Well it's been a good month since my last post. Lots of fun stuff in that month too, I don't even know where to begin. It really was just an extension of the awesomeness in Sweden, due in no small part to the awesomeness I brought back from Sweden: the lovely Feifei. Seeing American culture after being gone for a year is weird enough, but seeing it through the eyes of someone who has never been to the US is just unreal. Endless tiny oddities that we take as mundane suddenly become magical. Like why there's Chinese written on street signs (PED XING) or what exotic fruit fresh squeezed "oy" (O.J.) comes from.
Meteor Crater and the Painted Desert were both beautiful and impressive but paled in comparison to the Grand Canyon. Feifei was absolutely blown away while I was duly impressed and rather astonished that something I saw years ago actually seems bigger upon revisiting it.
The Comicon in San Diego was pretty damn cool. We saw people dressed up as pretty much anything you could imagine: from storm troopers to Klingons, Xena to Dick Tracy. Of course, it's also the perfect opportunity for girls to show off their thigh high black vinyl boots and matching corsets and not be considered oddly dressed. Navigating through the crowd of people was quite difficult, partly because we often became separated when one of us suddenly saw something interesting and veered off without telling the other person and also because it's hard to make your way through thousands of people doing the exact same thing.
I'm now Frank's roommate at his new house, which is awesome. It's strange that even while I have to find a job, return to the U of A, declare my minor and do more and more grown up, responsible things, the adventures of this past month have made me feel like a kid again.

And I have a month's worth of pictures from my travels.

This will be my last post in Sweden. Next time you hear from me I'll be back home again. I've come a long way since I arrived Uppsala that brisk August evening. So much done yet so much that still needs to be done. I never saw the Silver Bible in Uppsala's Carolina library, or the big, pink castle Slottet in town either. I never saw Kalix, nor made it to Hammerfest. We never had a chance to go to Visby or to the big lakes in the middle of Sweden. I do not regret missing these, though; it just means I have plenty of reasons to come back. And of course when I do come back I will visit all the friends I made during my stay here. I will miss Uppsala, and Sweden, and Europe but I know I will return. Uppsala is like a second home now.
And so, I hereby bring to a close what has been the greatest chapter in my life. The End.

June 24th. Well, it’s been powm now for one whole year. The blog was created specifically so I could chronicle my adventures in Sweden. In fact today is the (in)famous Swedish Midsummer and I should be out partying. I definitely plan to keep up the blog after I come back to the States, though. The reverse culture shock alone should be worth an entry or two.For those that don’t know (or those that have forgotten) “That’s it! Now it’s powm!” was something I used to say as a child. It is said in anger or frustration with the implication (but rarely actual use) of physical violence of some sort. Powm I believe is a reference to “Pow!” the onomatopoeia for impacts/punches. I decided it would be a good name for my blog simply because I wanted a title that would be a personal reflection of me. I thought it should be something to refer to whatever thoughts might pop into my head but the ideas for titles seemed too faux intellectual. In the end I decided on a title I can truly call my own. So yes, happy birthday blog! May there be many more posts in the future.

Out of Uppsala now, I’ll be slumming in hotels and other people’s houses for the next few blog entries.
It occurred to me the other day that the music in clubs is sometimes just downright bizarre. Specifically, I wondered at point musicians became so vain that they could sing entire songs about their own ass. My Humps and Bootylicious come to mind. Then again, it might be self-deprecating, after all who would refer to their ass as lumpy or jelly-like?
Also, My Humps is insidious; I heard it for the first time in Malmö and then it was everywhere. I even was woken up by it at 3am in a cabin in Kiruna. At first, when I heard it and remembered I was in a cabin above the Arctic Circle, kilometers away from civilization, I was really not sure if I was awake or not.
Anyway, why are songs about butts OK but you’d never be able to get a song about breasts on the radio? What’s so bad about them that aren’t bad about butts?

A final note on European music: people complain about radio everywhere but after listening to the Swedish radio the US has nothing to complain about. It's all techno, bad R&B and schlager (the genre of music that traditionally dominates Eurovision). Say what you will about KFMA or the Point, at least they're better than the stations here.

I’m now quite busy with moving and planning the last few trips in Sweden. I'm moving out of my room for good on Friday. It’s amazing how much stuff I bought while I was here that I now have to take back with me. I guess it’s not that surprising, all things considered, but when I think about how I arrived in Uppsala with literally little more than the clothes on my back, it’s astounding.

