It's been six months since I came to Uppsala, amazing how it goes by so quickly. I had one hell of a weekend. Friday was a friend's moving in party, plenty of alcohol and good food. The music selection was also pretty odd too, again all the stuff Americans make fun of Europeans for. When Swedes get drunk they just turn absolutely crazy, acting like little kids or, in one case, flamboyantly gay. After that we ended up at one of the nations, a meat market one. We observed how around a half hour before closing it gradually turns from a dance floor to a pre-orgy. Fun times. Also, Värmlands is my nation of choice for trying out mixed drinks, that's where I tried absinthe (no hallucinations at all, what a rip-off). I also tried a Margarita, which I didn't expect they'd get exactly right so I wasn't going to hold that against the student bartender, but they line the glass with SUGAR! For Christ's sake can't they get anything Mexican right? Well, if you want something done right, you got to do it yourself, I guess.
Saturday was dumpling night at Feifei's parent's house in Stockholm. Six of her friends were there as well so it wasn't a horrible one on one dinner with them prying me for details. Not that they would have done that anyway since I made such a good impression the last time I was over with my expert handling of garlic and chopsticks. I now know how to make Chinese dumplings, now I just need to know what's in them. Speaking of ingredients in Chinese food, evidently the stereotype of Chinese eating cats, chicken feet and other unusual things only applies to Southern China, not Manchuria. As Feifei's dad commented, "Yes, the Southern Chinese will eat *anything*."Which I thought was rather amusing.
Later that night I went back to Uppsala just in time for my corridor's first corridor party. It was good fun, especially seeing all my hallmates drunk. They're quite reserved; you have to be in the kitchen together for several minutes before an obligatory conversation awkwardly starts up. I showed up and was greeted with, "HEEEEJJJJ KEVEEEN!!" A refreshing change to be sure, though I'm glad they're not always like that. The hall smelled of smoke from my Persian hallmate's hookah, which I, being the good anthropologist I am, tried. Flavored smoke tastes like what you'd imagine: smoke. No insight gained as to why people like them so much.
Sunday was the ski trip to Romme in Dalarna (the land of the Swedish Chef, though I didn't hear a single Bork) it was my first time skiing, so I ended up falling and crashing a lot. I didn't even know one could fall face forward while wearing skis. My efforts were cut short when Feifei got hurt snowboarding (she's fine); I spent the rest of the day with her. Shame, it really spoiled my plans to fall in snow for six hours. It did give me more points with her parents, to be sure. And as the Chinese proverb goes, "Making your girlfriend's parent happy is worth more than a day skiing."

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Johnny Depp and Freddie Highmore. I went into the theater expecting the movie to be less than the sum of its parts and to be disappointing. At the moment all I can say is that it was entertaining but the jury is still out as to whether or not it was disappointing. Naturally, it was dark but I didn't think it was a very poetic dark, just creepy. If anyone denies that Wonka in this version is based on Michael Jackson they're fooling themselves. Come to think of it I think everyone was portrayed better than the 1971 film except Wonka and Charlie. Thankfully they offer a completely plausible explanation for this Wonka's freaky, messed up behavior: Count Dooku is his father. I dunno, dark is refreshing and good but only for certain stories, and I don't think this is one of those stories. I probably would have liked it so much more if it weren't for the way Wonka was portrayed. I wouldn't ever let five children near him, actually I wouldn't let five adults near him either. Aside from him, everyone in the cast was awesome, the fat German kid, especially.

It's so strange to me that so few people in Sweden know what anthropology is. I had been told that it's not a very common major outside the US and Britain, but I had assumed people would at least know what it is. It's a particular contrast to back home where largely people not only knew what it was but were all in awe like I told them I was studying to become a superhero. Then again, they might be thinking archaeology and automatically think Indiana Jones. But hey I haven't decided where I'll go with anthropology yet, so who knows? And going off on a tangent, at what point can one no longer say, "When I grow up, I want to be..."? When you graduate college? When you get that job? At a certain age? When are you too old to talk about when you grow up?

Oh, and here's something uniquely American and part of a generation's collective heritage: The Oregon Trail. Imagine your childhood without it. How else would you learn about dysentery or shooting buffalo? Or how funny your epitaph could be? The Swedes of course would have no games teaching American history, that's to be expected. But you'd think they'd at least have the Amazon Trail or maybe some Swedified version, the Leif Eriksson Trail or something. What a sad, sad childhood they must have had.

BTW, I got some message from someone on Flickr that wants to use my photo "The Source" as a cover for his album. So that's cool.

