Here in Jönköping....

Here in Jönköping it's.....really dark, probably because it is 2300, but then again, it gets dark at 1530....or I should say grayish.  But what am I doing?   Weather waits until the end of a conversion when you don't know what else to talk about (unless you are Swedish, then it's usually the first thing you talk about!).

What did I do last time, I believe ended on Monday!--So let's skip to Wednesday!

Wednesday
Did anyone else read that in an announcer voice?--anywho!

I had to go get my picture and finger prints done for my resident permit, and had my appointment for Wednesday morning.  Was it ever a difficult place to find!  The picture on the left is what I found first, that sign, up on the 3-4 floor says I had to be there, great place for a sign!  I ended up going through the back entrance and was at the door for employees.  Which is what I was told when a lady came out of it and said I had to go around the building to the other entrance, arrgg!

 I only found it because I remembered it was in number 7, otherwise it's on those little signs to the right!  Super easy :P.  Once I got inside, waited for them to finally open at 9AM, it took about 4 minutes total.

Main street in town centre, very cool.

So after my fun at the migration office, I went off to explore!  I found that most places don't open until 10AM, so I got cold and went into a hardware shop that was open!

This is what an empty Ikea is like...

They had a video screen outside the store.....it was very odd.

I found the Swedish version of DUCKTAPE©!

After my excursion I headed back home and decided to make something new....

Yum yum!

That night I then went to may buddy's house before Aka and had a fun time meeting a lot of new people!  I picked a Swedish guy's brian for about an hour and learned quite a bit!  We then all went to Aka as a group and had some fun, but I lost them shortly after [3 dances ish] and found some engineering friends.

I was a fun night, and got a bus home by 11:45PM [it took almost 15min to get my coat!]--getting the bus is always a happy thing!

Thursday

Inset "Swedish Language"

Thursday was the real beginning of my language course, with another to follow on Friday.  It moves very quickly, and my mouth was not ready to try and make those noises :P.  But I am better off than some, I have lip muscles from trumpet and can roll my r's--both of which are needed in Swedish!  We [Brian, Emily and I] started planning our own trip to Kiruna also, because we could not go to the ones set up by the student union here!......So I did research and didn't get my homework done:P  Also some people were visited downstairs, and one came up while I was making more Cinnamon rolls and played a game.....his idea was to make everything harder by closing your eyes X].

Friday
Class until 4PM--food--and researched more for our trip.  I also researched for going to Rome, Don't know if I said on here, but I have a ticket to see the Pope for Easter Mass! [cheers, confetti!]  We then watched two different movies as a Furan Family and finally went to bed......around late O'clock.  Today was just a homework day.  That was all.  But Mass tomorrow in English!--I'll understand something!  YAY!

O yeah!--I found how to make my keyboard do the extra Swedish letters!..It was exciting for me!

Hejdå!
blog ya later!

Who knows?

Who knows what's going to be in this post?  Not even I as of yet!--So let's get going!

Saturday~~
Saturday-(Lördag)-I went out to Aka again this night, and had quite a bit of fun, but didn't know a lot of the people there!--So Emily and I stuck together most of the night and I believe I managed to scare some people into submission with my fantastic dancing skills *cough* that may include the classic fridge dance.

[This is where I would like to include a clever and funny

Youtube video of someone doing this dance, but none were

like that of the fridge dance I know and love.  They were rubbish.  

It was sad]

This is our Fadders (in the purple and bright yellow/green shirts) and everyone else is other exchange students (in fact, some of the Fadders are from elsewhere, what I remember--France and Turkey).

I forced Emily to take a photo with me, you can see
my evil-ness reflected in that guy over my shoulder.

I then came home and talked to my parental units! --It was only about 5:30PM at home for them....It was a bit earlier here ;P

Sondag~~

  After a short sleep it was time to get ready for Mass!  Went to Mass, and I think I got a record 6 words out of a 25 minute Homily!---I guess that's not very good, is it?  but it was better than last week!  But I did meet a priest before Mass (you Catholic may know what this means), and a lady told me before that he was in Canada before coming here!  HAHA!  so there was one who knew English--In fact he had to use it in Mass because he didn't know how to announce something in Swedish.  At the end of Mass he also announced there would be an English Mass the nest week for the exchange students, so Emily and I agree to go to that one next week [we would understand it, YAY!].  During the day I did some more boring work and taught myself how to make bread.

