People!

On my way home from class earlier this week I was somewhat alone in a usually busy area in my neighborhood. In front of me, on a bench were sitting a pair of boys who didn't appear very Swedish and spoke broken Swedish. I was the only one besides them on the bike path then and all of a sudden they throw a glass bottle against the back of the grocery store on the other side of the bike path. Ugh! Glass everywhere. Why do people do so stupid things? When immigrants behave like that it makes my life much more difficult. I was very tempted to get off of my bike and lecture them, but my common sense won out. People shouldn't trash their own neighborhoods, it's just stupid. There are enough broken bottles around without people adding more on purpose. And it isn't like they sweep the streets and paths as often as they do back in Chico. The glass will likely just stay there for a long time. It'll probably give some people flat tires as well.

LAG

The internet is soooo slow right now. But I suppose that is typical for a Sunday night.

In the news today, not doing much. Mostly I'm sitting in here blogging while David and his friend play some NHL game on the xbox. David is getting ready to leave for China in less than a week and he'll be gone for 5 weeks. EEK! I guess I REALLY need to find myself some friends here ASAP or else I'm in for a VERY depressing month. Somehow I don't think I'd get much studying done if I am depressed. I think I should go get some work done at the nations. I could use the extra cash.

David bought me the cutest little teddy bear last week. It's little and like CUTE and stuff. If I ever get around to it, I should take some more pictures and post them into my album. Maybe I'll take one of my new teddy bear. I haven't really named him yet, but I'm thinking Lille Nalle or something like that.

I still don't have a personal number, a bank account, or much of anything of my own. This makes me nervous since my safety net (aka David) will be taking off for a long time. I'm in a bit of a panic mode thinking of 'what if!' There are so many things that could go wrong and right now when something confuses me or gets messed up, I turn to David. Soon I'll have to figure things out on my own. That's really pretty scary!

Ok, this is really starting to be even more nonsense than usual. I'm going to bed I think. I'm a lot better now, but I still cough quite a bit and I'm tired a lot. Being sick sucks, but I'm back to school again tomorrow.

I hate colds!

Colds just never seem to end! Anyways, I've mostly finished my paper that is due Monday. I just need to write the conclusion and proofread it. It isn't a great paper, heck, it isn't even a good paper, but I wrote it. Anyways, I'm going to babble in Swedish for a minute because I'm tired and actually somewhat willing to for once.

Jag är så trött! Jag har varit forkylled hela vecken! Jag var lycklig att jag inte hade mycket skolan. Jag kan inte stava alls. Idag har jag fått en present av David. En ny mjukdjur! Just nu hatar jag tid. Varfor kan man sä ikväll och menar den här natten men om man sä imorgon det menar inte idag men dagen efter idag? Jag kunde lära mig att hatar svenska... Och det är Davids fel att jag är sjuk. Jag är i den här landet for att vara med han, darfor det ar hans fel att jag ar sjuk! Han tror mig inte. Nu ska jag sova jag tror. Natti natti. ZzZzZzZzZz (host host host host host)

Host host

I ended up with a nasty little cold this weekend. It's starting to develop into a cough again. Why oh why do I always end up sick in Sweden?

Anyways, this weekend was a lot of fun. Friday night my class party was nice. We sat at Snerkis and had a nice dinner and just talked. I've decided that some of my classmates get a bit shallow when drunk, but I guess we all do. Oh, and they forgot to feed some of us dinner. When the other half of the table was getting dessert, we complained and they freaked out and it was generally much fun.

Saturday morning I was a bit tired, but not too bad. We spent the day relaxing then we ate a late lunch around 3. That way we'd have food in our stomachs before the gasque. David looked soooo cute in his fancy jacket and nice shoes. It was good we ate early because the food took forever to get there. And long before food we had worked our way through a couple of drinks. With our 250 SEK dinner tickets we got 2 glasses of white wine, a drink before dinner, a beer/cider, a snaps, a portvin, and an avec. We also got a three course sit down dinner with entertainment. That isn't really a bad deal when you think about it. We also had the option of buying 6 cl snaps for 25 SEK. I did NOT drink all of the alcohol I was given, or even most of it. It was way too much for me, but Swedes seem to drink a lot at parties. Quite cheap, even for a nation. We met several really nice people and sang lots of songs. I think David was glad we went with me. Even if he wasn't a new student or a varmlands member.

Sunday I woke up with a really horrible cold. I spent the day doing nothing. It was nice. On Monday I dragged myself to class and when I got home David made me drink some soup and go to bed. I slept for more than 2 hours before dinner. Today I think I'm going to just take it calm and maybe study a bit for my paper if I start feeling better. Our next 5 page paper isn't due until Monday morning. I think that gives me plenty of time.

Sometime before this weekend I need to figure out how to get a birthday party together for Peter. He's turning 30 and therefore needs a big party!

I'm still alive!

Life here has been a bit crazy, but I'm still alive. Since I last wrote I have taken part in the culture night in town, gotten my new passport, dealt with the internet dying multiple times, and had the cable stop working. I've attended several classes and worked a bunch on a paper. I've read books and studied and played way too much X-Box when I didn't want to do anything else.

