Anders Västfält

Aloha! Hola! Hej! Hi! Welcome back to the first blog post in 8 years!

The reason behind this post is that one of my most faithful readers Katie and my very good friend Dave just got married ;)

Dave and I met during a semester abroad at grad school in California and have since then been on many fun adventures and trips. I first met Katie about 15 months ago when she and Dave came to Sweden. We went kayaking, they did the swim run which I nearly joined (not) then we went on amazing holidays in Russia and Greece. Katie made us do highlight and lowlight every day of the trip which I really liked!

About 6 months ago I did get an invitation to the wedding and there was no doubt. I booked my flights so I would get to the states a week before to be well time adjusted for this big weekend :)

Boise

Finally, the big day(s) arrived. I flew in from San Francisco to Boise, Idaho. I had no idea what to expect but quickly understood that this state is famous for their potatoes. I love potatoes and had it everyday as growing up. However, when seeing this much potato advertisement one of my favourite YouTube videos were constantly in my head. The guy in the video below is the biggest potato lover I have seen, a must see!

 

 

Boise is a very nice city with 223k inhabitants. I like the size of the city and there were plenty of nice places to eat and walk. The Freak Alley Gallery was especially impressive with a lot of cool artwork. After hanging out in Boise for a few hours and having some tasty tacos it was time to head to the main destination for the weekend, McCall.

McCall

This cute little lake town has amazing nature and is perfect for all kinds of adventures and enjoyers of life. It got everything from water sports, fishing, hiking and biking in the summers and all kinds of winter sports in the winter. It is like a smaller and less touristy Lake Tahoe. I really like that there were flags at each crosswalk to call the attention of cars to make the crossing of the streets safer. We got to McCall Friday afternoon and went directly to THE ice cream place. We all got one scoop each. I had one scoop divided into two flavours. The huckleberry ice cream flavour was definitely the best! Check out the photos, this is one scoop! Mountain size scoops!!

In McCall we were 10 people renting a house just a couple of minutes walk from basically everything. I was lucky to even get my own room. It was SHAFTers and their respective in the house. Such good times! The first day in McCall it was Andrew, Ellie, Tori and me. Later in the evening, we went to the Salmon River Brewery for dinner. They got some tasty beers and delicious food. I got a Mac n cheese, fully loaded! Then we went to Forester Club which is one of two bars/clubs in McCall to check it out. There was a dog running around on the dance floor which was pretty fun. We had a couple of drinks there before we went late night shopping at the grocery store Albertson and then headed back home.

The day before the Wedding

Saturday started out with a hike in Ponderosa State Park. It was a very relaxing and great way to start of the day.

At 3:30 pm Katie and Dave (mostly Katie) had arranged a boat to take us from Shore Lodge in McCall (the wedding venue) to Katie’s parents’ vacation house. This was an incredible trip. I think it took around an hour and we were around 60 people on the boat but I not very sure. The lake and surroundings are just amazing. When I was reading the invitation, I thought we were going to Pilgrim Cove to drop off of some people for their rehearsal dinner. I had no idea what Pilgrims Cove was but when we got there I understood that it is where Katie’s parents’ vacation house is. Such a beautiful place! I just want to stay there for a couple of weeks and read books and enjoy the view of nature and the lake. Apparently, it was also here Dave and Katie had their first date. The boat trip was definitely one of the highlights that day! Hopefully, they will allow me to come back one day.

After the boat trip, we went back to the house for a bbq. At this point, some people had joined for the boat cruise and some after. The others that stayed with us in the house were Brent, Mona, Bryan, Sahar, Isaac and Nicole. Danny and Erin joined for the bbq as well as Kit (a friend of Katie). Isaac was the grill master and also tried to teach Kit to thumb a beer. Which did not work out that well. After the great bbq we went to the Yacht Club (named Anchor) for drinks and dance party. It was super fun! First, we had the biggest whiskey shot I ever had in my life and then danced with Dave and the other SHAFTers for hours! We even got painted with colours that glow in the dark haha! It felt like being 25 years old again :)

Sunday Wedding Day – Before

We got a bit tired from all the dancing the night before but the wedding did not start until 4 pm so we had plenty of time to recover. When being in America and being surrounded by SHAFTers it is not the right time to chillax. Instead, we went for stand up paddle boarding (SUP) around lunchtime. We paddled from the Marina to Shore Lodge were the wedding was. At Shore Lodge we met up with some people to have drinks and then we paddled back. On the way back we had a Waboba which is basically a small ball that bounces on water which makes everything so much more fun! We all went swimming in the water at some point, pretty chilly but totally worth it!

