... 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.

...

Some Things That Happened To Me

In Rotary we change host families at least once during the year. I think it's so we can get a broader perspective of the culture or something. Most people get two or three, although I'm already on my second and I'm switching again in Feburary.

I changed host families on December 1st to a family who lives in the nearby village of Glemmingebro (Gleh-min-geh-broo), or just Glemminge. It takes about 20 minutes to get to school in Ystad.

The town is known for about three things. The first is a massive rock in the middle of a field with a crack in it. It's called Klövasten, or Cleaved Stone. The second is Olof Viktors cafe, which was voted the best cafe in Sweden in 2007. I should mention that neither of these things are actually located in Glemminge itself and are just close enough to the village for them to be associated with each other. This is perhaps due to the third notible thing about Glemmingebro, and that is it's size. Or lack thereof. I think there about 370 residents. Like the rock and the cafe, most of them live in the surrounding area.

A traditional Swedish Christmas celebration is Sankta Lucia. It is usually celebrated on the 13th of December. Lunds Rotary Club decided to flaunt tradition and do a Luciafest on the 3rd. I went by train and met the others at the Grand Hotel in the middle of the city, or thereabouts.

We were a group of about 10 or so exchange students. We sat about in the lobby, meeting Rotarians and taking advantage of the free candy until Dagmar, a Rotarian, rounded us up and brought us upstairs into a large dining room where we met still more Rotarians. Dinner was turkey and potatoes. It was followed by a cake like substance that I can only describe as "cake". And "good".

Then after we had finished, a procession of singers in white dresses came in and sang some Swedisn Christmas songs. At the front was "Lucia", who had a crown of candles. At one point, the candles almost fell and there was a mad scramble to get it back on her head without burning her hair off. To their credit, the rest of the singers did a very good job of pretending like nothing was wrong.

Being Lucia is actually hazardous to your health. Not only do you have to support a candlebra with your head (getting wax dripped on you all the while), but the candles burn all the good breathing air which has caused many a Lucia to faint mid-song.

After Luciafest we wandered around Lund for a bit. While we were walking I noticed an interesting piece of honest advertising. It was a poster for perfume or something, across which was written "Utan halvnakna kvinnor skulle vi inte sälja ett skit", or "Without half-naked women, we wouldn't sell anything". Someone had written "Men hon är vacker/But she is pretty" underneath.
I am inclined to agree.

Eventually we headed to the train station. I thought I was going to be late because the next train to Malmö was leaving in four minutes so Minh and I ran to every of the six platforms before realizing it was the first one. Minh tried to run across the tracks to save time but he got yelled at by a conductor. In the end, our efforts were for nothing because another train came soon after that and I ended up sitting in the station for a half hour.

I finally came back at around 12:30 a.m. and had to wake up about five hours later for school. Huzzah.

Stockholm

Last weekend I traveled up to Swedens capital and largest city, Stockholm along with lots of other exchange students. On Friday night I took the bus to Lund, and from there I got on the night train to Stockholm Central. I was in a liggvagn, which is a sleeper car, in which I slept badly. At around six in the morning we arrived at the station. We weren't meeting the guides and hosts until around 10:00 a.m., so I spent the following three or so hours on a Burger King breakfast and reading my book.

Finally, everyone met up and we headed out into the city. We started off walking arouind and saw a lot of things: the Parliament building, the Prime Minister's office, a famous church where the Swedish royalty get married, the palace and Stor Torget (the big square) which ironically was quite small. After that, we were given about three hours of free time. I wandered around Gamla Stan (the Old Town) for a while. One of my friends bought a shirt that said: "Vodka, bringing people together".

After that we had a traditional Swedish meal, meatballs with mashed potatoes and gravy. On our way to the restaurant, we observed an anti-nazi ralley complete with chanting people with signs and police. When I left the restaurant after lunch, I could hear whistles blowing. As we continued up the street, a police car crashed into and knocked over one of those stub like structures that are supposed to discourage cars from driving into pedestrian only areas.

Having eaten, we went bovling (bowling)near the youth/travelers hostel where we would be staying. We stayed for about an hour which gave me time to do badly at two games. I did get one strike though. Then they gave us more free time before dinner, so we all split up and went our seperate ways. Me and a few others walked around and nearly succeeded in getting lost.

Dinner was spectacular. We ate at a fancy Italian restaurant. I had some of the greatest pork I've ever had. After dinner we lounged about and did some activities. One was a quiz about Sweden with questions about famous Swedish olympians, inventors and political parties. Then some of the exchange students who have been here the longest (from Austrailia and New Zealand, they come up and leave in January) and Swedish returning exchange students gave advice about being living in a foriegn country and exchange in general.

After that we were free until the next day, so me and some others stuck around in the foyer playing cards. We all played B.S., Much to our amazement, the Swedes didn't know what that was so we had to teach them. Then we played Texas Hold'Em betting with car-shaped candies called "Bilar". We did that until either they were all eaten or too disgusting to eat. What followed was an epic game of Egyptian Rat Screw, which went on for ages. I even earned a nickname from it. At one point, a drunk guy wandered in and we all sat in hushed silence and watched him stumble around until the manager helped him into the elevator.

During our card games, we were joined by a guy who was staying at the hostel as well. He sat down and introduced himself as Shan. He was interested in what we were doing in Sweden and our exchanges and explained that he was traveling the world with three of his friends before he went to college. It was really interesting to meet him and hear his stories.

