Last Saturday I was on my way to a grocery store when a furry little creature ran across the bike path. A friend whom I was with almost crashed and I went looking or the animal. It turned out to be a kitten. Probably 5 weeks old or so. He was so little and it was very cold outside then and the cat was shaking. We hopefully did the right thing and just left it there. Just kidding. We picked it up, put it in one of our cloth grocery bags and went shopping. The tiny cat, then called Osker, became fairly restless and tried relentlessly to get out of the bag. I felt bad when I kept blowing in his face to scare him so he'd stop. After buying food we took him to the vet. They were barely any help at all. They kept us waiting for like an hour. On another note, while we were waiting there was a short movie that looped every few minutes and it showed a dog after it had been is some sort of traumatic accident all bloodied up, then taken to a vet and operated on. It was pretty disgusting. But that's how things are here in Sweden. On first aid kits it shows very graphic pictures of wounds that the certain bandages are for. Back to the vet. The only information we got out of them was the phone number for the police because they would take the kitten, not the vet. We thought that was strange so we left and tried to think of maybe someone else who would want a cat. We brought it back to our apartment and all the girls on my floor fell in love with it. Being a few days later, the cat is now named Cider, has food and kitty litter in her own room, and gets tons of attention from the girls on that end of the hall, the opposite side of mine end. One of the girls has decided to keep it. The problem is that we aren't allowed to keep pets. I don't really want to keep it. The main reason is that the cat smells and it lives in the same room that I keep my bike in. There may be a mysterious call to the police that a stray cat may be on my floor.
I also took my long board outside this weekend. Before this I used my board only to go to one end of the hall to the other. It's fun and I've gotten others to try their hands at boarding down the hall. A friend of mine, Dave from Australia, and I went to the bus station parking lot. It was fun. The roads are in good shape here but its getting cold. I'm not sure if it hit 50 degrees today. I went home to put shoes on (I've been wearing my slippers most of the time, a.k.a. flip flops, sandals, thongs, etc) and a scarf. I'm not excited about the cold. I've heard it doesn't snow much here but rather cold rain. I get shivers even thinking about it.
One last thing. I shaved my room mate's head a couple of days ago and it was very disgusting. He's the kind of guy who showers when he feels like, and no, it's not every day, or every two days. I'm not really sure how often it is but when I shaved his head he had a ton of flakes under the canopy. His hair wasn't that long to begin with, but oh man, it was gross underneath. I didn't say anything to him at the time but darn sure I washed my hands for ten minutes after wards.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
"What did she say?"
Today I had to explain a "that's what she said" joke to a French guy and an Iranian. I don't think they appreciated it as much as I did. Many times regional humor doesn't transfer over and it makes me a little sad. It'll take some times but I'll indoctrinate them to say the same awful jokes that Americans use to amuse themselves on a daily basis.
Speaking of America, I made an American pizza for lunch today. Swedish pizza has thin crust and weird toppings. Also I don't know how to make them that way. Neither American off hand but I looked up some crust recipes and had at it. Let me tell you everyone on my floor was stunned when they saw me at work. Mostly because I've never cooked/baked that much here, but it was something that sort of took up all the kitchen. Our kitchen isn't that big for the 15 residents living there. It turned out okay for my standards but everyone that tried some liked it. I put pepperoni, olives, and mushrooms on it. I introduced black olives to some people in the process. One problem was that the pizza stuck to the pan. I didn't oil it enough, apparently. It wasn't a big deal but I know I can do it better. So in a few days I'll have another go. I've got some pictures of my pie and I'll post those later. btw, I think my camera broke a little. It doesn't show what the lens in looking at on the view screen, but it'll take pictures and put those on the view screen. When I set it to video, that'll show up as well. I'm hoping it's a minor problem.
Well, the weather's been uncooperative lately. It's been cloudy and rainy for some time. There was supposed to be a bonfire last night but it was canceled. I actually couldn't go because I got stuck doing laundry. Doing laundry takes FOR-EV-ER (name that movie). They only got 2 washing machines, one dryer, and one drying closet. I think I've mentioned this before but it deserves another rant. The first annoying this was completely my fault. I put my detergent in and my close and I pushed the button to turn it on. It turns out that I didn't push it hard enough and didn't actually turn it on. So I come back a half hour later and I find my close on top of the washer with a note stating that I forgot. When I first got down there and saw my close I thought they were washed and needed some drying. They felt dry when i touched them and thought the washer was working really well. Then I saw the note and got a little mad. Why couldn't the person just start the washer? They were nice enough to write a note, so why couldn't they be nice the other way? I'll tell you. Getting laundry done in that place is a battle. If someone takes too long or doesn't use the machines properly they close are out of there. Another girl came down one time and found her clothes on top of the dryer. They were in the drying and drying, but for some reason, someone took her clothes out to dry their clothes. It could have been that the dryer stopped before the clothes were dry. This dryer is the worst possible dryer on the face of the earth, or at least I'm pretty sure. I gets the clothes really hot but it doesn't seem to do that much. I had clothes in the dryer and drying closet and I keep taking close out of the dryer to put in the closet to dry them faster. I rambling because it took me 5 hours to do three loads of wash. FIVE of them. Actually 6 and a half if you count the first time I put my clothes in a washer. I really hate doing laundry here. If they were American sized washer I could probably fit it all in one load and be done in a little over an hour. This country doesn't have laundromats either.