After SUP we went to a Mexican place to have some quick and delicious food. It was neither quick or delicious but it was food :) Then we went back to the house for showers and preparations for the big moment!

The Wedding

We came to the wedding around 3:55 pm so right on time. Unfortunately, the fire alarm went off just before 4 pm but good thing it did not happen during the ceremony. With a few minutes delay, it all started. It was an awesome introduction. Instead of playing the “regular” wedding some friends played the song out of the Lion King… Can you feel the love tonight! I really liked that! There were also 7 groomsmen (whom all was wearing Björn Borg underwear) and 7 brides but 2 brides were males. Love how they put their own touch to the wedding and thinking outside the box. There was no priest that did all the talking instead it was one of Katie’s best friends Niko. He was talking about the Swim-run in Stockholm “ö till ö” and the fun story about how they got tied together to perform the race. He also talked about how Dave purposed like 6 am in the morning after a run. Katie and Dave also did vows and exchanged rings. I think they will be able to keep all vows except that Dave promises to not eat Katie’s ice cream! Not too sure that it was a very smart idea Dave ;) We as the guest also got to promise by saying “I do” to that we all will support Dave and Katie in their marriage. I really liked that!

After the ceremony and the first kiss, there was an open bar for an hour before the dinner started. We took a lot of photos and a drank couple of huckletinis. A martini with huckleberries. I really liked the drink but some thought it was too sweet.

At 5:30 the dinner started. We got “boarding passes” for the seating. I got the destination(table) Milos were we went together last summer. I was sitting between Evelina (a Swede Katie met on Hawaii) and Danny. On the boarding pass, it was saying what food you had selected when accepting the invitation. Smart! Katie’s dad had an amazing speech. He stutters a little bit and did it great! After stuttering my entire childhood, it was a bit extra emotional for me to hear his fantastic speech. Dave’s brother Matt had a great speech and Katie’s friend Vincent as well. Many of the speeches were about that even though Dave has always been good at everything he is doing he has finally met someone with more athletic skills. Especially when it comes to running :) Dave had the last speech and of course, it was about the famous cupcake toast. If I understand it right the first time Dave said that he loves Katie was during a Thanksgiving toast with both family O’Neil’s and Priestley’s. And instead of toasting with a drink like regular people the amazing Dave did a cupcake toast. Got to love it!

The food and everything at the dinner was just perfect. Great food, great speeches, amazing atmosphere. As the last performance, Katie’s sibling made a song for the new married couple. It was based on the rap song (I think from Eminem)… it was a pretty impressive performance!

After dinner, we went downstairs to the dance party. Dave and Katie had practised and choreographed a first dance which was incredibly good! I must say that Dave felt a bit more relaxed than Katie. But they both did a great performance! Maybe Dave cheated with a couple of extra drinks to get more relaxed ;) The Björn Borg dance later from Dave was not as impressive, maybe he was a bit too relaxed at that time!

We danced, danced and danced! Nicole and Kit made a crazy dance performance! All in all, it was such a fun evening! Best of all was to see Dave and Katie happy together! I’m so am happy for them!!

The day after

The day after the wedding we went to Katie parents house for breakfast. Dave and Katie ran with their guests in the morning. I think Dave did 3 miles and Katie 7 miles. Impressed but not surprised haha.

We took a swim at their lake house and went with their pedalo boat then we went to My Fathers Place, which is a nice little restaurant to have açaí bowls and burgers. Then we went to Louie Lake for a hike after an awesome recommendation from Katie. It was such a beautiful place. In addition to the breathtaking scenery, it also seemed to have plenty of fish. It was like the water was boiling. So if you ever want to be “sure” to catch a fish. Go to Louie Lake, Idaho.