Culture Builders by Jonas Frykman and Orvar Löfgren. What a great book, so full of fun little anecdotes about Swedish cultural history and society. They compare and contrast the peasant and bourgeois classes and show how each has influenced modern Swedish culture. I'm not sure which one of the two I'd rather want to be if I had a choice, since they were both so horribly extreme. The peasants were vulgar and filthy to the point where it seems like they did it just to be gross. For example peasant women used to wipe their children's noses with their own mouths. At the other end of the spectrum, the upper class was so prudish and reserved that they rarely could call any part of the body that was covered by clothing (everything but the hands and head) by its actual name. They were allowed to say foot but weren't allowed to refer to them in the plural. I have no idea why that might be, maybe they weren't allowed to think that things came in pairs, they could say breast, but not breasts. Of course, this gets to the point where one can hardly say anything at all; one account said someone's risqué and outspoken mother referred to the rear segment of a fish as the "tail end". One possible bright side is that I imagine if a language continued to develop that way, it would be incredibly poetic since they would need to call everything by pleasant euphemisms.

I started my fieldwork at a Swedish high school, or gymnasium, this week. It's weird, some things are only slightly different and others are so crazy it makes me wonder how they even function. First off, let me just say that as much as we bitched about school food in the US, you have no idea how bad it is here. We at least had to pay for ours which ensured a modicum of quality, theirs is free and worth every penny. Blech! To offset this, there are plenty of vending machines with candy and coffee and a little vendor by the entrance too. Not up to par with the giant muffins and fresh baked cookies we got at Sabino but they make up for it in other areas. Namely, high school is voluntary in Sweden so they don't have monitors, hall passes or any of that crap. When they don't have classes, instead of study hall, they are free to sit in the halls, the lobby or in the library (which is pathetically small, even for a school of 1000 students).
As for the students themselves, they're not so different from Americans. The school was about as ethnically diverse as Sabino, so no real change there. Swedish guys have one of two hairstyles: long or bald. Only the obviously non-Swedes have something different. The girls are almost identical to American girls: bottle blonde hair, ugg boots and base tans and yet for some reason that doesn't piss me off as much as it would in the US. They just seem to pull it off better. Maybe it's because the Swedes are supposed to be blonde, uggs are practical in cold weather and Swedes will turn translucent if they don't get any sun in the winter.
A common greeting among girls is to go up and smack each other in the ass. I find this to be an unfair double standard; I believe guys should be able to greet girls in the same way. I guarantee it would eliminate the shyness the Swedes are so known for. Besides, Swedes are all about equality.

And a final thought: why is the letter R so hard to consistently pronounce throughout the world? Asians mix L's and R's, it's often dropped if it's at the end of a word, and sometimes added for no apparent reason (Warshington). The Australians are the worst offenders of this letter, I find. Adding and dropping R's whenever they want: Har ah yer during? And the infamous Aussie negation "Nar!"

I am enrolled in two courses that give me an ungodly amount of reading. One, Swedish Society and Everyday Life, I don't mind because it's interesting and the class involves fieldwork. The other is People, Power and Food, it is about as interesting as it sounds; sustainability, free market, global harmony, pretty unicorns etc. It's supposed to be an anthropology class but it's really economics. Honestly, I don't care about the population of blue fin tuna, I want to know about people and cultures. The class wants us to answer questions that are better suited to be rhetorical questions; asking us to contextualize need, define what sustainable development is and who has the right to decide what the future will be like. The discussion groups all end up agreeing that the terms are impossible to define and we end up just talking amongst ourselves for a half hour, which I suppose isn't all bad. The reading is by far the worst part of it all. I've never read so much and not learned a thing, the information repeats over and over without any solution. I guess that's an allegory for the real world bureaucracy. One thing that's kind of cool is that every week we have video conferences with universities around the world, so there's an opportunity to get global perspectives on these ever so fascinating issues. We get the best time though, one university has to get up at 4AM to talk to us, which makes me feel better about having a 1PM class. And of course I must mention one of the universities is called EARTH University, which naturally leads to: "Earth? Earth? Are you recieving our transmission? Lars I'm not picking up anything from Earth!"
The other class had me do a fieldwork at a bank, which was boring but since I had to actively observe my surroundings it was boring in an interesting way. My later fieldwork will be at a Swedish high school and I will study how Swedish culture is created in the school systems. Should be enlightening, I'm particularly excited because I was very curious about how Swedish high school functioned since I'm told the US high school movies are very different from what the Swedes are used to. Now not only will I be able to satisfy my curiousity, but I'll get credit for it too.
In one of the books I'm reading for that class, they explain origins of Swedish archetypical traits like loving nature, avoiding conflict and a solid work ethic. Some of the best gems from the book are fun little etymology lessons, for example the Swedish word for autumn, höst, means 'harvest.' The word for Saturday, lördag, means 'bath day' because the peasants only bathed once a week and only the day before church. My favorite is the word for knacker (the person who slaughters worn-out livestock): 'rackare'. The knackers were the lowest rung of society, like gypsies or prostitutes. Since the largely rural Swedes had such a connection to their cows and horses anyone whose job it was to kill them was treated as diseased. And where do I live? Rackarberget: "the knacker's hill." That might explain why the rest is so cheap and why most people I know don't live here. Lovely.

Word of the Day: etic- Of or relating to features or items analyzed without considering their role as a structural unit in a system, as in behavioral science or linguistics.

