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.

Dublin Day 3 & 4

Once we landed and got all our stuff sorted out and caught the shuttle back to our hostel it was about 5:30 pm. we went out for a quick bite to eat and then came back to our room to meet our other roommate, Josephine from Australia.

While in Paris we had made contact with a friend of ours, Talya who had also lived in the Hebrew Cluster of Language House last semester. At 11:15 pm we met Talya right outside of the very cool and imposing front gates of Trinity, and traveled to a local bar with late license (meaning they close not at 11:30pm like most of the other bars but at 2:30am) we hung out at the bar for a little but were all very tired and busy so we decided to meet up again the next day.

Joe went on a tour of the Cliffs of Moeher today, while I met Talya and got a feel for the local Irish College student life. We ran errands, did laundry, saw her dorm and wandered the campus. Talya had class at 4pm so once she went off to class.

Then Ilja a friend of hers, and now a friend of mine too showed me the museum section of the library (which we got in to for free because he is a Trinity Student) where the Book of Kells and a whole bunch of other very old and rare manuscripts are housed. I also overheard a tour guide telling her group that the library has not 1 but 2! copies of the original Gutenberg Bibles. I also saw the oldest surviving Irish hard, the one which is displayed on the flag of Ireland which was pretty impressive.

The second part of the museum section housed what was called the long room, which is apparently the Jedi library in Star wars and had many different old and rare objects and books, at the time the theme of the exhibitions was biology so all of the books on display and not on the racks were old pictures and diagrams and latin texts regarding flowers anatomy, and other biological stuff. very cool.

After the visit to the library I said goodbye to Ilja and made my way to the internet Cafe where I am now sitting, I created this blog, called many people who had been promised phone calls and updates and had not yet received them. I am planning to meet Joe around 7 pm back at the Hostel in the common room and see where the night takes us from there.

4 Days in Paris

**** *** Disclaimer: This Post in not going to be chronological but it will detail our acitvities in what i think is a coherent manner********

As soon as we landed in Paris I had 2 misconceptions on mine shattered immediately the first was that everyone in Europe speaks a modicum of English, and the second was that the French are stuck up and dislike Americans.

The first restaurant that we went to had a menu that had (somewhat accurate) English translations of all the dishes, but the staff between them spoke maybe 2 words of english, and Joe and I between the 2 of us spoke maybe 2 words of French. After much pointing and gesturing we got our order, mine was a burger with salad and Joe got lamb something (i think ribs but i am not sure.)

** Side note for Anthropology people reading the Blog: I found that my use of the restaurant Frame was utterly misplaced and i realized that I could not impose top down mode, and had to revert to bottom up mode while creating new and more useful frames as social expectations differed significantly. **

Our Hotel (notice the lack of an S this time we got a little bit fancier... probably because Joe did the booking) was a nice 2 star hotel within walking distance of the Eiffel tower and although our room was not what you would call spacious it suited our needs and budget perfectly, and with a Bakery right across the street and a supermarket that was open until 2 am 2 blocks away i was satisfied and content.

while in Paris although we enjoyed sleeping in (which i may add we did quite frequently a little bit because of jet lag more because we were lazy) we tried to go and see many place because after all... it is Paris.

so here is a quick list and if it warrant it further explanation of the sites we visited

• The Eiffel Tower: Of course this was one of the first places we visited, it was fun, although not nearly as tall as i thought it would be, lots of tourists fun gift shop, we took an elevator to the top which cost 7 £ each.
  
• The Louvre: At first we were planning to go and visit the Louvre on Monday although Joe was convinced that it was closed on Monday ("its either Monday or Tuesday its closed on, but Iam pretty sure its Monday") so we went on Tuesday only to find out that in fact it was during Tuesdays that the Louvre was closed so we got to see the outside and the triangles but that was about it
• The Jewish Quarter: we had some Schwarma Pita there (more expensive than the already expensive rest of paris) and wandered around a lot, always fun to be with Members of the Tribe.
• The Arch de Triumph: we actually saw this with our luggage still in our hands as we got off of the bus from the airport
• Cathédrale Notre Dame de Paris (the Home of Quasimodo and the Gargoyles): lots of fun, beautiful Gothic architecture very reminiscent to me of Westminster Abbey
• Montparnasse Section: Just another section of paris very trendy fun and late-nightish
• Pigalle: The less classy 'red-light' section of paris named by British Sailors after they discovered what was sold there
• Moulin Rouge: A world famous show, and the only show in Pigalle with a strict dress-code
• Louis Vitton Store: Just thought i should mention it since it is the headquarters of the overpriced brand

Everything in Paris was EXPENSIVE and although i am glad i saw it, the next time i come back i will make sure to bring with a lot more spending money. The food was all declicious and Fresh, the sandwiches made on fresh baguette bread, the crepes were made right in front of you, the cheese and wine were delicious.

the sites were all very fun and the French were NOTHING BUT FRIENDLY when they found out we were American, there was no condescension or arrogance which I stereotypically expected from them. which just showed me how Ethnocentric I was being.