The next day after breakfast we headed out to Skansen Djurpark (Zoo). There were lots of interesting animals to see, many of them native to Sweden. I saw seals, otters, bison, moose, wolves and some owls. There was a guy there taking photographs of the owls who started giving us a nice explanation about the species of owls and their habits right until a well meaning simile about the accuracy of owls' eyesight turned into a full-blown rant about the U.S. military operations in Afganistan. There was also an interesting glass blowing demonstation.

After lunch and goodbyes, Chad, Tony, Josh, Claire and I went back to Claires house in Stockholm and sat about for awhile. Chad, Josh and Tony were going to be staying for a few days before leaving for Helsinki on Tuesday and my return ticket wasn't until around midnight and I had some time to kill. We went out again shortly after and met up with other exchange students with badly scheduled tickets who were hanging around in the train station for a few hours.

It was a great evening, we were at a coffee house for a while (where I bought a chocolate ball for 25 crowns or a little over four dollars) and then ventured out into Gamla Stan again before returning to Claires house and watching "Crash". I didn't get to finish the movie because I had a train to catch, and an hour later, I was on the night train back to Lund. From there, the bus to Ystad. And from there, my long awaited bed. Where I stayed until about two in the afternoon.

Yrkedag

There was no class for the whole day today because we had a Yrkedag (Career Day). They had a schedule with different people representing different professions every 40 minutes. The first one I saw was an ekonom. I would guess that's an economist or something similar. He talked about different aspects of being an economist and the various things you can work with like international stuff, taxes, etc. It was kind of hard to follow but I caught the gist of it.

The next one I saw was a pilot. She showed us how a typical work week would go. For example, start in Copenhagen, go to Frankfurt, go back to Copenhagen, then fly to Helsinki and stay the night there. She talked about her responsibilities: checking the plane to make sure it's not leaking oil or anything as well as pre-flight preparations.

After lunch I went to the presentation for the "fastighetsmäcklare"'s, or real estate agents. They talked about what kind of education and personal characteristics you need to do their job. They also gave out pens and chocolate, so they were my favorite. Then we went back to a friends house and played Empire: Total War. I was the Prussians and I did really badly.

I'm going to Stockholm for the first time this weekend. Looking forward to it!

Köpenhamn Igen

I went to Copenhagen again yesterday. We met the Rotary people at the train station and then went across the bridge on the train. After we changed our money from Swedish to Danish crowns, we went to the Strøget. That's the main commercial street in Copenhagen.

There were a lot of shops to see, one of the biggest was H&M. It was just this huge building that went on and on and on. It was like 5 city blocks of one shop. Another interesting one was a tobacconists shop. They had about 500 pipes. Then there was a puzzle and game shop. They had board games, juggling balls, rubik's cubes, dice and books on magic tricks. There was a magician there too. He could shuffle a deck of cards with one hand.

After exploring and eating lunch, we went to the National Museum. There had a tour guide who could speak really good English and he took us around some of the major exhibits of Danish pre-history.



We started in the Stone Age and he showed us flint tools and how people hunted. There was an aurok (prehistoric super cow) that showed evidence of being wounded with both a flint arrow head and a flint spear. There was also some amber jewelry and skulls with holes drilled in the tops. He told us how they used to work for ages and ages on a really nice axe and then throw it in a lake as a sacrifice. That was also the beginning of agriculture in Denmark.

Next was the bronze age, Denmark didn't have any bronze so they had to trade it from further south. There were some really interesting daggers and shields from that time. In that exhibit there was an elk which they used to hunt. He showed us a grave that had two people in it. They had ochre on their bodies which had some kind of spiritual significance. He also told us how they could tell how old a grave was by carbon dating and tree trunk rings.

Finally we came to the Iron age. That was when the Vikings came into power in Denmark. He told us how they never wore horned helmets. Ever. There was a huge cauldron which was apparently used to collect the blood of dying war prisoners so that their last spasms could be used as a way of predicting how the battle would go. Interestingly, it was from Bulgaria, which means that the ancient Danes would have had to gone a long way to get it. Some of the last things he showed us where some golden drinking horns, a ship, and the runic writing system.

That was the last thing on the agenda, so after we were done with that, we just wandered around until it was time to leave.

Rainy Day

Today was supremely wet in every sense of the word. When I got back from Malmö I was soaked. Tomorrow some other exchange students and I are going to Copenhagen to look around and stuff. I'm looking forward to it, but I have to wake up early to catch the train. Blehhh...

This week went by fast for me. In psykologi we're learning about memory. She recited a bunch of numbers in sequence and we had to repeat them back to her. One girl got all 16 with only one mistake. Then she had us remember animals, and then a page with pictures, and finally we had to remember which profession was associated with which emotion (hairdresser = happy, policeman = worried, etc.).

We're studying Buddhism in Religion class, and end of the year accounting in Business. Russian is going well, and I'm having fun with it too. Some of my friends also did German and one of them is German so I've been picking up a little of that too.

I went to my first idrott class ever on Tuesday. It was the first time they were in the gym. The other times they were swimming or orienteering somewhere else I didn't know about. He had us do boxing drills for most of the time.

Yesterday I went out Christmas shopping for my family. I just hope that it won't be too expensive to send.

Pictures of Fall

I went around and took pictures today. Ystad has changed since summer. They say that winter has already started and that it will last for five months. It's already starting to get darker. I took a lot of photos, but here are some of the best:

Lebanese food. They have really good gyros.





I think this is one of the oldest churches in Skåne.



Means "The Power and the Holiness". It was outside the church, I think it was an exhibit.



Out in the courtyard of the house.



The rest of the pictures are on my photostream.