hej hej

well it's about time i started blogging so here we go. I now live in Uppsala, Sweden. Getting here went pretty smoothly, though I took a wrong turn in the airport in Iceland and ended up leaving the airport briefly (I took like 3 steps outside to get to the airport entrance) before catching my connection. So I guess I can say I've been to Iceland- the airport was really cool and modern. I arrived in Stockholm last Wednesday around noon and took a train to Uppsala. I met a Canandian, Vanaka, on the train who was coming here to study too. My department had arranged for Marcus to pick me up at the station and he showed me around the first day. It was also through his friend that I bought a bike, so that was good. It's about a 20 minute ride into the city or a 45 minute walk from my building.
I went on 2 pub crawls last weekend, which probably sounds worse than it was, I don't think anyone was drunk because we took it really slow (started at 6 pm and finished around 1 am). All the student 'nations' have their own pubs that serve students (for much cheaper than alcohol elsewhere) so being a student here is really the best position to be in. You have to join a nation so I joined Kalmar. It's known for being friendly to international students as well as having a great pub and hosting lots of live music. All the nations have formal dinners every so often, so that should be fun too.
I started my class yesterday. I'm taking Political Theory, and it's mostly a philosophy discussion of what government should look like and why. I think later we'll talk about democracy. You take one class at a time (though I might take a swedish class too) for about a month. My class only has 11 formal meetings and then 3 times you're supposed to meet with a discussion group so most of the work is done on your own in the form of readings.
Cooking has been interesting. Tonight I had rice with some cashews. I need to buy some meat, probably fish, and figure out how to cook that. The nations serve food that's somewhat affordable, but every time you eat out you're paying at least $8 for your food, $10 for anything that could be called a meal. The kebab place is the cheapest I've found so far, and it's pretty tasty but probably not too good for you.
I decorated my room with pictures I brought and some IKEA stuff. I bought some boots because every single girl here wears them all the time. The clothes are really expensive so I probably won't do much actual shopping, just a lot of window shopping because everything is really fashionable. Okay well, more to come later.