Since Uppsala is a student town, it gets really quiet during the summer months and am told can be horribly boring since everyone leaves. It’s calmed down a bit but the town is still trying to keep active. On Thursday there was this festival organized by the local radio station that filled the streets downtown. All manner of souvenirs and confections were being sold up and down the roads. Granted, Feifei and I were rather old compared to the majority of the crowd, but it was still fun. I guess the high school students can’t leave town so easily and they can’t go to clubs or nations yet. I gotta say, in terms of consistent fun times, Uppsala definitely wins over Tucson.

By now all of the Swedish high school students have finished for the year and the seniors have graduated. The Swedes graduate mid day rather than in the evening. After the ceremony they all hop in rented cars and trucks and joyride around town waving banners and honking horns. They also are all dressed in white and have these cute graduation caps. The white is supposed to symbolize innocence, though it is my belief that teenagers in Sweden are anything but innocent. I was fortunate enough to see the graduation festivities in Stockholm last week, which was a novel experience. I’m told the celebrations in Stockholm are the biggest and best and that it’s not as common in other towns. The latter turned out to be false; Uppsala’s gymnasium had similar (but naturally smaller) celebrations going on as well. Regrettably I was not able to see the festivities at Lundellska, though I did see those of their rival, Katedral skolan. After seeing the Swedish graduation traditions, no one in the US has the right to complain about people throwing beach balls or tortillas.

I also went sailing for the first time over the weekend. It’s a lot like I would have imagined in many ways and rather different in others. It’s difficult to explain, really. I wasn’t really happy the first couple of hours but once I got the hang of it I had fun. The fun is contingent on what you are expecting; that is, if you were expecting a leisurely cruise and the wind is fast or if you are expecting more action and there are hardly any waves you won’t have fun. Thankfully, we got both so I could appreciate the two sides of sailing.
And I should also mention that it is clearly now summer in Sweden. It's not a pleasant heat either, not that it approaches the spontaneous combustion inducing temperatures of Tucson, but it's pretty rough. When you're outside it's fine, but the Swedes don't believe in ventilation of any sort, so indoors is torturous. All I want is a fan of some sort, but since "fan" is Swedish for devil, they likely consider such a device to be heretical.

X-Men: The Last Stand with Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart. A nice entertaining movie though a bit frustrating in several ways. It definitely did have a real comic book feel to it with regard to how several of the characters were handled. I was rather frustrated by the fact that certain characters were never shown (coughGambitcough). One thing I will say though, I never liked Juggernaut until Vinnie Jones’ take on him.

They say that idle hands are the devil's playthings. Perhaps that's true. Now that I am free from any academic responsibilities I have now taken to indulging my strange whims. Namely, I have been looking up the pronunciation of special letters in other languages so that I might find out how to pronounce the safe word in Eurotrip. (this seemed important at the time)
The word is: FLÜGGÅeNKƠ€ČHIŒßØLSÊN
Unfortunately I could not find the character for where that lower case E is. The word is written in all capitals but the letter looks like a lowercase backwards E.
The closest pronunciation I could come up with was: Flueggo-enkerech-hi-oissirlseen
I'm pretty sure I've gotten that wrong but it's not actually meant to be said. After all they have a Vietnamese character in there and one that doesn't seem to exist. And I can only assume you don't actually say "Euro" when you read the Euro symbol.
Anyway, in case anyone else wondered about that kind of thing, now you know. Plus if even one person is saved from Club Vandersexxx then this post is totally worth it.

