Happy New Period of Time to Rock!!!

Hello internet. Where to begin, where to begin. This very second I'm soaking my hat in warm water and detergent. You know the hat I always wear. Well, I don't wash it much and it shows. This water is now pretty disgusting with a color normally seen in a toilet. This hat has been with me through a lot so I don't care what it does when it's not on my head. I wish it would clean itself more often. Whatever.

So foremost in my mind is my trip back to Jonkoping from Paris. The day started at 3:30 when my alarm went off. I snoozed it. 3:40 and I turned the alarm off, got up a few minutes later dreading what was before me. Let me tell you that I went to bed only a couple of hours previous and was insanely tired at this point. The reason why I'm getting up this early was to catch a train to go across Paris to bus that will take me and a couple friends to the airport. This early the trains aren't that frequent. We said our goodbyes to people we may not ever see again in life and walk in the cold dark morning to the first train station. This train ride takes 45 minutes to get to the metro station we needed to switch trains. We waited at this train station for what felt like an hour. It very well could have been an hour. I was so tired I only hated it. Another 15 minutes on the metro, then an hour and a half bus ride to the air port. This airport hosts Ryanair, easily the cheapest airline I've ever flown with, and it shows with the airports it flies into. They're crowded and very ill informative. Two hours of this then 2 hours of flight to Skavsta. Here's where things went wrong. Remember two sentences ago when I wrote that we flew to Skasta? We flew there but we didn't land there. We flew to Arlanda, the airport north of Stockholm. What this does is totally screw with the travel schedule that everyone has to get to where they're supposed to go, including mine. At this point the mood of the crew I'm traveling with takes a down turn. Not only are we super tired but now we may have to eat our tickets and buy new ones to get home. I'm not sure how much money I've got in the bank. Parents were supposed to put more money in but I didn't know. So I only had a few hundred crowns with me and I didn't know what it would cost. I was going through a bunch of scenarios on what to do and not liking any of them. Ryanair was kind enough to provide a shuttle back to Skavsta which took us awhile to find and a lot of heat searching. Yeah, it's pretty cold here in Sweden now. It took over an hour to get back to Skavsta and by the time we got there we were over two hours behind our original schedule. This is where luck and kindness pulls its weight a little. I notice that one of the buses on my original itinerary was sitting next us and that there wasn't a time table of when I was supposed to take that bus. This was would be free and get me closer to home where I would at least be able to buy a cheaper ticket. An hour and a half I get to Linkoping and luckily for me the next bus was waiting to take me home. So no waiting in the cold. I show the bus driver my ticket that was for a bus 2 hours a go, but he was very kind and let me on the bus. 2 hours later and I was home. I was very glad to get back in Jonkoping and at this point I was having a hard time staying awake. I stumbled back to my door and I remembered that I left my card key with someone staying. They needed it cause they had to turn theirs in. I called this person and they were over a half hour's bus ride away. to be honest I wasn't mad. I was a little past feeling at this point. So I went to get a pizza which was the first thing that I had eaten that whole day. It was about 7 in the evening and very cold outside. Let me mention that this pizza was free. I had a card that got stamped every time I ate there and the eleventh was free. This was my eleventh pizza. I ate in the restaurant all by myself with no one else in sight, even the workers were somewhere else. I just felt weird. Anyway, I got home and my friend was there to open the door for me. It was nice to be in my room and to go to bed. I quickly got out of my cloths and headed for bed. Just before I was about to fall asleep I remembered that I was supposed to get a key to someone coming over at 10, about an hour or so away. I had to hold sleep at bay for just a few more minutes. There was a great battle between me and sleep this whole hour. But I did the deed and was off the dreamland. One of the longest days of my life.

I'll write about Paris later. Pics'll be provided as well, but later.

Almost Christmas

So it's been an emotionally draining week. As you may have heard Christmas is in a couple of days and for normal folk Christmas is spend with families. Unfortunately I live way too far from home to travel there; it's mostly a financial issue. But it's more than that. I don't really know where home is exactly. If I were to go to my parents house I'd be going to see them and my other siblings. I didn't grow up there so there wouldn't be many friends. I could go back to Hawaii. Oh, I miss Hawaii so much. Go to the beach, feel the warmth of the sun on my face and the searing heat of the sand on my feet. Paradise. I really want to swim in the ocean. I've got family and friends there. That would be a better "home" for me.

