Let's Call It Off

Here is a fun little game. I wanted to write about the election, but decided to avoid political subjects to avoid gloating (which I am bound to do), so instead of saying something that will offend at least 39.724% of my faithful readers, I am instead going to do a survey with my ipod.

The Rules:
1. Put your iTunes/ music player on Shuffle

2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.

3. You must write that song name down no matter what.

IF SOMEONE SAYS “IS THIS OKAY” YOU SAY?
"Brandy Alexander” – Feist

I dont think people ask me that on a normal basis, but if they do I have a kicky little response now.

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
"I Just Don't Think I'll Ever Get Over You" - Colin Hay

Aww.. thats cute. Y'all will never get over me! How sweet of you!

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
"Breaking It Up” – Lykke Li

Umm.. that's awkward for Blake. No comment?

HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
”Point of Extinction” – Motion City Soundtrack

Wow. This one works. I am still not caught up with sleep after staying up until 6:30 am to watch the results the other night!

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE’S PURPOSE?
"Summer Skin” – Death Cab For Cutie

Maybe I should wear sunscreen more often...

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
"To Give Love” – El Perro Del Mar

I concur. <3

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
"TV”— Headlights

I am sure Lisa would agree for sure.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR PARENTS?
“So Come Back, I am Waiting” – Okkervil River

Dad- this means you. Are you actually moving in with us in Sweden now that McCain lost?

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
"In a Radio Song” -- Okkervil River

Actually this is pretty right on. I fantasize often about being a rockstar on the radio!

WHAT IS 2+2?
"The Stars of Track and Field” – Belle & Sebastian

Sure.. why not? At least it isnt 25.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
"You and I Both” – Jason Mraz

It is like we have 2 brains and 1 body!

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
"The Jessica Numbers"– The New Pornographers

Skip this one... they were bound to not all make sense.

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
”Ton Plat Favori”— Malajube

Maybe it is... I just dont speak french!

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
"The Boy Done Wrong Again” – Belle & Sebastian

A boy? Hmm.. not likely. Doing wrong again? Yeah.. probably.

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
"The House Wins” – Ok Go

I think I won too... awww.. adorable... I know!

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
"Wreck of the Day” -- Anna Nalick

Wow. That hurts. I'm not that bad, right? Right?!!!! I mean, I cant take back my vote now!

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
"On Your Wings” -- Iron & Wine

Whoa, all this talk of weddings is freaking me out. Let's slow down here. Sheesh.

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
"Publish My Love” – Rogue Wave

Well, my motto is apparently to give love, so you might as well write about it to remember me forever. FOREVER! (Insert evil laugh here)

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
"Austraila” – The Shins

I am very interested in going to Austraila! How did they know?

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
"The Boy's Gone” – Jason Mraz

I got nothing...

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
"Love and Some Versus” – Iron & Wine

Awww.. seriously, I am all about the love people!

WHAT SHOULD YOU POST THIS AS?
"Let's Call It Off” – Peter Bjorn and John

Awesomely appropriate for so many reasons! (Peter, Bjorn and John are from Stockholm!)

Anyways... give it a try and either send me an email with all your results, or just if you get some funny ones and want to share them as a response to this post!

Shiny New Apartment!!!!

So, if you have heard me talk about our old apartment at all, you know I didnt exactly hold a special place for it in my heart. The new place though, ohh.. swoon.. our new place. It is exactly where we wanted to live, in the heart of everything. No more hour long train rides into work, no more hearing our neighbors argue at weird hours of the day, no more just crappy, crappy apartment.

Here is a view of the new, super cute place:




Oh, did I mention that our faucet lights up blue and red?

Cool loft:

Alla Helgons Dag

As I mentioned in my previous post, Halloween is not widely celebrated in Sweden, and I am pretty sure it is because they already have a pretty huge holiday, Alla Helgons Dag, which is All Saints Day, on November 1st. A helpful co-worker of mine told me that we should go to Skogkyrkagården (a large cemetary) as the sun sets to see what it was really all about. So we set out on the short metro ride and noticed that we were not the only people with this same idea. I have never seen so many people and hot dog vendors outside of a cemetary... it was crazy. (Also, I think a lady was yelling at me in Swedish for putting my feet up on the seat on the train, but she was talking really fast, and Blake and I just smiled and nodded, so anways...) By the time we got there it was dark and there were just thousands upon thousands of candles along the paths and at graves:



The holiday is used to celebrate all the saints in the Catholic tradition, but Lutharens use it as a day to remember the dead. It was really quite amazing, it is hard to describe. So here are a few more pictures, and I added part of an article about the event that does a much better job than I ever will of describing the day.





