The Mountains Revisited

Hi!

Long time no see. Sorry about that, but school was as promised a mess for a month there.

I need to go to sleep soon so this won't be too long. I just want to say that I went snowboarding this weekend for two days in Deux Alpes and it was absoluteley marvellous. Excellent snow, decent to excellent weather and of course wonderful friends to share the experience with. I have put some pictures on my Picasa picture page as well as pictures from my hike in the moutains with mum. There's not too much snow in the moutains but that just means that it's more or less Swedish conditions (not this year's Swedish conditions though).

From Deux Alpes web album

I'm coming home for Christmas the 22nd and then I leave again for Paris the 30th to celebrate New Years Eve there. School starts again the 3rd.

Take care!

Time to get to work

This coming month is going to a bit more loaded when it comes to homework. I've two group assignments. In one of them, the three of us have 30-page scientific text about car manufacturing (more precisely about optimisation, the best order to produce cars with the different features, like colour or extra equipment, on the same production line) in French which we need to understand and present by a two-page text and presentation, with questions from the teachers in the end. It IS a bit scary. The other assignment is to go out and interview a company about their innovation process and make a 15-page essay about it. We're visiting Caterpillar, the company that builds construction vehicles. This course also includes a written 2-page synthesis on another text plus a presentation of said text, about 21 hours of mandatory lectures AND a test. All this will give 1,75 ECTS which corresponds to approximately one (1!!!) Swedish högskolepoäng. To give a bit of perspective I managed to get 3 ECTS by doing an all-to-easy online French course. You had to work online a bit and then the examination was 2 half-hour tests. Do I need to add that the French are quite new with the credit system?

Despite school having its ups and downs, I still love it here. Yesterday, I had an absolutely lovely evening. I made pizza and kladdkaka with a couple of friends (and DAD, if they show up on several photos it won't necessarily mean we're dating) and after that we joined with a couple of other persons and went out dancing. We manage to find this bar with the kind of music I love I love to dance to and we stayed till closing, which sadly is two o'clock at all bars in France. If you want to continue you need to go to a boite (disco) and the one we found cost €10 (or is it 10€?, comment please). It was free for the ladies though. Makes you think what you're actually paying for...

The ones of you who have visited my photo page lately have seen that I've done some stuff I haven't really written about, like climbing outdoors. My mother asked me when she was here (guess I haven't mentioned that either) what the fun with climbing was, with the sort of tone in her voice suggesting that she personally thinks it's dangerous and unnecessary. I guess it's just the challenge of it all. Managing to do something that first looks impossible. I've already got me a pair of climbing shoes and joined the climbing school attached to the university sport system (which I've described it a bit more in the bottom of this blog entry) so now I can go climbing almost every week-day if I want to. I guess the outdoor season will soon be finished but there's always the indoor wall.

I've also gone to Paris with a couple of friends from school. It was nice.

Then my mother came here last Thursday. It was also nice.

I hope to go Nice before the end of the year here.

Ha. Ha. Ha. (I am a little bit tired today.) Paris trip and my mother's visit was possible thanks to the vacation we had last week. Write something in the comments section if your curious and wanna know more. Actually, write something anyway. It would be nice to see who's reading this text. What you think of the links, etc. See, I ain't to proud to beg...

Anyway, before I go back to trying to start doing my homework I want to give you a little treat. The window below starts a clip from a concert with Jethro Tull, a group I know absolutely nothing about. However, the song is absolutely brilliant, weird, fluteylicious>, (you'll understand when you see him play...) and generally different from whatever you usually listen to. Listen at least until the flute solo. Later he plays air guitar with it as well...

Tills nästa gång, kram till er alla! (Hugs until next time!)

Gala!

Hey you!

Since it's easier to look at images than to read I'm now supplying you with a nice web album with pictures from the "Gala" my school had this weekend. The girls were pretty, the guys were handsome and the wine was flowing. I had a really nice time.