My recent project was to make Mexican food for dinner for the Swedes. This was considerably harder than I had thought (and I suspected that it would be pretty tough to begin with). I think I went to half the grocery stores in Uppsala trying to find all the stuff. Things like cheddar cheese, refried beans and enchilada sauce were minor miracles to find. No corn tortillas though, whether they were out or I just didn't look hard enough, I can't be sure. I felt rather foolish when I finally found the cheese, though, since in Europe cheddar is white. Which probably means it was in all the stores I couldn't find it in.
I went quite out of my way to ICA Maxi, the giant hub of the near monopolistic grocery chain ICA (note: you don't spell the letters out, it's pronounced "eeka"). I now love that store and I've only been there once. It's like a real supermarket, but instead of just having food they have department store items too. It's like a Target. I felt the euphoria one must have felt when big stores like that first opened: I can actually buy it all in one store! Screw Netto, (a smaller chain that sells foreign foods) they only had stuff you could get anywhere else so there isn't much point in having it as a place for foreigners to get their culture's food. Anyway, after five months without a big store like that it was so wonderful to find nearly anything I wanted. As long as they don't turn into Wal-Mart I'll be fine, but then again, the Swedes seem to have a thing for monopolies so they might not mind.
But I digress, the dinner turned out nicely, though I was a little behind schedule thanks to recipes in Swedish even the Swedes couldn't understand. It was also the first time any of them had seen, heard of or tasted refried beans, I have now corrected this culture gap. I have to say the best part of the evening was watching the Swedes try to eat a taco; once they realized that their vaunted silverware would be ineffective they began to figure out at what angle one eats tacos. But the food was good and everyone liked it, though I thought it was rather odd that a supposed vegetarian ate tacos when I had vegetarian enchiladas. I guess they're a bit more flexible than they are back home.

On an unrelated note: I don't care if it's snowing or not, I would *kill* for an eegee's right now.

The Librarian You scored 73 erudition!

Congratulations! You're well above average when it comes to your knowledge of English grammar, history, and literature. You may have missed a few questions, but if you keep your studies up and stay away from genre fiction, we'll have you ready for Stanford in no time! Who knows, we just might be reading your columns in Talk of the Town a few years from now.

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 45% on erudition

Link: The Are You Truly Erudite? Test written by okellelala on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

I have a feeling my regular readers will do better at this that I did, but then again most of you are older and are English majors.

I, Robot with Will Smith and Bridget Moynahan. A fairly entertaining movie, though not necessarily a powerful or award winning one. I was already familiar with Isaac Asimov's story so the plot twists weren't as effective as perhaps they should have been. I did find it odd that the main character is obsessed with vintage items and is supposed to come across as cool. I dunno, maybe since retro is more cool now it will be even more so in the future. Or maybe someone wearing shoes from 2005 will be cooler in 2035 than someone wearing shoes from 1975 would be today. Avoiding the obvious analysis of how 2035 will probably look nothing like how it's portrayed in the movie, I have to wonder about those robots. The obsolete models were pretty cool looking, the new ones were just plain creepy, what kind of product design idea is that? And it would have been nice to see how the military made use of robot technology; if the civilian models can be powerful killing machines what would an actual killing robot be like?

Aeon Flux with Charlize Theron and Marton Csokas. I suspected that the confusion I felt while watching this movie stemmed from the fact that I knew nothing about the animated series that it was based upon. But after a quick investigation I learned that in the series the main character dies in half the episodes so there probably isn't anything I would have learned from it that would have shed light on the movie. I guess it's a pretty good film, all things considered. They weren't pretentious enough to think that the plot was substantial enough to make it a long movie. They went in, told the story and ended it with not much fluff or filler to bog it down. There were a lot of futuristic items and weapons that were just...weird. It's almost refreshing to see sci-fi movies that don't even care whether the technology they depict is possible or not. One thing I have to point out, though, why is it that in dystopian societies the police are always outfitted with armor that appears to made of glass? Come to think of it, if they had stayed true to the animated series and had Flux die at the end it would have made the movie that much better. The sheer novelty of the main character dying in an action movie would have made it much more note worthy, but I guess there are some things Hollywood movies just can't do. Oh, and Charlize Theron looks infinitely better than the drawn version of Aeon Flux.

Finally, a good reason to know art history:
Cute Dutch Girl: "Hi, I'm Saskia."
me: "Saskia. Wasn't that the name of Rembrandt's wife?"
CDG: "Yes! Wow. You're the first person to know that."

I've been noticing a lot of phrases in English are often pointed out as odd or improper despite their frequent use. For example, when someone tells us about some misfortune that has befallen them we say, "I'm sorry." But we (presumably) are not responsible for this event. Why should we apologize for something we didn't do? In Swedish, the reaction to bad news is "Jag är ledsen" or "I'm sad"; which makes more sense because the news is sad, but it isn't your fault.
Also, in English you say you know someone, which might give rise to the rhetorical question "How well can anyone truly know another?" In Swedish, the verb for knowing a person is "känner" which also means to sense or feel. It has less of an objective connotation; less of an implication that if you know someone you know all about them. Whereas if you "känner" someone you perceive them through your own senses, so one person might be perceived in many different ways. Though I suppose if you've "known" the person long enough and have spent a lot of time together, you might eventually actually start to know them. So maybe with that in mind, people a long time ago, back when Swedish and English were more closely related, decided that they would "know" everyone to make it sound more loving and friendly than "sensing" them.