Now I'm a little tired cause I had a group project meeting this morning and lots of American pizza in my belly. I'll go read stuff now hopefully go to bed early.
Speaking of America, I made an American pizza for lunch today. Swedish pizza has thin crust and weird toppings. Also I don't know how to make them that way. Neither American off hand but I looked up some crust recipes and had at it. Let me tell you everyone on my floor was stunned when they saw me at work. Mostly because I've never cooked/baked that much here, but it was something that sort of took up all the kitchen. Our kitchen isn't that big for the 15 residents living there. It turned out okay for my standards but everyone that tried some liked it. I put pepperoni, olives, and mushrooms on it. I introduced black olives to some people in the process. One problem was that the pizza stuck to the pan. I didn't oil it enough, apparently. It wasn't a big deal but I know I can do it better. So in a few days I'll have another go. I've got some pictures of my pie and I'll post those later. btw, I think my camera broke a little. It doesn't show what the lens in looking at on the view screen, but it'll take pictures and put those on the view screen. When I set it to video, that'll show up as well. I'm hoping it's a minor problem.
Well, the weather's been uncooperative lately. It's been cloudy and rainy for some time. There was supposed to be a bonfire last night but it was canceled. I actually couldn't go because I got stuck doing laundry. Doing laundry takes FOR-EV-ER (name that movie). They only got 2 washing machines, one dryer, and one drying closet. I think I've mentioned this before but it deserves another rant. The first annoying this was completely my fault. I put my detergent in and my close and I pushed the button to turn it on. It turns out that I didn't push it hard enough and didn't actually turn it on. So I come back a half hour later and I find my close on top of the washer with a note stating that I forgot. When I first got down there and saw my close I thought they were washed and needed some drying. They felt dry when i touched them and thought the washer was working really well. Then I saw the note and got a little mad. Why couldn't the person just start the washer? They were nice enough to write a note, so why couldn't they be nice the other way? I'll tell you. Getting laundry done in that place is a battle. If someone takes too long or doesn't use the machines properly they close are out of there. Another girl came down one time and found her clothes on top of the dryer. They were in the drying and drying, but for some reason, someone took her clothes out to dry their clothes. It could have been that the dryer stopped before the clothes were dry. This dryer is the worst possible dryer on the face of the earth, or at least I'm pretty sure. I gets the clothes really hot but it doesn't seem to do that much. I had clothes in the dryer and drying closet and I keep taking close out of the dryer to put in the closet to dry them faster. I rambling because it took me 5 hours to do three loads of wash. FIVE of them. Actually 6 and a half if you count the first time I put my clothes in a washer. I really hate doing laundry here. If they were American sized washer I could probably fit it all in one load and be done in a little over an hour. This country doesn't have laundromats either.
Now I'm a little tired cause I had a group project meeting this morning and lots of American pizza in my belly. I'll go read stuff now hopefully go to bed early.
Monday, September 8, 2008
How many states in the USA? No way!!!
I've asked a ton of foreigners a very simple question and have repeatedly gotten the wrong answer. And it's the same wrong answer given by Australians, Germans, Portuguese, and more. My simple question is how many states are there in the United States of America. Unsurprisingly, Americans seem to be the only ones who know the correct answer (I had no idea that Australia had 6 until recently but I don't care though and neither should I because it doesn't affect me), but the surprising part is how adamant the foreigners are at professing their correctness. The number of states they say is 52. It blows there mind that the actual number is so round. I had a discussion late last Friday about this. Unfortunately I didn't have a map so we searched the entire building till we found this tiny German world atlas. My rivals counted the number of states a few times before they said they had to consult the internet. They were apparently too tired at the time to trust their data collecting skills. I still don't see how they all said the same number. I'm wondering if there's an American television show they've all seen that taught them wrong. It sort of blows my mind how they all say 52.