Gala in Grenoble

Just click the photo and you'll be taken to the album. Captions (bildtexter) might be written later on. (And yes mother, the blog entry about studying will be published :-)

Le Parcour

Parcourir means "travel through". It's not really what these guys are doing. Crazy...

WEI not?

Spent a nice Weekend d'Integration with my school somewhere southwest of Grenoble called Ardeche. It might have been here. It's a bit embarassing but I'm not too sure exactly where we were. Anyway, there were canoeing in more-rapid-than-calm waters (quite cool for a beginner like me). I've no pictures of that I'm sad to say. Would have been good to have a shell for the camera now... There were also quite a lot of partying and dancing and people from the second and last year who threw up our furniture on the roofs of our mobile homes/bungalows. The WEI seems to be an important tradition in my school and quite a lof of people went there from all three "years" and even some alumnis.

School's been kinda slow this week since the third year don't have any classes since they're presenting internships they've done, but all of a sudden someone tells me I need to hand in stuff next wednesday. I still don't know what I need to do exactly. Ah, well. I'll be allright.

Louis XIV really knows how to get you in a party mode!

Yesterday (Thursday) was spent i Lyon. A partnership organisation for the Grandes Écoles in the Rhône-Alps region (AGERA) gaves us, the foreign students a free bus ride to Lyon, a guided tour of the old town including a traditional silk and velvet weaving mill (sidenväveri). I think you would have liked that Lisbet. The velvet with gold threads was a €500/m. and the silk was a €1000... In the 1500-1600s about 20% or 30 000 of Lyon's population worked with it.

I guess the goal of the day was to integrate students from different areas. It didn't work to well I must say. We didn't have to much time to integrate. Lyon was cool anyway and I think I'll return.

Und jetzt c'est le week-end!

Local games

(I Wrote this monday two weeks ago, then I couldn't upload it right away, so the time references are a bit outdated)

Gravity vs My Neighbours : 5-6-7... a lot – 0

There's a family who lives a couple of stories above me. They seem to be doing the laundry quite a lot. Nothing strange there. It's just that, every other or third day there is laundry on the ground in the little inside yard of our house. I'm trying to figure out why they don't buy more clothespins. Maybe they just really like to get their clothes dirty without wearing them.

Erik vs French Food : 0-1

I had a lovely baguette this saturday before I went out for the BDS rally. It might've a been a bit too crispy though cuz one of my my fillings (lagningar) broke. Now I'll have to spend a couple of days looking like Cletus from the Simpssons. It doesn't really hurt, it just looks silly, as you can see.

Yesterday, Sunday the 17th, I also had the opportunity to go to the birthday party of one of my new friends. It was around 25 people there and I'm happy to say I knew quite a lot of them. It's easy to make friends here. It remains to be seen how easy these friendships are to sustain but I hope to make at least a couple of friends that I'll stay in touch with. My friend Daniel is 24 years old now which means that he's old, at least compared to the other French students. Most of the engineering students are around 20-22 years old. Having gap years (sabbatsår) doesn't seem to be so common here in France. Anyhow, I'm used to spend time with younger people in Linköping. When in university, you don't really think of the age differences the same way one used to do before.

Tonight, theres another rally but this time it's being arranged by the people who lives in different ”collocs”, that is a flat where people live together (kollektiv). Should be interesting (and it was :-), I survived the Absinthe...)

Wierd Al, don't know how he keeps doing it...

(I can add that my teeth are doing fine now. I went to this private dental clinic with only blond nurses and a young dentist. I got it recommended by a [female] friend and they did a good job. Not to expensive either.)

The Mountains! The Mountains!