And when I was at a corridor party last week, I met an American from Minnesota. He's a bit more like what a typical American college student is like and it turns out I have a class with him, so I'll be able to make some more observations. But the thing that got me was that he always says he's from America Not the US, or the States, or simply which state he's from. I find this a bit strange because hardly anyone calls it America without a pejorative connotation here. On several occasions I've heard it used as a synonym for stupid. Even the Americans seem to have an aversion to the word "America". I myself have avoided saying it because that instantly triggers the attack mechanism I mentioned before. I don't know if I've developed this on my own or absorbed it though the mental vibes of Europeans, but I now consider saying "America" to be like saying "I'm better than you." So it always slightly irks me when he declares he's from America (he also has a habit of speaking loudly, which might also be why it comes across in an obnoxious way. Europeans claim speaking loudly is typical of Americans, though I find the dumber Swedes do it too). Though there is something to be said for this connotation, namely you can tell off snotty Europeans by simply stating you are American in such a way that says, "Yes, in fact, I am better than you."

Moving right along on that note, my Swedish Society and Everyday Life class has a large number of Americans, more so than in any of my previous classes. During my stay in Sweden I've found it easy to go up to people in class or in clubs and strike up a conversation, something that would be very difficult for me to do back home. I thought that this was part of me growing and becoming more confident and comfortable around others. But no, it's not me. It's them. Trying to strike up a conversation with this group of Americans was just like trying to talk to frat boys and sorority girls back at the U of A. I might be from the same country, but I'm not one of them. This realization also put their choice of nations into perspective, they joined Värmlands and Stockholms, meat markets with the latter also known for being rather elitist. Sound like any college institutions we know? But I'm sure this reverse culture shock will be beneficial to my observations since now I can directly compare and contrast Swedish and American college life.

And finally, Word of the Day: stymied-An obstacle or obstruction. Also a verb: stymie-To thwart; stump.

BloodRayne with Kristanna Loken and Matthew Davis. It's a movie based on a video game, what do you expect? They really tried hard to put all the elements of a good movie into it but they didn't have the focus to pick just one, so it ended up failing at all of them. Good plot? Not so much; evil vampire lord must be killed by a society of vampire hunters. Good fight scenes? Would be if they didn't zoom in in a panicky kind of way every time she killed someone, I understand that her trademark is pouncing on them and biting their neck but I was kinda hoping for a nice fight scene with those giant sword/tonfas she has. The dialog was equally uninspiring, not quite the worst I've heard, but close. Not surprisingly, the only thing the movie has going for it is Kristanna Loken herself (she shows a lot more skin in this movie but I still think she was hotter in Terminator 3) and consequently one of the few notable parts in the movie is the rather abrupt sex scene between the two main characters which served as the only way to tell that there was supposed to be a romance between them. The ending was kind of sudden too; had kind of a Chronicles of Riddick feel to it, which didn't really make much sense. I've never played the games, so maybe it makes sense in that context, but I somehow doubt it. About all I can say is that I'm sure the game is much more fun than the movie but, honestly, that doesn't seem hard to do.

Equilibrium with Christian Bale and Sean Bean. I remember seeing this movie a few years ago and finding it so stupid that I walked out of the room. Later it seemed that everyone who had seen the movie loved it, so I decided to sit down and watch the whole thing through to see what was so great about it. And I want that hour and 45 minutes of my life back. It's an unoriginal dystopian plot where people take drugs to suppress emotion and anyone who doesn't comply with the totalitarian dictates of the society are hunted down and executed. 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451 are but a few of the stories that this movie is influenced by. But I shouldn't be too harsh on unoriginality since sometimes people can take an old story and make it better, but sadly this was not so. The inconsistencies were just too big, they suppress emotions, then why do the people panic and shout and deliver speeches full of emotion? These people should be the easiest to spot but the elite agents sent to hunt down those with emotion don't seem to notice. The martial arts in this movie would be good if it wasn't just Christian Bale hitting and shooting people who don't fight back. The thing that makes these agents so deadly are their proficiency in martial arts, including gun kata, where one can learn to shoot everyone in a dark room because they know the statistically probable location of where everyone in that room is. Now if you go into a dark room and you know there's someone in there that you're going to shoot isn't there about a 1 in 180 chance (assuming this is only 2 dimensional and you're standing in the doorway) you'll hit them? Isn't that why the term "a shot in the dark" has meaning? They also know the probable trajectory of bullets and can dodge them using the powerful but effective technique of standing in the exact same spot while muzzle flash reveals your location. But the true strength of these agents lies not in their own training but the incorrect training of those they fight. Bale can kill an entire room full of snipers because rather than shooting him from a distance, they try to snipe him from an arms length away. And when the regular soldiers are smart enough to team up on him they surround him and let themselves get pistol whipped for a good minute without so much as throwing a punch.
To conclude, what the hell is wrong with you people? This is a bad movie, why do you watch it?