"For many, Friday is a half day and on Saturday morning the main newspapers are not printed. As dusk falls on Saturday, All Saints Day, Swedes stream towards the country's graveyards armed with candles, matches, wreaths and flowers for the graves of their loved ones.The beauty of the candlelight blended with a soothing melancholy creates an emotionally-charged atmosphere. Small rural churchyards are visible across fields, dotted with flecks of golden light, while in towns and cities people murmur hushed greetings to those visiting neighbouring graves.

Probably the most spectacular place to witness the festival is the massive cemetery of Skogskyrkogården in the south of Stockholm. Chatty crowds drift from the train station, past hot dog vendors and candle stalls, as if to a football match. But as they enter the cemetery they are greeted not with the roar of a stadium but with a silence almost as overwhelming. Thousands upon thousands of marshal lights line the winding road into the churchyard, the glare becoming more and more intense until at the top of the hill in the centre there is barely space to walk between the rows of candles.

It is an awe-inspiring sight, but here and there real mourners, perhaps remembering a loved one for the first time, are a reminder of the day's meaning."

A Very Swedish Halloween

As most of you know, I happen to love Halloween, so I was intrigued to hear that they sort of celebrate Halloween. How do you sort of celebrate something, one might ask? Well, turns out the answer is to not actually celebrate it at all. I guess they didnt start celebrating at all until about 10 years ago, and it started to get popular and then just sort of fizzled out. At toy stores they sell a few costumes and decorations, and I noticed bakeries selling cakes shaped like pumpkins that were undoubtably made out of marzipan (gross!), but most people at my work forgot it was even halloween. My boss said that he took his kids out trick or treating (known as, "Bus eller Godis" in swedish) on Wednesday evening (the 29th). And a few people said they were going to a party in a week or so. So it seems to me that they miss the point that Halloween is supposed to be celebrated, well, on Halloween. Especially since it convienently fell on a Friday this year! Oh, Swedes!

I couldnt not celebrate Halloween, so we decided to have a few people over to carve pumpkins and drink hot apple cider. In total we had 7 Swedes, 3 Americans (including us), 1 German, and 1 Italian. I dressed up as a cat, because it happened to be the easiest costume I could think of. All I had to do was draw ears and tape them to a headband, and then paint some whiskers on. Easy-peasy. Blake bought some silly giant rubber ears that he wore for about 2 minutes, and we didnt even get a picture of them. I made some pumpkin themed recipes and we were ready to par-tay. Here are some of our guests, Ylva and Pär enjoying the fondue (notice it was served in a pumpkin... pretty awesome):



We only bought 4 pumpkins to carve, so the crowd sort of split up to share in them. We taught them the basics of cutting open the top and pulling out the innards, and them told them to carve whatever they wanted. They all seemed to get into it:







Karin and I made an Obama pumpkin (of course):



Ylva had some fun with nail polish and made a joker face:



Pär and Alina made a goal of trying to carve out the most pumpkin as possible in a cool random design, while Anna and the other Per with the help of a few others went with a goofy jack-o-lantern, complete with ears. I was pretty impressed with them all, especially for first timers:



Here is everyone (a few other people dressed up too, including a Swedish Chef!) and our creations:

Everything is falling into place

For the past month, we have been waiting on pins and needles to hear if Blake could stay in Sweden with me. You see, his scholarship ended as mine began, and so he had gone to the Migration Board and asked for a Visitors Permit that would allow him to legally be here until the end of October. In the mean time, we moved to Stockholm, and he began looking for a job. Well, he got a great job offer at a structural engineering firm (Tyrens), but they said he had to get a Residence Permit before he started. Ok, fine. So he called to look into that and the person he talked to bluntly said that in no possible way could he get a Residence Permit while on a Visitors Permit, and that he would have to go back to the states for 3 months and wait before he could even come back to Sweden. Great. My scholarship is only 9 months to begin with, so it would have been pointless for him to try and stay, and it would have sucked, big time if we had to be apart for another year.

So he decided to just give it a try and apply for a Residence Permit anyways, which was a hassle because first his job had to get approval to hire him. You see, with Sweden being part of the EU, his company had to prove that they weren't discriminating against any other EU citizen when they hired him. That got approved, but it took a few weeks.