It's hard to know where to begin when one has to recapitulate 3 weeks packed with events so let's just start with the mountains. Grenoble is actually a quite flat city (which makes it excellent for biking, I'm about halfway through renovating my landlord's bike, which I'm planning to buy) but all around it there's mountains. You don't always see them but sometimes when you least expect it they just appear as an almost breathtaking backdrop to the end of a street. The smallest one is the Bastille. That's the one with little see-through eggs going up and down from the last entry. It rises about 300 metres over Grenoble. The view from there is not bad at all. It still seemed quite small when we looked down upon it from the top of one of the nearby mountain tops, la Mountrousse, which rises about 1700 metres over Grenoble and 1896 metres over sea level. From there you could see Mount Blanc and a bunch of other more nearby mountain ridges where I'm sure I'll spend quite some time snowboarding this winter. It's also possible to go inside the mountains. We were to one cave, which apparently stretches about 16 km inside the mountain. Naturally, we didn't go that far in but it was still a really nice experience. The cave was excellently lit up in different colours, for example green, as you can see on the picture. Lummelunda eat your heart out is all I can say after that experience. Oh, and I had my first waterfall shower near the caves as well. Cold, yet refreshing.

The ”we”, who did the trip to la Mountrousse, are by the way most of the foreign students who will study at the different engineering schools here in Grenoble. This year we were about 60 people who took the intensive course in French, in 6 differently levelled groups. I was in the next best one, something that has proved to be quite appropriate. I'm far from being totally independent when it comes to the French language but I'm certainly a better speaker than the majority of the foreign students. I'm just glad that it seems that my two years at university seems to have helped laying a good foundation to build on.
I've encountered quite a few friendly people here from various places on the Globe including France, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, England,, Scotland, Ecuador, Brazil, Spain, Italy, Basque, Finland, the US of A and so on and so forth. In addition to the mountain hike we've also gone bowling (I won on my lane, yaaaaaaay), danced Salsa (or in my case tried to dance salsa) and just in general had loads of fun. September 4th it was time to meet the other new students at the industrial engineering and management school here where I'll take most or all of my courses. I haven't quite understood the entire French school system yet but I know that these students have had two years of preparatory school with math, physics, chemistry, more math and so on, after which they all take a large national test which determines which schools they can apply to. This means that these new students are more or less kick-ass when it comes to math and absolute beginners when it comes to economy. This leads to a bit of problem for the foreign students when it comes to choosing courses since we have to pick them from all tree years here. It's tricky to make the schedule work to say the least. I've changed my plan quite a bit, I won't for example do as much programming as I thought, but I'm sure it will be fine. Well, not entirely sure but I hope at least.

The integration period (nollningen) at my school have so far been delightful. Just as in Sweden, there's a group of people who does a lot of work to help the new students learn to know each other and the town, without getting payed of course. There's been some ”soirées” with dancing and partying at different clubs, including one with a pool. A new encounter for most people I'm sure and certainly for the ones who got their cell phones ruined after being thrown in the water...

Quite a few of the parties have been parties with so called open bar. You pay your entrance fee and after that it's all drinks are free. Luckily, I've been able to handle it quite well. It would be interesting to see how a party like that would work in Linköping. Here, I've seen vomit and vomiting but not so much of it. Anyway, so much for all the talk about the French drinking culture.
Two of the more noteworthy events during the integration (which is still far from finished, after all it's just been two weeks) have been a picture assignment and a ”rally” in town with the BDS, le Bureau du Sport. For the former, we were given little envelopes with different team names like ”les Has-beens”, les ”Biatches” or in my case ”Les Skieurs”. The assignment was to arrange a picture with a theme associated to the team name, preferably with a twist. As you can see from the result we twisted it quite well. The picture is taken from my window and the skis belong actually to my landlord (let's hope he doesn't read my blog AND understand English at the same time). As you can see we edited it quite a bit. Scieurs means ”sawers”...

The other happening was as mentioned arranged by the ”sports department” of my school. Basically another group who likes to arrange parties and from time to time show their hairy behinds (an activity the French seems to be quite fond of for some reason). My group (TuffGIngarna, GI is my school) did quite well I think. For example I've drunk beer under water in a fountain through a snorkel and shot a commercial for shampoo in another fountain, and I've had little shy French boy throw a pie in my face. All in all a sticky and wet but FUN afternoon in Grenoble.