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace. From the title and cover illustration I thought this might be some autobiographical account of college life, I was quite mistaken and pleasantly so. I really like this guy's style, and his observations are quite astute, shame he isn't an anthropologist. Given the depth with which he analyzes things I feel almost obligated to watch David Lynch's movies just so Wallace didn't write about him in vain. Maybe the title essay about Wallace's ocean cruise actually was the best or maybe I identified with it since I've been on a cruise myself. Also props to him for describing a person's voice as post-coital, an adjective I've never heard anyone else use and have been too afraid of misinterpretation to use it myself. I'd say that is the best part about Wallace, he describes things in a way you wouldn't have thought of, and in doing so describes them perfectly. You don't even have to have any experience with what he's talking about to get exactly the right feeling from his writing, but a common point of reference improves the reading experience infinitely.

The day before I went to Kiruna I went to Stockholm with Feifei to see a Rembrandt exhibition at the museum. Pretty cool stuff, it was interesting picking out the different translations to certain paintings or slogans. i.e. Memento mori was translated in Swedish as "Remember that you are mortal" the English translation was "Don't forget you must die."
We also went to the American Food Store to get some root beer, but all they had was diet root beer. It was vastly inadequate and a poor introduction for someone who's never tasted it before. Afterwards we had homemade Chinese dumplings with garlic sauce. Apparently they cut down on the garlic for me since Swedes cannot stand garlic at all. I impressed them by eating garlic at their level and they were in actual disbelief that I could handle it. I would likely not do that again however as it took a full 24 hours to get rid of my garlic breath (morning breath+garlic breath=ew²) I also impressed them with the correct use of chopsticks, yet another remarkable trait that I owe to my family. Excellent.

Kiruna was pretty cool, though not as frigidly cold as I had been warned. It was above freezing most of the time and I actually regarded it as pleasantly brisk. I went on a Northern Lights tour out to the forest many kilometers outside of Kiruna. We went by dog sled, which was pretty interesting, though the guy in charge of getting us to the campsite was not exactly the cheerful type and often got upset at us for not doing what he didn't tell us to do. The guy who was in charge of the campsite was friendly as can be, though. He prepared some tasty dishes of reindeer meat seasoned with none other than garlic,apparently the Norrlanders can handle the stuff a lot more than the rest of the Swedes. We went into the sauna a few hours later, the old-fashioned wood fire kind with no safety limit on the temperature. That was intense. I also tried the common Swedish practice of running out of the sauna and into the snow. I thought the severe temperature difference would be quite painful, similar to running out of a spa and jumping into a swimming pool, but it was quite pleasant. I was so hot I was literally steaming, (picture the Terminator when he first arrives).
After few more hours the once cloudy sky became completely clear and far from city lights the sky was full of stars. Around midnight the Northern Light appeared, and I have to say that it is one of the most underwhelming things I've ever seen. I'll post pics of it on Flickr. I checked the "fore"casts for the Northern Light and they said it was a pretty quiet time with little solar activity. Of course, by the laws of the Universe now that I'm gone there will be a magnificent Northern Lights display the likes of which will be talked about for years. I guess it's not fair to judge the Northern Lights on the crappy specimens I saw, just like it would be wrong to judge root beer by only tasting the diet version.
The trip back to Kiruna was interesting, sledding in the dark as part of a convoy of inexperienced sledders is quite a feat. And it was there I learned the difference between feeling numb and feeling like an amputee.

I was unable to go to the other two cities I wanted to visit due to a couple of factors: one, I couldn't visit two cities in opposite directions from Kiruna in the time allotted and two, the Norwegian transportation system sucks. I had always thought that Zeno's Paradox was something cooked up by an idiot trying to sound profound and had no practical application, but as it turns out this is the principle behind Norwegian buses. In order to get to Hammerfest, Norway from Kiruna I need to take the train to Narvik. Fair enough. To get from Narvik to Hammerfest I need to take a bus which can only take me halfway, to Tromsø. From there I must take another bus which can only take me to Alta, halfway in between. Unfortunately, I cannot take that bus, I must take the bus to Storslett, which is (surprise!) halfway in between. Each one of these towns will take a day, since starting traveling before 4PM is just plain silly, so I realized I couldn't possibly make it to Hammerfest in time, stayed in Tromsø awhile then began my trip home. Shame too, I was really looking forward to getting a Hammerfest T shirt.

My last day in Kiruna I visited the Icehotel, which was pretty impressive, despite my very incorrect mental image of it being a multi-story glimmering spire adorned with icicles. The inside is reminiscent of the Fortress of Solitude, or if real life had the obligatory ice level in video games. The chairs were pretty comfortable, amazingly enough.