Totally free with all of my classes. I now have one month of free time in Sweden and I plan to make the most of it. Plans include exploring Uppsala a bit more (I've been here almost a year and there are still important places I haven't seen), Stockholm, Göteborg, and Visby. Visby is this old walled city on an island off of Sweden that hosts this SCA/Ren Faire thing in late summer. I won't be there to see it but I have a feeling it's a lot more authentic than the Tucson ones. And in less than a month I'll be back in the excruciating Tucson sun. Where does the time go?
Last Saturday was the Spring Ball in Uppsala. Every nation had their own ball so there were plenty to choose from. We chose to go to Östgöta Nation instead of V-Dala cuz, well, this is the only ball I'm probably going to go to in Uppsala so we picked the nicest building (and not V-Dala, arguably the ugliest). It started out quite similar to a normal gasque except that the food was good and it arrived promptly, whether this is because it's a ball and not a gasque or because it's Östgöta and not V-Dala I could not say. It was fun seeing how another nation had formal dinners, complete with different songs. After the dinner tables were moved out the main hall became the ballroom. There was a live band playing waltzes and foxtrots for hours. Feifei and I had taken a couple of crash courses in dancing before the ball so we managed to hold our own. After Östgöta calmed down in the wee hours of the morning we made our way to V-Dala to say hi to our friends there. There's definitely a magic to Uppsala: 2AM and the sky is already brightening, the streets filled with young ladies and gentlemen dressed their finest, gazing up at the majestic Domkyrkan while funky dance music blares from the nearby Värmlands Nation. V-Dala didn't have a live band but the dancing went on until 4AM.
The Spring Ball was equated by some to the prom. Even though it's quite different in many ways, it also serves the same function. And in that regard it vastly surpasses prom.
My only gripe is the formal attire required for the occasion. It's a white tie event, which is more formal than a tuxedo. Even though a tuxedo looks fifty times better than tails. I now know that the fictional profanity "frack" on Battlestar Galactica is actually a reference to the difficulty of putting on, the discomfort of wearing and the silly appearance of the formal suit of the same name.

And I find most of these to be quite true. Mormons in Sweden, there's an exercise in futility.

Also, new month, new Flickr pics.

I can't tell if this Swedish course is more for kicks or if it's actually helpful.
On another note, I looked up some stuff on the Swedish language on Wikipedia and found that they evidently have a sound that does not exist in other languages. The 'sj' sound is closest to "phew!" in English but is essentially like blowing out a candle. The Norrlanders have an easier time, they just pronounce it like 'sh' but sometimes I don't think it sounds as good then. I have gotten the pronunciation pretty much figured out after 9 months though.
One thing I will never get used to or use myself is the Swedish equivalent sound for "mmhmm". They inhale quickly either through the mouth or the nose and it sometimes sounds like they just stopped themselves from burping. It the most annoying thing in the world. I think someone mentioned it to me once last semester but I forgot it and it came as a surprise to me at the beginning of this semester. Originally I thought only female Swedish teachers did it since they were the only ones I ever observed doing it. One teacher at my department made that affirmative sound literally after every single sentence. I honestly thought she had a respiratory problem, but apparently she's just the Swedish Mr. Mackey.

Also, I've been here nine months and I have yet to see an actual, dedicated Swedish restaurant. At first I was just a little frustrated that I couldn't find one, but figured that it was natural to not find ethnic food restaurants in the same region that the ethnicity hails from. But it occurred to me in Poland and Lithuania that I could find plenty of ethnic restaurants there. One can find Spanish food in Spain and British food in Britain, but no Swedish food in Sweden. It's not that Swedish food sucks, for some reason, though, the Swedes just don't like it. One Swede told me that it's because when people go out to a restaurant they don't want to eat the same stuff they have at home. Theoretically true, but I know for a fact that Swedes don't eat pickled herring at home every day, they have pasta and stuff like that. He then said Swedish restaurants would mainly cater to tourists (evidently the million immigrants in Sweden aren't a big enough market) and Sweden isn't a big tourist country. Compared to England and Spain, yes definitely, but I think there are more tourists that would rather go to Stockholm than downtown Warsaw. I think the Swedes just don't like their cultural food, for whatever reason. I don't think they could have gotten tired of it; you can only get it on holidays. It does tend to be the same thing no matter what the holiday is, though.

Also, a couple new Flickr pics.

Thankfully classes are coming to a close, it won't be long before I'm totally free and can enjoy Sweden without having that nagging feeling of being a slacker. Not that that has stopped me in the past, but still. My paper on Lundellska skolan will be done by the end of the week and hopefully it will say everything I want it to say, though given the sorry state of the weather lately I doubt I will be able to observe the Swedish spring fashions, namely the supposed Muslim girls with spaghetti strap tops and headscarves. That would be anthropological gold.
I had the chance to watch the Eurovision Song Contest last night; Feifei was quite determined that I see it, as it is such an important pan-European cultural event. For those that don't know, imagine American Idol but bigger and, though everyone can sing and perform nicely, the songs and performances themselves are so cheesy and dumb. The best word to describe it is simply "European." The Europeans take it so seriously too, while the real entertainment for me is in making fun of these people. The front pages of all the newspapers have the voting results and how terrible it was the Sweden lost to Finland, totally displacing actual important news. The real reason they won was cuz they were so different from all the other acts and they just stood out the most. My favorite, on account of just how cheeky their act was, was Lithuania: "We Are the Winners of Eurovision". Still wish Zlad had been able to perform, though. I don't think he should be disqualified on account of his country not existing. I mean, Molvania is still fictionally in Europe, yet Israel can perform and they're on the wrong continent! I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but if you have the chance to watch Eurovision, do so by all means. If not for the cultural experience then just for the sake of comedy.

