oh the sun

so when i first arrived in sweden it was quite dark, all the time... as in the sun would come up around 10 and then set around 2 and in between those hours it wouldn't be "sunny" it would be hazy and just kinda blah

well because sweden is so far north things regarding the sun change QUICKLY here... now the sun comes up before six and sets after six which is great... but the unfortunate thing is that my bedroom faces east and i have no curtains - so while in january i had a hard time waking up before 10 or 11 now i wake up at 6:30 every morning without fail...

although it would be lovely to be here in june for midsummer i would definitely need some blackout curtains!

LAST DAY of class in SWEDEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

woooooohooooo i am done... yesterday i had my presentation in psychology of financial markets and today we had our presentation in entrepreneurship in developing countries... which means i am done done done done done with class in sweden... and i can't say that i am too sad about it

tonight after class ankur, paula, andrea and i went to a bar called pet sounds in sodermalm for a drink and some food... it was quite cute and reminded me of a slightly classier garlic & shots, one of the restaurants i went to while my parents were here

i basically only have 2 days left in sweden which is pretty crazy... tomorrow a bunch of us are planning on going to watch a world cup x-c skiing race that is finishing around the palace in stockholm... should be pretty cool

nice saturday and lovikka mittens

today for some reason i woke up at 7am... so i watched up in the air, i had just finished reading the book last week and i have to say after the book i was pretty disappointed in the movie, but i guess that is pretty much always the case, i don't think that i have ever seen a movie that i thought was better than the book it was based on.

so i started my day at the wayne's in liljeholmen, which is basically the swedish equivalent of starbucks.  i sat there with all the dads having fika with each other and their toddlers which is definitely one of the cuter things about daily life in sweden - you always see men out with their children - at least as much as you see women if not more.  i stayed at wayne's for quite a while... my mom was reading game change when she came to visit and left it with me - i started it a couple of days ago and just haven't been able to put it down!

then i did some shopping in sodermalm, gamla stan and hotorget... it was a beautiful sunny day and then out of nowhere it started snowing or maybe it was hail - not sure it was just like snowing large snow pellets it was really weird

anyhow, last night i knit the first of my two lovikka mittens they are traditional swedish mittens that they sell everywhere here that are adorable i found the real pattern but only in swedish this is the best that i could do in english but i don't think that the pattern is quite right.  anyhow because the mittens are fulled i wanted to knit one and full it before i  knitted the other to make sure that i wasn't making the wrong size

the fulled mitten is on the left and the not yet fulled mitten is on the right for comparison:

i think that they are pretty cute :) in my shopping expedition today i checked out some more lovikka mittens to improve on the pattern a bit

only one more week in stockholm

so next friday i leave for my trip to central europe with carol, mia and alexis... which means that i have one full week in stockholm and then i am pretty much done!

i have been back in stockholm since monday and for the first time since i came to sweden i actually feel like i kind of live here... i don't really notice that everyone around me is speaking swedish anymore, and i feel pretty at home... also this past week i actually had to do a lot of school work and i think that made me feel more at home too.  i wasn't trying to take advantage of all the touristy stuff instead i was sitting in the computer lab and library all day.

but most of the work is over now and so i have one more week to enjoy myself here!

some random observations since i have been back:
-when we got to liljeholmen 2 months ago there was one grocery store... now there are three
-found a really cute new restaurant near school this week
-went to hermans again for lunch with andrea and ankur on monday
-knit my first lovikka (traditional swedish) mittens tonight... will post pics tomorrow

north of the arctic circle...

last thursday upon my return from turku i left about 5 hours later to head to lappland in the north of sweden the trip started with an 18 hour overnight train ride.  luckily there weren't too many other people on the train so we got to spread out a bit

note that we are really really really far north of the arctic circle.  luckily when we got to kiruna the weather was great - it was sunny and amazing!  we started with a trip to a large iron mine in kiruna... other than tourism the mine is a major source of employment in swedish lappland.  the tour was interesting and we learned that because the mine had become so deep they now are in the process of moving the entire town!

