Blake is picking up the slack for me

It turns out moving to Sweden hasnt been the vacation I thought it would be. I have had a lot of fun, but this class is super time consuming. And when I have weekends off I like to go explore... which I did last weekend, which left me no time to study for my big test tomorrow until this week, which left me no time to post a blog (which I shouldnt even be doing right now, but here we are, so I might as well keep it going). But the godo news is that after my test tomorrow I am done with this stupid class! Huzzzah!

But anyways, so last Friday Blake and I went on another feildtrip with my class. Blake already wrote about it and I dont have time, so if you are curious, here you go: Landskrona.

Then Friday night we went to our friend Ulrika's cabin in the south which was amazing for several reasons. A) The weather was amazing for a change. B) Ulrika has a Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier. (She has a headlamp on her head because we were about to go out in the dark. She's Swedish, so she is normally quite stylish).

C) Blake, Bjorn and I went swimming in the ocean at 2 am. (We also went to the beach the next day where I was the only brunette out of several 100 people, which is weird, FYI)

Blake is triumphant during the cold walk back to the cabin:
The action doesnt stop there, on Sunday, Blake, and 2 of my friends from my program, Michelle and Astrid, checked out my first European soccer match in Malmo. Blake also documented this and so I'm not going to. Check it out!

There are no words for this.

Ok, maybe there are a few. I have made a few references to the people in my program (most from California). One person you may have heard me mention is Daniel- AKA: Swedish Sapphire. His belt always matches his shoes, which is why I love him. My goal is to get him referenced in a South Park episode. That is all I can say, these videos do the rest:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTZZVQk02XU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7EOfGNyP10&feature=related

Hi, My name is...

Clara apparently. So at first I didnt really notice that everytime I would introduce myself, people would repeat, "Cordny?" and I would say, yeah, "Court-ney" I never really realized that they never really got it. (I know I do the same thing when I cant pronounce someones name... we all remember the "what's your name, Coon?" story.) So anyways, someone in my class was complaining about how hard it is to pronounce words in Swedish (because it is!) and our teacher started saying how there are words in English that are hard to say too, like, well, Courtney. I took immediate offense, of course, but then she said, no, say your name. So i did. And she goes, notice how the tn sound is almost swallowed? Sure enough, it is! And so my teacher goes, yeah, we should just call you Clara. And so now she sometimes does.

And now I notice how no non-americans can say my name right. This is going to be a long year....

Best way to spend a Sunday

So as I have told some people, the weather here isnt so great, so we havent had a chance to check out the beach that is pretty close by. But we had a nice day on Sunday (not hot, but not raining, so we will take what we can get) and decided to ride our bikes out to Lomma Beach. It is about 7 km (4.5 miles for you pesky americans out there keeping track. Oh yeah, thats all of you. Oh, and me.) and we didnt really know where we were going, and we were riding into a head wind the whole time, and I saw cute cows and wanted to take a picture and my bike tipped over which was carrying our dinner and I spilled baked beans all over the place, and then Blake so kindly cleaned them up while I got this picture:
But after some confusion and a hard bike ride, we finally got there with most of our dinner intact, and it was gorgeous:So we have this gorgeous beach, some amazing food, a "En Gångs Grill" (One-time grill), the sun is shining, and, oh- the wind is blowing like crazy. No really, it was hard to walk in it was blowing so hard. Not wanting to ruin our chicken, we found the ugliest place on the beach and fought some swedish hobos for the spot:
(I'm just kidding about the hobos, although if I were a hobo and wanted to get out of the wind, this is where I would go.)

At least the Swedes, being pretty environmental and all (except for the one-use grills, which I am sure are terrible for the environment) use all this excecss wind for a good purpose- there are windmills everywhere here:

We got some pretty nice shots of the beautiful countryside and the beach that you should check out....right... wait for it...here.

Old houses and Rocks

This last Saturday, my program arranged another pretty good feild trip (hey- it is better than class!) and we first went to Glimmingehus (see the picture above where I am checking out the safety precautions - you can never be too sure around moats.) Glimmingehus is Scandinavia's best preserved medieval fortress. It was built in 1499 by a knight who was obsessed with protection. Here is Blake looking out for peasant uprisings (per usual):
After a tour, we headed to the southern coast to check out Ale Stanar in Kåseberga. Ales Stenar is like a mini-stonehedge with 59 rocks, sorry, I mean stones, that are in the shape of a ship. No one knows how old they are, or why they are there, and since we werent going to be able to solve this unsolved mystery on an empty stomach, we spent most of our there time eating delicious smoked salmon. Yummy. After lunch (which really was the best part of the day) we headed up to see the stones:

After getting bored relatively quickly we started playing around the cliffs. And then I fell:
To see how this adventure ends (oh no! The suspense!)- check out the rest of the pics.

