conformation, their movement in trot and walk, and how they are under saddle.

Jasmine had pulled a shoe so I held her while the farrier re-shod her, at 8 15 AM. Then I brought in Tigris and another young horse, Rachel. I rode Jasmine first which went really well, we spent most of the time in canter and worked on her bending around my inside leg around a circle. Then I took Tigris out. This is the fun part because I sat on him again and we trotted!! Considering what I wrote about him when we first started it felt GREAT to be on him and trotting!!! I then helped Hans with Rachel, well kind of. I was mostly just on standby in case she did anything to stand beside her and/or lead her. Then in the afternoon I spent the time bathing horses. This is the first bath for them, this year at least. I'm not sure about their experience with water in their younger years. I bathed one horse on my own, he was good. Then I helped Hans with a horse. She was really nervous about the water, as were most of them. I found that I could spray the horses in the face with the water, so they knew what it was, but as soon as you moved the water over their hindquarters they would get really nervous.

Jasmine all braided up for the test

Tuesday was the practice 3 year olds test. First thing we did was the löshoppning, or free jumping. This is made up of 2 jumps on one side of a track.

The ring for löshopp

The jumps are set up as a one stride with the second jump being raised every jump or so to see how high the horse can jump. Then I held on to her in front of the judge while he checked out her conformation. Then Hans led her around (she is 171.5 cm and so is tall and I can't keep up with her trot) so that the judge could see how she moved in trot and walk. She was so clean and the braid looked so nice that I got a comment from Linda on them, and then the judge commented that maybe he should bring me to his barn to do his horses =D In the afternoon we did riding, and it was the best ride I had had on her to date.

On thursday I had Jamarra and my mother was here so I rode her before I had a quiz in djursjukvård. Here is a photo of us:

She has been coming along so well! When I first got on her she had not had anyone on her back in a year, and before that she had had very little training under saddle. She is a french trotting horse and we cantered on thursday. This is a huge deal for us and I am very excited about it! Her owner has been doing a lot of canter through driving from the ground but this was the first time that we really got a canter under saddle. Granted it was a little disorganized and she rushed the transition but it was a canter nonetheless!
I then had a quiz in my vet class, 17/20 which I was happy about.
After that I had another ride on Jasmine which also went well!

On Friday I took out Tigris again and we trotted again, much longer this time!

Now I am in Lomma for a few days, then back to school to work in the horse clinic and ride the horses on Thursday. My brother is coming down for a week which is awesome as well!

Happy Easter!

Short Hello

Hello all!
My mother has arrived and spring seems to be sticking around a little better around here. It has been sunny since yesterday afternoon and it's supposed to be like this into next week. We are moving into my mums friends place for a few days and are going to explore Skåne a little. Then we're back here for me to do some more work in the horse veterinary clinic here and do work with the now 3 year old horses!

That's it for now!

Spring is Here

Hello all,

     Spring has finally arrived at Bollerup! Here are a few photos of the sunshine:

These are a few photos that I took while on a scooter to and from Tomelilla

I took them yesterday

I have also finally taken some photos of Jasmine, the two year old I started working with when Tigris became too much.

Us getting ready to go out for a ride!

And now here is a photo from the day before yesterday:

As you can see, the water from the fountain is being really carried, 

there are also white caps on the little waves in the pond

I'm not sure that the amount of wind is really portrayed in the photo so I'll just say that I was getting pushed over when I was standing still. When you walked you had to lean into the wind to stay on track or you would get blown off your path. People were worried to drive home. Our riding was cancelled because there was too much noise from the wind in the indoor arenas, and if you did go into the ring the hanging lights were actually shaking from how much the wind was moving the houses. It was kinda scary.

This coming week I am really excited that my mother is coming to visit, and is staying in Sweden until June which will be really nice. All my family in Sweden! Also on Tuesday I am having a practice 3 year olds test with Jasmine. It's a test to see if the young horses are on the right track with their training. Jasmine is definitely doing it and we are hoping that Tigris may be ready for the real thing in 4 weeks. Oh, yes, I have started working with Tigris again!

That's it for today, I'll post again after the 3 year olds test, with photos!