Some other observations I made: -as pretty as Sweden is, geographically Norway kicks the crap out of Sweden. One word: fjords.
-Either red hair dye is really popular up north or there are a hell of a lot of redheads living there, like maybe every 9th person.
-I'm either going to continuously be bugged by people's views on the US or will have to learn to accept incredibly backhanded compliments. I'm still trying to define the look that people give me when they find out I'm American; perhaps one of surprise that I'm not Yosemite Sam, perhaps one of dismay as if I told them I was an assassin, perhaps one of disgust since they're assholes. I dunno, maybe all of the above.

Words of the Day: sylph-A slim, graceful woman or girl.
sunroll-(word invented by me) the phenomenon observable above the Arctic Circle during winter where the sun does not rise in the sky as it does elsewhere in the world but rolls across the horizon for a few hours producing what appears to be an incredibly long lasting sunset.

**And a small addendum that I promised myself I would mention: in Kiruna I stayed in the most awesomely named hostel ever: the STF Youth Hostel.

I can't make this post too long since I'm heading to Kiruna soon but I wanted to report on Lund and Malmö before I forget. Lund is Uppsala's main university rival, how this is possible is beyond me because Lund sucks big time. Could be because I was there when everything was closed and in the middle of a blizzard which cut down on my sight-seeing fun, but the town was just dull. I stayed one night then went to Malmö, which despite the blizzard was much more fun than Lund. People had told me that Malmö and Copenhagen are much colder than Uppsala, I figured they were just being babies since it shouldn't be colder in southern Sweden. But hoo boy it was, that coastal air made the cold wet and the wind cuts through you like a knife. I caught a cold from that damn place. Grr.
I was sadly unable to find Gunther's nightclub, so my tra-la-la remained untouched. The real nightclubs won't let you in unless you're 24 so I doubt I would've gotten in anyway.
I did learn something interesting in my travels though: I can safely say I'm from Arizona and people are intrigued and will have a nice chat with me but as soon as the words "The States" "America" or "The US" exit my mouth it triggers an attack mechanism in Europeans. They become haughty little bitches and make snide remarks like "American huh? So you like hamburgers then?" WTF mate? Everyone loves hamburgers. The Swedes, and other Europeans as well, eat their hamburgers with a knife and fork though. Losers.
In other news I failed the listening and writing Swedish tests which sucks immensely. It's a pass/fail system so I don't know how I did, just that it wasn't good enough. I get a massive sense of inferiority from this cuz all the Swedes speak perfect English (except in Göteborg where their English is merely really good) and the Germans pick up Swedish easily. My only solace is that I can still speak reasonably good Spanish even after years without practice. Which gives me a realization that that damn Swedish final wants me to be nearly fluent in Swedish after 4 months, I don't think it can be done.

Anyway I'll be back in a week, cross your fingers and hope there are some huge solar flares to make the Northern Lights spectacular.

Merry Christmas! God Jul! Most of the population is raised Christian so there's none of that Happy Holidays crap. Just good ol' Christmas.

And while not exactly the most jolly Christmas post, I couldn't find a fitting spot on the last post, so here you go. The bus trip across Sweden gave me time to catch up on my Nietzsche. His argument that most friendships are simply means of using people seemed pretty bleak. He makes some obvious examples of someone you befriend in class because they take much better notes than you do. When the class ends the friendship ends as well. OK that's pretty clearly a friendship where people are used. Another example was someone you play sports with: you cannot play without an opponent so you befriend them so you can play a game you enjoy. That's arguable, befriending someone as a means to make you happy seems like a pretty normal thing to. The last example of a friendship of using one another is when people pick friends that are like them or complement/compliment them. The claim is that subconsciously we pick them to make ourselves feel better, and thus the friendship is another means of utility.
Nietzsche suggests that a better friendship is based on mutual enjoyment; that you must actually like the person you play sports with or like your friends. But, aren't people then just befriending one another so they can enjoy each other's company? Seems just as bad as playing sports with someone so you can enjoy the game. The best friendship is one from mutual inspiration, where one befriends people who you see as better than you and seek to emulate their virtues. Again, being friends with someone in order to improve yourself seems similar to the friendship with the person who takes good notes. Nietzsche looks like he wasn't so much describing what does and doesn't make a friend but the difference between friends/acquaintances and your bestest best friend in the whole wide world. Looks like the only way not to end up using someone is to never have friends of any sort, which would be one sucky life. Alternately you could just not say "using each other" and making it sound so base and manipulative, but call it symbiosis. If you get really cynical about it, you can suck the joy out of pretty much everything.
After all, Christmas is nothing but celebrating the birthday of the founder of a intolerant religion with a history of terrible violence and cruelty. But that isn't going to stop me from enjoying it. It's snowing! The first white Christmas I've ever seen, I finally can try out my new parka. Later everyone, spend some quality time with your friends (screw Nietzschean cynicism!) and family. Hejdå!

