Long Post

Well... life has been just insanely crazy recently. Here is a quick recap and a promise to update more often and be a better blogger in the future! (Which should be easier now that I have an internet connection)

I went to the US, had a nice time. Visited my relatives.

David and I are now planning a wedding. We're engaged now. I bought the two rings while in the states. My ring has 3 diamonds and David's ring is a simple gold band. Swedish guys get engagement rings. The jewelery store seemed to think that it was a great idea and that American guys should also get engagement rings. The wedding is probably going to be in early June next year. I need to sit down with David's mom next week and figure out the guest list and get the exact date. Then my mom can start booking facilities and services.

The apartment fixing is going pretty well. David has ripped down most of the wallpaper and put a new floor into the bedroom. Now we just need to put new wallpaper up, paint, and do all the little details around the entire apartment. We might also have to remove wallpaper from one more room. Hopefully by the end of August at the latest we will have moved into our new place. My mom is being super kind and has offered me about 1,000 USD towards getting a washer and dryer. That will be just great! I just need to find something decent.

Peter was here visiting for the first week when I was back from the States. It was really fun. We went out and picked berries, sat around, drank wine, and generally celebrated David and my engagement. It works as a good substitute for the engagement party I won't get here in Sweden. I've pretty much resigned myself to not getting lots of the things here that I would get back home. But that's ok, because here is where I live and I've got a ton of things to do with trying to get the apartment ready.

Drivers' License. Apparently I have until I was registered in Sweden for a year to get my Swedish driver's license. So I've got until November or something. I've gone out trying to learn to drive a stick shift with David's car, but I've been having such problems with it. Then in the states I used my uncle's car to try learning. Man, what a difference. I figured out that most of the problems I had with driving are the fault of David's car. It's near impossible to drive I've decided! It's a good thing I've got 5 driving lessons from the driving school in town. I got them as a graduation present from David's family. At least this way I'll get some chance to practice in a car that is actually possible to drive! I miss my old car already. As soon as I get a decent job and have fixed the apartment, taken care of wedding expenses, and everything else that is really important, I'm going to try to find a nice automatic, easy to drive car for myself.

Oh, and the actual trip back from the states was hell. It ended up taking 3 days to go through 5 airports, and sit on 4 airplanes. I actually had British Airways pay for my hotel in Stockholm since their stupid flight delays cost me the last flight of the day. Then, of course, they lost my bags for awhile. I reported them missing on Thursday evening. On Saturday afternoon we got a phonecall that said they had my bags. When they came by they tried to give me one bag that wasn't mine. Yes, I was sure that it wasn't mine. I wanted a large green bag, NOT a small silver bag. The next evening (Sunday) they had managed to find and deliver my last bag. This time, despite the fact that my luggage ended up all over the entire world, only one item in my bags was broken. That is pretty impressive since I moved about half of my dishes here this trip. I lost one small bowl. I'll replace it at Christmas, so no big deal.

Now, I've still not managed to find myself a job. I've been applying for everything that I might possibly be able to handle, but no luck so far. So I'm going to study lots of Swedish in the next month and enroll myself in Swedish classes when they start up in the fall. Perhaps I'll sign up for math or economics classes or something too. Just something to get me out of the house and trying to improve my Swedish so that I have a better chance of getting a job.

Meanwhile... I'm keeping house. Cleaning, vacuuming, dusting, doing dishes, doing lots and lots of laundry, and then repeating all of this constantly. I swear, every time I wake up the house has been trashed again. I'm not quite sure how this happens. It's like magic! Now if only the magic worked the other way around and the house magically cleaned itself instead of magically becoming messy...

Now I promise I'll TRY at least to update this thing more often. I'll have all sorts of wedding plans, apartment progress, job searching, studying, and of course... cleaning to babble on about.

Oh. And I've decided that Sweden in the summer is a rain forest or something. It's only stopped raining for a couple of hours at a time since I got back.