Maybe I should mention another evening here as well. I thought it would be another night of simple socializing but hej vad jag bedrog mig. All of sudden I had more or less volunteered to be in one of the teams for an improvised theatre competition. Each team had a coach from some theatre group here in town and after a little warm-up I was supposed to be speaking French with a Scottish accent and improvise the scene ”a house by the sea”. Let's just say that the feeling I had before it started must have been a bit like jumping from plane for the first time knowing that your parachute is the size of a handkerchief. The ”battle” was played in several rounds with the audience deciding the winner of each round by vote. I didn't start off to well but I must say I excelled in one special round, ”1001 and one ways to...”. All the contenders from booth teams stood on a line and the goal was to take turns performing as many ways one could to do certain things. The one I got most comments for afterwards were in the genre ”picking up girls/boys at the beach”. I simply walked out on the floor and said: ”Je vient de la Suède”, (I come from Sweden). I should maybe add that I've got quite a few questions and comments about Swedish girls and how good-looking swedes are in general. It would seem I've got a bit a reputation here in school after that night but the comments have only been positive so it should be okay.

I'm sure I'll have more stuff to write about the integration as it goes on. For example I've already payed 110 Euros to go to the WEI (Weekend Integration) for three days. I don't know to much about it but everyone says it's worth the money. Besides, my French bank have been more than generous. Not only will they return me 40€ after the WEI. They have also given me 40€+33€+16€+a 256 MB USB stick to open an account. The account is free and they've given me a VISA card as well as an account with 4% interest rate. They claim it's a good deal for them. It's most certainly a good deal for me. Or so I hope in any case.
Grenoble once hosted the winter Olympics and sports are still important here, or at least in school. All engineering students are actually required to do some sort of sport every week. There is massive selection to choose including, skiing, snowboarding, climbing (indoors and outdoors), fencing (fäktning), judo etc. I chose climbing and skiing/snowboarding. I've alreadye bought a pair of insanely small climbing shoes. More about sports later.

I'll get an Internet connection on Monday (or so they say) and after that I hope you will Skype me. My screenname is horseradish. Why horseradish? Beats me...

And finally...
France isn't Sweden because:
People talk quite loudly during lectures and if you set a meeting at 7 in the evening it really means 7:30.

Take care everyone and write me comments. Hugs!

French Number

Hey!

I'm about a third into a blog entry that will hopefully please the ones who are waiting. I'll get my own internet connection in a week and updates should improve by then.

Until next time you can send me an sms and nag on me.

Number is: +33 (0)6 28 32 47 25

Cheers!

French Administration Vs. Erik, 1- 0

People had told me before I came here that the French administration loves pictures of the people it processes. I thought I would be a smart kid and bring lots of pictures with me here to France so I printed out 30 pictures of myself on a sheet. No good. When I showed them today they were appearantly twice the size that they should be. Well, at least I got lots of pictures to give to my friends.

Right now I'm just waiting for school to begin on monday so I can begin meeting new people.

I looked through a guide to Grenoble and it seems to be quite a few nice night clubs, or boites, including ones that play house. Sweeeeeet...

This Sunday I will recieve Sara from Linköping and KTH (it's a long story) at the train station. There seems to be a TGV going directly to Grenoble (I just couldn't find it myself) and she'll arive with one in the evening. She doesn't have a place to stay the until the first of september so she'll stay with me for a couple of days.

This is a Smirnoff commercial but if you swing that way, it's quite funny.

Vocab fab: tuyeuteur - euse, someone who gives tips (e.g. to the police)

New address

If you wanna write me the address is:

Erik Werner
4 place VAUCANSON
38000 GRENOBLE
France

I just love the parks here, free Internet access everywhere...

So far so good

Salut tout le monde! Je suis à Grenoble! I've just found a park in this pretty little town with free internet and a fantastic view over one of the surrounding moutain tops. This particular hill top has a large fortress on it and there's cable car going to the top. I'm sure I'll go there later.

