Week 4

This week was a really relaxing one for me, i have finally begun to settle into a routine here. Now when i wander i know how to get places, and i have people to hang out with which is an advantage when you are not a local. on monday i had class and got into an argument with one of my professors because i felt that he made a very blanket and incorrect statement, he was an anthropology professor who stated that there were no set formulas, laws, or patterns that govern human behavior. After that i headed home and got started on my homework and went to sleep because i had a lot of stuff to do on tuesday. 

On tuesday i woke up and went into town in order to pick up a package that my mom had sent me, a package which had warm wool gloves in it, thank god. then i headed back home and began planning the rest of my day, i talked to my friends and was planning to go to play floorball- again when i spoke to Joe and realized that our friend Elena who was visiting here from america was only here for one more night so i decided to go and meet them at a nation (varmlands) who was having a club night, we had a fun time hanging out and i learned about another traditional swedish drink which is served in 3 separate shot glasses, i really cant describe it any further however because it was loud at the club and i could not hear a thing my friend said when he purchased the drink for us. It was a fun night and i only ended up going to sleep at about 3am.

Wednesday was poker night and our group has been growing exponentially we went from barely having 6 people to 12 guys and gals. during the day i went shopping and did my laundry all very important things.

On thursday i had our video conference where we had a conference with costa rica, honduras, autrailia, Cornell (USA), and us in Sweden. the conference itself took a total of 2 and a half hours and involved a lot of sitting and talking about sustainability.  i spent most of the time mastering the game of Reversi which i have installed on my computer. after class i met up with my friend and had a fika during which we had some coffee and food and just hung out. afterwards we went over to stockholm nation where they had a club night, this nation was huge there were at least 15 different grand ballrooms that i went into that had at least 150 people in each, the place is huge i had a lot of fun exploring and ran into a few friends of mine who had just returned from a trip to the north of sweden.

on Friday I went into town and looked for the tax office, it took me a long time once i finally found it, it was too late and the office had closed for the day and i was still unsure as to weather or not i had gone to the right place. The rest of the day i spent mostly on errands lots of little things that i had put off doing. One exciting event that stood out however was that Kate my friend from class told me that Ryanair was having a sale on tickets so i signed on to the website and found very cheap airplane tickets to fly to amsterdam, so i am going to go to amsterdam on march 3rd to go and visit my cousin Valentijn very exciting. 

Saturday was spent mostly just hanging out and putzing around i went to the sauna that we have upstairs and did a little bit more shopping. at night i went into town and attended the afterparty for a gasque (fancy dressy ball) at Smallands nation with my swedish friend eric. that was fun and i got to meet his sister and friends. we spent some time hanging out and had a lot of fun. 

Sunday was sadly dedicated mostly to doing homework and preparing for my class on monday i went to the gym and discovered that they refuse to have a scale anywhere in the gym because apparently it can make people feel bad... a silly policy which annoyed me quite a bit. that was pretty much week 4, also i officially hit a month in sweden on thursday which was pretty exciting because i felt like i fit in more more updates coming soon

Updates are here

The long awaited update to the blog is here I would like to first thank everyone for waiting and being patient with me.

I will attempt to update chronologically by week

Week 3

This week began with the Superbowl party which me and my neighbors organized it was lots of fun and my first time visiting the ‘Systembolage’. But first a quick explanation of the liquor laws here. In Sweden you only have to be 18 years old to buy beer, and you can purchase beer at many convenience stores however all of the beer sold at convenience stores can only be up to 3.5% alcohol if you wish to purchase anything stronger you must go to the only store that sells it, the Systembolage (aka systema) which is a store owned by the government that sells all types of alcohol at very jacked-up prices. Anyway back to my adventures, so we went to the systema and bought beers there because if you buy beer at the systema they have beer anywhere from 3.5% to 10% Alcohol by Volume.

