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.
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