Where does everyone get the time to blog? I have difficulty keeping up as it is, though I suppose work and college don’t leave a lot of extra time. I think I’ve finally gotten used to the American college system again, Uppsala made me soft. As fun as it was to have no homework or exams before the final (plus 4 day weekends every week my first semester), I think a constant barrage of midterms helps keep your academic edge. Now, granted, the academic career of an exchange student is pretty light anyway, but I don’t think all of the ease was just because of that, the Swedes have it pretty easy, too. They get paid to go to college (everyone, not just people with scholarships) so they really don’t have to work, only have to worry about one test that they can take over again indefinitely, don’t have GenEd’s or minors so they can focus on just one thing and rumor has it they have university counselors to help the students cope with the stress of it all. Now, some of the majors have a pretty hard time, at least from what I’ve observed: the Law students (or maybe they were just pretending) and the Engineering students.

In other news, Beyond Bread is a very interesting anthropological site, I’ve come to realize. Just tonight I saw a perfect example of sorority girl hierarchical structure: a Lil Sis was ordering food from me and when I asked if it was to eat here, she asked to her Big Sis, who just stared back at her, not so much as uttering a word. The Lil Sis then surprisingly meekly, especially considering the chipper nature of sorority girls, said she going to eat here. I guess that’s part of the hazing process, breaking their will and turning them into little clones. She didn’t look like her Big Sis, but I suppose it’s only a matter of time.

Finally, I’ve always been slow to embrace cell phones. I first got mine as a graduation present when nigh everyone else in my class had one already. But I came to see their inherent value. I was still wary of all the crazy new features they kept coming out with, preferring my simple non-color screen and default ring tones. I only started appreciating texting while I was in Uppsala, mainly cuz it was easier to read and write Swedish than to try and speak it. Also, my old phone never had the auto word dictionary thing; I used to just have to type it in the old fashioned way. Plus having a polylingual dictionary made things a lot easier. My new phone isn’t as good with recognizing what I’m trying to text and I find myself having to spell it out again. Also, unlike my other two phones, it doesn't have any other language settings besides English and Spanish. I’m really miffed about that part, it means you can no longer steal your friend’s phone and switch the language settings to Hebrew and see how long it take for him to figure out how to undo it. It also bugs me cuz now I can’t type the ö in one of my friend’s last name.
On the plus side, my new phone has a camera, allowing me to take pics like this: