Fall Weekend

Saturday I decided to participate in the local and somewhat cheesy Harvest Festival in the city park. For such a widely publicized event it was smaller than I expected but it was still pretty cute. I had a Swedish waffle and then bought a bottle of applemust from a cute, old Swedish couple.

I have no idea where I was at this point but it was nice to find.

Later that night I felt very Swedish with my Swedish yellow pea soup with mustard and the applemust I bought. Pretty delicious.


Today I attempted to ride the 8-9km route over to Lomma Beach. After about 5km in, riding with the wind directly blowing against me, I started to second guess my decision to go on this bike ride in the first place. But I still really wanted to get to the beach so I kept going. At this point it's so windy that there are tears streaming down my face and I realize that I have not seen one other person on the bike path, however, I still wanted to make it to Lomma.

So I kept going and then I get 2km away and I hit a freeway. The bike path veers left away from Lomma and the only way I see to get to Lomma is crossing the freeway over this highway bridge, but there's no way to cross to the right side of the highway to get on the bridge and get over the freeway. I'm utterly perplexed now and felt I had no choice but to turn around.

The only thing that salvaged the ride was seeing these super cute Swedish cows.

Slowly Becoming Normal

I have been getting more into my academic routine in the past week. My research group and I have made some great progress on the Iceland project and I've even been emailing with the Head of Information from the Ministry for the Environment in Iceland.


On Thursday I volunteered for a study for the Literature and Language Department. It's the one time where being a monolingual English speaker was actually an advantage! However, I hope I won't be forever. Although I'm not really sure how the researcher is going to use the data I got a free movie ticket for participating! And since a movie ticket costs about $15 here in Sweden that was actually a really good use of 30 minutes.


Like the rest of the week, Friday has been a very studious day. However I did take some time to saunter through the city and do some shopping. And good news, I finally bought a hair dryer! I realized my situation was desperate when I was going to the gym just so I could dry my hair, so I gave in today and spent $50 so I wouldn't have to worry about coordinating my activities around how long it takes my hair to dry.

OMG!

This exists somewhere!!!!!!

One month anniversary

Friday was my one month anniversary of being in Sweden. It doesn't really feel like it though because there are so many things I'm still confused about and I haven't been getting much better at understand Swedish, only at understanding English with different accents. Klara invited me over for a real Swedish seafood casserole that night. We enjoyed avoiding talking about our Iceland climate change project and instead delved into Swedish versus American politics and social welfare.


Saturday morning I attended a PhD dissertation defense for someone from the Human Ecology program, or programme, as they spell it here. It was a very academic, intellectual, and Swedish morning. Although the "opponent" said that his dissertation was so great that it was difficult to find any flaws in it, the discussion went over my 45 minutes. I was stuck in the middle of the row and so could not escape the nearly 3 hour session. Once the panel finished asking questions we were all invited to the top floor of the department building for drinks and appetizers. I finished a glass of sparkling cider and some sort of smoked salmon canape, but couldn't really stand to wait around anymore so I sped off on my bike through the rain wishing Kenneth Hermele well with "Land Matters".

To return the favor I invited Klara over for some Californian food for dinner. I used the enchilada sauce seasoning sent to me by Aggie Winters (the mother of one the first kids I was ever an RA for) to make enchiladas. Though they still aren't coming out quite like home, mostly due to the huge lack of cheddar cheese in Sweden, I still introduced my Swedish friend to some delicious Californian/Mexican cuisine. I also bought a really nice apple-strawberry applemust (which we had to research since Sweden apparently has five different terms to define what type of juice the juice is) that we finsihed drinking while Klara explained the importance of the Eurovision contest to me. Apparently Sweden won last year.

I decided that Sunday should be both a productive and a relaxing day so I used most of the morning to watch Top Chef Masters episodes that I missed after leaving the US, then made a BLTA on wheat, and walked to the Espresso House with Mehreen where we spent a couple hours playing the part of ever studious, coffee drinking Masters students. Now to balance things out I'm going to watch some missed episodes of The Real Housewives of New York City. Please don't judge me.

9/19

I don't have anything exciting to tell you about so far this week because I am being a good student. 

I've been catching up on reading and working on my project for Iceland with my research group. We've decided that we'll need to reach out to Iceland's Ministry for the Environment as well as the coordinating agencies also working on their Climate Change Strategy, including the Ministry of Fisheries, Ministry of Agriculture, etc. The group has decided that I will be the official correspondent for the project, mostly because English is my native language, and since none of us speak Icelandic we're going with English. I think our presentation for the project at the end of October will be pretty challenging. Anyone want to try saying Eyjafjallajökull (a volcano); Vatnajökull, Langjökull or Hofsjökull (glaciers) while still sounding professional?

