End of Week 2

I had just finished writing this entry when I accidentally pasted over the entry and erased everything and blogger promptly saved my new version so there was no hope of getting my previous entry back. Here is my second attempt.

Thursday

Went grocery shopping with Nick at the larger and less expensive ICA supermarket near Flogsta. Laurie and Anneloes came over to our place to discuss possible travel arrangements. We ended up booking a cruise to Tallinn, Estonia for this coming Friday to Sunday. The cost for the five of us going, Franzi, Laurie, Anneloes, Nick, and me, was about $20 each! This includes a room for two nights on the boat and a 1.5-hour entrance to a day spa in Tallinn! We’ll be able to explore the rest of Tallinn for about 8 hours while the boat is docked there and then will sail back to Stockholm overnight. It is actually going to cost us more to get to and from Stockholm on train than the whole cruise. We will still have to figure out our own food and drink situation as well. We plan on getting to Stockholm early on Friday so we can explore some of it before boarding the cruise. We will definitely be looking into the cruises to Helsinki and Riga if we can get these prices again! We booked through the Swedish version of the cruise line Tallink and booking through the Swedish site was about 1/10th the cost of booking through their English site (they know how to take advantage of English speaking tourists!). After booking the cruise the four of us went to dinner at Snerikes. I ordered a salad that turned out to only consist of 5 spinach leaves, a crouton, and two slices of mozzarella cheese, not worth it. I also ordered this beer solely based on its name:

We decided not to go to Stockholms club night, but as we were walking by the nation to head home we realized the police were carefully following and watching us because they thought we were trying to jump a fence and sneak into the club for free.

Friday

I finally did laundry and didn’t struggle too much getting the machines to work for me. I then had a group meeting for a presentation we have on Monday. We are supposed to summarize the scientific findings on climate change as if we were presenting to a politician. There are four of us in the group, but only Magnus and I showed up for the meeting. We got a good outline set up and decided who would say what, but communication with the group has been very frustrating. Nick and I met up with the Minnesota girls Anna, Dawn, and Katie before heading out to Östgöta Nation (ÖG). I hadn't been there previously, but their club was pretty good and there was no queue when we arrived. Varmlands Nation also has their club Friday night and their line was extremely long. ÖG's club stayed open until 2am instead of the usual 1am, which is a big deal when the nations can do that.

Saturday

Nick and I went and paid our rent at Forex, which was a relatively easy process thankfully. We then went to the Systembolaget to stock up on beers. The Systembolaget closes at 3pm on Saturdays so we were there during the last weekend rush, which was very crazy. Got a donut from a vender on the main pedestrian mall for a delicious taste of home. Took it easy the rest of the day until meeting up with new friends before going to a corridor welcome party. It was a very big corridor and packed with people and there was also a DJ again with a very impressive sound system, these corridor parties are serious! Apparently the party was a little too good and what happens when something is too good? It doesn't last. In this case the police made sure of that by ending the party. The police seem to have a better relationship with the students here as no one was arrested or felt they needed to run and hide from the Police, as may be the case back home. The party dispersed slowly, but efficiently under the watch of the police and we headed back to Rackarbergsgatan for bed.

Sunday

Took it very easy today and did some homework for the coming week. Was supposed to meet with my group for our presentation, but again email communication was poor and it ended up falling through, so now we are meeting tomorrow a few hours before we present to finalize everything. It will be very nice to have this rather annoying little assignment behind me.

I am excited for classes and then our cruise this week. I think the cruise will really kick start more adventures and travels instead of just being in Uppsala, having class, and going to the pubs, clubs and parties. We are still trying to set up a time to go north to Lappland and are now leaning towards going in early March. Nick and I are also looking into going to Dublin for St. Patrick’s Day, which would be an amazing once in a lifetime experience. Some possible class schedule conflicts and possibly expensive flights still need to be looked at and resolved before we can book this trip though.

I also forgot to mention that on Wednesday I met a Swede, Jacob, who is considering studying at CU next year on exchange! He asked me a lot of questions about CU and Boulder and I think I left him with a pretty good impression of it all so hopefully he comes next year!

That’s all I have for now, this my second time writing this entry. Next new post at the latest by next Sunday after the cruise! One last picture I snapped of the river through downtown at night.

Hej då
Jesse