Oct/093
Come as you are, as you were, as I want you to be
Lalalalalala… love Nirvana <3 ... memoryyyyyyyy.
Anyway.
Last week I spent a few days in Slovakia with my friend Lenka. Lenka was an exchange student when I was a junior in high school, so I thought it would be fun to go see her in her home country. It has been five years since I had seen her, and I was very excited.
I arrived in Bratislava on Thursday afternoon, and Lenka took me to a few hotspots. First, we ate. She ordered me traditional Slovak food, and it was actually good! Then we had fika (or I had fika, and explained to her what it was).
Then we of course went to IKEA. Because I’m strange and thought it would be funny to get a picture of a Slovakian IKEA.
On Friday she took me around and we looked at a lot of historical things… like the palace, the castle, the WWII memorial, etc.
And then on Saturday I left 
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Lenka was so nice and hospitable! She made me food, wouldn’t let me pay for anything, and made sure I was having a good time! I can’t wait until she visits me in Sweden 
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Some observations: Swedish city buses are nicer. In Slovakia you have this little piece of paper and you have to stick it in the machine which stamps the date and time. It’s only good for an hour… this is problematic because it took us longer than an hour to take the bus from the airport to her apartment. On my way back to the airport, our first bus was about ten minutes late. In my experience, buses are NEVER late in Sweden. Because the first bus was late, we missed our second bus by just a few minutes and had to wait around for the next one… needless to say it was very hectic trying to get to the airport to catch my plane! But I made it back, thankfully!
Another observation: Slovaks like to keep their buildings very, very warm. It’s almost suffocating walking from the freezing cold into 24 degree (celcius… so practically 80 Fahrenheit) rooms! Ulgh!
There are also a lot of cars . And like most European cities, there was a lot of history, old buildings, etc. It was so beautiful! I just wish I could have had some better weather… it rained literally the whole time I was there. No fun. Especially since they had WARM weather the week before! Like 25 degrees!! And I get there, and they have 5 degree weather. I must be bad luck or something. I was so wanting warm weather though, would have been nice to get out of the Swedish cold for a bit. But no. Gah.
Some pictures:
Lenka and I in front of the castle.
The night I got back from Slovakia, my corridor celebrated Diwali!
This past week has been the last for my current class. So I had a final presentation, and my final essay, which was due yesterday. Things were a little hectic with that this week. And almost every night we watched movies… my least favorite was Frankenstein (Mark’s idea), and my favorite was Troy (Steven’s idea). My movie was Collateral, but apparently it was too violent for the Swede that was there (LISA, grrr ), so we only watched half.
Overall a good week… and a better one is to come! Monday I leave for Berlin with my class! Veryyyy excited about this. I will come back Monday November 2nd… so probably no posts until after that date. Unless I bring my laptop with me to Berlin, but I’m a little weary of bringing it to a hostel. We’ll see!
xoxo for now,
Jessy
p.s. – I am so writing this post on Windows 7! I got it for $30 because I am a student with a .edu address – so if you are a student you should definitely take advantage of this opportunity!
Oct/094
It snowed
First of all, it snowed this morning. Of course I missed it, mostly because I have this problem where I can’t be awake before noon. The sleeping in is not my fault though. I fully blame this on the inhabitants of my corridor, who feel it necessary to keep me awake until three or four in the morning watching movies and chatting and eating dessert. Yes, it’s ALL their fault 
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Second, Obama won the Peace Prize… I agree that it is a little (lot) premature, but being in Sweden when this happened I feel the obligation to support him anyway. It’s funny that I come to Sweden and then all of sudden I become extremely patriotic. Although… I do think it’s weird to say that I’m from the USA. I feel as though I am more from California than the US… if that makes sense.
Third, I went and saw Green Day in Stockholm last Sunday!!
They always put on a good show in San Francisco, and now I can say that they also put on a good show in Stockholm . I went by myself, which wasn’t ideal, but to be honest I had a great time alone. And I’m kind of proud of myself for going all the way to Stockholm and back alone. I had to take the train and the subway to get there, and I didn’t get lost once, which is a miracle because I always get lost!