While I'm now being introduced to Icelandic, Swedish is still a challenge. This week I went to a yoga class that was taught completely in Swedish. The only words I understood were in and ut, and I'm sure you can figure out what those mean. Luckily I have done enough yoga and pilates that I was already familiar with all the poses, I just didn't know when the instructor was telling us to do them.

I also come across this weird blog the other day that actually made me laugh harder than it should. Here is the king of Sweden Photoshopped to be wearing different kinds of hats in different settings. 

Saturday night-Event Masters

Saturday I worked as a photographer for the Exotic Hairstyles and Hats party for Event Masters. It was a very fun experience but I ended the night having to ride home in wine soaked jeans after accidentally sitting on someone's spilt drink. Not very cute.

Me, Idil, and Meriyem...

Friendly coat check guy bombed our picture.

PS - I apologize for doing this out of order. It's late for me.

Landskrona och Helsingborg

I was hoping to get some relaxing hiking in on Sunday. There was a tour organized by the school so I met up to go with Alexandra. Once the guide finally showed up at the train station, he told us it would be a 30km hike--which is not at all what I had in mind for a relaxing Sunday. We decided to start off with the group and take the train north to Landskrona. There is not much to say about or to see in Landskrona except the citadel.

But I did find this very strange statue...

We decided not to continue with the group and somehow found our way back to the Landskrona station. We weren't exactly sure how to get back so we stopped an older lady on the street and asked her if she spoke English. She didn't so I used my broken Swedish to ask about the train station and so we stood on the corner for a minute both gesticulating trying to tell each other what we meant.

So we hopped on another train and arrived in Helsingborg and were able to salvage our Sunday. Alex and I found the remains of a castle (built in the 1300's and fought over for years between the Danish and Swedish kings) and even had time to stop for a varm choklad by the yacht club before making our way back home.

View from just below the castle...

Our fika spot.

Science Stand Up

I was invited to attend Lund University's Science Stand Up today. Five researchers from different disciplines were allowed eight minutes each to present their current research in a fun and interesting way. We, the audience, then scored them and decided the winner.

Crazy partying engineering students in the square.

Student sitting on ancient rune stone to watch the performances.

The host, a famous Swedish comedian.

The computer science researcher wanted to make his presentation more exciting.

And I guess it worked because he won!

Busy, busy

It has been quite a hectic week here in Sweden. I've had problems with loan deferment, bank accounts, my cell phone, internet access, electricity, and with Lufthansa. Not to mention schoolwork. Despite being drained there were still some fun parts to the week.


Wednesday night most of us from the Human Ecology program celebrated what was supposed to be a traditional crayfish party, but was really more of a potluck. Idil and I brought traditional Swedish Princess Cake.

The party was held at the top floor of the Human Geography Department. The sun was shining and you could see all the way across the sea to Denmark.

It didn't quite look like this, but you get the idea.

After dinner and dessert a few of us headed to Cafe Ariman where we continued talking about upcoming projects, Swedish culture, sustainability issues, etc.

Thursday night I felt guilted into having some fun, so I went to Östgöta Nation's Novischfest. It was basically a big get together in the Nation where you could get dinner, buy beer and cider and get to know the rest of the new people in your mentor group a little better. Apparently my group has the theme of Peter Pan but I'm not really sure what that means yet. Although I didn't stay for the entire party I did enjoy some traditional Swedish yellow pea soup with mustard and Somersby pear cider.

Also this week, the list of the world's top 100 universities came out. Lund University ranked 71st, up from its position of 86th in 2011, and ranks as the number one university in Sweden.

Challenges Ahead

Today was a hot day in Lund--almost 80 degrees! I spent the morning in class, which, as per the Lund tradition, started 15 minutes after the hour, and then included a 20 minute break in the middle. They have a strange concept of class time here in Sweden.

Last week we were mysteriously told that we needed to form groups of four and select an island nation with a population of less than one million. My group selected Iceland. Today we found out that we will be working on a project about Iceland for the next two months. We will need to evaluate their climate change adaptation plan, analyze it, and make suggestions to the plan. We will then need to contact the Icelandic government and inform them of our findings! The goal is to have some kind of correspondence with them and they can either dismiss our findings or possibly incorporate them into their current plan. So we will see what happens!

Svartsengi Geothermal Power Plant - Rejkjanes Peninsula, Iceland

I spent the rest of the day reading in the sun and riding my bike around the city running errands, and the sunny day turned into a rainy evening.

St. Jakobs Kanelbulle

The cinnamon bun I awarded myself with for speaking Swedish last week:

Brännboll!