after the mine we grabbed lunch and headed for the ice hotel!  i had been looking forward to the ice hotel ever since i had watched the 2 hour discovery special... now you expect it to be like arctic tundra up there but really it was just a lot of woods with snow and rivers.  the ice hotel was built along the river that they harvest all the ice from... apparently real ice from a river is a lot more clear than fake ice that is just frozen still water so they prefer that for building the hotel... it was really cool!  sadly the power was out at the hotel so it was hard to see in a lot of the rooms, but i still took a lot of pictures and you can get the drift :)

we then drove another two and a half hours to the forest hotel which is where we would be staying for the weekend... it was very cute - bright red building set against the pretty white snow... we had a dinner buffet and got outfitted with our awesome snowsuits and CRAZY think boots, hats and mittens

the next morning we had what i definitely viewed to be the highlight of the weekend - DOGSLEDDING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  we were paired up and given a 1 minute tutorial on how to break and then were sent off on our own sleds with 5 very adorable and very loud dogs... it was so amazing and serene being out on the river with the dogs and mushing them was really fun... i was the first one to drive and ended up getting to drive for basically the whole time... which was awesome - i would do another hour of that any day.

after dogsledding we went skiing - cross country skiing - with our huge snowsuits and gynormous boots on we strapped on wooden army skis that looked like they were from the 1920s it was pretty fun...

after a long day outside we had another great dinner - this time reindeer and i tuckered out early... on sunday a bunch of people went to the reindeer farm... but i decided just to stay back and got to sit by the fire read all the wonderful american magazines that my mom brought for me and talk to some of the other exchange students which i don't get to do as often as i like since i don't live in the dorm with most of them.  we ended up having a really interesting chat about healthcare with a student from canada and germany who both HATE their countries' universal healthcare programs... anyhow, nothing like debating healthcare on a sunday morning :)

sunday afternoon we went ice fishing... we drilled our own holes and everything!  went to bed very early sun night because we had a 6am flight monday morning and we had to leave the hotel at 2:30am to get to the airport on time!

one of the most interesting things was at the airport no one ever checked our id - at all - ever - not when we got our tickets, not when we went through security, not when we boarded the plane... CRAZY... can't imagine that happening in the US, guess it really is much safer in sweden :)

anyhow i got back on monday EXHAUSTED and decided to cancel my trip to oslo that i was going to take this week... i have just been traveling sooo much and still have so much traveling ahead of me that i didn't feel like i really needed another trip...  but lappland was great and i am very glad i went - must see for anyone who comes to sweden and has the time

turku!

well this is my much delayed post on finland... more specifically turku.

we arrived late late monday night into turku, my dad had left earlier monday to go back to stockholm and then the states so it was just me and mom on the train...

first of all, if you are ever in russia and considering a trip to finland, definitely fly!  we spent about 2 of our 5 hour train ride to helsinki sitting on the border having the russian border patrol walk back and forth with their dogs... what fun.

tuesday my mom's friend megan met us at our hotel and gave us a wonderful tour of turku, we had lunch at a great restaurant called mami where we all had wonderful pumpkin soup and then went to the cathedral in town and a bunch of adorable little shops.  we headed to the grocery store that afternoon to buy the ingredients for that night's dinner - REINDEER!!!


we headed over to megan's that night and had a lovely reindeer dinner with her family.  wednesday my mom and i spent the day exploring the sights of turku that we hadn't seen the day before, walked to a few more cute shops and went to the finnish equivalent of a saluhall, although i can't remember the finnish word for it.  we also made it to the turku castle and an interesting lecture on finnish religion with megan and her husband chris.  we went to another great restaurant that night which was really fun.

the next morning mom and i headed back to stockholm.  it was really fun to see finland and compare it to sweden given that they were a part of sweden for so long.  lots of things looked the same, same stores, lots of similar food etc, but i think that under the surface the countries were really quite different... megan and chris were really knowledgeable about finnish culture so it was great to compare and contrast the two countries with them

thanks again megan for the great tour!!!!

update from lappland

well i have been a little mia because i have been traveling so much. spent monday in st. petersburg and tuesday and wednesday in turku finland. rushed back to stockholm to do some laundry and then left thursday night for what turned out to be an 18 hour overnight train ride up to lappland more specifically kiruna.

didn't get in until around noon yesterday had a quick tour of the big iron mine here and the made our way to the ice hotel before checking into our own hotel the forest hotel right before dinner. it was a long and exhausting day but i got a great nights sleep last night and am ready to head down for breakfast and some dogsledding :)