Alien vs. Predator, with Sanaa Lathan and Lance Hendriksen. This movie wasn't as bad as all the critics had led me to believe. Granted, I wouldn't have wanted to go see it in a theater but it's not something unwatchable. That said, it could have been done better, but that comment hardly makes a movie bad these days. I think it should have taken place in the Aliens time period and not on modern day Earth, but maybe that's just me. They could have gotten rid of a lot of dumb little nits that way. I think if anything will bug you it's the accumulation of little dumb things, like how the girl is running around in Antarctica at night after taking her parka off and doesn't freeze to death. But then again, there aren't many scenes where you can see their breath anyway. Pretty much, if you don't mind the inconsistencies and don't pay too close attention to detail it's an enjoyable film, but nowhere near the level of either the "Aliens" or "Predator" movies.

Sex is Zero, with Ji-won Ha and Chang Jung Lim. My brother got an email from Amazon saying that since he bought Eurotrip, he might be interested in this movie too. Since he got me Eurotrip as a birthday gift I thought I'd check it out. The reviews said it was 5 times funnier than American Pie and equated it with Porky's and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Evidently this person has either never seen this film or has never seen those films, because it's totally beyond me how any rational person could make that claim. The movie definitely tries to follow that format, but goes overboard in some places, crossing the line from funny/gross to just wrong. Like a supposedly funny scene where the main character eats rat poison. The more serious elements of the movie are really dark and not appropriate for a comedy at all. I may have missed the point or am just of the wrong culture, but damn this movie sucks.

Finally done with one of my least favorite courses ever. No more People, Power and Food ever again! I should be thankful that the course involved so little work that I could (and did) do all the work at the last minute.
In other news the weather is bright and sunny and beautiful here in Uppsala. Why just the other day it reached 68F (20C). Lovely day for a stroll in the park. It's amazing seeing how the entire city changes from winter to spring. Visibly it looks like the population of Uppsala doubled since people all want to be outside now. Plus, all the trees and bushes are sprouting leaves again. The parks are filled with pretty flowers that are causing so many allergies to so many people. So I suppose I have to thank desert broom for making me resistant to Swedish pollen, who knew that plant was useful? The Swedes are now all sunbathing in the parks, on their balconies and actually outside my very window. I wore shorts for the first time in eight months today, a nice refreshing change but it's still not hot enough where I would actually need them. Contrast with the Swedes who are fanning themselves and running for ice cream to cool themselves down. Remember, 68F is hot to them. I had worried that my time in Sweden had robbed me of my ability to tolerate heat, but thankfully not. When I was in Vilnius, the kitchen was maybe 80F (26C) and everyone was fanning themselves and rolling up their sleeves and saying how horribly hot it was. And then there's me and a girl from Israel who were totally fine.

Also, Feifei and I are evidently part of an unprecedented legal case involving a screw up with online airline tickets. It's going to take a long time, naturally, but if we win we get a partial refund. Plus unprecedented legal cases look nice on a law major's resume, I'd think, so hurray for Feifei.

Valborg was on Sunday, this big holiday celebrated all over Sweden by lighting bonfires and singing songs. Except in Uppsala, where the student town goes completely nuts and everyone roams the streets from dawn till dawn drinking and partying away. I've never seen anything like this in my life; so much alcohol, so many bottles littering the streets, such hedonistic indulgence, and all of it totally sanctioned by the municipality. To give you an idea on just how much alcohol is involved here let me quote a statistic: 25% of Systembolaget's (the Swedish government run liquor monopoly) annual sales happen the week before Valborg. 25% consumed on a single day. I did not drink nearly as much as all the Swedes claimed I inevitably would, which is good cuz I really like being able to remember all the things that happened and also not ending up in one of the ambulances we heard running through town all that day.

