I am now an "Upper Secondary School" graduate! Because of the graduation and everything around it, I haven't had any time to write about the week's events until now (a week since my last post). And let me tell you, a LOT of things have happened!!! Let's start with the Monday, exactly one week ago.
Monday morning I woke up fairly early because I had to be in school at about 8.30 am with the paint. You see, there's a part of Swedish tradition that the graduating classes go around on the back of trucks spraying beer at each other (more about this in the next post) after they have "run out" of the school. On said trucks sheets with funny slogans and often the school name are hung on the sides. I was in possession of the spray paint and textile pens that we would use, so I had to be in school when we started. My fellow classmates that were to bring the sheets were late - of course. Anyways, when they got there we, and a few other girls that managed to get their butts to school (note that I said girls, no boys felt the need to leave their comfortable beds for this activity), started planning what to do with the sheets and where to paint them. We decided to use the spray-paint on two of the three sheets, and took them outside to paint.
I just needed to interrupt my story-telling to say that this is actually going somewhere. It will be a special anecdote, I promise. And another sidenote: our sheets had the slogans "Studentflak (which the trucks with graduates are called) - can contain traces of nuts(with the very clever wordplay, nuts=stupid people (not crazy), at least in Swedish, that NO ONE understood)" and "We will pay your retirement, how does that feel" as well as "IKG Natur (short for Natural Science Programme, which I was in).
Ok, back to the story. It was raining, or rather drizzling, outside and we did not want to get the sheets wet so we stood under a roof. This also meant that we had to lay the sheets on the ground (which was concrete or whatever) and not in the grass. And then we started painting/writing. We had some minor issues with not having enough paint and me getting blue fingers, and paint all over the lab-coat I was wearing. The real problem however, occured as we went to carry to sheets inside to start writing with the textile pens (our names and such). It turned out that one of the sheets was too thin for this kind of activity, and all the paint had gone right through so that it said "Studentflak - can contain traces of nuts" - on the ground. To make matters worse, it was in front of a neighbouring company, working with cameras or whatever, and it was in the employees' smoking place.
Needless to say, we had to clean it up. So me and Jen, who were mostly responsible for this mishap - and also the only ones caring - tried figuring out how to clean up the freaking mess. The thing is, in Sweden you could get charged by the police for spray-painting on the ground (or anywhere really), and we really did not want that the day before our graduation. So we asked our school's "receptionist" to let us use the cleaning supplies, and we got concentrated cleaning liquid, a bucket of water and brushes (like dish brushes). We stood scrubbing for quite some time but the stupid paint just would not go away!
About 11.10 am we had to take a break since I had to go to my only class of the day - a half hour basegroup (meeting with mentor and fellow classmates). Somewhere in the timeframe before the basegroup my two best friends from school arrived (Faryal was actually pretty early), my mom called me and asked me to come home and kill a spider, and everyone was asking me stuff non-stop. Jen and Mad also tried to get in touch with their parents to see if they knew anything. Also, me and Jen ran to a store to see if they had anything that would help, and we found paint thinner (slightly toxic, but whatever), we would have to use it after lunch though.
During the basegroup we had a "friendly" competition where we worked in two groups to answer questions and complete tasks so that we would get lego pieces out of which we had to build a car, and the group with the coolest car won - which was my group (of course). ;) Our mentor also gave books to the students in his basegroup that he found the most deserving (for a great project work, good attendance or whatever), and all of the four of us that were there got one. XD It was written by some Polish journalist, so it's "educational" or whatever, but it seems interesting. There was also a lottery about this other book about an alternative world where Germany won WW2 and I won that too. :)
After basegroup I ate a quick lunch and armed with a lab-coat, protective glasses, rubber gloves, paint thinner, a bucket of water, sponges and a brush we went outside again. Me and Jen stood on all four, scrubbing like crazy people, for a while before Mad, Clara, Erika and Farry joined us. I guess some people got scared by our appearance (especially mine), as we wore full lab-gear as well as scarves around our faces to protect us from the fumes (see the picture below). The paint finally went away though!!
To celebrate we spent the afternoon at Wayne's Coffee (I think I was there for about four hours). Erika and Farry went back to school to have their final class of the year (City Planning), for about an hour, but then came back. We had so much fun, even though I can't even remember half of what we said. As me, Farry and Erika didn't really want to spray beer at each other the following day, we decided to buy sparkled water before we went our separate ways.
I can barely recall what happened after I got home this day, but I think I prepared for my graduation by locating my clothes, showering and shaving my legs (you know, for such an important occation...). My parents tried to get me to help clean the house, but I don't remember them being successful at that point.
The "Studentflak" - it was worth the hard work in the end
Me being scary (Jen in the background)
Tomorrow: the big day - Graduation (which will be written today ;))
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