Saturday something very cool/American happened in the streets of Jonkoping. There was a cruise of old american cars. A cruise is when a bunch of cars usually numbered in the hundreds take over the streets to show off. This cruise included old American cars for the 60's. I knew it was coming but until one of my flat mates yelled down the hall about the goings on. A few grabbed chairs and headed to the street. It was pretty cool. Lots of old chevys, a few muscle cars, and maybe two or three European cars. A few of us wanted to be part of the action so we kept asking for rides. It took awhile but we got a nice couple to let us sit in the back of a cool sea-foam green chevy convertible. We were essentially in a parade, waving and being waved at. It was smashing. While we were in the back seat I was interpreter between the Swedes and my friends. They told me that there were 200 cars in this cruise and they get only one day a year to show them off properly. It was a pretty cool thing to be apart of.
I think I'm finally over my illness. Which reminds me: I came home for lunch today and when I walked into the kitchen I found that our garbage was leaking something kind of liquid that had crawled over half of the floor. There was also a couple of people in the kitchen preparing food and barely acknowledging it. I went straight to the garbage and took it out and proceeded to mop. I was sort of in a bad mood before this because my roommate lost his key to our room and we can't lock it cause he needs to get in too, and I had found out that the key copy place won't copy our keys. I was also in a frustrated mood earlier because I'm in a newly formed group that will present an IT innovation, the whole class does it, but I was the fifth guy in our group of 5 friends who need to get with another group. this is fine with me but the group that I with now works a different way that I do. We had a meeting on our project and just about nothing got done in half an hour. Anyway, the floor got clean no thanks to the others living there.
Saturday something very cool/American happened in the streets of Jonkoping. There was a cruise of old american cars. A cruise is when a bunch of cars usually numbered in the hundreds take over the streets to show off. This cruise included old American cars for the 60's. I knew it was coming but until one of my flat mates yelled down the hall about the goings on. A few grabbed chairs and headed to the street. It was pretty cool. Lots of old chevys, a few muscle cars, and maybe two or three European cars. A few of us wanted to be part of the action so we kept asking for rides. It took awhile but we got a nice couple to let us sit in the back of a cool sea-foam green chevy convertible. We were essentially in a parade, waving and being waved at. It was smashing. While we were in the back seat I was interpreter between the Swedes and my friends. They told me that there were 200 cars in this cruise and they get only one day a year to show them off properly. It was a pretty cool thing to be apart of.
I think I'm finally over my illness. Which reminds me: I came home for lunch today and when I walked into the kitchen I found that our garbage was leaking something kind of liquid that had crawled over half of the floor. There was also a couple of people in the kitchen preparing food and barely acknowledging it. I went straight to the garbage and took it out and proceeded to mop. I was sort of in a bad mood before this because my roommate lost his key to our room and we can't lock it cause he needs to get in too, and I had found out that the key copy place won't copy our keys. I was also in a frustrated mood earlier because I'm in a newly formed group that will present an IT innovation, the whole class does it, but I was the fifth guy in our group of 5 friends who need to get with another group. this is fine with me but the group that I with now works a different way that I do. We had a meeting on our project and just about nothing got done in half an hour. Anyway, the floor got clean no thanks to the others living there.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
A couple photos
From left to right: two Iranians, Leila and Nahim, a German girl, Julia, and a Mexican named Mary. The Iranians live on my floor, the german from two floors up and Mary lives 20 minutes away by bus.
Here are some friends of mine. Tsiory from France and Benny from Germany. We're at the lake enjoying good weather.
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| From Jonkoping |
Here are some friends of mine. Tsiory from France and Benny from Germany. We're at the lake enjoying good weather.
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| From Jonkoping |
Cheers
For lunch today I ate at a place where the Swedes think is better than McDonalds. It's called Max Hamburgare and it was terrible. The thing about hamburgers here is that every restaurant uses the same meat. Everything about it is the same: the size, taste, everything. They only change it with different toppings. There must be one company supplying the meat for hamburgers in all the non-fancy restaurants. Although the hamburgers in the nice restaurants fail to compare with a nice Carl's Jr. 6 dollar burger. With this in mind I've vowed to show my flatmates what a real American hamburger tastes like. I'm going to get a bucket grill from Ikea, season the meat of my choosing, grill it up, maybe saute some mushrooms and onions, and feast.
You know I was looking at some of my earlier posts and I've noticed that my writing was fairly poor and I want to address this. You see there aren't very many native English speakers here and we have people from all over the world with many many accents which makes understanding English some what of a challenge. So what I've noticed is that I've unconsciously dumbed-down the way I speak: taking out the idioms, using smaller words, using five words when I would usually use ten. That sort of thing. But now I'm trying to get back to my normalcy. Maybe teach some of my friends how we really speak in USA.