So here's a quick rundown of how this day plays out if you really want to enjoy it all: First you wake up nice and early and head on down to the Fyrisån so you can get a good spot for the forsränningen, an event where University students construct floats/rafts out of Styrofoam and balsa wood and float them down the river and try to survive the two waterfalls, the 2nd of which is bigger and more difficult than the first. Unfortunately we didn't see the 2nd one, but we did have a rather nice view at the 1st where we saw the weaker floats get obliterated. Also, during this time, one traditionally has champagne and strawberries for breakfast, known as the champagnefrukost, but time and space restrictions made us opt out of that one.
After the float race we headed back to Feifei's place so she and her friends could change for this semiformal lunch thing where all the Swedes have to wear their high school graduation caps. These little white caps btw are the cutest things in the world; damn stylish too, if our graduation caps looked like that I'd probably wear mine more often. The lunch was all Swedish food, which was great because aside from holidays the Swedes never eat the stuff. The Swedes don't seem fond of their traditional food, which is strange cuz I like it, but I'll save that analysis for another day. The main reason for having those little caps is that the Dean of Uppsala University gives a speech at the top of the hill at the main library, the Carolina Rediviva, where immediately after the speech the students fling their hats in the air (collecting them afterwards, presumably) then running down the hill in great haste to get to a nation for the champagnegalopp.
After the lunch we went back and changed clothes again to something we didn't mind getting drenched in champagne, then proceeded to a nation, Göteborg. And just as expected there was a lot of champagne going around with people shaking it up and spraying it on one another. There were champagne puddles on the ground and the air was so humidified with it you might get tipsy just breathing there. Aside from the obvious consequence of being really sticky afterwards, being sprayed was rather refreshing since it was so hot inside the building.

We went home to change once more, and afterwards we went to a barbeque and a corridor party, as is tradition. That was really fun, and people complimented me on my Swedish, specifically my lack of an American accent. That really made my day. There was one really obnoxiously drunk Swede who didn't seem to understand any English and was a total jackass. After that we went to an after party at one of the nations, but that sucked so we ended up going home. On the way back we surveyed the damage wrought by the day. A grassy field on the way back home was totally covered in garbage, it literally looked like a landfill. Amazingly though, I biked by there late the next day and it was almost cleaned up, though it was less miraculous when I saw the small army of garbage men cleaning it all, or the fact that just beyond where the garbage men stood was still a solid field of garbage.

All said, a wonderful time was had by all and it was a great introduction to Valborg. I've got to come back some time. Hot damn.

Yesterday I went to this martial arts show in a nightclub in Uppsala, Birger Jarl, known among English speakers as Club BJ. Anyway, the show was pretty fun to watch; they had Muay Thai, jujitsu, capoeira and MMA. Aside from the fighting itself the stuff revolving around it was also pretty entertaining, from the announcer shouting, "Let's get ready to rumble!" in a Swedish accent to the fights having their own soundtracks (who hasn't wanted to fight to a good song?) to watching the girls holding the round cards get instructions before the fights. It was agreed that the jujitsu fight was by far the best; faster, harder more immediate and also just prettier than some of the other fights. And of course it's always more fun watching people if you know what techniques they're doing. Their fighting style reminded me a lot of the Ko Sho system, in fact.
The capoeira was sadly not an actual fight but a demonstration of acrobatics and coordination. Entertaining, but I really wanted to see an actual capoeira fight. The last fight was a free fight against an MMA guy and a Muay Thai guy (that rhymes!) but that wasn't very pleasant to watch. Judging from the punches to the kidneys, rabbit punches and kicking the opponent while they were down the only real rules seemed to be to stay in the ring and not kill anyone.
One thing I would have really wanted to see was a match against all these martial arts against one another. A jujitsu/capoeira match would have been just awesome. But even without it, it was still a fun time.

I learned this in class from an Australian and thought it was just worth mentioning: place a 2 liter water bottle in the water tank of your toilet. This reduces the water use for flushing from 7 to 5 liters. If you have a household of four people that in average uses the toilet 5 times per day and person this is a reduction of water use by 40 liters every day.

Words of the Day: leechate-garbage juice.
shibboleth-A word or pronunciation that distinguishes people of one group or class from those of another. A custom or practice that betrays one as an outsider.

