... And Then Some More Things Happened

The last post was about things that happened in the beginning of the month so I could catch up on the shameful drought of recent posting. This one will be about what has happened since then. Well, it's been mostly uneventful, with occasional eventfulness cropping up every now and again. Here are some of them.

I have started to take French again, I had originally decided to take both French and Russian at the beginning of the school year, but decided that three languages would be too much. I think I was right because Russian is HARD. Now that I have more of the language understood, I think I can take French too. That's the nice thing about the language class structure here. It's much more... open I guess is the best way to describe it. The only language classes that are actually structured into the schedule are English and S.F.I., (Svenska För Invandrar/Swedish For Immigrants).

I lost my wallet. Not that newsworthy but it was pretty stressful until I found it in what might have been the most obvious place ever.

I helped do a presentation on business which involved diversity and doing the actual presentation in English, which was relativly easy for me. I am always surprised by how good Swedes are at English. I try not to dwell on it though because when I do my self esteem plummets.

Perhaps the most noticable change has been Jul (Christmas). Many of our Christmas traditions are the same like Christmas trees and mistletoe and Christmas presents and those red flowers I can't remember the name of. In Sweden, Christmas is celebrated on the 24th and you get presents in the evening.

We have started drinking Glögg and Julmust. Julmust is a drink that is not entirely unlike Coke, yet neither is it the same thing. It is also the main reason why no one buys Coke during December. We also have pepparkakor, it's like gingerbread but thinner and more addicting. Then there are Julbords. It's like a smörgåsbord but specifically for Christmas. I went to one last Tuesday. Usually Julbords have raw herring, which seems to be something Swedes break out during the holidays. There was also raw salmon, smoked eel (which was raw), liver ground into little patties (probably raw), bacon (uncooked) and ham (not raw). I tried everything but ended up eating a lot of ham.

As for today, there was too much snow this morning and the buses couldn't run so I got to sleep in this morning until the afternoon. I'm looking forward to Scrubs, which will of course have Swedish subtitles and if the weather allows, I'm going to go to Ystad and hang out with my Costa Rican friend Gabe. I also rented "The Life of Brian" from the city library so I'll have to watch that at some point.

I'm not looking forward to writing a page long analysis about "Trainspotting" for my Filmkunskap class. I really liked the movie (which incidentally has nothing to do with either trains or spotting them and is actually about a bunch of Scottish heroin addicts), but I can't analys(ize?) to save my life. Or spell apparently.

Last, but certainly not least: One of my close friends and fellow exchange student Marguerite Truckey was sent home to Colorado on Monday. She was ridiculous, and that was probably my favorite thing about her. I already miss her ability to make people laugh. I miss her genorisity and her fearlessness. I miss her crazy dances.

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