The superbowl party itself was lots of fun the only problem with it was that the superbowl in America started at 6pm, which is 12pm for Sweden. The game only ended at 4:15 Am and we were all so very exhausted but it was a well-spent night, I was disappointed that those damm Steelers won.

Then on Monday Joe asked me to meet our friend Elena at the Train station as she was coming in to visit him and he was in class, she was supposed to arrive at the train station at 1:30ish (pm), I got there at 1pm and stayed at the station waiting until 3:15pm unsure of where Elena was or what had happened to her, until 1:45 I was in contact with joe, but then the entire 3 (phone company) network in Uppsala crashed which meant that I could neither make nor receive any phone calls or text messages.
I felt bad but I had to get to class so I left for class and made it just in time, (on Mondays I have 4 hours of class) and then made my way home where I had a message on my skype telling me that Elena’s flight had been delayed and don’t worry she is still alive, at which point I was quite relieved.

I had actually also accumulated quite a large amount of homework at this point so I spent some time on Tuesday and Wednesday taking care of (some of) that.

Tuesday nights here have actually become some of my favorite nights because I now go along with a group of about 15 other local people give or take a few to a school where they rent out the gym and play floorball (similar to hokey without ice or skates) for a couple hours. Ever time we finish playing I am exhausted but thrilled that I improved, my first time playing I did ok on defense but did not like having the ball passed to me. Last time we played however, I scored my first goal from half court, a very exciting moment for me. I am also considering going to watch a professional floorball game at some point because here it is a very big and popular sport.

Wednesday night I had the option of either going to punk rock concert or playing poker, in the end I chose to have a poker night with my neighbors and had a blast just hanging out with the guys, and winning 2nd place out of 6 people.

I also visited another few of the nations this week, I went to Varmlands for their club night, and I visited V-dala nation for their jazz night both of which were entertaining. It is now Sunday and I am spending my time updating my blog and doing homework that I have been putting off all week another update to come soon

Cheers

Week 2

This was an exciting week for me, I met a lot of new people, both international students and Swedish students and began to acclimate and familiarize myself with the surroundings here. I began by introducing my self to our neighbors who turned out to be some pretty cool Swedish guys, and spent a night of learning Swedish swearwords and playing Swedish card games, I also spent some time hanging our with a bunch of cool aussies (Austrailians) who live/hang out a lot in my corridor.

This week I also set out to finally buy a phone, I had been having a lot of bad luck trying to find the phone and model that I wanted (skypephone by 3) and my frustration only increased tenfold because I do not speak a (polite) word of Swedish. Then my Buddy Matilda who is awesome and has already helped me out a whole bunch finally helped me call the company and get to the bottom of the situation after which there was a phone in the post for me supposed to arrive in 2 days. 4 days later the phone arrived and I needed to go to the supermarket to pick it up, once I got there the clerk spent about 20 minutes looking for my package but could not find it anywhere so they told me to come back the next day. The next day I came back and finally picked up my phoned and was ready to start using it, only I noticed that every time the phone was turned on it would stay on for about 5 minutes and arbitrarily restart, so I had to send that phone in and am currently using a ‘standby’ phone waiting for my replacement to arrive (Matilda is convinced that I am cursed and I am also starting to believe her, I have gone through no less than 5 phones since I left the states)

Anyway back to my week, Erik one of my new Swedish friends invited me to an afterski party, which basically involves food, drinking, singing, dancing, and limbo. It was lots of fun, so much fun that I decided to join the nation at which this party took place (Norrlands).

I also found a place here that makes not great but decent scwarma which made me happy, and was escorted by a friend to a supermarket that sells all sorts of middle eastern food (zaatar, humus, pita, lafa, Turkish coffee…) that made me happy and gave me a nice meal without worrying about ham which everything here seems to have. I found a nice coffeeshop called Wayne’s Coffee which is very similar to starbucks only it is Swedish, but I liked hanging out there a lot.