So yesterday was an absolutely gorgeous spring day, the best one yet and I arrived just in time for it too. I also learned in class that on the first day of spring it's tradition that someone walks around naked in a park. See in the Eastern US the first robin is the sign of spring, in Tucson it's the first vulture and in Sweden it's the first naked man.
Also, today is 4/20 which, as any American knows, is National Pot Day. This concept is completely unknown to Europeans which is unusual considering its ubiquity back home. I recall the endless snickers I got when people learned I lived in dorm room number 420. It's refreshing that the Swedes aren't all crazy for pot, though in Vilnius I did learn of a very bizarre tradition the Russians have on 4/20. I cannot confirm or deny this but this is what I hear: since today is also Hitler's birthday, the Russians, allegedly, go on a xenophobic rampage and beat up any foreigner they can find. So Americans will chill out and smoke weed today and the Russians will go out looking for a fight. If there was ever a difference between our two cultures, that would definitely be it.

Well I'm back safe and sound from my Easter break vacation. Though I did end up leaving 10 hours later than I planned thanks to the unwavering incompetence of SAS Airlines and Arlanda airport. It saddens me to think that the last thing I will see of Sweden when I leave will be that wretched place.
But I digress; I made it to Warsaw all right and after being overcharged by a Polish mafia taxi I made it to the hostel. The hostel itself was kinda crappy, and it was in a bad part of town. I'd call it a ghetto, but y'know... My roommate in the hostel I feel is worth mentioning, as he seemed to be the physical manifestation of Warsaw. A disheveled middle-aged man with a moustache, who does not speak a lick of English, smokes heavily in a non-smoking room and drinks copious amounts of vodka. The last thing he did before going to sleep was have a cigarette and finish off his bottle of vodka. He went out like a light and the only way I knew he wasn't dead was his insufferably loud snoring. The next morning I swear the very first things he did when he woke up were light up a cigarette and open another bottle of vodka.
Warsaw was totally destroyed in WWII, absolutely nothing remained, which means that it's built for the 20th century and traveling by foot is nigh impossible. It also means that the city had to be rebuilt by the Soviets, who have a real eye for aesthetics. Really, communism leaves a stink of its presence wherever it goes, not unlike my roommate at the hostel. The Old Town in downtown Warsaw was really fun and cool I have to admit, though my appreciation for how well kept it looked was misguided since it was all recreated based on prewar photographs. Still fun to see though. Aside from that, the only other thing really worth seeing is the giant fugly skyscraper downtown that I believe is a replica of the 7 skyscrapers in Moscow.
After 2 days in Warsaw I was really worried about the quality of my heritage, then I took the train to Krakow and felt tremendous relief. Apparently Krakow is the town my ancestors are from originally, and strangely enough the city was virtually untouched by war. There was a funny feeling of seeing the Old Town and the castle just as my great great grandparents would have seen them. It's such an amazing place, full of history and culture and delicious Polish food.
I took a day trip from Krakow to Oświęcim, better known as Auschwitz. Needless to say it was rather unsettling, I felt that perhaps I hadn't gotten the scope of it all, though. But maybe it's impossible to actually grasp the magnitude of it all. One odd thing I noticed was that in all the other Polish cities I visited, all the multilingual signs had German text since it's one of the most common languages in Poland. But, perhaps fittingly, there was no German text to be found anywhere in the Auschwitz camp.
After Krakow I had planned to go up to the northeastern part of Poland where, on recommendation, I would tour the lakes up there. Unfortunately because of Easter the buses to Lithuania stopped running after the day I got there so it was either leave immediately or miss Vilnius entirely. Olstein was the name of the town, not much to see and more of a hub for destinations than a destination in itself. It was a small town yet it had the crummyness of a downtown big city. Before I arrived in Olstein I had been very pleased to see an absence of hateful political graffiti in Poland and had figured the Poles more than any other country would understand why Nazism is a bad idea. But my happiness was short lived; there were white power slogans, swastikas, anarchy signs and hammers and sickles EVERYWHERE. I'm going off on a tangent here but what the hell is wrong with these people? I'll give them the anarchy thing since after enduring two totalitarian regimes a lack of any government might seem appealing, and I'll sort of give them the communist thing since it's a good idea *in theory* but having seen its application firsthand I just don't get how any Eastern European could support it. And the swastika, did these people never go to school, watch TV, read books or even look around them? Their capital city was obliterated by the Nazis and 6 million of their citizens were brutally murdered and there are still some that support it?

OK since this whole post is so damn big I'm chopping it up into smaller sections.

