long week

so the past few days have been a little hard here, but yesterday tiffany and i decided to take a little trip to copenhagen! it was much needed and it was a lot of fun to get out of lund and be somewhere new for the day.
we left and got to copenhagen around noon and set off for the planetarium! we watched a 3d movie on dinosaur sea monsters. we were in a huge imax, dome theater and there were only 4 of us in the whole place! it was really fun though and before the movie they did this little presentation on the stars and planets which was interesting. i was sad that we didnt get to keep the 3d glasses which was disappointing but oh well. after the movie we explored the place a little bit and they had some pretty cool little exhibits and they even had this video game where you had to move on this green screen and then they put you into a video game and you had to move to make your character move. it was fun.
after that tiffany and i just wandered around a bit and ate this really good chocolate strawberry pastery thing. then we went to this little part of copenhagen called christiania which is like this little "freetown" that isn't governed by danish law. its just a little hippie town, a mix of santa cruz san francisco and berkley something out of the 60's. it was a little sketchy so we didnt spend too long there, but it was a new part that we got to see! they dont let you take pictures inside christiana im not sure why but all over the place they had no camera signs.
so after we left there we walked around a little bit more, but we were getting tired since we had been walking around for about 7 hours so we decided to go to the hard rock cafe. it tasted so good after a long day of walking and it was nice to just sit and relax for a little bit.
afterwards we headed home and our day adventure came to an end.
tonight i think some of the girls and i are getting together and making dinner together and having wine so im excited to have a girls night! these are the girls that i am going with to amsterdam so i'm really excited for us to all travel together it should be a lot of fun! i told them about the mike's bike tour in amsterdam and everyone seemed pretty excited about it so hopefully we can fit that into our schedule! i also saw this thing called boom chicago, its this comedy night club that some people from SNL and madTV have performed at so maybe we'll include that in our trip as well. who knows.
i'm excited to start traveling. i like it here in sweden, but it gets a little lonely sometimes and since i onoly have school 2 days a week for 2 hours it gets a little boring here so i'm struggling to find things to fill my time. tiffany and i are going to look into joining the gym here so that might give me something to do!
hope all is well in california and that everyone is excited to start school.
i'll leave you guys with some pictures from my trip yesterday and from my serving job last weekend at the nations.

miss you lots.
love you more.

playing the intense green screen game

thats me on the right hand corner of the screen

our 3d glasses before the sea monster movie

christiania

random foot statue in the middle of lund

getting ready to serve for the 60 person dinner

our amazing uniforms

colder days

today i have officially been in sweden for a month. somedays it feels a lot longer, and other times it feels like days go by really slowly.
the cold weather has begun. it is in the mid 50's everyday and its hard to believe that this is just the beginning!
my days haven't been filled with anything exciting recently. i'm ready to get out and travel! the other day i signed up for one of the student nation's (hallands) so i'm excited to see what sort of events and activities they'll host. when i went to sign up i put down that i wouldn't mind working at one of the events, and so they asked me and one of my friends to serve a 3 course dinner on friday! i'm slightly terrified since i know little to no swedish and i've never done any sort of dinner serving, but oh well just another chance to embarrass myself.
hallands hosted a new members dinner last night. they served a traditional thursday meal (even though it was wednesday...) of pea soup and pancakes. the pea soup was sooo good but different than what i'm used to (it was yellow...). and the pancakes were good (they're like crepes). and so it was fun to spend the evening there with some of my friends and there was lots of singing and joking so i think i made the right choice with this nation!
darin is here in 3 weeks so i'm excited to have a familiar face with me in sweden! i'm not sure what we're going to do while he's here....maybe a trip to malmo or copenhagen. i'm not sure! but we'll figure something out! i'm also really excited that i'm going to be able to go and visit him too! i love london and so i'm excited to see his favorite spots and see some new places!
i also got an e-mail from sterling airlines telling me that the flight time for our return trip from amsterdam has been changed so i hope that the new time still works for everyone! it doesnt' really matter to me since i don't have any classes then, but i don't want this to ruin our trip!
i watched the SNL skit of tina fey portraying sarah palin and i thought it was great! "global warming is just god hugging us a little closer...". all of my swedish corridor mates have been asking about my thoughts on the election and so its interesting to see what they think of the candidtates.
well i hope you all are doing wonderfully back at home and i hope to have more entertaining news once this weekend is over!

miss you lots.
love you more.

going to the zoo, zoo, zoo how about you, you, you?

hi hi hi
spent the day at the zoo! we took a 20 minute train ride to the town höör. from there it was about a 3 mile walk to the zoo! this wasn't your average zoo, this was skanes djurpark and it houses over 75 different nordic animals. the park was beautiful full of trees, and the animals had wide open spaces to frolic in and what not. it was fun seeing animals you don't typically see at a normal zoo. it was fun to just walk around and be in the sun, but i could definently tell that the weather is starting to get colder and that our days of sunshine are coming to an end. unfortunately the drop in temperature and being out all day made me get the beginnings of a cold and i'm going through my tissue supply fast. so tomorrow i'm just going to sleep and eat lots of soup and orange juice!
in my swedish culture class we got divided up into groups of 4 and we have to find something in the swedish culture that is odd or different and report on the significance of it. our teacher gave us the example of toilets; everyone uses them everyday, but many countires have different customs and different styles of toilets that can confuse an outsider. she showed us a whole slideshow of toilets from around the world. it was a funny example but made a lot of sense so i'm excited to see what the rest of the sememester will be like! my group is supposed to get together somtime this week and figure out what topic we're going to present on so hopefully we can come up with something good!
tiffany and i are going to buy our tickets for budapest tomorrow so i'm excited that i have 3 great trips planned! i'm really excited to have darin here in a few weeks! i think once i start traveling my time here is going to fly by!