Eventful Day

Hello,
     Today was an eventful say, as most of my tuesdays are. Tuesday is the day that I have the most to do but I finished early today, meaning I squished everything into 3 blocks.
As most tuesdays, we started with stalltjänst (7 30 AM). Stalltjänst (pronounced: stal-shain-st) is stable work, taking the horses out to the paddocks and mucking the stalls in the morning and bringing the horses in and feeding them for the afternoon shift. Today during stalltjänst I got run over by one of the horses I was leading. A man was carrying a ladder and the horse decided that it would be a good idea to run into me instead of around me until I fell over and then stepped on me. I'm fine, but I will have bruises tomorrow and i have some scrapes on my legs.

This is supposed to me a spooking horse

I also had a jumping test today, and it was supposed to be during the last block but my teachers decided that it would be a good idea to do it during my Unghäst lesson. Straight after stalltjänst I went up to skolstallet and got Ruzzin ready and off we went (9:15 AM). I did my test at 10:00 and it went well. We jumped 90 cm, or 3 ft. It was nice to get some height in jumping as in Canada I was jumping 3ft6 and 3ft9 weekly. Ruzzin is not an adjustable horse and she needs to go forward in jumping otherwise she tends to chip into the jumps. This also means that when we get a long distance into a jump and she is going really forward it is hard to get her to shorten her step and get back quickly. There were two lines in the course, a 7-stride and a 6-stride. In those lines we got 6 and 5...

Next lesson was Unghäst (young horse) on Jasmin (10 45 AM). We rode in the Ny Ridhus (new indoor ring) which was great because Jasmin is the biggest 2 year old and needs lots of space. Normally we ride in the Små Ridhus (I'm guessing you understand small indoor ring) which is 40x20 m. The ny ridhus is 80x30m, so much bigger. Jasmin usually has a hard time going forward because of how small the ring is that we normally in, and I think that she feels a little claustrophobic and like she can't go forward. Today she was going forward and really moving in front of me! There were cones and poles in the ring to challenge the horses as well, we jumped the pole and she tried to go around the cones instead of through them (there were 2 set up close together to go in between). In the end she was sweaty and tired!

After lunch we had ridteori. At the beginning of the year we were assigned topics to write about and present. My topic was the difference between riding in Canada and riding in Sweden. Today I presented. It was a lot of fun, and I spoke swedish. Of course the presentation wasn't only in swedish as my swedish is not that good yet but I tried and the class understood and I got a big applause at the end.

I am starting to really feel a part of this school and feel great about my swedish!!

=D

Week 2 away: Flyinge

I got back to Bollerup at 10 30 PM on Sunday night from being away since the Friday a week before. You would think that finally arriving would be great and I could just crash on my bed and not worry about the next day. You would be wrong.
Once I got home I had to quickly change the clothing in my bag to what I would need for another 6 days away from school. I was off to work at a Stallion show at Flyinge.

At 6 AM, only 7 and a half hours after arriving back at Bollerup, I was off to Flyinge for 6 days. Flyinge is a school similar to Bollerup, only without the boarding. As far as I know it is primarily focused on equine studies, whereas Bollerup is also very big on their farming program.

The show I was working at all week was a stallion show. People bring their Swedish Warmblood horses to try and get them certified as a Stud, basically to say their genes are good enough to pass on based on their performance. This means that the horses are AMAZING!!

Here are a few photos, I did not take as many as I wanted but anyway:

                                     This is where we all slept       This is the Färs och Frosta

                                                                                              Stallet office

                                  This is how busy we were most         This is the coffee machine 

                                  of the time in the office                       that kept me alive

Some of the jobs I did were: whipper-in, ringmaster, and working in the office at Färs och Frosta Stallet.

We had shifts that could start as early as 6 AM, and end as late as 10 PM. Most of the shifts were about 2 hours long and you would have several per day doing something different in each one. Working in the office was pretty chill, we just wrote down which horses went out, what time and when they came back. The rest of the time we would go on the computer and check out the horses on the internet, or go on facebook. When we exhausted those options we would play solitair, or Harpan as it is called here. The week on the whole was great! I spoke a TON of swedish, really improved it and I used a lot of words I was afraid to use (because of being unsure of pronunciation or if it was the correct context) and I learned many new words. Here are a couple of horses that I loved from the show:

Sohn der Sonne

Luxus CML (SWB)

Zidane (SWB)

Zidane was my absolute favorite, unfortunately I could not find a photo of him under saddle in movement.

Anyway, hope you like the photos! Until next time!

Sportlov

It has been quite a while since my last post.
I have been away from Bollerup for 2 weeks, and before that it was all the same things here.

