taking the plunge

I dyed my hair dark brown. I think I like it. I'll miss my natural hair color because it is rather unique, but I figure now is as good a time as any to try something a little different (perhaps quite different). here are some recent photos:

Eating pancakes with my corridormates. Texas and I sort of had a bake off, a friendly one of course.

Some corridormates and Kayla hanging out in our kitchen. From left to right: Kayla, Ali, Howard, Jonathan, and Texas.

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".

it's snowing!

I woke up this morning and noticed that my room seemed to be illuminated in a different sort of way. Opening the blinds confirmed my suspicion... snow! It's hard to believe there hasn't been any snow (except for a dusty one day that was gone by the next) since I got here. I thought Sweden = snow but apparently that was incorrect. All the Swedes point to global warming as the cause for the change and my corridor mate called this "the worst winter [he] can remember." It's actually been really nice for me because biking is our main mode of transportation and that's a bit easier to do without snow. I'm excited for the snow though, this town was meant to be blanketed this time of year.

I've been doing some cooking. Sunday night I made meatloaf for Kayla and Karina and last night I made enough stirfry to feed a whole family (so I'll just eat it for several days, it was yummy). So far I'm enjoying cooking for myself (which is good because eating out is so expensive) but I've noticed it's only possible for me here because I have so few structured activities. The reading is a bit of a burden but my class is pretty interesting so far and very few of my classmates have actually done it. Anyway, here are some pictures from our first sunday night dinner.

I joined Kalmar Nation. We didn't really know much about it when we joined, but it seems to be the punk/alternative scene. We went to a concert (a cool swedish band) and I was really wishing I had some of my vintage clothes because it was sort of an "anything goes except boring" uniform. Next time we'll punk it up a little. We had just spent the day in Stockholm (see facebook for pictures) so we were pretty tired and not dressed for the occasion. Stockholm was really beautiful and trendy. We went in 2 hardcore vintage clothing stores- there was no mistake about these clothes being from another era. Still, there was a heavy emphasis on loud and bright clothes from the 70's and 80's, which doesn't really appeal to me so I didn't buy anything. There was another store that had very avant guard fashion, some of which didn't look wearable in every day life but I guess in Sweden it's different. It's almost like you have to try. And you have to wear predominantly black. Some people wear only black every day. At home we might call these people emo or morbid, but here it's very socially exceptable and almost expected. I hope when the weather gets warmer people will break out the color because I brought a lot of colorful clothes and plan to wear them.

Swedes are an interesting breed (though they consider themselves quite boring actually). They are so reserved that it often comes off to me as rudeness. We walk around cities and grocery stores looking totally confused and lost and not a soul would dare open their mouth to help us. When we ask for help people are willing to help, but they avert their eyes from you until you speak to them. Forget talking to the person next to you on the train. Everyone puts in their headphones. It's not really so different from home, just more extreme, and since I like chatty and meeting new, random people, it feels a bit stifling at times. The international students are the exception (obviously, they aren't swedish) and they love to chat and meet everyone. This weekend a whole bunch of internationals are going on a little cruise from friday evening to sunday morning to Tallinn, Estonia. We'll only be in Tallinn for 8 hours or so, but it's cheap and should be really fun as long as I'm not horribly seasick.

Kayla and I both want to do some serious traveling around Europe (and she wants to go to Morocco) so if anyone reading this has a suggestion for a city we "just can't miss" please comment :) We're planning to do Russia for sure.

Sometimes it's strange to come 'home' here since this is really the first time I've ever felt like I live alone. Freshman year I had Karen and ever since I've had my suitmates (love you guys) so even though I was very independent in my wanderings around campus, I always had people to come home to. My corridor mates here are a pretty weak substitute and often are not around anyway. Still I think aside from it feeling very strange and a bit bare, I'm dong well with it. This is such an independent culture- it takes my natural loner-ness and amplifies it into a society's way of life. Students don't even feel particularly tied to their families since the state pays for all their education (and even gives them a stipend to live off so they can go away to school) and so their parents desires have no economic bearing of the students' choices. The elderly are also taken care of by the state, so there's not a lot of intergenerational interaction as far as I can tell. The whole system makes for a very "me-centered" life (which is similar to America of course).

One glaring difference with Americans is the desire to distinguish ourselves from the pack through hard work, and then be recognized and rewarded for it- while in Sweden there is this unspoken rule that no one can think they are better than anyone else and thus shouldn't want to make a lot of money (though plenty of them do) or draw attention to themself. My swedish friend david told me this unbelievable antecdote, I don't know if it's an exaggeration but here it is: An elderly person gets on a bus that is already filled with people. No one gets up to offer their seat and the older person will have to tell someone to get up (I believe this so far because I witnessed the same situation, and unfortunately for me, the old lady barked at me in Swedish and asked for my seat even though I was carrying/holding a ton of heavy stuff from IKEA). He say's no one will move until told to do so for this motivation: they don't want to act charitably because people will think they're doing it so people will think "oh that person is so charitable" and thus they will draw (positive) attention and recognition that will put them on a higher moral plain than the others around them, which isn't acceptable because they must all be the same. Also John (another swede who spent time in America) told me that it's super taboo to talk about salaries, even vaguely and among friends and family. You can only talk about it if you make a pathetically low amount and want to complain. I guess it's similar in the US, but just more extreme here. John says people here aren't supposed to desire to be rich. There's no "Swedish dream" to go from rags to riches (of course, almost no one here would fall into the 'rags' category).

Okay that's enough rambling for this morning. I'm going to go eat some leftovers and be sad that during the time I was writing this, the snow changed to rain and thus the snow will probably be gone soon. Please send mail! My address is:

Sernanders väg 6-137

752 61 UPPSALA Sweden

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.

I'm here, just busy!

I keep meaning to post here but just keep running out of hours in the day. They've been keeping all the new exchange students busy meeting each other and getting to know the nations system. Pretty fun stuff. Well I need to say more but now is not the time. I guess this is a pointless post. Yup. Yay for Sweden!

guess i'm going to sweden

Found this picture of Sweden. Looks cold and dark but hopeful. Hopefully the rest of this year will be less emotional than the past two days. I'm doing so much missing and I haven't even left.