Look at this video with all the jumping fishes!

We then drove back to Boise and had a last dinner and now we are going back to reality again.

Thanks, Dave and Katie for an amazing wedding and that we got to be part of it, that we got to see this beautiful places and hang out with so many awesome people!

Happy marriage!! All the best and have a great honeymoon!!

Wwwwwwwweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!! Finally an update! Sorry blogreaders :) Been busy enjoying life (at least most of the time:)… Less than one month left in US and it feels a bit sad… Im finally starting to understand and really appreciate the American culture! at the moment i dont feel like going home, sorry Sweden :)

I will try to cover all things that happened the last 3weeks, starting with Halloween and my birthday… It was absolutely one of the best weekends in my life! it started off with a Halloween party on Thursday the 28th of October! We went to the grad pub, I was dressed up as santa with a tie and a tshirt saying “santa claus is coming to town, please dont hit him”, I was the only santa there so it was fun! the most common costume was the mine worker from chile, some people say that Halloween is just an excuse for girls to dress up slutty, i dont think that is true, it was not that crazy :) During the whole weekend i gave away my camera and asked other to surprise me so I got like 300 pictures from the weekend!

Friday afternoon we went to Palo Alto which is a suburb to San Francisco, it is a really nice suburb though, next to silicon valley and stanford university! we went out to a cool sushi restaurant in the evening where i experiences my first american birthday dinner! We did sake-bombs, super delicious food and there was also a ballon-bender that made a swedish flag hat of ballons and wrote 25th birthday on it, pretty awesome! I was a bit surprised that in america when you celebrate someone’s birthday it is like you are the king and everyone else is supposed to buy drinks for you… It felt a bit weird in the beginning to not pay for my stuff but it was an awesome night, it was very special for me! THANKS! Brent Johnson, Bryan Shepherd, Christian Drestler, Danny Hartsough, David Priestley Pristley, Isaac Riffelmacher, Jefferson Heidelberger and Matt Heitzmann! SHAFT

We stayed at Dave´s parents house in palo alto that night and i got to sleep like one hour in the bed before Jefferson and Brent started to fake-fighting so i decided to sleep the rest four hour on a pilates mat, it was not comfortable but i was not sober either so it was ok :) We had to wake up at 8am in the morning to prepare for the Warrior Dash, which is an incredible fun mud race! Andrew Perroy was meeting us up at the warrior dash spot… Most of the guys ran in tuxedos, Matt and Danny were Mexican runner, Christan was a moose and I was santa again! One thing that is new for me here is what i thought was American but apparently is just that we are in business school where everyone loves to hold speeches all the time! It is so much fun but it is sometimes hard to come up with something smart to say! Since it was my birthday weekend i held the opening speech and the closing speech for the run… The opening speech was pretty nice I think, the closing speech was not as nice but it is a lot of fun and it is ok to suck, because it is just for practice :) Before every obstacle someone in our group gave a speech! most of the time it ended with someone saying BOOM and the others go JIZZEM, 3 times! after the race they all surprised me with nice presents! A UC Davis t-shirt, UC Davis beer glass and a birthday card saying “happy birthday girl” with a pony on it, very cute :) In the birthday card they all had written personal birthday greetings to me, some were serious and some ironic, but highly appreciated! They also sang happy birthday in English but spontaneously they started to sing in with a what they believe a Swedish accent, it felt great, it might sound emotional but it felt that it was real friendship coming right there! thanks guys! super awesome day, just have a look at the pictures and you will understand!

