So, even though our stove/oven is impossibly complicated to operate, it seems to be broken. Which leaves me with very little food choices... cold sandwich, microwaved oatmeal, or waffles. Dinner tonight I think will be a salad with lunch meat and waffles...
Our hiking trip through the Upplands trail yesterday was very nice. We went through a lot of different forest types, rocks covered in lichens, mossy ground, grass, fields of wildflowers, boggy stuff... it was great to get into nature. The Finnish girl we went with picked a bunch of berries and mushrooms (a recurring theme in Scandinavia...), and we saw some really neat poisonous ones too :P
We must have taken a wrong turn, because instead of going south to Knivsta, we ended up on a highway in between Uppsala and Knivsta... at least we had our GPS, so we were able to follow the roads to Knivsta and then take the train back home (about 6 hours of walking, 10 minutes on the train...) Luckily we saw some very cute farmhouses.
This afternoon, we went in separate groups (depending on how late you stayed up...) to Gamla Uppsala, which means old Uppsala. Uppsala used to be located north of where it is today, when the river level was higher and you could reach it by boat. It was the original sacred spot, for thousands of years. It's the site of 3 large burial mounds, thought to hold a king or queen. Two have been excavated to check, but one was left alone. They have all been restored, as people used to ski and sled on them, not knowing what they were! They were only protected about 25 years ago.
We went into the little museum, mostly about vikings and the original pagan centre here which was turned into a church in the 12th century, and was the seat of the first Swedish archbishop. We went into the cafe for a fika (coffee/cake/relax time), and wandered around the burial mounds for a little while. I think we will come back another sunny day and bring a picnic... there is a little hill with a path that you can sit on, and it has a great view. You can even see the Uppsala cathedral from there.
Other news... I have bought two winter jackets. One is just a warm raincoat, the other is a big fluffy thing with a fur-trimmed hood... I chose one with removable fur though as I think it looks kind of silly on me. Apparently now is the time to buy, because if you wait too long all the good ones are gone (so say my finnish friends). Tomorrow I'm going on a hunt for winter boots, and a jacket to wear in the evenings... it gets down to 8-9 C after the sun goes down most nights. I seem to only have cardigans and a sweatshirt, I'm not sure how that happened.
I have learned that here, each day is 5-6 minutes shorter than the day before (I think for Vancouver its 2-3). When I got here, the daylight was 05:22-20:20, but now it's 05:51-19:45. Having fun with the daylight calculator... Vancouver's shortest day is 08:05-16:17 (8 hrs), Uppsala's is 08:50-14:45 (6 hrs), and in Umeå it's 09:29-13:48... four hours of daylight. It's going to be interesting...
I forgot to talk about my classes!
Our building is gorgeous. BRAND new, opened a few weeks ago. Our classroom is on the top floor (5) which you need an access card to get into, which none of us have (ha ha). We have to arrive a bit early and wait for a staff member who has an office up there to let us in. It has a great view though. (yes dad I will bring my camera to class one day :P)
My class consists of three are Spanish exchange students, one French, and one Swedish student. The professor is very much a forestry guy. And very much Swedish. I asked Olof, my Swedish classmate, what was up with the coffee break... he said all Swedish professors seem to have this unwritten rule that you break for coffee 45 mins into every lecture. Also, Mr. Johansson likes to turn his g's and j's into y's... he makes yokes, and talks about the reyeneration of trees. This will be weird to get used to. Other than that, it's not too hard to understand him.
I'm pretty excited for our field trip. On October 17, we will be piling into a minibus and driving all day to a house that SLU owns in the middle of a forest close to Östads Säteri, and staying there to do 'forestry exercises' for Tuesday to Thursday, and driving back on Friday.
That reminds me, our international student facebook group likes to plan things, and we have planned for a whole lot of us to go on the Viking Line cruise from Stockholm to Helsinki and back. If we booked in groups of 3, it's only about 430 kr for the bus to Stockholm and the cruise ($66). This doesn't include food of course... I think we will pack some food and do the big buffet on the way home, all together. We leave Stockholm at about 5pm Friday October 7, arrive in Helsinki Saturday morning, and leave for Stockholm again on Saturday night. We are going with at least one girl from Helsinki, so hopefully she can show us all around!!
Also this week I joined a nation! My nation is the Södermanlands - Nerikes nation, Snerikes for short, after the two regions from which the Swedish members are from. I stole a lovely picture of their 'castle' from their website, because it was evening when I went. They had their first 'club night' on Friday, and a few friends and I went to dinner there. It got a bit chilly but they hand out blankets! (see pix.) Afterward we wanted to go to the party at the Värmlands nation, but arriving at 9:05pm means you pay 80kr each to get in! Instead we paid 80kr at the ICA and got some nacho supplies. "What? You put chips in the oven??" It was a fun experience. We then played a dutch "Animal Sounds" card game followed by some slapjack and spoons in my tiny kitchen.
My pictures from the Snerikes dinner and the Upplands trail are in the first album. The second album starts with photos I stole from others from the hike, and my pix of Gamla Uppsala and a couple other random photos as well!
First: https://picasaweb.google.com/111478015196222952326/September32011?authuser=0&feat=directlink
Second: https://picasaweb.google.com/111478015196222952326/September42011?authuser=0&feat=directlink
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