This week was our first week of building! We were on site everyday, setting up material, prototyping, and moving forward in our design process! A bunch of logs and gravel that we ordered came in so a lot of the time was spent doing some heavy-duty lifting and moving the gravel and logs down to the site as well as cutting logs. We had pretty nice weather the whole week which made the days better!

On Monday we moved fencing down to the site and outlined where we would be working as well as marked out more of our paths. On Tuesday, I was part of the food and fika guru team so we had to go grocery shopping and cook for the entire group. We decided to make tacos and they were a hit! We underestimated a bit and ran out of food for ourselves, but it was a lesson learned for future groups. I’ve never cooked for a large group of people before, so it was definitely and fun and different experience that broke up the work we were doing on-site. We also got some cookies, fruit, and coffee for our two daily fikas. The rest of the week we enjoyed some really good Thai food and on Thursday to celebrate Midsummer, we had some traditional Swedish Midsummer food! It consisted mainly of bread, potatoes, and pickled herring of different flavors– I didn’t even know flavors of that existed, especially not earl gray flavor! On Midsummer we went out for lunch and went to the park at night.

During the week we got a good amount of work done on-site. We laid down and leveled pretty much all of the gravel and began placing the logs down for the base of our path. We are hoping to get almost all of the circle path done before we leave this week and I think we are on track for that. We had to change our design a lot to adapt to the changes in plans and environment, but having to redesign on the spot and think on our feet was a cool and applicable experience. Having to change plans and reach an agreement between the mechanical engineers, structural engineer, and architect was tricky, but made the process challenging and exciting. By the end of the week we had a lot done and were more than ready for a relaxing three-day weekend.

Over the weekend the group took a trip to Copenhagen for two days. It was super fun and definitely quite different than Gothenburg. It was a lot busier and more touristy, which was a fun change. We went to Christiania, or Freetown Christiania, where everyone is pretty free to do what they want, as the name implies. Then we saw Nyahvn and got really good street food at Reffen. The next morning we saw Rosenborg Castle, The National Gallery of Denmark, and the Botanical Gardens. We finished our trip with some good ice cream and headed back to Gothenburg for another week of building!

The last week came quick, but I hope it’s the most productive one yet!