On our last day in Paris we woke up early showered cleaned the room went across the street to the bakery bought our last tuna baguette and caught a shuttle from our hotel to the airport where we flew back to Dublin.

Dublin night 1&2

the first 2 days of our trip began in Dublin, after numerous and quite frustrating delays we landed at the Dublin airport and took the free shuttle to our hostel where I had an argument with the front desk about why they had charged my credit card for a random amount which they shouldnt have done, after about 20 minutes of arguing (during which Joe was asleep on the couch) we came to an agreement and the lady handed me a key which had a sticker with a room number and told me to go to room 21.

I however did not hear/understand what she said so i looked to the room key to see what number we were in and went to room 7 which turned out to be the nicest suite at the hostel. we stayed there for a night not realizing how lucky we were until the staff told us that the room was booked for the next night and we needed to move so then we got transfered to a room with 6 other people which was nowhere near as fun or nice.

After finally figuring out the whole lodging situation we were both quite tired and although we felt like falling asleep i demanded that we first go out and get Joe his first authentically Irish Pint of Guinness. Joe hates Guinness in the States and was pleasantly surprised to find that it tastes so much better in Ireland we then each ordered some food hung out a local pub listening to a band playing lots of popular American songs for an hour or two befriended one of the bartenders and then left to go back to the hostel.

on our way back we struck up a conversation with one of the locals who told us that we needed to go and see the local nightlife and not the one geared at tourists. Alan who was an Irish football player who studies at a University in the area (cant remember which) ended up taking us to the Purdy Kitchen a local pub where drinks are relatively cheap (although EVERYTHING is more expensive in Ireland especially because i have to pay with the euro) and there was a fun disco dance floor.

we ended up hanging out with Alan and his friends until about 2:30 AM when the pub closed and then instead of taking a taxi back i manged to successfully navigate our way to the Hostel that we were staying at. thus ended night 1.

on our second day in Dublin we both overslept because we were both Jetlagged and tired we woke up around 2:30 pm were planning to go touring but decided that it wasn't worth the price to catch a bus at that point because it was so late in the day the tours would soon stop running. instead we spent about 2 hours hammering out the rest of our travel plans and deciding what we were doing and where we were going, booking tickets and the such...... minor details of course.

We then went and got some food (Breakfast/lunch) at a Japanese all-you-can-eat Buffet. After that I bought a charger for the unlocked Israeli cellphone that I own only to discover that it was broken and spent most of the next hour trying to get it fixed. Once that failed and I refused to pay 30 Euro to fix the phone we went to the shopping center next door to hang out. Joe was enjoying looking at clothes but I was not Particularly interested so we decided to split up and meet back up at the entrance to the shopping center at 6 (at least that is what i heard) I had a great time frequenting all of the little tiny bookstores and coffee shops where they had a very different more *Irishy* atmosphere. At every bookstores i walked in to i would amass a pile of at least 10 books that i wanted to buy and then just as i was about to approach the cashier i would realize how impractical it was to travel/walk with that many books when i already had enough luggage to lug around so i would sadly put all of the books back and wave goodbye.

I then made my way back to the entrance of the shopping center and got there 15 minutes early at 5:45 and saw Joe there who asked where i had been for the past 15 minutes... apparently he thought we were meeting at 5:30 and i thought we were meeting at 6 OOPS.... after that mixup we went back to the hostel and showered and prepared for the night. this night we went to a whoel different area and did not intend on even going to the pubs as they were expensive and we had a flight to catch the next day.

Since it was friday we decided to go to Chabad for a meal, and looked up their address on the internet and took a taxi there because it was about and hour and a half walk from our hostel. Once we arrived and the Taxi drove off we realized that the house which we had arrived house was a vacant house with a for sale on it (Later we learned that for security reasons chabad does not list its true address on the internet .... great help for tourists like us....) After spending money on a taxi to get all of the way to where we were we decided to save money by walking back, and on our way to the hostel. On our way i made Joe stopped at 'the pav' which is the on-campus very cheap bar at trinity which i had discovered on my last visit to Ireland, after that we stopped at temple bar (the tourist area) and ran into 3 other Students from College Park that i know, (David & Josh Goldstein and Jonathan Siegel) so we ended up going to the Purdy Kitchen with them just to show them where to go and stayed there until about 12:30 when we made our way back to the hostel because we had to wake up early to check out and catch our shuttle to the airport so we could fly to Paris.

Thus ended the first half of our trip to Dublin

The time has come for another EPIC adventure

Hello again everybody

the time has come for another epic adventure so this time i have teamed up with Joe Paulson and we are traveling to Sweden in order to study abroad at Uppsala University. on our trip we plan to stay in first Dublin, then Paris, then Dublin again before we make our way over to Sweden where we are staying for 6 months. post describing day 1 is on its way.

I am particularly excited as Sweden and particularly Uppsala seems like a great place to learn about a whole new anthropological technique and learn how to anthropology appreciate a culture from my very introduction to it