After the race we came back to Davis, the San Francisco baseball team(giants) were playing an important game (world series which means only American teams:), some among us really wanted to see it… I decided to take a nap instead before the second Halloween party! It started off at a friend’s house with games and bbq, we were around 50people there. i was dressed up as an Indian prince slash king, i just burrowed my flatmate’s traditional costume, it almost felt that I was wearing something good looking and not a real Halloween costume :) There was a competition of the best costume, most creative and “what the fuck did he/she think”… Jefferey won the “what the fuck did you think”, Thomas from Germany won the most creative and best costume title went to Chris Carleson who dressed up as Matt Heitzmann… Pretty funny to dress up as someone in the same program! Chris made an amazing speech that was one of the highlight of the night! well done chris! later all 50 people sang happy birthday for me with a Swedish accent, it was cool! :) So now it is more or less becoming a thing to try to imitate my accent, especially when alcohol is involved :)

This post is becoming very long! As you understand the Halloween/birthday weekend was amazing! Next time i will write about Sebastian Ingrosso, redwoods in Berkeley, school and Pigroast… This week Arnold Schwarzenegger and Harrison Ford were at a climate conference next to our school, pretty cool! On friday we are a gang of 10-15people going to portland for hiking and sightseeing, some people will go to a live comedy show(Tosh), me and Christian will go to see Robyn live, im really excited for that! Ok enough for today! Hasta la vista baby!!!

Hi hi hi!

Last weekend I was visiting my old teacher and friend Lilian in her son´s house in Clovis which is just outside Fresno. Her son and his wife was in China so it was Lilian, Göran, there two grandchildren Emelie, Kimberly and me! and the lovely dog Zlatan of course :) It was a supernice weekend, we went to Halloween party at the kids school, went to see the girls playing soccer, eating and drinking nice, went to mountains next to sierra forest to have a look. It was very interesting trip also from a culture perspective, i learned so much about how it is to have kids in US. Its so different from Sweden… Emelie and Kimberly are such a adorable children, they mix Swedish and English in an almost perfect way! Just before I went home we went to a nice Mexican restaurant were Lilian and Göran gave me birthday dinner. Thank you all so much for a great weekend!

This week is midterm week so its kind of stressful at the moment. The first midterm in Customer Relationship Management went okey but the second one in Marketing Strategy was probably the worst one I ever taken, I studied the completely wrong things… good thing though that it only counts for around 10-15% of the total grade.

Tomorrow is a Halloween party and on Friday we will go to Palo Alto (near San Francisco) to be closer to the Warriordash that we will run on Saturday. We will probably go out in Palo Alto on Friday and on Saturday evening there is another Halloween party back in Davis.

I also booked tickets to go to Portland on the 19th of November together with like 15 people, after we booked the tickets my German friend Christian found out that Robyn is playing in Portland on the 20th of November so we will go and watch her! Im very excited about that!

Time to get some sleep! Going to be some intense couple of days now! sweet! Happy Halloween!

I love my new toy!!! It is so much fun, im having two mid-terms and one paper due to next week, this indoor helicopter is the perfect thing to relax with when i need to take a break or studying. Me and Wasse both one each in Las Vegas, only $25, hopefully we will move together in spring so we can have races with them at home! That would be awesome! :)

Today I played one soccer game and one ultimate frisbee game, we lost both :) It so much fun though, Europe has a lot to learn when it comes to sports in school. Tomorrow morning im leaving for Fresno to meet my friend and teacher from Sweden Lillian, her husband and their two grandchildren, im really looking forward to that!

And by the way, if you prefer to read this page in Swedish, just click on the google traslate link on the sidebar to the right. There you can also subscribe to my posts, find my American number and address.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Had such an amazing weekend!! Most of all it was great to spend time with my great friend Christofer “Wasse” Wassenius! We were in Vegas two years ago so we did not had to stress around to see things! Before I didnt really enjoy going back to the same place twice but after Hawaii and Las Vegas I must admit that I change my mind, or maybe it is just the fact that Hawaii and Las Vegas is two of the most awesome places in the world. Anyway we mostly spend time at the pool, eating, walking around on the strip and went clubs :) Two times at Tao, then Surrender and JET. I like Surrender best, it a outdoor party around a big pool, which make the atmosphere exactly as you would expect from a good club in Vegas. There were 5 girls from Wasses university and 1 friend of them so most of the time we did not have to stand in a line at all. Me and Wasse had to pay cover fees while the girls went in for free! I think in some aspects Las Vegas is more of a paradise for girls than for guys, because they are really threated like princesses :)

On the way home the plane for late for more than one hours because of thunderstorms, the plane was also overbooked so i was offered $300 to stay one night extra in Vegas. Too bad I had class the day after, probably wouldnt be so fun to stay in Vegas alone anyways… At the SAC-airport a classmate named Cammi came to pick me up, thank you very very much Cammi!

