Madeleine Tham Johansson

2009-10 Inbound from Sweden

Hometown: Falkenberg, Sweden

Sponsor: Falkenberg Rotary Club, District 2400, Sweden

Host: Fort Lauderdale Rotary Club, District 6990, Florida, USA

School: Cardinal Gibbons High School, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Bio

Madeleine's Bio

Hey! My name is Madeleine Tham Johansson and I’m from Falkenberg, Sweden. Falkenberg is situated on the west coast, 1 hour south of Göteborg (Gothenburg is our 2nd biggest city). I am 18 years old and when I go home to Sweden I will have one year left to do in gymnasium (the Swedish high school). I play a lot of golf, that’s like the only thing I do in the summer except go to the beach. The beach in Falkenberg is actually really nice, I would say nicer then Fort Lauderdale’s beaches. I’ve been playing golf since I was very young but I started to really like it when I was about 13. I also play tennis once in a while!

As I already mentioned, I live in Fort Lauderdale while I am here in Florida. I already love this city! You can do so much different things if you compare to Falkenberg. My host family is awesome and I have a host sister who is 17 years old. We live close to the beach and I love spending time there in the weekends. At my school I’m joining the girl’s golf team and I will join the tennis team in the spring!

I would like to thank Rotary for making me this year very good! This is something I will remember my whole life and it will be a great experience for suuuuure!

The Sweeede Madeleine!

September 21 Journal

My First Great Month + 8 days!

I came to Fort Lauderdale the 13th of August so I have been here for more than a month now and I do really like this place! My English has improved but it’s hard in some of my classes. I am on the golf team and I’m almost used to the heat now after a month.

My first weekend here we went to Leesburg with all the exchange students from Florida. It was so much fun to meet all the other people from all over the world who were as excited as me for this year in The States.

My second week, my school had a school dance which was a great experience, and American people don’t dance as dirty as I thought, haha. It’s a big difference from Swedes and Americans, I think Americans have so much more confidence.

I went to Britney Spears concert in Miami the 2nd of September and that was amazing! I went there with 4 other people and 2 of them go to my school. The tickets were only 20 dollars! This was a very good price because I heard people at school had to pay 100 dollars for their tickets (maybe they had better seats?) Our seats was actually pretty good.

Two weeks ago I want to Gainesville with my host family and another family. We saw the Gators play their first match for the season. They had chosen a very bad team, a team they would beat for sure. I think the score ended up with 60-3 to the GATORS! GO GATORS!!! That was the first football I’ve seen and it was so big, so much people, totally confusing and amazing!

I have been at the beach almost every weekend and it is so nice and the water is so warm almost not refreshing. I have heard so much about the sharks in Florida! That scares me a little when I am at the beach.

Yesterday I came home from Jupiter with my host family and my friend Hannah. The family we stayed with lived very close to the beach so I and Hannah went to the beach and the waves were huuuuge! It was so much fun to swim and dive in the waves.

As you maybe see, I am always busy, I have homework and golf almost every day after school! This is good because I’m never bored. (Except when I do my homework…)

Check out my nice pictures! The Swede Madeleine! 		On a boat ride with my host family	Orientation weekend - exchange students in Leesburg
Before the school dance (we had to wear white)	Me and Hannah at the Britney Spears concert	At the Britney Spears concert	The football game in Gainesville ... GO GATORS!

October 25 Journal

I love this place, Florida is aaawesome! Now when the weather is getting cooler and it’s not as humid as before it’s even better. I’m having a great time and meet nice people all the time.

Two weeks ago the exchange students in my district 6990 went to Everglades and Miami. We stayed at Diane’s house. She is an awesome woman and made us an awesome dinner and breakfast and her house was pretty awesome too!

Last night I had my homecoming dance and it was so much fun! I wore a green dress and high heels! When everybody started dancing all the girls took their shoes off, me too! Dancing with high heels doesn’t really work! The dance was held at a really fancy place called Signature Grand.

Tomorrow I am gonna play regional with the golf team because we got qualified from districts to regional last Monday. If we are in top 2 we are gonna play state next week!

Next weekend I’m going to Universal studios, Orlando for Halloween horror nights with some friends from school! I am so excited because I love scary things and stuff like this as Halloween doesn’t almost exist in Sweden. So my Halloween weekend is gonna be awesome I think! :D

See you

Madeleine

December 7 Journal

Xmas is coming closer and it’s such big deal here! And I looove it.

We got our Christmas tree last Thursday! It’s so different from what I’m used to. Okay! The first thing is that we never buy our Christmas tree, because we actually pick our tree in our forest. And the second thing is that we never bring the Christmas tree inside before the 20th of December!! Such big differences...

I played golf with Lloyd Rhodes and his wife today (he is in my Rotary club) and it was amazing weather and I actually played pretty well too! I still can’t believe I’m playing golf in December! Warm weather all year = golf all year! Pretty awesome.

I’m so excited for next weekend when we are going to Disney world in Orlando with all the exchange students!

Thanks Rotary for doing so much for us exchange students! I start realizing that this year is gonna be the best year ever and it would never happen without Rotary! Thanks for this opportunity and I’m so happy I went in the exchange program! Everyone that are considering to go on exchange, just do it you are never gonna regret it! It is a wonderful experience.
Lloyd and me at the golf club	Karin and me at the golf club	Playing my first round in December

April 6 Journal

Hey Madeleine is here again!

