Because she guessed the right answer! It was Ice skates I bought from $5 from the Swedish goodwill. Monica, I’ll send you a post card as soon as I figure out where to buy stamps.
Not a long post for today (I have a long Laboration to translate for Kemi tomorrow) but for new pictures of this “winter wonderland” check out the picasa ablum by clicking the link (yea the one with the icicles) in the post below.
Can you guess what I bought? I am really excited about this purchase. I mean REALLY excited. Quite like a small child, actually. Yesterday I walked into Erikshjälpan, the Swedish version of the Goodwill and my new favorite store,a nd there was ______ (oh, come on guess!) for only 35 Kronor, or $5. It must have been written in the stars.
Seriously- I think this could be fun. Comment in with your guesses and whoever gets it right wins a postcard from Sweden!!
If no one guesses I’ll post the answer in a couple of days.
I’ll give you some hints:
1. It takes some skill to use them
2. You can use them inside or outside, depending on where you are.
3. Proper use of them requires a certain, very Swedish, temperature.
4. Canada is a big fan.
5. If you find yourself on a desert island with one, it can be applied to the cracking open of a coconut.
6. There’s not much use for them in Southern California, unless of course, you are a Duck.
So, what did I buy? And… what am I going to do this weekend? Come on, guess!
A Dramatization based on real events.
Location: a small laundromat (tvättstuga), clean almost to sterility, in the basement of a student housing complex somewhere in the south of Sweden. Four turquoise washing machines stand in a line against the southern wall. Along the opposite wall stand two drying machines, one a similar turquoise color and the other dark blue. Random Guy 1 stands next to the third washing machine talking rapidly in Swedish with Random Guy 2. The Girl stands bent over the first dryer, pulling colorful scraps of clothing out of it and stuffing them into a sack.
Random Guys 1 & 2: (continuing with incomprehensible Swedish conversation).
The Girl continues with the laundry, not even attempting to listen to their conversation. It must also be added that said girl is not fluent in Swedish.
Random Guys 1 & 2: (silence)
The Girl stops for a moment, having just realized that Random Guys 1 & 2 have probably just asked her something.
Random Guy 2: Kanske på engleska? (Maybe in English?)
Girl: (under her breath, realizing her cover was blown) Dang.
Random Guy 1: Excuse me, is this your, uh… thing?
The girl turns around to be greeted by two Swedish guys staring at her underwear.
FML.
She has a choice to make… claim the underwear and lose some small bit of dignity or maintain dignity but lose the underwear. She decides that her dignity was already lost when she didn’t understand a simple question in Swedish. Plus, she doesn’t have that many pairs of underwear.
The Girl: Oh, yea! Oops! Thank you. It’s mine. Haha… well, it’s definitely not yours!
Random Guys 1 & 2: (Stifled, awkward chuckling)
The Girl snatches the underwear, finishes grabbing the rest of her laundry and walks out the door.
End Scene
Reminders of why I came here.
I read Kerstin Ekman’s novel, “Rövarna i Skuleskogen” or “The Forest of Hours” during my Freshman year at Berkeley. It amazed me in English. I have yet to read it in Swedish.
I came across this very brief interview by chance today.
Kerstin Ekman is the only person to have left her seat Swedish Academy, in protest of the Academy’s unwillingness to consider for award the work of then-controversial author Salman Rushide.
Kerstin Ekman says the thing she loves most about her country is the language and the landscape.
In short, Kerstin Ekman made me move to Sweden in January.
Dear Physics,
I never thought I’d say this, but, well, here goes: I miss you. Chemistry is just so messy. And not in the crazy-good sort of way. In the unit conversion, stoichiometric, beräknade sort of way. I mean, Chem will be good for me, something different for a little while. But just promise you’ll take me back next term, okej? I promise I’ll try harder too.
From Sweden with Love,
Arielle
WordPress has limited space for photos. But I’m sure you all want to see more than one every two weeks. Hence, I give you: PICASA! I’ve made an album called. “The Sweden Files.” You can guess what’s in it. Or you can just klick in the link below. Oh my God, did I just spell click with a “K” ? I think I my transition in to Swedish-language mode must be well underway.
Klick on the Icicles!
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| The Sweden Files |
Also, I am now posting on the Daily Cal’s Travel Blog.
blog.dailycal.org/travel
Tack så mycket!
God, I wish this was my bike.