Another thing someone brought up was the most of the Americans here aren't what they expected us to be like. There's a girl from Texas on the floor below me and she was described as being very American. And I asked the person making this comment why they didn't think that I was "very American"? The reply was that I didn't act like what they saw in the movies and American television. I still haven't met this person from Texas but my knowledge of people from that state gives me a few hints as to why I may not seem as American. Also I don't think that average Americans study abroad. When I told everyone that education was free here they were blown away. I guess it's not common knowledge. But there's still the fact that schools in the United States are some of the best in the world. Many people I've met here agree completely that the schools in the US are dominant.
Another 2 cents. This school teaches in English, right? Most of the teachers here are Swedish. But their English isn't as good as I would expect it to be. I'm making a higher standard for professors. They translate many phrases directly from Swedish and it doesn't work all of the time. And pronunciation sometimes sounds like someone scratching their nails on a chalkboard. Take the word diameter for instance. During one lecture this word was used fairly often but the teacher put the emphasis on the first "e": diamEter. It may be a regional thing but it drove me crazy that day. Normally I wouldn't care so much but these are my teachers teaching complex ideas to multicultural students who will learn how to say these words and phrases this way and perpetuate false grammar. Such is life I suppose.
I was going to put some photos up but another problem with this university is that when everyone is on the internet it gets a bit slow. I'll get it done some other time.
You know I was looking at some of my earlier posts and I've noticed that my writing was fairly poor and I want to address this. You see there aren't very many native English speakers here and we have people from all over the world with many many accents which makes understanding English some what of a challenge. So what I've noticed is that I've unconsciously dumbed-down the way I speak: taking out the idioms, using smaller words, using five words when I would usually use ten. That sort of thing. But now I'm trying to get back to my normalcy. Maybe teach some of my friends how we really speak in USA.
Another thing someone brought up was the most of the Americans here aren't what they expected us to be like. There's a girl from Texas on the floor below me and she was described as being very American. And I asked the person making this comment why they didn't think that I was "very American"? The reply was that I didn't act like what they saw in the movies and American television. I still haven't met this person from Texas but my knowledge of people from that state gives me a few hints as to why I may not seem as American. Also I don't think that average Americans study abroad. When I told everyone that education was free here they were blown away. I guess it's not common knowledge. But there's still the fact that schools in the United States are some of the best in the world. Many people I've met here agree completely that the schools in the US are dominant.
Another 2 cents. This school teaches in English, right? Most of the teachers here are Swedish. But their English isn't as good as I would expect it to be. I'm making a higher standard for professors. They translate many phrases directly from Swedish and it doesn't work all of the time. And pronunciation sometimes sounds like someone scratching their nails on a chalkboard. Take the word diameter for instance. During one lecture this word was used fairly often but the teacher put the emphasis on the first "e": diamEter. It may be a regional thing but it drove me crazy that day. Normally I wouldn't care so much but these are my teachers teaching complex ideas to multicultural students who will learn how to say these words and phrases this way and perpetuate false grammar. Such is life I suppose.
I was going to put some photos up but another problem with this university is that when everyone is on the internet it gets a bit slow. I'll get it done some other time.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Still Cruizin
I can't believe it's September already. Time has flown by. It feels like I've been in Sweden for months, like I've figured out most things already. The days here have been fun like last Saturday we experienced the best weather here. The sun was shining with hardly any wind so my flatmates and I spent the entire day outside. It started at the farmers market where I got some nice pastries, then we went out to lunch at a nice place close to the lake where we ate outside, had some nice hamburgers, and just chilled for a while. We checked out the lake after that and just enjoyed being outside.
I think Monday I went to play tennis with one of the guys on my floor. He's really good at tennis and has been an instructor at times. In Sweden if one wants to play tennis or basketball or just about anything one must rent a court or something to play. I like the american style where there are places to play sports everywhere. Tennis was fun but i think I strained a muscle in my leg. it's not bad. That night there was a pajama party at a sports bar not far where i live. It wasn't the best party but I had lots of fun.
it's about time for me to go. Until next time...
I think Monday I went to play tennis with one of the guys on my floor. He's really good at tennis and has been an instructor at times. In Sweden if one wants to play tennis or basketball or just about anything one must rent a court or something to play. I like the american style where there are places to play sports everywhere. Tennis was fun but i think I strained a muscle in my leg. it's not bad. That night there was a pajama party at a sports bar not far where i live. It wasn't the best party but I had lots of fun.
it's about time for me to go. Until next time...
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