jag heter michelle. jag kommer från USA. tack!

I've become more of a student in the last two weeks. I'm now taking Swedish class in addition to my political science or economic course each month so I'm actually in the classroom on a regular basis. Today was the exam for my political theory course and I didn't really realize how much material there was until it was too late to study at a reasonable pace. Thus Tuesday and Wednesday involved lots of reading, studying, and Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Therapy (which made the cramming a bit more pleasant). I love learning, but this was certainly no "ideal-type" situation. My exam today went from 1 to 5 pm and involved writing 4 seperate and full essays. Glad it's over now and I'm looking forward to my economic history class(which unfortunately starts tomorrow morning at 9).

In other news, I got a new bike! For those who didn't hear, my first bike was stolen about 2 weeks ago. My strategy this time was to buy a bike no one would want to steal. Unfortunately bikes here are soo expensive. I doubt anyone would pay more than $10 for this bike at a tag sale in the US and I paid quite a bit more. Oh well, it feels good to be out in the air again and to get places so much faster! No doubt I need some exercise after my pint of chocolate therapy.

Last weekend I attended my first Swedish gasque at Kalmar Nation (my nation). I put some pictures up on facebook but here are a few goodies:

(The cool pep band that played while we stood in the freezing cold waiting for all the nations to arrive at the University Main Building for our ceremonial entrance.)

The first course was AMAZING! Seriously, I didn't know toast with sundried tomotoes and artichokes could be so good. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that I was starving by the time we ate, but it was still really good. Of course gasque-ing and drinking (and singing!) all go hand in hand so we drank some swedish schnapps, beer, and wine. I can say with confidence that I'll never enjoy schnapps.

Also at the opening remarks of the recceqasque the University Choir preformed for us. Here is a clip (since I know you all want to know what singing in Swedish sounds like). I joined a different choir (the one at Kalmar) so I'll rehearse with them every Wednesday and then we sing at gasques and in the spring choir festival. It was really nice to sing with them on Wednesday, it's really going to help my swedish pronounciation and help me to get to know some Swedes better. I would love to be in a choir at home, but just don't have the time to be committed to it like I do here. Between the biking, singing, reading, learning for the sake of learning, and catching up on current events- I think my time here so far has been really fruitful. I'm learning to define productivity in a different way that's allowing me to chill out for a change.

I think that's a pretty solid update for now. I'm having fun planning for Stephen's visit and our trip to the UK and Ireland. I might even take two classes in March so I'll have the whole month of April off and won't have to worry about making things up. Being an exchange student allows for quite a bit of flexibility over here. Tomorrow afternoon I'm going to Copenhagen for the weekend, so stay tuned for a post on that.

am I swedish yet?

Between yesterday and today I took two steps closer to becoming a real European girl. I bought my first pair of euro-tight jeans (the waist is a bit higher and they are tight all the way to the ankle) and I got bangs, or as they call it here "fringe". I'm embracing the idea of assimilation and giving it my best shot. People continually speak to me in Swedish, but I think they'd probably do that no matter what I looked like. Still, I tell myself I'm playing the part well.

I took a boat cruise to tallinn, estonia, this past weekend. For those who know me and my history of severe motion sickness, you may be questioning the rationality behind such a decision. I just figured I'd have a good time until I got sick, which was the case. I won't be taking any more boat cruises, but I don't regret it. As far as estonia though, it was quite different from Sweden (Uppsala or Stockholm). They are obviously more similar to each other than to the US, given that they are both european, but the vibe was different. when I poke into the shops in sweden, I find all most all the clothing tasteful, but kayla and I couldn't help but remark on how gaudy a lot of the estonian fashion was. Not that fashionable clothes make or break a city, I'm considering erasing this whole last paragraph for fear that I sound very ethnocentric, but I'll leave it since it was my honest first impression. Also take into account that I was still feeling pretty sea sick all day and dreading going back on the boat. To top it off, there was intense wind and rain which made for a pretty miserable walk around the city.

Anyhow, the old section of Tallinn was really beautiful. The country is famous for making amber jewelry, which was quite lovely. I smiled to myself on seeing women with round fur hats. The alcohol was cheaper than here in Sweden (hence the reason most people went on the boat cruise) so I bought 2 bottles of wine, though I have no plans to open them soon. We ate lunch at a lovely italian restaurant looking over the main square. There were lots of pretty churches. Really I just love european cities for their old and weathered buildings. We climbed up a lot of stairs to look out over most of the old city below- it was postcard perfect.

In other news, we went to Kalmar tonight (our nation, where nation means student organization, of which there are 13 you can choose from as a student at uppsala university). They told us all about the nation and what we can be involved in there. Then we had a dinner and learned some of the swedish (drinking) songs that are sung at the gasques (fancy dinner parties). The choir sang for us too and I am planning to go see about joining it. I think that would be a fun way to learn some swedish. I just keep hoping that if I listen hard enough to people speaking swedish I'll magically understand, but I doubt this is the case so I should probably start working on that. Part of me sees no reason at all to expend effort learning a language I'll never use again, but then again, it would be quite useful now and what's the harm in knowing another language? Might come in handy some day.

My class is going quite well. We switched professors (which is quite normal here for them to do sort of tag-team teaching in their own specialty) and started talking about different models of democracy. It made me want to read up on the classics so I'll probably go pick up some aristotle and perhaps machiaveli's the prince. We talked a lot about feminism last week, and since sweden is known for being a more gender equal society than perhaps any other major country in the world, it has led to some very interesting discussions. I admit I hadn't spent much time formally considering the way society is constructed to reenforce gender roles. Still I don't like the idea of the government interfering with the way families choose to divide up tasks and responsibilities within the home. I doubt such a policy would ever be accepted in the US where we value our personal liberty above all else.

Well I should get to some reading. It's easy to fall into thinking that I have no work to do since there is only an exam in two weeks and that is the only grade for the course. In any event, time to learn about "the best of the degenerate forms of government".