My journey down here went well. Funny thing was that it in a way ended up beeing funded by Air France. At the check-in they told me that the flight might be overbooked and asked if I in that case could take a flight leaving only 20 (!) minutes later. For this possible inconvenience they me gave a 150€ voucher (The cost of my flight was around 60€). In any case, the flight was never overbooked and the only trouble I had was a late check-in which resulted in a swift baggage pick-up in Paris where my bags were number three and four on the conveyor belt. Hopefully they'll continue to pay me for flying with them...

The rest of the journey went without problems. The TGV train to Lyon was quite uneventful, as was the bus ride to Grenoble. My land-lord welcomed me at the bus station. He was in a good mood and drove me to the house. I must ask how old it is because it just seems built quite long ago with thick brick walls. It's 5-storey (British spelling, mind you) apartment building and I think my landlord owns three apartments and lets two of them. To go to my room you have cross a yard, enter my landlords garage, open another door and go up a wooden staircase. The room is cosy with lots of spotlights and the small kitchen is quite well planned. Well, there's no real oven of course, which is a bit of a setback. There is some excuse for one which I guess can be used to grill sandwhiches and make cakes. I'll just have to go to restaurants a lot more... :) The futon-style bed and sofa is a bit on the shorter side with a colour from your most brown-yellow nightmares. I hope I can find something nice to cover it with. It is, however, nice to sleep in. The window has a view over the small yard and the house blocks direct sunlight most of the day, which is probably a blessing during the hotter months here.

I've another day on my own and then my friend Ylva from my French language course in Linköping will arrive. I suppose we will explore the city more together over the weekend. Language school starts this monday, and all the extra-curricular activities with it. A week later it's time for rollcall. What me worry? This is going to be challenge but I understand quite much of what people are saying already, even when they speak really fast.

As I'm sure I'll come to discover more and more, France is certainly not Sweden. They don't have proper plastic bags at the food stores and it seems like house music songs can be popular hits (”Call on me” was an exception). I also think that French kids are more in to chasing pigeons than Swedish kids are for some unknown reason. Some children (not the little girl on the picture though) really aim to hurt the little flying buggers but I haven't seen one succeed so far. I don't know if French kids are more aggressive or if there's just less pigeons accessible to maiming in Sweden.

From now on I'll try to update the blog at least once a week so I won't send you emails every time I do. Just check once a while.

Vocab fab:

caillou-x (m) , small stones. As in: ”Ne lance pas les cailloux!” which a lady said to her kid in the park . If there's one universal thing that kids all over the globe enjoy, I'd say it is throwing pebbles.

Sell Paris Hilton and buy God

Johannes recently directed me to a fairly new website. One could say it's a stock exchange game but instead of real stocks you buy and sell words, short phrases or names. The value of the words are based on how many times they're mentioned in articles from 3000 websites. For example"Kofi Annan" is so far today's best word. I've been sitting trying to find the next big word and work out patterns in the price movements. "Hurricane" has so far been a disappointment. I guess that's a good thing... It's quite fun. It's also a magnificent waste of time so I'll have to try to be careful and not get drawn in completely. There's also a French version of the game that I might check out later. Try it at your own risk...

The Latest Sh*t

Red toilet paper... what will civilisation come up with next?
They also come in black.

Sthlm Jazz Festival or What Has Happened so Far?

I was to the Stockholm Jazz Festival yesterday. After seeing a couple of Great shows it was time for the main act and the reason I paid 425 SEK for the ticket in the first place, Kanye West. I actually changed my summer plans for this concert. You know I mentioned going to the south of Sweden. The original idea was to take the boat from Gotland to Oskarhamn instead of Nynäshamn and continue the trip from there. The change of plans was worth it in any case. Not that I'm the world's biggest Kanye fan but I like his style. OK, he's a Champagne rapper but at least he shows from time to time than he's about more than just cars, cribs and chicks. This statement during an aid show for the New Orleans flood victims could easily have damaged his careeer like the Dixie Chicks's but it seems that it only made his street cred stronger. I also think he's a bit more relaxed than some of the other rappers (50 cent, Dr Dre...). It's hard to imagine 50 posing in a teddy bear suit.