Back from my first trip, Göteborg was quite fun. The town was not at its most fun since it was so close to Christmas and everyone was going home and shops closed early. Still there were plenty of fun things to do; I went to the Liseberg amusement park where they put Christmas lights on pretty much everything. It was really beautiful. The camera doesn't work too well at night though, so there weren't many good pics.
There's a debate as to whether Stockholm or Göteborg is better, I don't know I only saw a small part of Stockholm, though it was awesome but I saw lots of Göteborg which was pretty cool, but also the slowest time of the year. There's an avenue with nightclubs and restaurants and I swear every place that was open had a bouncer. And since when does Hard Rock Cafe have bouncers? They're a restaurant!
As much as I enjoy traveling with a group of friends, just wandering around and doing things at my own pace and going off on a whim was really fun. I found these little mountains that offered a wonderful view of the whole city, and they were pristine, not what I would imagine one would find in the middle of a city at all.

I gotta say, some of the best parts about Göteborg are the street signs:

"Warning: Do not grab hands reaching out of the ice!" Nothing inherently funny about that sign, but it reminded me of the warnings on high voltage equipment that led one to believe that an evil electrical octopus would be released if you touched the machine.



For the safety of the pedestrians, trams must display the current emotion of the driver. In this case it is advisable to get the hell out of the way.






Beware of ass grabbers!
OR
Sweden is so supportive of same sex parents they have their own designated walkway.








I'm sure it means something like Baby Seal Street in Swedish.








heeheehee. Childish? Yes, but you laughed too.











And lastly, there's a traditional Christmas soda in Sweden called Julmust. Everyone loves it so much, and I like it too. Thing is, it tastes exactly like Dr. Pepper but they hate Dr. Pepper here. Silly Swedes. Now the question is, does diet Julmust taste just like regular Julmust?

OK, I'm going to largely be out of town for the next few weeks exploring Sweden. Here's the game plan: tomorrow I take the bus to Göteborg, the second largest city in Sweden, see what there is to see and come back for Christmas (which is the 24th, cuz the Swedes don't know what day Christmas is supposed to be) and have a Swedish Christmas with the other exchange students at one of the nations. Then I go south to Malmö and Lund. I hope to see the twisting torso building and Günther's nightclub and Lund University, Uppsala's rival. If I get bored I might go to Copenhagen. Then I come back to Uppsala for New Year's. A one day trip to Stockholm after that and on January 3rd I'll fly to Kiruna, way the hell up north in the land Sweden forgot. I'll be up there until the 11th, hopefully I'll see the northern lights. I want to see what 24 hour darkness looks like but supposedly there's still a half hour of sun. Damn. Anyway, if you can't get in touch with me, that's probably why.

And before I go, another weirdness about Sweden: We were planning another movie night and the thing that people were all hung up on was the food. They were reluctant to have a movie night because they didn't want to cook something big. So the suggestion was that they just cook a 1 course dinner and then make a dessert. Incredulous, I suggested we just get a pizza instead of doing all that work. They looked at each other and said, "Hey, that's not a bad idea." The fact that they didn't even consider that baffles me. I suspect the Swedes don't like movie nights as much as Americans.

Finns are odd, here is a colloquial expression for "in the beginning of time": "First there was a swamp, a hoe and Jussi." Don't ask, I don't get it either.

I've been going out nearly every day to see if I can get a good pic of the sunset. Most of them have been utterly boring, the sun just goes below the horizon without any spectacular farewell. Today was different though, this one is worthy of being an Arizona sunset. Still, this is the best Sweden can offer and it's average by Tucson standards.

Incidentally I took this pic at exactly 3PM.

Swedes don't seem to enjoy enforcing or obeying rules, too stuffy for them I guess. The copyright protection warning on DVD's says that the office in charge of such things is in Stockholm, yet file sharing is a way of life here. There's a spot where I park my bike when I go to class that says no bicycle parking allowed yet it is surrounded by parked bikes and the sign post itself is used to secure bikes from theft. Driving with one's bike lights off at night it a ticketable offense, yet I'd say easily 90% of the people ride with no lights on. Refunds at grocery stores are not allowed (perhaps a wise policy considering the blatant abuse of that privilege at Sunflower Market) but I sure enough returned something. Why even bother having the rules if nothing happens when you break them?

Word of the Day: genuflect-To bend the knee or touch one knee to the floor or ground, as in worship. To be servilely respectful or deferential; grovel.

