Round 2

Hey Everyone,

I'm back for another summer at Vassaro, but it feels like I never left. The year has gone by so fast that nothing here seems out of place or surprisingly new. It's still beautiful here, but I didn't get that feeling of awe like I did last year. That's not to say I'm not excited, because that is definitely not the case. What makes Vassaro truly special is not just the location, but the people that choose to volunteer their time for 4 weeks (or in many cases more) out of the year to come to this place.

I'm glad to be back, it feels like a second home. Getting here was a litte interesting, though. Before I left, I was with my girlfriend Anna (who I met last year at Vassaro and is Swedish of course) who visited me and came with me to my family reunion. We got to my local airport, only to find out our flight was delayed indefinitely because of thunderstorms in Newark. To make things worse, all flights the next day to anywhere from my airport were full, so we were stuck with our flight. After waiting for around 4 hours, we missed our connecting flight to Stockholm. However, the airline showed us that two more flights left to Oslo and Munich about 3 hours later and that there was a "very likely" chance that we could make one of those flights.

Wrong. Instead we waited for about another hour and a half and got on the plane. With the flight time being about 45 minutes we thought we could make it with little time to spare. But instead, we sat in the airplane on the tarmac for another hour and as a result we missed the other two flights. When we finally landed, the weather was miraculously clear and all the flights were on time. It seems Newark was trying to catch up on its schedule and decided to ignore the flights from smaller airports no matter how long the delay was. Thanks.

Fortunately, we talked to someone at the ticket counter who got us seats on the same exact flight to Stockholm. Same time, just one day later. With some help (Thanks Mom and Dad), we spent the night and good part of the day at a hotel. We got on the flight next day and landed in Stockholm on time. A few days later, after spending some time at her summer house, we met up with the rest of the staff members and took the bus & boat to Vassaro.

I will admit I was suprised how fast things are getting started. I'm working at Fladan (the waterfront again), and today we spent the afternoon and evening fixing things on this giant list of things-to-do. Tomorrow, we spend all day with 50 scouts taking them sailing around the islands. The camp has a secret agent theme, and tomorrow, all of us instructors are going to be dressing up and acting as agents. This should be pretty interesting, and I think there will be some good pictures here soon.

I'm still jet-lagged, but right now, life is pretty good and I can't complain.

-Lukas