hope you all are having fun back in the states and are enjoying the california heat!

miss you lots.
love you more.

coooooooooows! i felt right at home.

vince came to the zoo with me. :)

fooooxes

emo bear. he didn't move the whole time we were there.

mooooose!

me and the moose

at least i'm not a little bird.

i'm not sure what this is. but it was kinda hideous. in a cute way.

rainy days

hi everyone!

so its started to rain here and going outside doesn't seem very appealing so i thought i would update you all on the past few days.

on monday i started my first class. its called Swedish Society and Everyday Life. every lecture we are going to cover a different aspect of swedish life; some of the topics are perspectives on swedish modernity, culture analysis, food and national identity (i thought mom would like that topic), habits and customs...so it should be pretty interesting and let me gain a better grasp on the life here and i figure there's no better time to learn about the swedes then when i'm actually here! i'm also the only person in there from california (actually the only one from the US) which seems odd since there are so many UC students here, but i think its going to be a good opportunity to meet some new people! the class only meets mon and fri for about 2 hours so its like i have two weekend. i have tues, wed, and thurs off and also the regular weekend. i'm going to have to find things to occupy my time!

there's a site where you can bid on tickets to stockholm and they are waaaaaaaaay cheaper than buying them at the station or online (online or at the station is around $100 round trip, but through the auction site you can get them for about $40 round trip) but the only problem is that they're for the next day, so you have to be ready to leave. so i think i might try to do that, but since everyone else has class i might just have to do some traveling on my own. but that might be nice since i'd get to see everything that i would want to see, so we'll see!

yesterday and today i just wandered around lund and i've been looking for a cheap bookstore, but everything is so expensive! paperback books cost about $20 and i don't really want to spend that much! so tiffany and sarah and i were talking about getting library cards so we could check out there selection annnnnnnd they'd be free! my favorite price! today i went to max burger, its the largest swedish fast food chain. it was pretty good, but i'm used to 99cent cheeseburgers and what not, but a fast food meal here still costs around $10! but it was fun and actually really good, but still doesn't compare to in-n-out!

this weekend me and some of the girls were talking about going to this park reservation where they have mooses! we thought that would be exciting and they have some trails you can hike, so hopefully the weather clears up by then so we can go explore!

i thought i'd post some pictures of some of the university buildings here so you can see what my actual school looks like!

this is the main building. they have statues of random people all over the place.

this is where they hold their graduations and what not.

the AF building. there is where we came when we first arrived and had registration.

the library. so pretty. i went in the other day and couldn't really figure out anything. i couldn't even figure out how to get on the computer. hopefully i'll figure it out soon! there's a cafe inside and a falafal place.

lund cathedral
this is a big mound on campus. really weird story behind it. i guess a long time ago one of the buildings became infested with rats, so the students decided to kill them and get rid of them. so this is where they buried them. so this mound is actually a pile of dead rats.
this is part of my mentor group. theres about 25 people in the group total. it's all international students; some from australia, england, germany, austria...so its a great place to meet people and my mentors are great and plan lots of events for us and dinners and game nights so its a lot of fun. this was one of the nights where we went to one of the nations.

miss you lots.
love you more.

starting a blog...

so i figured that since i write everyone the same messages describing what im doing with my life in sweden, it might just be easier to write a blog that everyone can read and i dont have to write a million different seperate times and it might be easier to share pictures this way.

soooo....

i'm into my third week here in lund and its been quite the experience so far.

i'll post some pictures for now and update you some more as the week goes on!

miss you lots. love you more.


here are some pictures from my adventure in copenhagen!

the entrance to tivoli gardens











continuing our theme as posing as statues we see while in europe...this one is is supposed to represent the planets.
the little mermaid statue. they are really big on hans christian anderson here.
the most amazing apples we have ever had! they were having like a produce festival and were giving out a lot of free samples so we kept coming back to this little apple stand and getting samples till we finally gave in and bought some. one of the best things we did that day.
nyhavn. my favorite part of copenhagen. this used to be a place where all the sails would drink and party when they came into town and was thought of as the bad side of town. but today its lined with cafes and restaurants and people just hanging out along the side of the canal. hans christian anderson lived here also. i loved the colorful buildings! so cute.

a church that was next to an amazing fountain. winston churchill did something here. there's a statue of him outside the church.
this is the fountain that was next to the church. the story behind it is the creation of denmark. so this goddess wanted her own land, but the head god wouldn't give her any. so after much convincing he finally agreed that she could have as much land as she could plow in one day. so she turned her four sons into oxen and plowed from sun up to sun down. her land then became denmark.
tivoli gardens. so pretty at night! there were twinkly lights everywhere and the whole place just lit up. though it wasn't cheap to be there! it was $30 just to get into the gardens and then we had to pay $12 to go on ONE ride. oh well. totally worth it.
the taj mahal of tivoli gardnes
the one ride we went on! it was so worth the money. its a huge swing that took us over 260 feet in the air. it felt so unsafe but was just so much fun!
sarah and i snuck our cameras onto the ride! we just had to hold on to them very tightly to make sure we didn't drop it on one of the people below us!

and that ended our stay in copenhagen. a very expensive day but totally worth it. i think we're planning to go back again because in the winter they turn one of the town's squares into an ice skating rink and i dont think we'll be able to pass that up!