Best Picture Ever

At my going away party in Seattle we tried a Bacon-Chocolate Martini (my group of friends in Seattle are obsessed with bacon so much that they entered a road rally and dedicated their car to bacon) and in case you wonder what that tastes like, I think Grant sums it up best with this blog post:

CLICK ON ME TO CHECK OUT BACON-TINI!!!!

Good times at Carlsberg Brewery

So on Sunday, we decided to venture out to Denmark again and check out Carlsberg brewery, which is the equivalent of Buweiser here in Europe (except better tasting, which is suprising, because most Swedish beer is terrible, but I digress.)

It was about a mile walk to the brewery from the subway stop, but the entire area had a lot of cool details, like these elephants:
It was a self-guided tour which we unfortunately cut short because a) the beer tasting was closing at 4 and we got there a little late (too many elephant pics!) and b) the other patrons checking out the museum had the worst B.O. that I have ever smelled in my life and I couldnt stand to be around them any longer.

Here I am enjoying some of the good stuff:

There were a bunch of empty glasses which I couldnt resist taking a picture of:
Flashback to my 24th birthday (thanks to Blake for putting together the collage of the 7 pictures of beer glasses I took that night):
After the brewery we met up with Charlotte and Oli who live in Copenhagen, and they gave us a little tour of the city. If you are bored at work, or if you are genuinley curious- the rest of our pics from the day are here.

A weekend off.. finally!

So after my stupid test, at least they rewarded us by giving us a 3 day weekend. Blake and I thought about going somewhere random, like Warsaw, but decided to check out things around here instead. We started off with a trip to Helsingborg on Saturday, which is an hour or so train ride north of Lund. I was pretty excited because last time we went to Helsingborg (in December) it was cold, and the main thing to see- the medieval fortress, Kärnan, was closed.

Here is Blake at the top of the tower which offers a pretty good view of the town of Helsingborg.

We then hopped on a ferry across the way to go to Helsingor in Denmark. Helsingor is home to Kronborg Castle, which is commonly called Hamlet's Castle, because it is the castle that Elsinore was based off of in the play Hamlet.

We randomly ran into Bjorn at the station in Helsingor and talked with him and his friend for a bit, which unfortuntely caused us to get caught in the nastiest rain storm ever, and if we hadnt stopped and chatted we could have been safely inside the castle. We had to huddle against a wall with a bunch of other people to wait out the storm. Dont worry, we gave Bjorn crap for it later. Here I am after the worst of it was over:

Here we are after we toured the castle:Afterwards we walked around Helsingor a bit, although like most Scandinavian towns, most things close by 4 everyday, so we just caught a ferry back to Sweden. Alcohol is a bit cheeper in Denmark, so a lot of Swedes stock up if they go out of the country:
If you want to see the rest of the pics, you should check them out here.

Half Way Done!!

Well I successfully made it through the 1st 3 weeks of my 6 week course. Huzzahs all around! We had a ridiculously hard test that I studied for all week and making me more stressed than I like to admit. The test was so absurdly hard that I witnessed a full on freak-out by one of my fellow classmates (the only person in the room who doesn’t eat meat or dairy... coincidence? I think not.) But my teacher told me afterwards that I did really well. And although I am not sure it was a congrats for doing better than she had thought that I was going to do, which is kind of condescending, or if it was that I actually did well, I will take it.

So the program is really 2, 3 week sessions, so some of my classmates will not be returning for the next 3 weeks (unfortunately the super annoying greek guy is one of the ones that is returning.. boo). Some are the sentimental type and wanted a picture of our class (annoying, rude greek guy had left by this point, so he isn’t pictured), and now you can see what I mean about the crazy hair! Isn’t that crazy?
Hopefully in the next 3 weeks I can try and figure out what I missed by being able to know begginer and really advanced swedish, but not knowing the stuff in-between, like how to say "I dropped my fork, can I get another one?"

Jag Lär Mig

So whenever I try to talk to strangers in Swedish, I usually preface it by saying: "Jag lär att prata svenska så min svenska är inte så bra." Which I thought meant, "I am learning to speak swedish, so my swedish is not so good." Turns out, lära means both to teach and to learn, but learn is reflexive (yep, they lost me on that one too). So, what I really have been saying to everyone is, "I am teaching swedish so my swedish is not so good." Ha! They probably are thinking, man- her students are jätte-screwed!!!

(For the few of you that care, I will now say, "Jag lär mig att prata svenska så min svenska är inte så bra.")

Fourth of July in Sweden!

We did the impossible folks. We held a successful American celebration on foreign soil. We gathered everyone we knew in Sweden (with some guests from Iceland by way of Copenhagen too!) and held a bar-b-q at the park behind our apartment. All of the Californians made it (all 40 or so of them) and there was hot dogs and hamburgers abound. I even whipped up some awesome baked beans, which are not sold here! We played some Kubb (a swedish lawn game, which I actually played in Michigan about a year ago at an O'Neill family gathering), racquetball, some football (the real kind) and some football (the other kind).