That night we (the Furan [which I learned is said "foo ron" so I feel like it should be Furån--but I digress] Family) got together to try and get to know each other better and we had quite a few of the people all together.  There are only about 20 of us living here though.  We played games and had fun conversations until about 1:30AM.

About half of our Furan Family

Monday~~

Did all the fun things, like;

• Paid the rent
• Compared the Stats Problems
• Paid a fee to Pay my rent :P
• Got more things to make more food....wait--this really is fun :D
• I love food, so I ate
• Now I am just making more bullet points because I can
• See?

I had another Stats class today also, but I understood it all!  After stats I went to a "Buddy Mingle", so got to talk to my buddy more!  We then had a quiz about Sweden, we did a good job at guessing together!  Just the people with the answers did it wrong.  I met some more people (including my Buddy's brother).  And came home and practiced my Spanish for 45 Minute ~ish while eating and cleaning, and then making more bread (might have been longer, but it was fun!--I still remember quite a bit even though it's been 4 years since my last clase de español).

          

           *Note: don't punch into a glass bowl....I skinned my thumb-- did learn you can make bread with just one hand though!

And I finally am reallllllllllly close to being right when I'm saying hi in Polish [it's very hard for me!]!!!  Now just writing for you with my pet of bread is rising [the warmest area in the building is on my floor ;P].

I'll do more random things later, like some of my favorite sweets of Sweden so far.

Oh! and I saw my first women bus driver yesterday!

Blog ya Later ;)

A week has gone by, and I'm tired!

I am sorry for all the spelling/wrong word issues in earlier blogs!--I just went back to read them and was confused myself!

Anywho~~~~
This week has been pretty busy.  Classes started on Tuesday (only my Statistical Methods class--stats from now on), and it's in the afternoon; which is not good for my ability to understand.  So 3-5PM we were in class (Brian and Emily both have the same class) and after we went to something called Stadsvandring.  It was a hike around town where we had to do various activities.  Like; did you know that 20 Engineers can fit inside a Swedish phone booth?  Also engineers are very good at making shapes [linking arms and making outlines of such things as a house, circle, and dinosaur], and we also learned a bit about the Student Union here, where I won another patch.  We met up again afterward at a small concert and went to the Student pub/nightclub thingy [I don't have much experience with these things], which is run by students with volunteer students working.  It is called Akademien, or Aka by the students.  Here I personally just dance but there are those who partake in the 'pub' side of it also.  So I leave between 11-12, before it gets interesting ;P

Wednesday
No classes today!  So I cleaned and explored school a little and worked on some of my paper work.  Also got my first rent bill today yeah!........ :P
When to Aka again tonight, and danced with one of my Fadders WHO KNEW HOW TO SWING DANCE!!! --If you can't tell...I was excited...and still am!

Thursday
Class again!
We then had this thing called 'night mission' in which we had to find different objects off a list to get points.  I went outside with another kid and I got a film of me dancing with an older couple (who were very nice!), some flowers (didn't have quite enough, so had to draw a rose on a fadder's arm), and something weird with a statue (I boxed with a bust ;P).  It was a lot of fun!
Went again to Aka (it's usually only Wednesday nights, but for kick off it's everynight!), but only stayed until 10:30ish, but got to dance swing again ;).

Friday
Almost there!
Class again, but they have this thing called tutorial over here.  The Prof. goes through examples at first then afterwards you can ask questions of him.  So today was just an hour of lecture to catch up on stuff from the week, hour of examples, then we were done!
*Side note-we get breaks in a 2 hour class! It's crazy, but we do move quite fast through the material, or it might just be that I've never done stats before.
Otherwise I worked on my bonus work.  [We got 5 problems a week and turn them in, the Prof. corrects one of them randomly, and if correct, we get a bonus point towards the final!]  It's pretty nice.  Then did go to Aka with people from my home here (Furan), but left right after 11PM, there were too many people there for me!! [and they all were a little tipsy :|]

Saturday
Yay! Today!
Got up....rather late for me, made food and realized it was the last of it!  CRISIS!! So went and got food.  Today I also got to meet my Buddy from the University!  After we found eachother (we were about 5 feet apart and didn't realize it) we went to a cafe where she had me eat a green Swedish cake (it was really good!) and she told me about the town, trips, herself and Sweden.  I was very nice.  And now I'm back, writing this for you!

