jessymessy.com the blog of Jessy

What I’ve been up to

So I haven’t had a proper post in a while, and I thought I should update everyone on what I have been up to.

Most nights I make myself dinner and end up talking to the Swedes and other corridor mates for hours upon hours. We have all booked a trip to Paris at the end of November! It will be two Swedes, two Americans, and a Pakistani. We may recruit more people that are not from our corridor. We’ll see!

Then! Last week I went to the Reccegasque, which is a three course dinner and a party for new students. It was fun! But let me tell you, I’m never, ever, ever, EVER wearing heels again.

Last Sunday there were free dance lessons and so me and some friends went. It was fun for a while but then it got old. Dancing is definitely not my thing — at least not formal dancing! So while everyone continued I headed to the train station (which was just a block away) and booked my ticket to Oslo! So it will be me, Sarah, Katie, and Hoang.

Andddddddd, yesterday Sarah and I went to Gamla Uppsala, or Old Uppsala. The weather was great and we had a lot of fun getting lost and getting chased by goats, hopping over fences, and getting 5 kronor coffee in the church. The mounds were really fascinating, royals from a long time ago were buried under them. I think two of the three mounds have been excavated but they still don’t know who exactly is in them.

A couple of weeks ago I went to this thing at Varmlands Nation for new students. It was basically a tour of the place and dinner. The tour was so-so, just kind of long. We were split up into groups and went into every room. Then at the end a guy from the comedy group (I think?) wanted to do an activity with us… it was so lame. Everyone stood in a circle, and one person was in the middle. That person randomly pointed at someone and had to tell them to do something- like pretend to be a washer machine, or whatever.

So when he was done explaining the rules for the game he asked if there were any questions, and I muttered to the girl next to me, “do we have to play?”

She chuckled and agreed with me, and so did the girl that was standing next to her. So once the game started girl I originally whispered to asked me if I wanted to skip out on the game and go to Systembolaget.

Heck yes! So we left and got some vodka, and then by the time we came back everyone was just lining up to get their dinner.

And that is the story behind the first time I ever went to Systembolaget. Systembolaget is the only place you can buy alcohol here in Sweden. It’s government controlled, they have crazy hours and close at like 5pm on Saturdays, and their prices are fairly expensive.

Other than what I talked about above nothing super exciting has been going on… at least not that I can think of.

I’m going to try to post more because there is definitely more going on in my life – I’m always so busy! – but I’ve just been lagging on posting about it. So expect more posts!

Until next time!
xoxo, Jessy

One month in Sverige

As of today I have been living in Sweden for one whole entire MONTH.

Crazy, isn’t it??

Time has been flying like crazy! I’m sure before I know it it’ll be June, and instead of complaining about the freezing cold I’ll be complaining about blazing-hot California weather.

But, I shouldn’t get too far ahead of myself. Funny how when I got here ten months seemed like forever and I really thought I wouldn’t be able to make it that long here… but now it seems like time is slipping by so quickly and that I’ll hardly have enough.

So anyway. I just got back from ICA Maxi, a big huge Wal-Mart like grocery store. I’ve only been to ICA Vast, which is teeny tiny and is only a five minute walk away from where I live. But Maxi is a ten minute bike ride. Thankfully I found it with no problems, but actually shopping there was insane!

First off, I had trouble with the shopping carts. You apparently have to stick either a 5 or 10 kronor coin in the cart before you are able to push it around. I had to ask someone to help me with this one.

And then, I’m in the store, and people have these little scanner thingys. Whenever they put food in their cart they would scan it first. I checked to see if my cart came with a scanner but it did not. I wonder where you get them? I’m not entirely sure what they are used for, but I think they have them so that way at the end you just pay and don’t have to wait for the cashier to scan everything…?

They had soooo much stuff you could buy! And it’s really hard to made a decision when you can’t read Swedish. And for this I prefer ICA Vast better, less choices, easier to buy.

BUT, Maxi has RANCH DRESSING! And a whole entire aisle filled with MEXICAN FOOD ITEMS! I nearly died when I saw that! Definitely making burritos pronto.

So 500 kronor later (!) and I have a stuffed pantry/fridge/freezer.

I can’t believe I was actually able to get all that crap back to Flogsta to be honest with you. But I had my backpack, which I stuffed groceries in, and I brought two plastic ICA bags with me. Because here in Sweden they make you pay for your plastic bags, so I save and reuse.

One plastic bag in my bike basket, and one on the handle bar and I was good to go.

I did get lost on the way home, which was totally lame. I was so pissed at myself because I stuffed the backpack with all the heavy stuff and so my back was killing me. I don’t know how I missed the turn, honestly, I must be an idiot.

In any case, I’m back. I won’t go back to Maxi for a while (until I run out of ranch probably).

I feel like it’s been a good month here in Sweden. Definitely a hard and trying month, but a good month. A milestone month. Can’t wait to see what the future will bring!

xoxo, Jessy

Culture day

Not to constantly complain on here or anything, but I’m sort of kind of bored right now.

I’ve been on the go go go for the past few days – so having nothing to do feels strange.

Yesterday when I woke up I felt super homesick. It was 11am and I just felt really lonely. So I went out into the corridor… I’ve learned that homesickness + people = no more homesickness. Sana was there with Jacob from building 7 and they were eating pancakes and offered me some.

During breakfast they said at 11:40 they would be leaving for fika at GH nation and wondered if I wanted to go. I had no immediate plans, so I jumped in the shower, and ten minutes later with wet hair I was biking to GH.

We fika-d for about two hours, I LOVE FIKA. Then I called Sarah because we were supposed to wander around for culture day.

Culture day is supposedly really big in Uppsala. The program was all in Swedish so we had no idea what to do or where to go, but had been told to just wander around as there would be hundreds of different things going on all around Uppsala.

So I met up with Sarah and Sonja at Norrlands nations. Sonja is German and can read Swedish (although she can’t understand it as the pronunciation is very different) so we made a few plans based on what she understood from the program.

We went to the castle for a tour in English, only to learn that the time for the tour had been printed incorrectly in the program and that we had already missed it. So since we were already there we went on a tour of the castle in Swedish, which was so boring by the way. I’m sure it would have been much more interesting if we could understand Swedish, but standing in the same room for ten plus minutes hearing an old lady yack in a language you can’t understand isn’t really fun… and there is only so much you can look at in one room of a castle. It would have been better if we could have just had a quick walk through or something!

Sonja said that the castle was kind of lacking anyway, and that she had been to better looking ones. She said that there is some castle in Berlin that we have to go to when we are there.

But at least I can say I’ve been to a castle now, right?

After that we wandered around, listened to some live music, watched people dance, etc.

As soon as it got dark we went to the botanical gardens to watch a fire show. I thought they would be doing tricks with fire but it was really more theatrical. There was a story line and they waved fire around during the war scenes. Not what I expected but it was fun just the same.

Then we did more wandering, went back to Norrlands for pub food, wandered… and then at about 1am I ended up back at my room.

It was a great day overall and I didn’t really have a chance to feel homesick which was even better.

I officially booked my ticket to Slovakia on Friday. I’ll only be spending three days there, but with RyanAir my roundtrip ticket cost me a total of about 25 American dollars. So worth it! And I can go back again on the cheap too.

Right after I post this I will probably finalize plans to Berlin. As of right now I’m likely going to be spending eight days there, but I need to talk to other people and basically compromise on when we’ll go and come back.

My dad is on Skype! Got to go!

xoxo, Jessy