My view of Poland and Poles after seeing the country for about a week was that there were two types of Polishness. One is of beautiful, clean, safe cities and friendly, intelligent, beautiful people while the other is of dodgy, run down, ugly cities and stupid, vulgar, disgusting people. After I got back to Uppsala I was discussing my impression of Poland with a Pole and she said that there are in fact two Polands; what the politicians refer to as Poland A and B, which possess the exact characteristics I observed. So it was good that the locals see the same things I do and that I'm not way off base.
But back to my travels: Vilnius itself is gorgeous and the change in architecture and overall atmosphere between the Old Town and the modern district is so amazing it feels like you're in two completely different cities. I should also mention I went to a metal concert I found in town on the grounds that Eastern European metal must be some pretty intense stuff. I was half right; the fans were some of the scariest people I had ever seen; I'd say 90% of them were about 2 meters tall and all manner of angry (the concert was delayed 3 hours so that might have contributed a bit). The music was quite sub par, I can say that with some measure of objectivity since even though metal isn't really my thing most of the other fans were pretty unimpressed as well.
The hostel I stayed at had the most awesome people ever and we had so much fun whether we were touring the city, going out on the town or just playing cards when it rained. This is my wholehearted endorsement of staying in hostels when you travel. Even if you don't meet fun people, you're very likely to meet interesting ones, case in point: I met a real life Veruca Salt. The daughter of a diplomat (a self-described and ever so apt diplobrat) this girl had a large amount of personal wealth and as such only wanted to stay in five star hotels and eat at the most expensive French restaurants. It was only at the insistence of her incredibly fun friend from Brooklyn that she went to the hostel. This girl was just unbelievable, she evidently normally has an Australian accent but while on the trip adopted an ultra high class British accent and went on about how she didn't like (insert any nationality besides the British, Germans, French and Belgians here). I could go on all day about this girl, she just put everyone off and it was just astounding how alien she was.
Fortunately her friend was more than awesome enough to make up for her. She and I visited a nearby small town with a medieval castle surrounded by lakes. An absolute blast, we even got to use the archery range in the castle.
So I think that's about it, though getting home was interesting too since I think my (expired) Russian visa makes the passport control really suspicious. And we took a propeller plane from Vilnius to Arlanda. An international flight on a propeller plane. The people all saw it and started laughing. Oh, and Feifei picked me up at the airport, so that was a nice surprise.

Naturally, I have many lovely pics from my travels.

Ice Age 2 with Ray Romano and John Leguizamo. Fun, cute movie though slightly darker than the original. The jury is still out on whether it was better than the original, IMO, but it was at least as good. I found the most interesting part of the movie was the different species, and just how much research the creators would have done to come up with weird creatures like that. Also helps to educate little kids on prehistoric creatures besides dinosaurs. They did change a few things though, apparently Sid would have been friggin' huge and would have kicked Diego's ass, maybe Manny's too. Anyway, I thought the nature of the scenes was pretty cool, there were a lot of them that could have been standalone animated shorts, particularly the ones with Scrat. It made for a refreshing change from really linear movies.

Mononoke Hime with Yôji Matsuda and Yuriko Ishida. An older movie by the same guy that made Spirited Away. I'm not much of an anime fan to begin with, so anything more positive that total disdain might be interpreted as praise. The moral of the story is pretty plain and simple, but that's about the only thing that is. That's probably just cuz of cultural differences, or the aforementioned disinterest in anime. There was a consensus that for an alleged non-hentai movie there were a lot of tentacles. I don't feel totally unqualified to judge this film since I was not the only person who thought it was really weird. Bottom line: if you like anime, watch it, if not, it's not the best introduction to it.

I was going to write something about my fieldwork at Lundellska Skolan but I'm tired and full of delicious cake and I have a busy day tomorrow. I'm off to bed and see y'all in 11 days.

Serenity with Nathan Fillion and Sean Maher. I liked Firefly so it was only natural that I would like the movie. Very nice fight sequences, though only a martial artist would notice that the people are deliberately going out of their way not to hurt the actors. There must have been a dozen missed opportunities for a joint break. Nonetheless, I was glad they tied up some loose ends from the series, and also frustrated that they didn't tie up ones that can now never be tied up. While watching the series I guess I never noticed how much Chinese they actually spoke, though that might be because their Chinese (I have it on authority) is terrible. My Chinese, on the other hand, is improving now that Feifei and I are watching the series while she points out the Chinese. The tones aren't as hard as I had thought, though I do find it interesting that in Chinese tones are used for denotation, forming specific words, while in Western languages they are used mainly for connotation, conveying emotion, sarcasm, etc. Anyway, Serenity rocks so much more with a Chinese translator by your side.

