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.