This was also the week my second class, People Power and Food a global seminar on sustainability started. This class is really cool we have 5 different classrooms from 5 different places (Cornell USA, Melbourne Australia, Uppsala Sweden, EARTH Costa Rica, Zamorrano Honduras). All five of these classrooms participate and interact with each other through the internet, we have chat-rooms that every student and professor has access to and submits on, and we also have a 2.5 hour video conference every 2 weeks with all 5 classrooms participating, whenever a student writes a paper the professors collaborate on a grade so instead of needing to please one professor I have to please 6 (Cornell has 2) all that said however it is a very exciting class and I hope to learn a lot from it.

This week I also had the opportunity to work at OG nation in the kitchen and had a blast doing it, I helped prepare some of the entrée’s and then I served all of the appetizers and deserts, I enjoyed the atmosphere much more and got paid an hourly wage instead of a nightly one.

Also this week I had to observe a Swedish setting for my Swedish society class, so I chose to observe the coffee place which I liked and spent nearly an hour recording various pieces of data for the class, and laughing to myself because the assignment was very similar to the one that I assigned to my students when I was a TA for introduction to anthropology albeit this was slightly more advanced. I noticed that Swedish people are very polite and have no problem waiting in line (unlike Israelis who will cut the line even if there is only 1 person), I also noticed that they were very patient with the staff, in the states when I worked at starbucks if people were made to wait over 2 minutes in line then they got very agitated here very fast, at Wayne’s however I noticed people waiting in line for as long as 25 minutes without a squeak something which reflected their upbringing, discipline, and the pace at which life progresses here.

Week 1 (continued)

This week was full of mostly boring things that do not bear too much mentioning, I did a lot of shopping and errands, was rejected when I tried to open a Swedish bank account, bought a blanket, paid my rent for all 6 months, converted some money, and other little boring things.

Also during this week I decided that it was time for me to find a job, and after some discussion with my fellow students I discovered that the best place for me to find a job would be at one of the 13 nations (nations here are similar to the houses in harry potter, everyone has to belong to one and each nation has its own events every week standup, club, pub, restaurant, fika (coffee chat) and other things). Both Joe and I on our 3rd day here met up and had dinner at Kalymar Nation where I later asked if they needed anyone to do anything in the kitchen they gave me a sign up sheet and that was it I had a job.

I showed up on Tuesday ready to work and discovered that the first Tuesday of every month was one of the most popular days because they had a comedy club event which apparently was the place to be. After a night of flipping many burgers and trying (and failing) to understand the standup which was all 100% in Swedish I left back to my dorms and fell asleep with the knowledge that the job at Kalymar was fun but paid horribly, about 120 SEK (about 15 dollars) for 6.5 hours of work.

So I decided to find another job one that pays better even if only slightly so, and after talking to one of the other people who live in my apartment I was invited to work at OG nation working in the kitchen and at the bar, but that is a story for week 2.

On Sunday I went into town hoping to do all of the shopping and errands that needed to be done, I caught the bus at about 3:30 and discovered that on Sundays in Uppsala EVERYTHING and I mean every single thing closes at 4pm latest, except for the text that had been erected to protest the Israeli slaughter in Gaza and the loud Muslim lady who stood yelling on the street corner and burning children’s clothing. I was so mad (because everything was closed) and annoyed, while wandering around lost I stumbled upon the only store in the area, which happened to be open until 5pm (how late). The store was a department store located on the main shopping square of town, I go most of what I needed there and felt that the week had not been a total waste.