Sorry there are no photos for this week, I am being careful with it so it does not get hurt!  I'll try and take some this weekend!

Blog ya' later!

...And one more thing!

For all you who remember the Jackie Chan animated series!

Couple more adventures that I had between hiking and Sunday night, then I'll be caught up!  For school starts for me tomorrow!

Saturday night.....I may or may not have fallen asleep when I got back from my hike, but before that, I actually walked home from the park.---Which you will already know, because I'm going to go make a new blog for that now...before this one, you just traveled in time, aaahh snap!----Yes, I may be getting tired!

13-1-14
It's a new day!  Which is good, I was making some interesting errors last night!--Like making puns!

After the hike home, I played poker with the guys from Hong Kong and a guy from China named Eric.  And a new person came to our all.  An American, Stacey, who now lives across from me and is in the Communication school.

As for Sunday
Start it off with Mass.  We (Stacey, Lily-[Korea])  were going to Mass, and the Polish couple that live here were off to school to work, and gave us a ride!--We were there about 10:20 then...and Mass started at 11, so just in time for the Rosary!....in Swedish!---I really need to learn some Swedish.  Emily, an engineering friend from Poland, then came and we all proceeded to not really understand what was going on, in fact, Lily had disappeared, and we didn't know where she went.  We knew the responses....in our respective languages.  At one point Emily told me she was just going to sing in Polish, which for me, is hard than Swedish! [I'm having problems just saying 'hi' in Polish!]

We were very lucky that the Catholic Mass is the same everywhere!

After Mass we learned Lily is actually Protestant, and we from her a church on the way home and got Stacey a Bus Pass.  I came home and worked on this and my overalls!

Until there was a great war!!----Namely, I played another game with [side note*] the HongKongians and Eric.

*I took a survey to see if they should be called Hong Kongers (as they said) or my made up words HongKongians.....I won 4-2, not even counting my vote!

That's all for now!--Today is new and we finally got hot water back! (I think) [it went out last night].  School starts today!--But not until 3 for me :P.

Blog ya later!

[and some pictures taken from my window again]

Yay!!  Caught up!

Notes*
--I messed up a name earlier, It's Emeline, not Emenine
--I probably have messed something else up to, some make it a puzzle to solve! :D

Back from a Hike-atus

Just some photos I got on my hike back from my hike.

You can see a slight brown....and it smelled like motor oil......not a great sign.

After this I hiked all the way back to Furan through the woods;

Odd little camp out; guessing with slight inebriation.

More later, now it's time for me to sleep!!

Blog ya later!

Stadsparken

On Saturday I tried organizing a hiking trip, it ended up with me learning people don't wake up by 9AM.  One did, but the buses didn't line up, but I did enjoy my hiking the Park!

The bushes were getting little green buds on them like they were trying to come out in the spring (right, up).

A bell tower that I believe said parts dated back to 1679!

This is where the park is in the city.

I guess I will just have to deal with such views......  :D

This is the remains of an old church.

The "football" field--which is very hard to get used to hearing, since it should be "soccer".

Info on the old church (above).

An old trading post was there....and I took a picture of the info, and not the trading post!

Llamas.....why are there llamas?

An old main house and store house.

Some one was having a party!

There was A LOT of ducks.

I found a cannon!!!!   Kanon!!

This was a very bad maze...you could walk right through it.....and I'm not kiding--I have a video, but it doesn't upload well :P

It is hard to see, but there is a soccer player carved out of wood in this picture....

I saw a cat!  It was my first cat I had seen!  There are a lot of dogs here.  In fact, this one jingled as I chased it!

My last good shot of this little tour!  It was great fun in this park!  It was like an outside museum, with things older than our country!  I hope I can find more cool places like this!

Until then;
Blog ya later!