catching up

so i have been away for the past ten days... i spent the 19th-22nd in vienna, then 22nd-25th in budapest, 25th-28th in prague then back to vienna for a day, got into stockholm late late last night and am currently in iceland for two days... the good news is i am iceland by myself so i am sure that i will have plenty of time to catch up on my blog tonight :)

last day in stockholm

yesterday i got done all my last day in stockholm stuff... went to school to take a couple more pictures, bought a SSE sweatshirt, paid my last internet bill, walked from sveavagen through the palace all the way through gamla stan.  i have a little tradition that i buy a print in each country i visit so i got my print yesterday too.  it was a nice day but it was quite gloomy - not shocking given that it is still winter in stockholm :)

anyhow today is full of packing and cleaning i will certainly miss stockholm but i am excited to leave for vienna tonight!!

xc skiing with the king

yesterday i met andrea for lunch at un momento a place next to the student palace behind school... it is quickly becoming one of my favorite lunch places - it is cheap and they have an amazing chicken bulgar salad with tatziki... i don't know if i have mentioned this here before or not but the swedes are totally obsessed with tatziki - they have it everywhere!!!

after lunch we went back to the big dorm near school to meet anna and jana our two czech friends to go watch a xc ski race that was taking place at the palace.  it was a world cup sprint race just over a kilometer and they had built a track around the palace in stockholm... the swedes were quite into the race all the commentary was in swedish so of course i didn't understand what they were saying - but it was really fun... we even got to see the king who came out to open the race... it was quite cold in the shade of the stands and so afterward we went to cafe mistlen in gamla stan for some yummy hot chocolate!

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