I also started my first class this week, the class is called Swedish Society and Everyday life, and the first lecture was mostly busy work and an introduction to the class, although there was one thing I thought would be interesting to share on here. Apparently in Sweden they have very strict copyright laws, so strict in fact that they have an actual copyright police who go to universities and make sure that professors are not infringing on copyright by making copies of articles and works for their students, because it is only legal in Sweden to make a copy of a work for yourself and for no-one else. So how are we to do the 120 readings for the class you might ask? Well the Anthropology department has 2 mailbox’s that belong to imaginary professors, in these mailbox’s they put all of our readings which we are allowed to make copies of for ourselves only and then have to put back for the rest of the class. Apparently this is 100% legal whereas if the professor made the copies for us even though we would have the same end result it would be illegal, oh Bureaucracy at its finest huh?

in sweden

Hello all

i do not have time for a long detailed post right now as me and some of the other exchange students are about to have a communal dinner, i made sauteed chicken breast with red peppers and onions.

i am having a fun time adjusting and dealing with culture shock, today when i went to the supermarket i spent about as much time shopping as i did asking people what is what because there is no english translation on the products that thye sell here. I now know what the milk, butter, chicken breast and laudry detergent look like all very useful information to me.

today and yesterday i overslep because i was so tired and jettlagged however tommorow classes start so i am setting my alarm to get up nice and early. yesterday i woke up and went to town aimelessly wandered around looking for a skypephone form a certain company and after being redirected 3 different time to other stores was told that the phones could only be ordered on the internet. i had a good time and went to a few different nations (sort of like students clubs or to use a harry potter refrence like houses, they also look like the houses in harry potter) to have a good meal and find some work to do, on tuesday i am going to help in the kitchen of Kalymar nation to make food.

today i woke up at noon and went searching for the gym, i found it after a little gamooling about and then after a tour in broken english bought a 6 month subscription to the gym but couldnt work out because you have to bring an "inside pair" of shoes tobe used only inside the gym so that the floors dont get too dirty.

After that i went into town (a 20 minute bus ride) and did some shopping for vaious articles i needed, such as clothing, towels, pillows, and nail clippers .... all very exciting of course.

i ran into a problem finding somwhere to buy stuff however as apparently on Sundays everything in Uppsala closes at 4pm and i only got into town around 4:15. I got very lucky however and found the only department store that is open until 5 (wow how late) and then made my way back home after some serious shopping. i am now sitting at my friends desk and updating my blog but i am hungry and that food smells declicious, so i am going to go and eat it now keep your eyes peeled for a more detailed update coming soon.

PS my phone number in Uppsala is (+46) 076 2080 192 looking forward to hearing from you.

Leaving Dublin and arriving in Sweden

yesterday we left dublin at 4am in the morning and took a taxi to the airport at 4am. once we cleared security i realized that i had left my coat that my parents bought me in the taxi and got very angry, since we had talked a lot to the taxi driver we remembered his name and found his dj website on google.

I called the driver on a public telephone and he told me that once he had realized i left my coat in the taxi he turned around and left it with the information desk along with a description of what i looked like. i then spen about 40 minutes sprinting from one endof the airport to the next until i finally ran into some friendly airport police who got me special authorization to leave and re-enter the terminal. once i had my coat in hand i retured to the gate and about 15 minutes later boarding began and we were off to sweden.

the first thing i noticed once we arrived in the area was that there were a lot of lakes below the airplane and that they were all EVERY SINGLE ONE was frozen. the weather here is regularly -29 Celcius so im very glad i have my coat back, from the airport we took a bus to stockholm and a train to Uppsala, where we met my international buddy Matilda who showed us around. Then we went to take care of lots of bureaucracy which is not that interesting. we also got our first look at Uppsala which was fun.

Keep in mind the whole time we were both very sleep deprived so there will be better descriptions and pictures to follow once i have my own personal internet connection. basically Uppsala is a town and the campus is heavily incorporated into the town in the form of buildings all over the place. There is no central campus where all of the students go, rather buildings are divided by departments or colleges so Behavioral and social sciences goes to one while Mathematics go to another, these building are where all of your advisors reside and where you take classes. then i went back to my dorn and unpacked and fell asleep until 2pm the next day. me an joe are now about to go shopping for stuff so ill keep you updated later.