Today was the day for Brännboll! My mentor group De Sma Kotbullarna (AKA The Little Meatballs) competed against mentor group 19. Group 19 started the week off trying to get the mental edge on us with a website made specifically for the occasion and with this inspirational video:

I played the role of the "burner" and put my elementary school softball skills to use to help my team. Although we played really well we lost on a technicality by three points. It was really funny to see the lack of competitiveness from the Europeans. Three guys eventually just sat down on the field in the middle of the game to drink cider. And one of those three guys was supposed to be batting with our team! 

After the match I drove my bike home then headed over to the store where I was able to pick up some herbs. Notice it's hhhherbs here in Europe. I bought cilantro (called Coriander here) and basil (that's basil with a short a, people).

Kanelbullar och Knytkalas

Yesterday was a really productive day. I bought a couple more books that I needed for class and headed over to SEB to open a Swedish bank account--finally! After all the paperwork I passed by this really well-known bakery called St. Jakobs. I decided to go in and order a cinnamon bun for lunch. Not the healthiest choice, I know, but I had limited options. And for some reason I decided to order in Swedish. So I successfully had my first conversational exchange in Swedish! It was quite an achievement for me and so eating the cinnamon bun for lunch was my reward, I think.

That afternoon I baked the Jiffy cornbread I picked up at The American Store and decided to make some honey butter to go with it since I didn't really want to eat the Lactose-free butter that I accidentally bought.

After a couple hours of studying and baking I biked over to the Ole's house to meet the rest of The Little Meatballs for the Knytkalas (AKA Potluck). We were all supposed to bring something from our home country so there was my cornbread, tortilla chips and homemade salsa, Swedish chocolate cake (four of them!), an almond cream cake, fresh baguettes and brie, a ham hock, chicken tikka masala, ratatouille, these german pancake things and a few other really fun dishes. I was incredibly amused by how seemingly exotic the cornbread and honey butter was to all the Europeans--but every single one of them loved it!


Now I am off to the gym to start my day!

Gerdahallen

Today I didn't have class so I decided to finally head over to the gym and use my membership. You know how everyone says Swedish people are beautiful and athletic? A la Bjorn Borg and Ingrid Bergman?

Well, even with their great genes the Swedes become especially perfect when they go to the gym. I have never seen so many good-looking and athletic people all in one place before. Needless to say I was slightly intimidated. After a hard workout I went back to my flat to do some reading, more reading, and then some more reading.

The Swedish Lifestyle?

After two weeks in Sweden, I have lost so much weight that all of my pants are at least a little baggy and my shirts look too big. This is not really a bad thing, but I wish I had lost the weight before I bought three new pairs of jeans.    :/

And so it begins!

On Sunday I met with my mentor group and went to the Lund University Botanical Garden. It is a really beautiful place where lots of plant ecologists and researchers from the university work, but it is also a popular site for picnicking. They have huge greenhouses that make you feel like you're in Jurassic park and even have small island birds running around in them. However, on a very wintry day in can looks like this:

http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/p/m/117bb1/

After my tour I prepared for a potluck with some friends (from Turkey, Russia, and the Netherlands). I attempted to make a gratin dauphinois, however it didn't really turn out as planned...We still had fun though.  :)

After two weeks of really doing nothing I finally had my first day of class. The professor was this sort of hippie guy who is originally from Canada. He wore a peace sign necklace, a button-up shirt, jeans, and running shoes. Not exactly the Lund University professor I imagined. He gave us a general introduction to the course and discussed some basic things and then told us that by next week we would need to get into an interdisciplinary group of four and pick an island nation with a population of less than 1 million. He didn't tell us why but there will definitely be some kind of project focusing on small, isolated populations. So we'll see what that's about next week.

I formed a group with my friend from Turkey (specializes in Sociology), Hanyu from China (specializes in Foreign Language), and Klara from Sweden (I forget her specialty). So I think we have a pretty good group with mixed strengths.


Also, here is a picture from my last day of Swedish class with Idil and our very Swedish Swedish teacher, Frederik:

The Eve

First day of school is tomorrow! So happy it's finally here!

Today has been a nice day in Lund.

I started the morning by heading over to a local bike shop and purchasing my new bike! Although I was nervous about the price at first I feel very happy knowing that I supported a small, family run business and that the owner genuinely cares about the bikes that he is selling. He also gave me a free lock for the same price of the bike and told me that if it gets stolen I will be reimbursed for 100% of the price. I even get complimentary insurance with the purchase in case I fall off, which I thought was pretty funny.

After buying my bike I went with my friend Idil (from Turkey) to run some errands. We made copies for class, got our library cards, and then registered at östgöta nation!

One of the things I love about Lund University is the history, being from California, nothing around us is very old. So it feels very exciting to belong to Östgöta Nation, the oldest nation in Lund (started in 1668). 

The rest of my day was spent watching scary tv shows on Project Free TV.   :)