Week 5 At SVF

September 18th - Septemer 24th

The rain continued to pour during the 5th week. The gross black and tan slugs remained on all the sidewalks on the trails that I had found to take walks on. I found myself taking a lot of walks. The city was too magnificent to stay away from for too long. *I had forgotten to mention that on Friday (fredag), we took a class trip to the John Bauer museum, which was remarkable. John Bauer was a popular Swedish artist who greatly portrayed the nordic dark season with mystical creatures. John Bauer died with his family in a boat sailing around Lake Vattern. I will try to post some of my favorite pieces by him.

This past weekend Jack, Axel, David, Jonatan, Calle, Malin and I all decided to go into the city and see the new 'It' movie. We were all pretty pumped to be scared out of our minds as we walked to the theater. We had previously stopped by Coop to get some candy so we wouldn't have to pay for food at the theater. After the movie (which was amazing by the way, go see it) we decided we didn't want to spend money on the bus ride home either so we walked. When we got back to our dorm, Jack had 'left his keys in my room and needed to come get them' so we walked to my room and the second I opened the door, my roommate Linnea was standing in the doorway with a clown wig, clown make-up, and holding an umbrella in the dark. I was so scared I screamed and was told by one of the other residents that I was waking everyone up. Jack had purposefully left his keys in my room so he could watch me get scared. Apparently there was a group of people planning to scare me after the movie and everyone who went to see the movie with me were in on the joke. Aside from being scared out of my mind after watching a horror movie, the weekend was well spent.

Monday (måndag) classes came around once again and we were supposed to label the objects in our room in Swedish, read a book on Astrid Lindgren (the author of the popular Swedish children's series, Pippi Longstocking), learn the nature words, words in a class room, and do a presentation on a popular Scandinavian artist of our choosing. I decided on an older band known as The Soundtrack To Our Lives. They originated in Gothenburg and were very similar to the Rolling Stones or Iggy and the Stooges in their 60s-70s rock style. We would be presenting this in the next week. Monday (måndag) night class was fun because usually during our night class we are supposed to bring a Swede and I decided to bring my friend Axel. This class we decided to go for a walk and talk about the nature and try to speak as much Swedish as we are able to. Axel helped me immensely and I was even able to get a couple sentences out correctly in Swedish. Religion class on Wednesday (onsdag) was a long class. We were told discuss the meaning of life in our own words. The Indian student, Gabriel, was placed in my group and, because they are my group, we got way off topic discussing theories of religion and our own personal lives and how our different cultures expressed life and happiness. Classes continued as usual for the week and on Friday (fredag) we were to present our assigned topics in our Mediterranean World class. My group, Lukas, David and I, were assigned the Silver Age in Rome; and we were to be tested on this material next week. That night, a group of people decided to go out and Olivea, Jonaton, Jack, Axel and I decided to stay in. We all had decided to make Swedish tacos (which are very similar to regular tacos) for dinner together so we stopped by the store to get ingredients. We also stopped by Ikea because me and Linnea needed some new things for our new room that we had moved into on Thursday (torsdag). After dinner we were planning on meeting up with the rest of the group who went out but we decided against it and just hung out in mine and Linneas new room. The next day (söndag), Axel, Jack, Jonatan and I decided to go watch Calle's basketball game. We left SVF around 3, took a bus the game and stayed and watched for a while. His team lost, but it was still a lot of fun to watch Calle play and be with friends. For dinner that night we decided to eat leftovers from the tacos we had the previous night and got ready for classes to start again in the morning. We were all eagerly waiting for the trip to Rome that would take place in two weeks! The rainy weather was making everyone itching to go to the 70 degrees Fahrenheit weather in Italy!