Hello Sweden!

Well, here I am in Stockholm, Sweden. I am sitting at a computer in my bedroom at my host's house. David dropped me off at the airport at 9:30 PM on Sunday after he and Katia provided me with cookies and books for the plane ride. So after a three hour delay out of Salt Lake making me leave at 2:30 AM, I arrived in Newark where I had to wait another nine hours before my flight to Sweden. However, with the help of Dave and Katia's cookies and books, I finally got to Arlanda Airport this morning at 7 AM.

I met Julie, another girl in my group, at the airport and we waited until our director, Chip Oscarson, came to meet us. We all then took a bus ride into Stockholm where we got our bus/metro passes and met up with Madeleine. After dropping our stuff off at our respective housing locations, Julie, Madeleine, and I went into the old city, Gamla Stan, to eat lunch and look around a bit. We ate sandwiches and got some pretty good ice cream (glass) and then walked around and saw St. George slaying the dragon (a statue of it actually :) ), the Royal Palace, a few different churches, and walked along the water. Since Julie and I were both so exhausted what with jet lag and not having slept much on our flights, we called it a day at about 3:30.

Julie and Madeleine rode the metro with me a little ways, then took a bus back to their host family's house and I rode the metro a bit further and after buying some apricots for dinner and breakfast along with Dave and Katia's last cookies (which will be fine until I can go to a grocery store), I walked about a mile up the road to where I will live. My host is Irene Karlsson and she lives here with her 18-year-old daughter, Emma. They both seem really nice and my bedroom, which I will share with Brittany, is very cute and comfortable. I tried to stay awake, but alas, I fell asleep reading and just woke up a half hour ago at 9 PM after a 3 hour nap and I am not very surprised to see it still light at 9:40 PM. Hopefully, I will be tired enough to sleep well tonight and get my body on this new Swedish time schedule.

Sweden is very beautiful and so green. It's kind of fun to fit into the population. With my blonde hair I can fit in as a Swede (unlike Jerusalem where it just got me cat calls :)) and it is fun to have the people start talking to me in Swedish before I ruin the fun and tell them I do not speak Swedish yet. I have started learning more though by just being here one day, so I'm hoping I will be able to pick it up pretty quickly hearing it all the time. Now I'm going to go eat dinner and make myself stay awake until my roommate, Brittany, gets here at 11 PM.

P.S. Sorry if this seems disjointed and rambling. I am still running on very little sleep and am only half awake after my nap. :)
P.P.S. Despite my best attempts, I cannot figure out how to get pictures on this computer. Since everything is in Swedish I can't really resolve the problem, so I will have to wait until I can use Brittany's computer to post some pictures.

Random Facts

A ~ Each person has to list 6 facts/habits about them.
B ~ After part A, go to 6 people's blogs and leave a comment letting them know to read your blog, and that they have been tagged. List at the end of your posting who you have tagged.

1. I love watching all the credits put to music at the end of movies.

2. I have very violent sudden shivers that are not always induced by cold, but often occur at very random times.

3. I always bite popsicles and hard candy. I can't just suck on them.

4. I have been known to sleep walk although sleep talking is much more common for me.

5. I've eaten some cow tongue and a fish eyeball.

6. My biggest pet peeve with bad drivers is when they don't use their blinker.

I tag whoever feels like doing this. Sorry, boring and a cop-out I know. :)

Work work work

Words start to look really strange when you type them too much. After I typed work three times I wasn't sure if that was how it was spelled. I should know how to spell it since I've been working 8 hours a day lately. Ugh. No, it's not too bad. It's kind of nice not to have to worry about classes and to have my evenings free. Plus, I'm earning lots of money to spend in Sweden.

Now, to update on the crossword news. My roommate and I do the New York Times Crossword puzzle contained in the Daily Universe every day. Unfortunately, because of the break between Winter and Spring classes, we were left without a newspaper and therefore we also lacked a crossword. We were quite despondent, but this week the paper was started again and we are once again happily doing our crossword puzzle every night. Not so happily last night, however. Thursday's puzzle seems to be the hardest to both my roommate and I and last night there were a few that were ridiculously obscure. For example, the clue on one of them was "Do trailers?" What the heck does that even mean? After finishing every other part of the puzzle but that one little section, we were so frustrated. We racked our brains for so long on that one. At first we thought it was something like a hemi engine that would make a truck stronger to pull trailers, but that did not fit well with the other words. Finally we finished the other one and found that it was remi and even though we didn't understand it in the slightest, we called it quits. After that, we looked up online to find if there was any explanation of it. Thanks to Rex Parker's blog on Crosswords, we found that it was actually two words: re mi. Do Re Mi. Oh my heck, we were so angry. What kind of clue is that anyway? Trailers? He should have put something like "Do followers" or some other word that makes sense.

Well, that is the update on the crossword. I don't think we'll get to Friday's today because of our other roommate's birthday celebration. We're going to go see "Made of Honor." I hope it's good. It looks pretty funny. Okay, back to work.

Here Come Finals

Well, classes are over and it's now time to buckle down and study for finals. It's so hard to stay motivated right now. The only way I get through finals week is to tell myself that it will all be over in a week and then I can relax.

So, I have this custom of doing the crossword every night with my roommate and we have been slacking off lately, but last night we finished it so fast. We were so proud of ourselves. Later that night, after all the boyfriends went home at midnight, we all watched The Bachelor, a new tradition that we started last week. After that my roommates and I recorded ourselves making strange noises with our mouthes characterized as "machine gun" or "weed eater." I felt bad for our neighbors: here we are at 1 AM making all this ruckus and they are probably trying to sleep. It was definitely a good roommate bonding night though. :)

Time to go study for finals!