Me and Wasse also planned a bit of our Mexico-trip in the middle of December. Or we actually decided to not plan so much, we will be traveling in the south of Mexico for around 2 weeks and then celebrate new years at Playa de Carmen. So much looking forward for that! Nice weather, cheap food, great company! It will be a perfect end of a great semester abroad!

Jonas we missed you :)

Obviously, i been busy enjoying life :) haha no seriously, before coming here i was sure that this was going to be the toughest semester in my life – no time to enjoy life! It has turned out to be wrong though! Of course the workload will soon get heavier, because of the mid-terms, groupworks and everything but still it is bearable…

This post will be a bit different, its been one week since my last post and i feel im just getting lazier and lazier so i will make it simple to just shortly summarize each day.

Thursday – School in the morning and then going out with friends in the evening.

Friday – Groupwork in school, Helping Cammi to move and the Corn Maze. The Corn Maze has been in the guiness world record for the biggest corn maze, it is a labyrinth on a corn field, look the album from october to get a better understanding… in the evening we went out again, surprise! :P

Saturday – Went to San Francisco with Braden to watch the Blue Angel (Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron). Brenden was born in the Bay area so he knows his way around. We watch the show from one of his friends roof-tops, later we went out and spent the night at one of his friends house, it was a perfect day, thanks buddy!

Sunday – Going back to Davis and try to recover from the weekend… Then I wrote a paper on a book in the leadership course and prepared for a project.

Monday – School and then in the evening we had our first game with my school soccer team, we unfortunately lost with 2-1… we have a quite good team, some of us just need to get into better shape, and that very much includes me :)

Tuesday – School, group project, pool, frisbee and trivia night… im surprised how good some people can be in trivia :)

Wednesday – School, cleaning, washing, going out to bernadors playing some dice game and enjoyed life with great company!

Thursday – School, packing my bag and going to LAS VEGAS!!! :D One of my best friends from Sweden is studying in Mexico so will meet in Vegas! Im very excited! Snart ses vi go man!!

Here are some pictures from the Corn Maze and SF/Blue Angel trip…
More pictures in the Davis October 2010 Album

I probably missed half of the things that has been going on this week but anyways… will try to update more often so the post doesnt need to be that long and my memory will be with me…

Lean on me Wasse, when you not strong :P

Back to Gallery

Yo yo yo yo! Im supertired! Life in Davis is really so intense! Been going out, doing sports and homework constantly the last week! It sounds like im complaining, but im not! I LOVE being here! It is such a great atmosphere, everyday when i bike to school there are thousands of happy bikers all over the campus! The people at my school are all super awesome! Yesterday I was at a birthday party and now I just came home from another birthday party! It is great to see 30people showing up to celebrate! I hope i will be able to host a Swedish birthday party in about 3 weeks :) IKEA is only a 30min drive away so i hope i can get some meatballs and swedish candy!

Last week i won a beerpong tournament together with Brandon(classmate)! It was pretty cool! It was between 40 and 50 teams in the tournament and before the tournament i never won a single game before so it was very exciting to play :P

The classes im taking are
* Leadership
* Marketing Strategies
* Customer Relationship Manager
* Business, Government and the International Economy

In this post i will shortly describe my Leadership course. Our professor name is Robert Lorber, author of at least 3 books that we will read this quarter! Then we will have 5 guestspeakers from sucessful leaders! Here is the list:
Dale Carlsen, CEO of The Sleep Train
Bob Eckert, Chairman and CEO of Mattel
Rosa Zeegers Senior Vice President Marketing and Licensing, Mattel
Steve Buster, CEO of Mechanics Bank
Joan Miszak, Senior Vice President, Organizational Effectiveness of Raley

We will write three individual papers on our professors books and then we also do one groupwork. I really like the professor and the class even though it is about soft skills. I like the professors life philosophy of always being honest to other and yourself and his strong focus to find everyones passion. On monday we will have our first guestspeaker and im really looking forward to hear for that.