Green Day started off with their current album, which disappointed me because I don’t know their new album very well. After about four songs they started making their way back to their older albums. They seriously played at least half of Dookie, including my favorite – Basket Case – and also Longview and Welcome to Paradise and She and ….
And then they started working their way back up to their current album again. They played 21 Guns, which is pretty much my favorite from their new album, and then they said bye bye and left. And you knew they weren’t done because they hadn’t played American Idiot yet, and how could they NOT play that song?? Right? So then of course they came back on stage and sang that song and about four others, and then they really left . Their closing song was Good Riddance, which I’m almost positive is the same way they ended the last show I went to. But it’s a good closing song so whatever .
Yesterday was spent watching Lisa make kannelbullar (sp?) – or just cinnamon buns. Yummyyyyy. Different from the American version but dare I say better? Hmmm. Of course I ate a ton. And then I went to Swedish, which was an epic fail. I suck at Swedish amazingly, but Lillemore is a good teacher so I am learning something, but I feel as though I am lagging behind everyone else.
And then I came back and my corridor FORCED be to stay up late and watch a movie with them. We watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (I think that’s the name?) with Jack Nicholson. It was good, but the content of the movie severely pissed me off… I guess that’s how you know a movie is good, if it makes you angry.
So because I stayed up late watching a movie and talking, I didn’t have time to work on my group project.
Today I woke up at noon, learned about the snow, was sad because I missed it (tear), went and did laundry, planned on working on my group project but then Hakan and Mabel FORCED me to sit in the kitchen with them and have tea and leftover kannelbullar.
At this point I’ve now finished and put away the clean clothes, and am now procrastinating on my group project.
All I have to do is write a page about the regulation of internet content in the USA and prepare a quick powerpoint presentation … it would take me not long at all. But still I put it off. I suck.
I also have Swedish homework to do, which I may just give to Hakan to do for me since you know, he speaks Swedish fluently. That way there will be no learning go on in my head and I can go to class and pretend I know what is going on.
Thursday reallyyyyy early in the morning I am hopping on the 6am train to Skavsta, where I will take a plane to SLOVAKIA. Super excited! Not about the waking up early part, since we are all now aware that my corridor is EVIL and forces me to do fun things and stay up late against my will!
Also, I totally booked my flight home for Christmas. I’ll be home from December 22 to January 12 . Three whole weeks!! 70 days away!
xoxo,
Jessy
Oct/092
The Last Week
My site died, again. I fixed it, hopefully for GOOD!
Last Saturday I went with V-Dala’s nation to the Falun Copper Mine and the city of Rattvik. It was a three hour bus ride up north, but it was worth it! I didn’t get any pictures of the mine, but I got plenty of pictures of Rattvik!
Rattvik is my corridormate Lisa’s hometown, so she met us where the bus dropped us off and we walked around. The point of going to Rattvik (besides the fact that it’s in the V-Dala region), is because there was a market/fair going on. There wasn’t anything special on sale, mostly it was stuff that I could get anywhere in Sweden and the USA. So I didn’t buy anything. Lisa took us to a pizza place for lunch (Swedish pizza sucks), and then we went to the pier.
This is Lisa, Jacob and me.
Then it started to rain, so Lisa took us to her house. We had fika, chatted, I got my first look at a Swedish home, it was great!
When we got back to Uppsala that night it was pouring. Needless to say, by the time I rode my bike back to Flogsta I was soaked!
The next day I went on a cruise to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. It was AWESOME.
The room, of course, was small. We brought our own food so that we wouldn’t have to pay a fortune for the ship food. Tallinn was so ancient! So much history. There are no words to describe how much I liked Tallinn. Even the cold and the very forceful wind didn’t ruin my Tallinn experience.
The whole group of us, minus me because I took the picture .
To see all of my Tallinn, Rattvik, and the rest of my Sweden pictures, check out my Flickr account.
I also added some pictures of my corridor!
xoxo, Jessy