It took me a couple of months to make this report but I’m now going to tell you guys what I’ve been up to lately.

2nd semester at school is going really good and it’s going soooo fast!! It’s already April and I can’t believe that it’s less than 2 months till graduation (May 22nd). I have joined the tennis team and I’m a player in the 1st team out of 3 but I really miss the golf! Tennis takes a lot of time, we practice approx twice a week and we have around 2 matches a week and then in the weekends I’ve almost never time for golf. I hang out a lot with my friends, both exchange students and friends from school! I am really enjoying my time here.

During my 19th birthday, February 22nd, I was in Hawaii for a week with Belo USA. We were 39 exchange students from east United States and out of those 39 people we were 15 from Florida. I flew with Arno and Sanne from Ft Lauderdale – LA – Honolulu. It took us total 10 hours!! What a trip!! But we were more than excited to get to the paradise island Oahu in Hawaii.. During a week in Oahu we went boating on a catamaran, hiking up on a mountain to see the most beautiful view, snorkeling, tanning, swimming and SURFING for my first time! I also got to meet new people from all over the world that became friends forever.

The last day we got to know that a tsunami was going to hit the Hawaiian Islands because of the earthquake in Chile. To be honest I actually thought that I was going to die for a while but the wave was not supposed to hit before noon so we evacuated around 9 am after breakfast to a food mall up on a mountain. We all were tired and all the restaurants were closed just because of the tsunami warnings so we were up there in the mountain chilling watching the closed restaurants in the hot sun. 2 pm we returned back to the hotel and I was quite excited to see what the wave had done with our hotel and the beach that was across the street from the hotel.. But to my disappointment you couldn’t even see that there had been a tsunami. Just kidding, I was quite happy that the tsunami didn’t hit the island at all. After this exciting/scary day we had to say goodbye to everyone and that was really sad cuz I know that there might be some people that I might never see again. To be honest I really think that that was the best week of my life in the best year of my life.

This week my family is here visiting me! It’s really nice to see them again after more than 7 months and we went to Key West last week, shopping, we are going to Orlando, St. Augustine and Bahamas this week.

I have a lot of fun stuff coming up in April, May and June. Prom is going to be the 18th of April. Grad Bash is the 23rd of April and we are going to have access in Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. I am going to Bahamas in May with the exchange students. Graduation is the 22nd of May! The best of all is going to when we go to the west coast trip in the end of June!! That’s going to be awesome!!

As I probably can read and see at the pictures I am really enjoying it here and I’m not too excited to go home in July. Take care. Love Madeleine

May 19 Journal

My 9 months here has been really good! I can’t imagine me leaving this place in less than 2 months. It feels unfair, 9 months ago I said good bye to my family and friends back home in Sweden and now I have to say good bye to my friends and family here. In a few days Al from Turkey is going home and I have some good friends here that are going to summer school up in Orlando, Tallahassee etc. so soon I have to say good bye to some friends.

The hardest part is going to be to say good bye to my host family that I have stayed with all my year here. I’m really going to miss them!

Some updates!!

Two weeks ago I went to visit Zeeshan and Guro up in Fernandina Beach! It was a lot of fun to them see them and hanging out with them. I have made so many good friends this year and I can’t wait to go in the west coast trip with a lot of them.

Last weekend I went to Freeport, Bahamas and we had such a good time over there. We flew over there Thursday morning and got back Sunday noon. We spend mostly of the time on the beach, they threw a beach party for us and the last day we got to swim with dolphins, that was like a dream coming true. This was the last days we spend together with all the exchange students from district 6990. (I have to mention that Kwan couldn’t make it which was sad so we were not the whole group but almost.) Gabriel and Shekirah (outbound to Brazil) they planned all weekend for us and did such a great job! A lot of thanks to both of you.

My sister is coming in less than 3 weeks and I can’t wait to see her! I’m going to show her south Florida and I’m counting down right now! Love, Madeleine

July 5 Journal

Two weeks on the west coast of the United States was AMAZING! We started in Phoenix and went to Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, LA, Yosemite and San Francisco. To be honest I had the 2 best weeks of my life. I saw stuff that I never thought I would see, like when we got off the busses in Grand Canyon and the view looked like a picture and people started to run towards it because it was hard to believe that it was real. We also experienced other stuff like a limo ride in Las Vegas, walking over the Golden Gate Bridge, we got totally wet after hiking up to a waterfall in Yosemite, but the best thing was to spend 2 whole weeks with 50 awesome exchange students. I never thought 51 people could get that close in 2 weeks, but already after 1 week we felt like a family that had known each other for forever! It was so hard to say good bye to each other the last day. Pretty much everyone was crying because realizing that we all 51 are never going to be together again was hard.

These last days I’ve been saying good bye to Tim that went home to Germany, Bellina that went home to Taiwan, Gabriel that went home to Brazil and tomorrow I’m saying good bye to Marco and Arnaud. This is so sad; it’s like saying good bye to family members, because we really are like a family. The good part is that now I have reasons to go all over the world!!

I have 8 more days of my exchange year and it’s hard to understand that a year can pass that fast. And it’s not just any year.. It’s actually been the best year in my life! I have grown so much as a person, become more independent, speak English as good as my native language, Swedish, and I’ve met so many awesome people this year and they are the biggest reason why my year has become this successful.

Take care Love Madeleine