Higlights from the concert were my favourite songs "the New Workout plan" and "Hey Mama". The latter is the greatest mum tribute I've heard to this date. I also loved when he was freestylin over "Bitter Sweet Symphony", played live by an orchestra of seven gorgeous women playing string instruments, including the harp. They were playing alongside A-track (five time DJ World Champion) during the concert. It wasn't like metallicas flirt with classical music orchestras. It blended quite naturally with the rap music. Finally, I loved when he played his favourite music and danced to it. After a Michael Jackson track the DJ, to everyone's surprise, played "Take on Me" (yes, that song by Norwegian Group Aha) while Kanye spinned across the stage. Priceless.
All in all, a good night in the company of good friends.

I'm not the worlds most industrious blogger, I know. Still think things should improve when I go to Grenoble. The plane leaves early in the morning the 22nd of August and after I land in Paris I'll transfer to the Train à Grand Vitesse to Lyon and after that it's bus to my final destination, Grenoble. I'm looking forward to it tremendously. I'm not not, however, looking forward to the task of packing 20 kgs + cabin bag for a 4-months stay. Hopefully people can visit me and bring some stuff.

Since my last blog entry I've, amongst other things, worked hard (and sometimes been hardly working) at the boat, I've gone to Gotland, been pampered by my dad and his wife and realised that coffee can be a nice experience (at least it the beans are of good quality and are newly-grained), I've dropped my programming course (I worked more on the boats than I thought I would, and it used up my time) and I've gone by bike from Linköping to Södertälje. Around 210 kilomtres in two days. I even bought bike pants (I know it's kah-rayzee!) but I'm glad I did since my butt was killing me as it was after two days on the bike.

Now comes a period of taking care of the details before the Grenoble trip. Large obstacles such as plane tickets, getting an apartment in Grenoble and finding someone who can rent my room in Linköping are already taken care of, so I'm quite relaxed.

Well gosh! It's alreade twelve o'clock. I guess I'll leave you guys for now. But first som funny stuff:

This year's best football song.

William Shatner's (aka. Captain Kirk of Star Trek) "Tribute" to George Lucas and Star Wars.

I just can't stop watching this. He is soooo good playing the friggin' ukulele.

Bu-bye now...

Back to where it all started...

...home that is. Or should I say "hemhemma". That's what students in Linköping call the place we used to live and where our parents still stay. It's usually associated with not having to do laundry and free meals. Hopefully I'll be better than that this summer.

I've been in Sthlm since thursday night and I've managed to work two days at Ängsholmen rederi, a charter boat company. It's my third year there and when things go the way they should it's fun work. This friday was one of those days. We picked up fourteen people in Skärholmen, dropped them off at an island (I really need to start learn geography and names better) where they stayed and I'm sure had a good time. Meanwhile we tied (I'm sure there's a better, more marine, word for it) the boat to some trees and had lunch in the sun. It's not often I get payed to improve my tan...

I'll work on and off during June and then I leave for Gotland the 9th of Juli with dad, and after Gotland I'll hopefully meet some friends around the south of Sweden (If you want a visit, tell me!). Before that I hope I'm close to finishing my five-week distance course in web programming and also that I've made some progress with my other summer job. I'm supposed to find course pages for all the schools and universities connected to my program. It really needs to be done by someone since it's quite hard to find these pages from time to time. What I like most about this job is that it was I who suggested it needed to be done and I got the job. I guess that's the closest anyone in my family been to start his own business... But things might change.

A friend o mine, Emelie (you NEED to check her blog if you're interested of traveling in the middle east), always finishes her blog with what's best and worse at the moment. I'm stealing this idea a bit now, but at least I'm giving her some credit for it. Anyways...

Anticipations: That this summer will be long, warm and filled with encounters of people I know and love and of people I'll love to get to know.