The emotionallity doesn't stop there. Tons of people are leaving for good. So I'm staying in Sweden or around here for Christmas then off to Paris for New Year's. But being one of the last ones here means that I'm saying goodbye to everyone. Seriously, there are lots of people leaving and the bus/train station is right behind where I live so there've been tons of goodbye gatherings over there. Tons of goodbye parties as well. Saying farewell to close friends almost everyday for a week really drains you, especially if you know there's a very slim chance that you'll see that person ever again. And now Delta house is fairly empty. Out of the 14 or so people on this floor only 4 of us are still here, and us four aren't the chummiest of chums. We're acquaintances. It's alright, but a lot of it turns into boring small talk that I'm only trying to look like I'm paying attention so they don't get mad at me. I've got Yassine here, though. He's a friend of mine from Morocco. He's having a couple of people from his home country join him for Christmas and maybe go somewhere. So that's what we're going to do. We still don't know where we're going, but that's what makes it an adventure, right?

yeah, so this building is just about empty. But every time I go down to do some laundry there's a shit load of clothes being washed with more on top of the washers waiting. There must be a lot more people here than I thought. I rarely go down to the first and second floors. Come on people.

Also I've moving my stuff into a bigger room here on the 3rd. It's tons bigger but it's difficult to come up with a good floor plan for all our things. Mike is going to moving in here as well when he comes back and he's wanting to buy a couch and a card table for this place. So I'm doing my best to come up with a good solution. There's a few obstacles like those stupid lamps that cant' be moved more than a foot. I've tried a few things and I think I'm close to a solution. It'll be great. I know it.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of my internet friends.

Exams suck

Hello all. So I had my big scary exam yesterday and it sucked. It was for a class called knowledge modeling. It was taught in the technical school. That is to say in a different school than the business school where I normally attend (plus I have a background in psychology). And the class was taught by three very boring technical school nerds. The classes were so boring that I only went to half of'em. The ones I did go to made me sooo sleepy that it wasn't worth going, even though I really tried to pay attention. They sucked the life out of me. So I studied super hard for the last couple of days. I only had a few days because my group mates and I were working really hard on presentations and papers for our other classes.

So there was this break I had between study sessions that was spent attending a Swedish culture thing where they were talking about traditions of a Swedish Christmas. There was a drink there called glog which is a lot like spiced cider. Anyway, I like the stuff but this time it wasn't sitting right. Soon after I finished the cup I had to run to the restroom to spew it up. It was weird. I've never done that before: drinking something just to pewk it out a moment later. The group went up to the study room in the library and keep joshing me about what happened making ralfing noises and picturing gross scenarios. I threw up again. That was a long day where I got about as much done as a pewking college student could. The presentations went very well the next couple of days, btw.

So the exam yesterday kicked my ass. I wasn't as prepared as I'd like to've been, but I think I passed. The think was after I had the exam I was super exhausted and headachey. We even had a big lasagna dinner that night with a bunch of people from delta. I was very tired and barely social. So went to bed early and slept till 11 this morning. So glad all that is over with. There's still more to be done during the break but I'm glad that day is over.

Sunday. The day the week winds up to kick ass. Can you feel it? I certainly can. This week's going to be hell. I'll be so glad when it's over. I'm not going to type why cause it'll depress me. Oh, hey we had our Secret Santa thing this last week. I had Chara. She's from Oklahoma I think but I don't really hang with her much. Not close friends at all. So there was a little lack of motivation doing this one. I wasn't going to half ass it, a little, maybe, but I sort of when through the motions. so yeah, half-assed. I got her some play-doh, some bouncy balls, because they were cheap at the toy store, and for her final gift that I gave her a box of stuff from the Body Shop. They weren't terrible gifts but there weren't that thoughtful and I didn't work at making them so. You wanna know what I got? well, my secret santa was this dude from germany named Max. He did this theme of 2 girls 1 cup. don't ask. But what he gave me was 2 candy bars, 1 cup, and for the final gift he gave me a double dvd of swedish porn. Awesome? you decide.

We went out to the Bongo Bar after all that, Mike got really drunk. We took him home and watched Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. I had to explain that White Castle is gross. The worst fast food I have ever tasted.

We also went to a hockey game last week were our team got there asses handed to them. The team here in Jonkoping won their division last season and this game was against Finlands national champion. They won 6-0. The worst thing about the whole game was that the fans were almost completely silent for the whole thing. There was no cheering section. The Finns on the other hand were loud. How can a home game feel like an away game? It was terrible. I got some pics of that but Leila has my memory card. I'll post'em when I can/want to.

That's it for now.

Later

wish me luck for my week

Oh those shenanigans!

