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.

home for christmas

well i'm back at the homestead for a month. a month can be a long time. i hope this one is long.

Christmas time has always been one of my favorite times of year, if not my favorite. i love the way the decorations look and the beauty of new snow. i love the candles and the smells of christmas cookies and evergreen and the fire burning in the fire place. i like the excitement surrounding the day and the way everyone puts in some extra effort to get along. i like the music and giving gifts. but the thought occured to me that perhaps i like the christmas season so much because it is so distinctive from the rest of the year. it has so many of its own traditions and it's own unique excitement. I know it's not wonderful to everyone and it stresses a lot of people out, but I certainly enjoy the predictable change of christmas time.

then of course there is the far more important aspect of christmas- the reason for the season Himself- who we should always keep in focus, especially this time of year. I really like advent because it reminds us that we are not just waiting and preparing for Christmas morning when we remember how Jesus arrived as a baby but also we are waiting and preparing for when Christ comes again. Advent does a good job of putting the incarnation in context. The incarnation itself is rather mind-boggling. God, the supreme being of the universe, completely good and perfect, taking on the form of a man, even a baby. He obviously got to pick at what time and in what place he wanted to arrive- He chose in an over-crowded small city, in a stable amongst the livestock, to a girl who had gotten pregnant out of wedlock. He knew Jesus would grow up poor, and probably the object of some speculation if people in His small town of Nazareth knew about his bastard status. All of this I like to think about during advent. I like to think of how our God humbled himself to this extent so that He could show God's love to us. Christmas is not just about a star, some shepherds, and a manger. It's about God breaking through to us in human flesh so we could know him.

I always think it's cheesy when people say "Jesus is the best present you can get for Christmas" because really there would be no Christmas without him and kids don't really feel like Jesus is much of a present since you can't hold him in your hands or put him in the playstation. Still I do think the sentiment is right, that Jesus is the gift of God to an undeserving world. do we earn our Christmas presents from our parents? I know I never did. I'm pretty sure that even if I was bad they still would have gotten me something. God took it a lot further by dieing for us while we were still undeserving and offensive. There really is no point in Christmas without Good Friday, and no point having Good Friday without Easter. I appreciate the plan and process of it all. It started so long ago- it was the hope of Israel and because of God's goodness and generosity, it became the hope of the gentiles as well. so as we approach Christmas, I hope we can keep Christ in his rightful place at the center. It's always a challenge for me because the other good things are so distracting. Especially this year as I get ready to leave (I feel like I just got back!).

I have a feeling these next 4 weeks of nothing will be very busy. I always manage to make my empty schedule full. If nothing else, I will definitely enjoy friends and family and read some good books.

a little procrastination

so I should be going over some macroeconomics slides right now but i haven't yet worked up enough motivation. It's finals week and I can't believe how quickly this semester went by. Definitely the fastest yet. Anyway, in a few days i'll be done and i'll get to think about Christmas for a week. then i'll pack and get coffee with a bunch of people, spend as much time with stephen as his schedule allows, make a few bucks doing economics research, and fly off to sweden. it hardly seems real.

right now all i can think about are Peru's economic development policies from 1990 to 2000. i tried to study for econometrics this afternoon but it didn't feel very important. none of my exams really deserve much study time, at least that's how I feel at this point. i'm sick of doing work just like the rest of the student body. wouldn't it be nice if they could just teach us without any testing, sort of a 'get what you want for your tuition' sort of deal? unfortunately that would prohibit them from giving us degrees and i'm guessing that's what most people are here for. so economically, it would not be a good idea for the university, though I would enjoy it.

here are some preliminary thoughts on my trip to sweden which i will someday look back on to compare to my actual experiences. I expect it to be expensive but I really hope I can get over that and not be overly frugal so that I don't miss out on too many once-in-a-lifetime experiences. this is probably the only point in my life that i can afford to deplete my savings on european adventures so why not? the more i think about grad school, the more i think i won't go straight into it.

i will probably be pretty lonely at times. i know some alone time will do me good though I'm not sure how i'll react to being away so long (2 months more than I was in Peru). I'd like to do a lot of reading- more classics and some philosophy perhaps. i'm hoping that swedes sit in cafes and read. in peru it wasn't common at all. if I get homesick I suppose I can wonder around in IKEA or H&M. Too bad the exchange rate these days is pretty poor.

Exchange rates, interest rates, wage rates- all things I should be studying at this moment. It really is true that economics relates to almost every aspect of life. I can't help but look at life in terms of supply and demand, the free rider problem, and diminishing returns. I often wonder how I viewed the world before everything fell into rather neat economic graphs. Note to self: take an econometrics grad course next year.

Okay well perhaps I'll get back to work. Sweden still seems like an abstraction most of the time and the workload sitting on my shoulders prohibits me from ignoring the here and now. it doesn't really feel like Christmas time.

turnips and meat stuffing

change always surprises me. thanksgiving snuck up on me this year and as with anything that lacks a long excitement-filled count down period, it passed almost like any other day. don't get me wrong, it was nice to sit around with my family and catch up, but mostly it just reinforced my feeling that everything around me is changing at an ever accelerating pace as I continue to age. Sometimes I feel like the world should just stand still, in time and pose, while I get older and figure everything out. "little" michael, as we continue to call him, wasn't around this year because he joined the air force and is down in Florida training. my brother owns a condo now and when asked what he wants for Christmas, he said decorations for his house. tim and chris are both renting houses and dan will probably move in with chris after he graduates. my sis and tory are applying to college. Are my memories just so vivid? why does it feel like it was just yesterday that we were crawling around in Nana's family room pretending to be zoo animals or serving fake food to all the grown ups from our restaurant?

I still feel like my own life is like the marble I used to drop into the funnel of the marble works; it starts off going slowly around the wide rim of the funnel and gets faster and faster as it spins towards the bottom. again, the change is good, really good. it's just surprising. i keep making decisions that are keeping me on track (for what, i don't know exactly) or perhaps I'm not making decisions consciously so much as going along with what comes. Doing research is a good example. I asked one of my econ professors if she knew of any internships related to econ that I could look into for the summer. she told me she knew the director of the research center at uconn was looking for workers at the moment, sent me to him with a great recommendation, and the next thing I know I'm learning all about connecticut's healthcare system and contacting doctors' and dentists' associations and tracking down data sources. It all just sort of happened.

Sweden seems less real to me than my past trips. brazil, mexico, spain, peru- all were embarked on with the main purpose of serving God. Sweden is for study abroad, for me to travel and "see the world". It almost feels selfish, and perhaps that is why it still seems so abstract. it's also longer. really i get a little freaked out just thinking about it. i know i'll enjoy it but that it will also be hard. i also know that every time I come home, home tastes that much sweeter. when i arrived home from peru, i asked myself why i'm always in such a rush to leave. if this spring semester wasn't the best time, school speaking, to study abroad, i would've seriously considered pushing it back a little further because I've so enjoyed being home these last few months.

i think the change outside me just feels that much bigger because the change in my life seems so big. change used to be gradual. the story might vary a little from time to time, but it always had the same characters and same basic plot. now it has new characters (whom i am very thankful for) and new story lines, and the protagonist keeps running off to a new setting every few months. it is good that everyone else's worlds are changing and growing too- just hard to take it all in sometimes.

we still have turnips and meat stuffing every thanksgiving because my grandpa liked them. he died when i was seven. i can understand why nana still wants to have them tho (aside from the fact that a few of us have developed a taste for them), amidst the change in life, it's nice to keep some little things constant- i think it's calming to the human soul.