It is unfortunate that Americans are so unbelievably stupid and totally ignorant about everything in the world. I was understandably reluctant to believe this, of course but after spending time outside the US I must arrive at the inevitable conclusion that, without exception, all Americans are morons. I was having a discussion with a Persian about Afghanistan and the topic moved into specific geographic details. My knowledge in this area was limited and he pointed out "Aha so it is true that Americans don't know anything about geography!" Sadly so, I mean this guy comes from a country that borders Afghanistan, he was stationed there in the military and his major is Middle Eastern studies and even he knows more about the geography of Afghanistan than I do! Surely I have a deficient education.
As if that wasn't bad enough, Americans don't even know basic facts about their own country. For example, most Americans don't know this but Arizona is very close to North Carolina and borders Louisiana. Also, the state is completely flat and is completely devoid of all plant life, resembling the Gobi desert. The myth that there are mountains or plentiful cacti is a testament to American ignorance. The 100 mile long state has only two cities, Phoenix and Tucson, which are on the northern and southernmost borders, respectively.
We are even totally oblivious as to how our government is set up, apparently (I did not know this until I was kindly enlightened by a European) the US has a parliamentary system where we elect people to elect the president. Contrast this with the false notion taught in our schools that the legislative and executive branches are elected by the people and independently of one another.
So thank you kind peoples of the world for showing me how truly backwards we really are. I will ride a giant condor back home to my clay hut in Tucson and, through a series of grunts and crude drawings in the sand, enlighten others in the ways of the world.

Maybe this post was over the top, maybe not. I'll let you decide.

Riddle me this: how is it even possible that no Swedish video store carries the original Star Wars trilogy? Not a one. And it wasn't like they were all checked out, they didn't have them in stock. And yet they have the Indiana Jones trilogy and movies I would never expect in Europe, like Eurotrip. Just let that swish around in your head a bit. What video store doesn't carry Star Wars? We ended up borrowing the DVD's from a Star Wars freak at our nation and they said that they haven't carried them in video stores in Sweden since 1995. Some Swede is in dire need of a swift kick in the ass for that one.
So we had a nice Star Wars movie marathon, complete with Swedish subtitles. They were interesting but also a bit of a let down. No backwards Swedish for Yoda, and "you must forget what you have learned" just doesn't sound as mystical as "unlearn." Nörf herder was pretty funny though. Beware the mörk side of Kraften!

OK this post is just random bits I'll forget if I don't post them.

Why girls are more fun at parties than guys-
Girl: "We were just discussing oral sex and would like your opinion..."
vs.
Guy: "You know what America's problem is?"

Why Blogger is great: Remembering I wrote an analytical book review on my blog, I then used that as a starting point on an essay on said book, saving me time and effort. It's like procrastinating in reverse.

Apparently in the Swedish military the Commander in Chief (or the Swedish equivalent) does not have the authority to order enlisted personnel to go anywhere. If they don't want to go to Afghanistan, they don't have to. Now, I suppose if your country hasn't been at war in 200 years you can pull that off, but good lord man! What good is a military if you can't order them around?

Also, in Sweden finals are never final. You can take infinite redo's until you pass. Supposedly law students can take up to a year to pass their final. Methinks the Swedes are too forgiving for their own good.

I have been told by people (girls) that the belief that Swedish women are so easy you can successfully proposition them in clubs is false. I was reluctant to believe it myself at first and I certainly never had the balls to try it, but I found out tonight it is true. The following is a dialog I heard first hand:
*guy whispers something in very Swedish looking girl's ear*
Girl: Of course I'll have sex with you!
(I think my impeccable sense of right and wrong might be getting in the way of me having fun.)

Miranda. A new IM program that is really small since there are no ads built in. But the best part is that it allows you to IM people on AIM, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ and more.

Words of the Day: Defenestration-the act of throwing someone or something out of a window.
hurdy gurdy-a Swedish musical instrument of the 18th century that makes music by rotation of a cylinder studded with pegs. (say it like the Swedish Chef)

I hate what the American education system has done with teaching languages, that is to say NOTHING! I hate the fact that for some reason actually learning language is not mandatory. The classes are required to graduate but there is no actual requirement to learn. Spanish is considered a dirty language so no intellectuals ever actually take the class, which means even in Spanish 4 there are still morons whom you can't ever practice Spanish with. French class is better, or at least every person I know who took French knows it remarkably well. And yet Americans are still rarely fluent in a language besides English. Everyone else in the world speaks more languages than we do.
The Germans obviously have an innate advantage over me when learning Swedish since the two languages are about as close as Spanish and Portuguese. Moreover, I hate that the Swedes are so patronizing to me cuz I can't speak Swedish. When I was at a gasque, they were playing some Jeopardy game and someone told them to speak in English since there was someone who didn't speak Swedish. I was the ONLY person that didn't, so they had to make everything harder for everyone in the room just cuz I was there. They say that's cuz it's rude to speak in a language that someone doesn't understand, I see it as when you're in PE and you step up to bat and everyone in the field moves in. Would it be rude of them not to accommodate for your lesser ability?
They also say it's easy for Swedes to learn English, so why doesn't it work the other way around? Because everything on the TV, radio or computer is in English, it's constantly forced down your throat and you learn it practically in utero. It's not easy, you just have a 10 year head start, which is evidenced by the fact that I am as good at Swedish as a 4 year old. Also, whatever they're teaching us it's not what people actually say. So if I'm expecting "Hello, how are you?" I'll likely get "Sup homie G?" then they'll wonder why I haven't learned anything.

This post brought to you by the panic of not understanding Swedish speech 24 hours before my final.