So I'm taking another break. I'm almost done with my take home exam. I just need to adjust one more question and that'll be it. Done with the class. Oh, get this. yesterday we met with one of our teachers to get the grade of our big paper. we did a research project and we thought we did an alright job. I thought we did well and I've got some experience behind me to let me say so. we walk and and find out we barely passed. It was all bullshit. I swear. Our research design was done much much better than other kids I saw walk out of there with better grades. This isn't our only qualm with the teacher either. At the end of this meeting one of the guys in our group still needed to get his exam back. This was weird cause every one got their graded exam back like a month ago. So he gets his back and the teacher had dropped a couple points of the test. Points, according to my friend, were awarded to him earlier when the teacher showed him his grade a couple weeks before. So my friend got really pissed. I thought he was going to deck the teacher. There were some heated words, I left the room, and the guys had a short terrible discussion. This meeting totally ruined our scholastic day. We were going to work on some other stuff but after this meeting every one was bummed. We got nothing done; sat there for an hour or two. then we had to get out of there and stop moping and went to the coffee shop. Once there the mood lightened, we saw some friends there and the day seemed salvageable. On our way to said coffee shop I saw my friend Louelle who told me that I was supposed to make a pizza for my roommates birthday dinner. Okay, it was my roommates birthday like last Thursday and there were two failed attempts to celebrate, but we finally did it up right last night. there was a big dinner with great food. It was a good time. I also got my hair cut cause the girl who cuts hair was there and she had her stuff there. It's fairly short but I like it. I'll post some pics soon. after that my friend mike was really trying hard to get me and Leila to go out. We were tired but after about an hour of pushing we let in and went to a sports bar for a few drinks. I was good to get out, sort of. We just hung out and it was good, but I needed today to work on that take home exam as well as some other stuff later on today so I couldn't be out too late. Too bad, but we got home around 2:30 or so and after that we came home to some shenanigans. Vodka bongs, deep frying (we bought a deep fryer a couple of days ago), a water fight (my pj's got soaked), and people wanting to watch a movie. We started the movie but we got too tired. This was around 4 when people left my room and I went straight to bed. sleep didn't come so easy and I was tired, am tired. so I got up at seven (three hours later) and started stuff. I finished some of this exam and started my laundry. So far things are good. Not sure for the rest of the day, but for now I'll keep going.

When is it ever going to get done?

It's so hard to concentrate right now. I'm trying to finish up a take home exam and I just realized that I don't have everything that I need here. I'm at JIBS and I need some handouts. I'm also needing food. There are other things that are making it difficult to concentrate which I don't want to discuss. But I need to get this stuff done so wish me luck.

Okay I'm back. Still can't think. I'll just chalk this up to my break. So yeah, i downloaded the current episode of Prison Break that we're going to watch tonight. I'm sort of excited for that. There's been a group of us who've watched season 3 together and now we've been keepin up with this new season week by week. It's fun to have this to look forward to every Tuesday but I think this may be the last episode of the series so "good bye" to this show. I know there'll always be others, but this one was sort of special in way because we did this way before we had internet. Also there are only a few more weeks till everyone leaves Sweden to go back to there own countries for good, or moves out of Delta house, or I just won't see these guys for weeks. Things are really going to change soon. It's sort of sinking in now. It's a good thing. I need some change right now.

Have I mentioned that there's snow on the ground? Yep. We got snow in November. I heard that it doesn't snow here much and it usually comes in January or something. Well, I'm not a huge fan of snow. It's cold and slippery. I'd love it if it were warm, like sand on Sunset beach. And there's this debate that snow is much better than rain. I'll agree to a point, but after the precipitate has fallen rain leaves a small trail while snow leaves a lasting impression that I usually can't wait to get over. The temp here is going to rise anyway. It's going to be in the positives tomorrow anyhow and all the lovely snow will be washed away by the awaiting rain that supposes to fall. It's not that I like rain, dislike it too, but I just prefer it over snow. This is a current opinion subject to change any second so don't battle me on this one.

Okay, I'm going to get some more stuff done for real this time.

Later tater.

Brave the cold!

I had to come to the university to do some school work. Can you believe that it's 24 degrees today. I mean that's the high temperature. So cold. But I had to brave it to get stuff done. So much distraction at home, right? I mean when there's a tv going and a few people watching, what else is there to do? So cold, though. It's alright cause it'll be much warmer in a few days. It snowed a bunch too. I was just talking to someone about Hawaii just a second ago and I got a little jealous of all of you back there. I'm still really trying to get there this June. I found some cheap airfare back to the states which might be a good idea so i can maybe work? Who knows?

I think one of the major reasons why it's hard for me to be motivated here is that it feels that I've lost a good deal of my identity. I mean you are what you do, right? And I haven't been doing anything that I normally do. I haven't been riding my bike, I acquired a guitar very very recently, and other social activities seem so far from what I normally do. It may be a slight touch of homesickness but I don't I've every really had that in my life. If part of growing up is learning to deal with different situations then why am I regressing? Maybe I am growing up and I need some stability and I'm not getting that here. Everything, it seems, is up in the air. What I really think it is, now that I think about it, is that my needs are being met. I'm working on that too. Louelle is trying to get an apartment and I may room with her. Her dad is helping her and he's Swedish so this may happen. Finding a place is very difficult here.

I should get back to studying (I really mean starting). So I'll let you go.

Wish me luck.