Yesterday, I realized I had been two weeks off the bike. Riding the crapcycle (doesn’t shift, makes scary noises, that cable that was wrapped around the pedal finally tore off) up to Kemicentrum every morning simply doesn’t count. Jogging outside is nice, but if you go too fast your face freezes off. After enduring two weeks of cycle-less desperation, I finally doled out the $72 dollars for a semester gym pass, and attended my first spinning class in Sweden. Little did I know it would be the best spinning class of my life.
I handed in my spinning ticket to the instructor a, middle aged man named Arne, and walked into an airy, open room with likely about 100 swedes on stationary bikes. So, so unlike the terribly small dungeon/raquetball court that is used for spinning in Berkeley! Even before I got on the bike, I was smiling. Can you imagine enormity of my excitement and amusement when the first song the instructor played was “Mamma Mia”? So, so much more enjoyable than having Britney Spears’ “Womanizer” and the likes blasted in your face for 45 minutes. Can you imagine how hard I started pedaling when Queen’s “Don’t stop me now” came on? And, can you imagine how good it felt to have 60 minutes of intensive exercise after almost two weeks of a semi-sedentary lifestyle? I’ll give you a hint: it felt good. Really, really good.
The rest of the day made it even better. Johanna and I visited Lena- a really cool girl from Uppsala who studies Human Ecology- in order to bake Semlor, the delicious marizpan and creme-filled buns eaten in Sweden before Lent. Lena lives in an all -female building, a place that reminded me a lot of my beloved Sherman Hall. Movie and theater posters adorned the walls, along with some cutout pictures from Pride and Prejudice, Twilight, and other girly things. I’m not usually one to out and call myself I girly-girl (I mean come on, I study physics, ride bikes, and worked as a maintenance manager), but living with all boys these last two weeks (a whole ‘nother post to look out for) has made me realized how much I truly valued the strong female community that I was immersed in at Sherman Hall. Being at Lena’s for even a couple of hours made me feel so much at home here. Maybe it was the baking. Ah, yes…the baking:
Good lord, these are delicious. Maria from Malmö joined our baking party, and a couple of other ladies dropped in from time to time to enjoy a semla. I think we each ate two of them. There was a lot of good Swedish conversation, a dice game called dados, and a bit of svengelska/swenglish (the swedish version of spanglish). After semlor we watched a Swedish historical comedy about Gustav Vasa…the king who kicked out Christian the Terrible (sorry I’m in Sweden now, he is no longer Christian the Great, as he is called in Denmark.) The point of the series, called “Nisse Huld,” is to show an alternate, comedic interpretation of historical events. For example: Apparently, according to the film, the original Vasaloppet was done in the summer time. Who knew? Of course, it’s a bit harder to ski when there is no snow.
En trevlig helg- a wonderful weekend- to be sure. But it’s back to KEMI now-which is mentally trying in many ways, but still, less frustrating than Quantum. So far. There’s nothing like struggling with the language to make you pay full, direct, unwavering attention to a two-hour lecture at 8 in the morning. I’ll update you on that as soon as I master molekylar växelverkan.
Oh, and I promise I will try to be a regular Julia Childs and translate the Semlor recipe into English for those of you who would like to try it at home.
Hygienic hilarity never ends!
Alright—I’ve got to stop buying haircare products simply because they amuse me. In order to make up for my truly poor shampoo purchasing decision last time around, I decided to make another trip 300 yards out my door to Coop Konsum grocery store and try my luck again. To be honest, this time around I still failed at the decision making process. I employed the same shopping logic that landed me in major customer-dissatisfaction-land last time with the Lingon stuff- I bought the shampoo that was both a) the cheapest and b) the most amusing, with the added condition that c) it wasn’t the Lingon stuff. But lo, and behold, look what I came across: a true curio of the the shampoo-marketing world, namely, Garnier Fructis’ Nordic Hair Care. Sure as heck haven’t seen this stuff Stateside—maybe if I’d bought it at home I’d had cold-and-snow-resistant Nordic hair by now. In all seriousness, though, this stuff isn’t bad. Let’s just say it’s quite a step up from LingonCrap.
Kväve. Syre. Col. Fosfor. Selen. Väte. Brom. Volfram. And my favorite: Kviksilver.
As I like awake in bed at night, the litany of names in the Periodiska Sytemet marches through my brain. Crom. Vanadin. Järn. Zirkronium… and all of a sudden I realize I am in for the challenge of a lifetime.