Week 1 away from Bollerup:

I had one week off from school for what we call sportlov. During this time I visited friends in two countries! I spent my first few days away from Bollerup in Berlin with an old family friend. It was really fun. I did a free walking tour my last day there because Tehya and her boyfriend were both working. It was a lot of fun and reviewing Berlin history was interesting.

    

                            Me at Brandenburger Tor                     Holocaust Memorial

                                        Fernseturm (TV Tower)                   Reichstag

My time in Berlin was made slightly more stressful as my phone does not seem to work outside of Sweden at this point. I had a great time walking around Berlin with Tehya and Cole. On the Sunday I was there Tehya and I went to Mauer Park Market where I bought a cute necklace and a nice scarf which I made good use of in the cold weather. As you can see from the photos it was super nice weather, which in winter also meant that it was super cold. It was almost like being back in Vancouver with all the different foods from different countries; mexican, indian, thai, and much coffee from Starbucks. Next I was off to Prague!

I was in Prague visiting another friend for a few days. My lack of use of phone was also quite stressful as on a couple occasions we got separated. My train to Prague was a couple hours late and so I missed meeting my friend at the station, and apparently there are no pay phones in train stations anymore. Pay phones have gone into extinction.

My first day in Prague I did two walking tours, also very freezing because there were no clouds to keep in the warmth. The city is really beautiful and I learned a lot! Walking around town on my own was also challenging as the map I bought was not great. The street that my friend, Lisa, lives on was not on the map.

We also spent a couple days outside Prague at her dad's house in Hluboká:

 

As you can see from the last photo, we went riding there as well. The first photo is looking down the street from the castle. The second is the castle and the third is the stables where the horse I was riding lives.

After the few days in The Czech Republic I spent 15 hours on a train to get back to Tomelilla.

Next post will be week 2 away from Bollerup! Enjoy the photos!

Vecka 4

This week was pretty crazy. I have only 3 classes throughout the week, except for my profile day which is full. I finally asked one of the trainers, Linda, if I can work with her on my free days. She happily accepted and I have worked with her twice this week. On Monday I had chemistry, which is hard. I then had my profile day; unghäst, ridning and stalltjänst. I have a new unghäst because Tigris is still being stubborn about being ridden and my trainers feel that it would be unsafe for me to try to get on him, so I have a new horse until Tigris is safe. Her name is Jasmin, and she is the biggest mare that they have. I have already ridden her off the lunge line and trotted in both directions!! She is a little lazy so I have had to use a short whip on her to keep her up in trot. I will have photos up soon of her.
On the topic of young horses, as I have been working with Linda I have been working with the horses in the Hingst stallet. That stables is where they keep the horses that they feel are the best, and Fay is there. For those who don't remember, Fay is the 3 year old that I started my unghäst program with. I lunged and clipped her. Here are a couple photos of how she turned out:

This is just after I clipped her

 I did quite a good job if I may say so

She looks older now, bigger and much more grown up looking.

This week I also rode Jamarra. I have been having a little trouble with her lateral aids, which is understandable for a horse who was brought up with driving and isn't used to the leg aids. I got my small spurs out because I felt that she needed a little more power of my leg, and it worked like a charm. Of course I had small problems at the beginning, her not being used to having to move sideways and all, but by the end of the ride she was shaping well around my legs!

So mostly I have been busy with horses this week!

It's been such a good week!

Back in Sweden

Tuesday this week I got back to Sweden!

It is a little weird being back in the middle of nowhere as in Vancouver everything is easily accessible for me. I have been working with horses since the day I got back which is great because when I was in Vancouver I didn't work with them at all. Tigris is still being a little difficult, and it's going to be a while before I get on him. On Tuesday I am going to ride one of the 2 year olds that my teachers is training because I at least should get on a 2 year old even if Tigris is being difficult. We are also going to work with the teachers 3 days a week instead of 2 days that we normally do. The 2 year olds are also inside now. They are in the same barn as Jamarra, whom I have been working with everyday as Emma (her owner) has hurt her ankle, Gamla Ko.

When I was in Vancouver I did quite a bit of yoga with my mother and before I came back I bought a DVD with yoga routines on it so I can further my practice. It has been fun doing yoga here everyday since I got back, especially because no after school exercise activities have started yet.

Since not much has happened here yet here are a few photos I took up at Whistler:

         Here is a view from the Red Chair                                  Going across the Peak-2-Peak

This one is going along the cat track to 7th Heaven Chair