Once that was approved, we took a trip down to Norrköping, which is a 2 hour train ride south of Stockholm to apply for his Residence Permit. You would think that the main Migration Board office would be in Stockholm, it being the largest city and the capital of Sweden and all, but nope, that would make too much sense. But anyways, it was good excuse to take a day off and to see a new city, since all we knew about Norrköping was that they speak with a whiny accent. He could have just mailed it in, but we felt better talking to someone in person. Nothing was approved that day, but the lady at the counter seemed positive that it would be approved and told us we would know within a week. So we just walked around Norrköping, which is a really cute city, although there isnt much to do there.

In the mean time, we basically can't plan anything in our life, including finding a new apartment (our lease ends at the end of November), planning a trip over Thanksgiving to Doha to visit Molly and Clifton, or anything because we didnt know if Blake could get back into the country if we left, and I didnt want to commit to an apartment thinking Blake was going to cover half and spend all of my stipend on rent! One good thing about Blake not working though was that it gave him time to officially finish and submit his thesis! So congrats Blake!

So we waited to hear back something from the migration board, and Blake sent an email to the lady in charge of his case. He gets an email back on Tuesday that says, "I am glad to tell you your case is ready, so please contact The Migration Board where you are living." Ummm... are they glad because it is approved, or just because they finished one of the things in their inbox and can move on with their job? We werent sure, so I gave Blake a big kiss the next day just in case he showed up at the Migration Board and they escorted him to the nearest airport to forbid him from coming back into Sweden ever again or something.

Luckily though, when he showed up they gave him a Residence Permit! Hooray! Today he is getting his personal number, and then he just has to do a few random little things like open a bank account so that he can get paid and then he can start working!!

With the good news in hand, we started looking at apartments. Our main priority was to get a 1 bedroom apartment (or as they say here, a 2a, which means that it has two rooms- a bedroom and a living room... so confusing!) close to downtown Stockholm. We knew this was going to cost quite a bit more, but after living in the suburbs for 2 months now, we decided to splurge and actually live in the city that we wanted to live in. One of my co-workers is moving back to China, but is keeping his apartment, so he offered to sublease it to me for a good deal, but it was still outside the city. So we declined, and on our first visit, we both fell in love with a place in the exact neighborhood (Södermalm) that we wanted to live in. It is in the heart of everything, and the apartment has a lot of character. Also, we can move in on Sunday. We have our current apartment until the end of November, so we can take our time moving in. We are so excited about it!

And to top things off, tonight I am going to a Okkervil River concert! Yeah, I would say things are going pretty good right now...

Things that make Courtney happy

Also, the Wearing of Dog Hair. Here are some portraits that I stole from some other blog:
One person is actually quoted as saing: "Kara was a pedigree Samoyed. She was so posh, if she could have talked she'd not have spoken to the likes of us." Hahahahaha...

Other people said that: "It is the most amazing stuff. It's like mohair but more lightweight and more soft, and the more you wash it, the more soft and fluffy it gets." Mrs Willis added: "People are surprised when they find out we're wearing dog wool clothes. Some think it's disgusting and ask how we can do it, but it seems very normal to us." Even now, Mrs Willis has enough hair left over to make a new jumper, and it has been sent to a friend in Derby to be spun.

Wanna try it yourself? You can purchase the following book at Amazon:
And last but not least, I wanted to brag and show my latest felt inspired creation:

That's what I call a great day

Last weekend the weather was beautiful (and by beautiful always just assume that I mean it was cold but at least sunny). The leaves have been changing colors and there are tons of parks around the city. So Blake and I walked around one of their biggest parks, Djurgården on Sunday. Here is some of the amazingness of Stockhom:







After our walk we went to a Chocolate Festival. Yeah, I know.. awesome. I can now say that there is such a thing as too much chocolate. There were about 100 vendors and you would just walk up to their booth and hold out your hand and they would give you chocolate. Pretty much the best thing ever.

The whole day was really fun and then to top it off, we watched American football with a group of Seahawks fans. We went to a "Boston-style" pub that we knew was showing the Dolphins game and Blake noticed a few people decked out in Seahawks gear. We started talking to them, and one of their brothers used to live in Seattle, and he converted all of his friends to Seahawks fans. How random is that?



The first game doesnt even start until 7 pm, and then we have a half hour subway ride home, so at 10:30, I was ready to go home, even though the Seahawks game was just starting. Plus I remembered that I had promised my office to bring in real American cupcakes (Thanks to Kathleen who brought me some cake mix and frosting from the States when she visited), and I still had to make them. Well, when you are at a bar watching football, apparently "I have to go home and make cupcakes" sounds like a pretty weird excuse... they got a pretty big kick out of it. But my office loved the cupcakes at fika (coffee and cake break- also, coincidently my favorite thing about Sweden) the next day.