I signed up for Chemistry in Swedish. Suddenly, my ability to communicate and understand the world around me was reduced to that of a one-year-old child, an adult gorilla, or a very, very smart Labrador retriever.
It has been exactly one week since I moved into Parentesen. However, to quote a blog by a former UC-Lund exchange student that has been helpful to me in figuring this whole thing out, “it feels like a month.” One week, one week, one week-and what can I say? I am doing alright, I am doing a lot, and I am realizing that Swedish isn’t as easy as it was back in Carl’s Svenska 1A. But I am stubborn, and despite all odds, all non-existent language barriers, and possibly all reason, I will learn this language. I don’t know why I am obsessed with this goal; everyone here speaks perfect, beautiful English. There happens to be an unfortunate rule that the UC Study Center only allows students to take Swedish courses through the Folkuniversitet (city college) rather than the University. And that costs $800. Which means that without a job here in Sweden, this is not really an option for me. Looks like I’m going to have to do this with my own blood and sweat and tears and awkward encounters. But mark my words, I tell you. Jag SKA lära mig svenska. Mark my words. Lyssna på vad jag säger.
That’s why I signed up for KEMIA00 ( man säger: ‘shem-ee aahhh nul-nul’). Making the decision was a sort of watershed moment for me. When I got here, none of my classes had been approved by the departments, so I spent a long time walking around LTH (Lunds teckniska högskola-you can guess what it means) in a daze, caught between Fysicum and Kemicentrum and Kårhuset, and a very bemusing statue of Tycho Brahe. Somehow, out of the grace of God or Science or both, I ended up in the office of the professor of KEMIA00. I need this class for my double-major in Geophysics, but I have been loath to take it at Berkeley because it is a lower-level course that is generally over-populated with pre-meds. So I thought: ‘Here is my chance to take Chem 1A. Here is my chance to learn Swedish’. Here goes nothing. “Hej, jag heter A….. (in Swedish I have a hard time pronouncing my own name)…jag är utbytestundent och jag läser fysik vid Berkeley i Californien. Och jag skulle vilja ta KEMIA00.”
Fast forward to this morning (and by morning I mean 12:15 pm). I sat in a class full of Swedish people. I listened to the teacher explain the syllabus, the lab schedule, and the exams in Swedish. I saw an Asian guy in the row in front of my and prayed he was an international student. He wasn’t. I spent 110 Kronor on a Lab reader. I learned about lab safety. I didn’t understand everything. That’s probably not a good thing.
But you know what: I had the time of my life.
I have been thinking a lot about this all day today (there is a lot of thinking to be done in Sweden). Being in a class where the language of instruction is not my native language is something I have never had to encounter in my academic lifetime. As some of you know, I have a strong interest in bi-lingual education. Coming from California, I have been in classes with many people whose native language is not the language of instruction-but never have I stood in their shoes. The past few years I have actually thought a lot about the way language is taught to English learners in American schools—should Spanish and English be taught simultaneously? When should English learners be integrated into classes with native speakers (or should they ever be separated?)? Why is our school system so, so, so inefficient at teaching foreign languages to native English speakers? And, how many truly brilliant kids with non-English backgrounds simply slip through the cracks?
Today, as I sat alone in lecture hall full of 150 people, struggling to understand the language (let alone the material that was actually being conveyed), I finally found myself in the position that so many children in California find themselves in every day. And it dawned on me that, perhaps, a lot of the people who designed our monster of an educational system haven’t been there.
Like I said before, this will probably be one of the hardest things I’ve done in my life. Yup, right up there with the Berkeley home road race and Quantum Mechanics ($#@!). But for me at least, the things that are the most challenging are also the most rewarding. Throughout this ordeal, I hope to learn a lot. And not just about Väte or kväve or Col or even Kviksilver, but about, well, everything.
*****
More on what I am doing in the tangible world to come later—when I am in a far less abstract mood.
Which is somewhat ironic, because “mood” is an abstraction.
I think I’ll go to sleep now.
Only in Sweden
You’d better believe it. The swedes love lingon (you know, those little red berries that they make the juice out of) so much that they have made a shampoo and conditioner out of it. I bought it out of sheer amusement. That, and I needed shampoo. This was this cheapest one. What is ligon berry shampoo like, you may ask? Well, don’t get your hopes up. It’s terrible. It barely works and it smells like fruit loops.
get yo’ self some science don’t know much about geography? mer vetenskap!
the daily saga 