Culture night was fun, even if it was overrun by drunk 12-16 year olds. Keeping in mind that the drinking age here is 18 to even buy people's beer with a lower alcohol content. I ran into a bunch of classmates that night. I got to want Tong perform at the center for Chinese Swedish something or other. She danced this really pretty dance. We ate dinner at Norrlands then pretty much aimlessly wandered from one place to another before heading home. I got to spend some time with Helena, which is always a promise for a fun evening.

My passport arrived on Monday and David spent 20 minutes today getting frusterated with migrationsverket before giving up on them ever answering their phones. I need to get ahold of them eventually so I can figure out what paperwork I need to fill out, what things I need, and if I can just mail everything in.

The internet (which usually means our router) seems to be dying a lot lately. Although part of it last week was really due to someone screwing up their router and it shutting down the whole grid in the area. The cable stopped working today because they digitalized Uppsala and we didn't get a new digital box. David figured that one out after 20 minutes on hold with the cable people. They say we'll have a new box in two days and we'll have cable again then.

On Friday night I will be going out with my classmates for a nice dinner. On Saturday night I'll be going with David to a gasque. oy oy oy! It's going to be a rough weekend! But since I won't have anything at all to do over the weekend in terms of school work, I can afford to party a bit. It should make up for the fact that I'm working quite hard this week to get my paper done by Friday.

I'll have to remember to let you people know how this coming weekend goes. I'll try to update more often, internet connection and free time willing.

Sweden is Expensive!

I've been calculating my costs for various bills and expenses during class today. EEK!

2400 - Rent (half of rent)
1500 - Food
200 - Cell phone
200 - Shampoo/toothpaste/etc
275 - Cable/Internet/TV
250 - Apartment phone
100 - Electricity

That's almost 5,000 SEK for just the expected monthly stuff with no play money! Right now the bills should be a bit lower since we're splitting phone/rent/electricity with Jenny as well. But planning for the expected highest costs is what I do best.

I've had a lot of other expenses since I got to Sweden as well.
1000 - New bike
80 - new inner tubes for said bike when tires went flat
760 - new passport
450 - student union fees
941 - for the books I've bought so far... Course literature is expensive!
175 - Cable startup fee
400 - IKEA trip to get places to put my stuff in David's room.

And that doesn't even include food, bus fares, train fares, occasional alcohol money, or much of anything fun. Living sure is expensive even when you mostly just study and try to get important things done! I've gone through 869.76 USD since I've arrived in Sweden. That's 6262 SEK at the rate of 7.2 SEK per USD. That's a LOT Of money to have spent in such a short time! And that doesn't include the money I owe David for rent/phone/cable/etc. He's being nice enough to pay them until I get my bank account working. BAH!

First day of school

Yesterday was my first day of school. It was exciting, but nerve destroying. I had a few nice surprises though. One of the first people I see when I get there is my friend Helena from Estonia. She studied here with me as an exchange student and she came back too. There is another boy in the same situation and perhaps a Swedish girl.

The professor worries me a bit though. Sometimes he is hard to understand and I don't understand his organizational methods at all. So far I have a list of books, no idea when I need them by, what they look like, or anything. I'm having problems finding one of them even online because the published year is different. He says we need the second edition, but I'm not sure if the published year is wrong on his paper, or I just can't find the new edition anywhere. I also don't know much of anything that's going on in the class. We spent like 2 hours yesterday (without a break!) going around in a circle. I feel like everyone in there has more experience in this type of fiend than I do. There are students who have worked long periods of time then came back to study more, those who have traveled a lot, and those who are very serious about their studies. I feel like a butterfly that has flirted around with many topics and hasn't decided on one to be serious about yet. Our professor started lecturing us on how we should start narrowing down what we want to write about now. I have no idea how to do that! Eek!

Last weekend David and I went to a party. Sunday I basically slept the whole day, and whined a lot. David had a bad headache and didn't do much either. The party was Russian theme. We drank vodka, listened to Russian music, and ate Russian snacks (pickles dipped in honey, dipped in sour cream, then eaten after a shot of vodka).

David is leaving for China at the end of this month and will be gone until the 2nd week in November. What am I going to do by myself in this new land for 5 weeks! Jenny will be gone as well. Woe is me! Woe is me! Alone! I think I need to start leaving the apartment more often and making some friends. I think I'll be doing a lot of studying too. I REALLY want to write some very impressive papers and get as perfect of grades as I can. It will be hard since so many of those in my class are very serious students. Good grades might help me get a better job (or a job at all) once I leave university. At this point I'd be even happy to get a PhD spot if I could manage that. I don't like researching, but it would be a job that paid money. Those spots are nearly impossible to get though from what I understand.

David and I also went to Stockholm last Thursday and turned my paperwork in at the Irish Embassy. They say it should only take 2 weeks to get a new passport mailed to me. Finding the Irish Embassy was somewhat difficult. It's quite a ways from the center of town to begin with. It's on a residential street. In a residential building. On the fourth floor. Inside an apartment. No flag, nothing. You really only know it's there if you have the address already. The only sign that it was located in the embassy was the small name sign, like the other apartments, but said 'Irish Embassy.' But in two weeks David and I can travel to the immigration office and try and get me a personal number so that I can exist again.

Tonight David and I are going to try to make his mom's spaghetti sauce. We got the recipe from her last night. We'll see if it turns out better than when I've tried to make it in the past. Wish us luck!