My favorite part of the evening was when we convinced one of the Swedes, Daniel, that the best way to eat a Smore is to shove it all in your mouth at once. We told him it was the American way. haha. You should know that Swedes eat hamburgers and pizza with a fork and knife... I dont think they enjoy getting messy!

When the sun finally went down, (around midnight) we gathered everyone, which was a miracle in itself, and walked over to the Stadsparken (The City Park) to set off some fireworks. Now, these arent your typical, buy at the side of the road in the states, fireworks. Blake bought these (legally) and they were incredible. Almost like something the city of Seattle or Detroit would set off. I would say our fireworks show rivaled that of a small towns.

Apparently the whole town heard them, and one of the barisstas this morning asked one of the Californians if he was part of the group setting of fireworks at midnight on Friday. Ha! Success!

Tykarpsgrottan and Wånas

For our next big feildtrip we first went to a man-made cave called Tykarpsgrottan. It was, well, to be honest, super lame. I guess it would have been one thing if it was natural, but none of us found it very impressive. I call this one- searching for something interesting: But the feild trip wasnt all bad. After the "caves" we hopped on Scandorama (Blake was sad to hear that this is in no relation to Futurama) and headed to Wånas, a historic castle that has modern art exhibits that are incorporated into the landscape and structures.
Some of the art is located in the buildings that are on the property, but there are woods that you can hike around in with artwork located randomly throughout. The following, "Love in the Afternoon" was the group favorite: Some of the exhibits didnt quite make sense, but Michelle and I interpreted them the best we could. This one is inexplicitly titled "The Eigth Chimney." Yeah, we got nothing....
The coolest/creepiest part of the exhibit was an old barn that had different floors with different random things. All the windows had a red tint to them, and there was a rotating alarm that was saying something in Swedish in a very serious, monotomous tone. Yeah, I realize that doesnt expalin anything. You just had to see it. Here is Vicky trying to get out of the creepy place:
The only non-creppy part of the barn was this random rotating floor. Again, I have no idea how this is art, but it was fun. Here, Brianna attempts to slide across it:

Well, that about covers that trip. If you want to see the rest of the pics, you can see them here.

They have hedgehogs!

No really. Real hedgehogs. I saw 2 in the first 2 nights I was here. This one was pretty scared:

My New Favorite Thing

Hear me out. A Swedish Meatball Sandwich garnished with the Swedish equivalent of tartar sauce and lingon berry jam. Soooooo good!!!!!!!!!! I had seen Gurka Salad (I thought it was pickle salad- yumm) everywhere and so I bought some, and it turned out it was tartar sauce. In case you don't know me, I happen to love tartar sauce, so I was pretty excited that this is everywhere here. And lingonberry is sort of like cranberry. Hey- I haven't started eating caviar out of a tube yet. (they love things in tubes here, give me time, I'm sure...)

What Am I Doing Here?!!!

Umm.. taking a ridiculously advanced Swedish class. So, after taking 1 year of Swedish at UW, I was sitting pretty comfortable at "Intermediate Swedish." So, I get here, and they keep saying- oh- the advanced class this, the advanced class that, and I thought it was maybe a lost in translation thing. Nope. Turns out they only have a beginner class and an advanced class. Since I already know how to say "My name is Courtney. I like ice cream." (Jag heter Courtney. Jag gillar mjukglass.), they put me in the advanced class. We aren't allowed to speak a word English, and for the first week of class I got really familiar with the phrase "I don't understand." (Jag förstå inte.), but it is going a bit better now. That whole immersion thing may sort of have some bearings, it turns out. My class has 10 people in it. Me, 3 Californians, 1 older German guy, 1 older crazy looking Romanian lady (Looks like this:)


1 annoying Greek guy, 2 nice Chinese girls, and 1 awesome girl from Gambia. The other 2 beginning classes are made up of mostly 40 19-20 year old Californians. They are all really nice, but kind of a lot to handle. Most of it is probably the age thing. I suppose if I was 19 and was in a country that allowed you to drink at bars, I would probably be like- "Dude! Lets get wasted!!" too, but I'm not, so well, yeah, I'm not.

I usually have 1-2 hours of homework every night. It probably wouldn't take that long for most people, but since I am not advanced, I have to look up every other word or so. But- the good news is that the weather this week has been amazing and so when I'm not at class (3 1/2 hours a day) or on one of the feildtrips (more on some of those later) with my program, I have been doing my homework while laying out in the sun in the park next to my apartment. I cant complain about that, that is for sure.

Most days I wake up, make my quadruple americano (I cannot kick my caffeine habit and having an apartment furnished with an espresso machine isn't helping), ride my cute pink bike with a basket to class, sit through class, go shopping at the square in town that has a farmers market everyday, come home, make lunch, sit outside in the sun, do some homework until Blake comes home, and then we make dinner and either go for bike rides or relax and hang out and watch a movie. Yeah, I would say I like it here. :)