Music: Alf med Augustibrev var bättre än jag trodde. Ska ge den några lyssningar till.

Kanotpolo

I haven't biked that much since my last post. After taking a 35 km tour I realised I had to slow down the pace a bit after my knees protested. Hopefully I'll be back in the saddle before I leave Linköping on Thursday. I have, however, been doing other sports since last time. Last Saturday I and most of the other Gozinto members started what will hopefully be a yearly tradition by arranging a reunion for our alumni members (of course called Golumns). What Gozinto is? Shortly one might say that Gozinto is a student consulting group. The goal is to be a "learning bridge" between the academic world and the business world. We do real consulting assignments for real companys and charge real money. We just charge a tad bit less than for example Accenture.

Anyway, first stop on the Golumni day was kanotpolo (I have no idea what the sport might called in english). I had missed out on this activity last year and so many people had talked about how fun it was so I was really looking forward to it. What you do is that be you have two teams, consisting of 5 people each with each person wearing a hockey helmet and sporting a quite sturdy kayak (this particular brand was called "Revenge", don't ask me why). The kayaks were quite manuverable which also means they were quite easy to do eskimoo-turns in, or at least do them half the way as a couple of people. did... (not me though). The water was around 10 degrees "warm" by the way. The goal of the game is to score goals in the other teams goal, which was a 1 by 1½ metre square raised in the air. You're not allowed to paddle with the ball or hold it longer than 5 seconds. You are however allowed to tackle (or should I say ram) with the kayak and even push other people when you're defending. It was so much fun playing. The teams were even and the spirit was high. Everybody wanted to win but not enough to hurt the other team members physically (which usually is a good thing, if you're not playing blood sports). I can definitely recommend this for any group that needs to have som sort of team building experience. I'm even considering joining the real team when I return from Grenoble.

After kayaking we had a sauna with plenty of singing and a beer or two and after that it was time to go home and switch clothes to go to Nationernas Hus, which is a student owned pub, in the centre of Linköping. We had a taco buffet which was decent and the spirits were high. Quite a few of the people in Gozinto are former members of what's in Swedish called a festeri. They have basically worked an entire year without pay and arranged parties for the rest of us students. This duty includes plenty of singing and there were some real nice songs sung during the evening. Real singing, mind you, in several harmonies (stämmor).

All in all it was a great day!

First real entry

Hey everybody!

First off. I realize that a ridiculously large percentage of the people reading this has Swedish as their mother tongue, but since I still have some non-Swedish friends I'll probably write in English, at least most of the times.

My hopes are that this blog will be an easy way for you to keep you updated with what I'm doing and thinking. It's going to be tough giving you a resumé of my first two years here in Linköping so I hope one of the latest week will do.

I've started biking with biking shoes after an "intense" lobbying campaign from my older brother. I wasn't that hard to convince but anyway. Biking with biking shoes is quite an interesting experience, especially when you forget that you have them on. Imagine one of those nature films, where they cut down a huge tree and it's slowly falling over, and you'll get an idea on how it looked when I fell in the woods the other day (in a large puddle of mud, of course). Need I say that my shoes are not that clean anymore?

Yesterday I got a flat tire which was a bit annoying since I was 4 kilometres into a bike trail in the woods and about 9 kilometres from home. In the end it worked out great. After two kilometres of walking in bike shoes (I don't reccomend it one bit) I entered a small community and ended up in the backyard of a house owned by a police man and his family. The guy had a bike chain tattoed on his upper arm and "bike cog" in silver around his neck. I couldn't have ended up in a better place. He fixed my tire (!) and soon after that I was on my way home. Absolutely amazing and a good reminder that kindness is cool.

Oh, and I got a scholarship for my Grenoble year. It feels great that some hard work actually payed off. Ask me about it if you want to know more.

Barbeque season has begun. We had a little get-together yesterday with my "kids" from the first year at my program. (Maybe you can't tell but I only drank juice.) Had a lovely time anyway.
Well. The weather's too nice to do blogwork. More later. Do write comments...