Oohh, and people already started to decorate their houses for Halloween and they ask me what I will be, VIKING?! Hmm, actually I have no idea of what to be, but it feels like Halloween is a pretty big deal here :)
On Friday we will go to something called Corn Maze, it is supposed to be the biggest corn field in US? where they cut the field in a special way to make a huuuge labyrinth. We will go their when it is dark, get a map of the field/labyrinth and then we all try to get through. They say it take about one and a half hour, i better bring some food :)

Finally, I would like to give two recommendations
1. TV-show “Eastbound and down” – Not for sensitive ears.
2. Book “The Developing World” – by Fredrik Hären.

Ok, time to say hello to the pillow, class tomorrow! Adios amigos!

Hello blogreaders :)

Its been a while since my last update and a lot of fun stuff have happen, hope I will not write too long so you guys get bored!

To leave Hawaii was not fun! It was such a great time so I wanted to stay longer! But I was also very curious about starting school. I came back to Davis Wednesday morning, and went directly to school for an international student meeting, nothing really interesting but is was a mandatory meeting. On Thursday I had my first class in “Innovation Management”. It seems to be a nice class and the teacher have written books in the subject so I think he will have a lot of knowledge to share. However I been taking a similar course in Sweden so I might change to something else. On Thursday evening some classmates had organized a big BBQ with beerpong, cornholing, flipcup, dodgebeer. Im really impressed about how organized BBQs are here! Afterward we went to a Froggys, a small bar/club, it was great fun, i still cant understand the American grinding culture, sex/foreplay on the dance floor? ffs, get a room!! :P

On Friday morning we went to Lake Tahoe, which is the most famous ski resort in America and a nice place to go hiking during summer. We were around 75 people of first and second year students at the MBA-program. It was perfect to get to know more people, we played games, hiked, drank beer, made a bonfire ect. It feels more relaxed to be a student here now. It was only the first day everyone had a suit, now everything is back to normal! People are super friendly, super cool and I love being here. This is actually the first night for over a week that I have some time over to just relax in front of the computer and do some readings. Two days ago Potter had a great BBQ before the game between Green Bay and Chicago(American football). Yesterday we played soccer and then trivia at a bar, I think I will join the GSM soccer, ultimate frisbee and landhockey teams. Tomorrow we will go out to a bar for graduate students, we will start with a BBQ at school before going to the bar/club where we will play a beerpong tournament before dancing all night long!

A few more photos, HERE

&%€”!#”€”#(&”# Today my bike got stolen!! I loved my bike! I just had it outside my house and this morning it was gone, i guess someone just carried it away :( It is such a small city and my bike is not expensive so I dont understand why. But anyway I was lucky because on the way to school I found a crashed bike, the bicycle chain was off, the handlebar was out of order, but after 3min fixing it was possible to ride it to school so i was only a couple of minutes late for class :) How lucky isn’t that?

It is crazy how hot in Davis at the moment, over 35+ Celsius everyday. To be honest I cant remember seeing a single cloud in Davis :) I went to the pool for one hour today to just cool down. Ooh, and american bureaucracy… I been spending hours on trying to waiving the schools health insurance, been to the office 3 or 4 times emailing my insurance company in Sweden, and finally it seems like i dont have to pay the schools $680 health insurance, sweet! The girl in the reception said “your rabbit foot is working for you”, apparently that means that I am lucky and I think that is true :)

Last but absolutely not least, I been in paradise today! or dining common as they say heere! I went with my friend Richard to go eating on campus where many of the undergraduate students eat on so called mealplans (you buy for example 100dinners/semester). Thanks Richard, it just amazing! Eat as much as you can from a more or less unlimited number of dishes, free soft drinks, free desserts and ice cream, my heaven should look like that :P

Ok, time to sleep, next time I will write a bit more about the classes im taking, it feels like the relaxing time is soon over and time for focusing :) Anyway, bye for now!