Spring has finally sprung here in Uppsala. A tad late on account of there being a huge blizzard at the beginning of the month that was a final farewell to snow. The days have been getting longer and longer, good in a way but also frustrating cuz I was just getting used to all the darkness. Plus, seeing the sun setting before one has done any work at all is a great academic motivator; you're finished with work by 3PM. Still, I'm very much looking forward to spring again, seeing everything green and lush and alive again. Hopefully I can go on another of those hikes I went on back in the fall, and this time not have my camera screw up.

Also, Easter vacation is coming up and I plan on using that time to go to The Old Country: Poland and Lithuania! Sure, I'll miss out on the Swedish Easter but as I hear it it's just like the Christmas food and such. Besides, I'll be getting the good, authentic, Polish stuff. I can't make it home for Easter so this is the next best thing. And I'll get to explore the country just as spring begins. I'm leaving the 7th and coming back the 18th. It'll be great!

They found more Martian bacteria in an asteroid. They say the bacteria can get all of its energy from minerals, which got me thinking: if minerals are all they need, and they were on an asteroid, given the right conditions they could evolve into space-dwelling life forms.

And now you can instant message God Himself.

Yesterday I found out my cat Molly died. Deep down I had accepted that as a possibility when I left for Sweden since there were signs she was getting sick. She was about 15 years old and we had her since she was a kitten. There were only a few years that I can remember when we didn't have her so she was basically part of my entire life.
When I thought about how I would react if I did find out she died I was never sure about how I would feel exactly. If I would find out and just not react at first, then have it hit me hours later, as sometimes happens, or if I would be angry that I wasn't there. Neither, it hit right away and I just felt sad.
She died in her sleep, as good an end as I could think of. Still, it doesn't make it hurt less.
I know in order to grow up some things from your childhood have to end, I just never realized that a part of my childhood would have to die along the way.

Not my usual blog post, but it's important to me and I felt the least I could do was mention it.

Something I learned over the weekend: rotten grapes smell like bad wine or vinegar. Makes sense, but I guess I never really thought about how similar rotting and fermentation really are.

One thing I've had difficulty with since I arrived in Sweden, but has flared up recently now I know more Swedish, is translations that are never quite accurate. That is, words that cannot be directly translated from Swedish to English or words that only cover half of a meaning in the other language. For an example of the latter, "upplevelse" and "erfarenhet" are both translated in English to "experience", but they are slightly different. Upplevelse is like life experience (i.e. life in Tucson) whereas erfarenhet is like acquired skill and knowledge through active participation (i.e. experience in aikido). This is a case where English has the upper hand; one word covers both meanings perfectly. This seems to be more an exception than a rule, though.
The example of the former is the very Swedish word "lagom"; (the Swedes practically pride themselves on the fact that this word cannot be directly translated directly into English) it means roughly "just right", "OK", "adequate". I think "just right" is the best for it but I'm told that's too good, that lagom isn't "good", it's just acceptable, but not in a bad way. It's a frustrating thing trying to understand the meaning behind a word, especially when I think the word encompasses almost mutually exclusive ideas. "Sub-par just right" is one definition I came up with in frustration that wasn't really disagreed with.
I understand of course that there are words and concepts in other languages that do not match words or concepts in English, there are overlapping and intermediate definitions of terms that perhaps facilitate a greater level of precision (the Saami and their many words for snow comes to mind) but sometimes I wonder if the Swedes are just quibbling about semantics with me. The word "mupp" means a silly or weird person ("Mupparna" is the Swedish translation for "The Muppets" if that gives you an idea). They were having difficulty finding an equivalent word in English, I suggested 'goofball' but they said that was just a bit too strong, I then offered simply 'goof' but that wasn't strong enough. So mupp is something between a goof and a goofball. It's examples like that that make me wonder if "lagom" is really so difficult to translate. Maybe it's a matter of people not realizing they're talking about the same thing, sort of like how if I tell you to think of a cup everyone will think of a different cup, even though they didn't think it incorrectly. That, or maybe lagom is just a pesky Swedish word.

Word of the Day: cavil- To find fault unnecessarily; raise trivial objections. (personally I like quibble more)