Dalarna, my darling

I have officially made travel plans (bought tickets, made pasta, packed clothes) for tomorrow to go to the Dalarna region to go to these two places: Sundborn (via Falun) where Carl Larsson's house is, and Mora where artist Anders Zorn has a museum and house as well. Wish me luck! This trip is so much more expensive than I wish it was :( but I guess that's what you get for traveling alone. And sleeping indoors. But I will maybe save some money by eating only coffee and bread :) :) :) This is my hope at least. I know my host dad thinks its funny that I am bringing all my food with me, but food is really expensive!!! I think tomorrow morning before I leave I will bake the squash I bought a few weeks ago :S and salt and butter it and eat it for dinner on Thursday... or lunch Friday? I don't know. It's kind of heavy.

Anyways, bon voyage to me, and see you again Saturday if all goes well.

P.S. Mom told me not to eat squash for three days in a row for the reason that it will make me unhappy- I think she's right! Also I just realized that eating out in Stockholm is probably a lot more expensive than in Dalarna, so I just might be eating real lunch after all.

P.P.S. WHERE IS JON GARREY WHEN I NEED HIM!? Dear Jon, your travel planning skills are excellent. I just wanted to tell you so. You would have had this trip figured out WEEKS ago. Instead, tomorrow morning I am calling the place I hope to sleep tomorrow to see if they have any rooms :P

The Slow and Painful Death of McAfee

My anti virus software must be running out? or something. Because it has been jumping up every two minutes all up in arms about how it can't run a virus scan. I'm kind of irritated but also worried because I don't really know what it is doing. Do I need McAfee? Can I get something for free that does the same thing that won't start freaking out when its at the end of its prescription? Ugh.

Fall Break Number 2

Ok. Here's the deal. I have decided to write more posts more often instead of not writing for a whole week and disappointing everyone who actually reads this. But the trade-off is this: my posts will be less interesting. Do you think I just sit around here doing interesting things all day? Most days I do some homework and check my email and eat dinner and take the subway. But some days, for example, I take a boat to Latvia. Or see an old man dressed in 3 different kinds of plaid on the subway (shirt, pants, socks - sorry I forgot to write about this) or I make soup or plan how to take over the world.

So in this boring post, I will speculate on what I might do tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow.
I feel kind of inflexible, so tomorrow morning if I manage to wake up I should go to the pool and swim. It's good to swim before lunch, because then you are hungry enough to know what you want to eat for lunch. I hate not knowing what to eat, so this is a good idea.

Also tomorrow, perhaps I will buy some pants. The pants I own now are as follows: one pair baggy brown plaid pants, one pair new jeans that are a little too short :(, one pair nice black dress pants, one pair gray corduroy pants meant to be rolled up to knees, one pair dress brown pants, one pair black jeans with repaired rip but every time I wear them they fall down, and one pair of really old jeans that ripped when I tried to protect Tonton from an incoming attacking large dog. Actually this sounds like a lot of pants. But the ripped pants and the saggy pants and short pants are my only jeans. And everybody knows that jeans and pants are not quite the same thing. I am not sure if I can buy pants in Sweden, because ALL Swedish people have skinnier legs than I do, and why would they make pants for a population of large-legged people that doesn't exist?

Tomorrow I may also buy a train, bus or plane ticket to Malmö. It is difficult for me to make up my mind.

Oh! That reminds me; if I do buy a train, bus or plane ticket I must also buy some yarn and borrow some needles and call Mom to ask for the lace pattern I used to make her black scarf, because what else would be as much fun as knitting when I'm on a train for 5 hours? The answer is ping pong, but that is not an option as far as I know. Not when you buy tickets on standby.

So the day after tomorrow is still undecided. I may be wandering around Malmö completely lost, or I may be sleeping my break away right here in Stockholm.

WE SHALL SEE...

Farewell J.A. !!!

I am dedicating a post to J.A. because last night's Halloween party at Gula Villan was the last I will see of him before he leaves Stockholm to go back to his folkhighschool, and I will miss him! I like J.A. because he is a very cool guy, and because he taught me this song:

"whoah, whoah, vi har sluta nian!"

This is probably spelled wrong, but it the song means: "whoah, whoah we have quit the ninth grade!" J.A. explained that this is the song that 9th grades sing when they graduate from that part of their schooling, but its fun to sing it now because everyone in the room has finished the 9th grade a long time ago.

J.A. also taught me to say calm hockey pucks in Swedish, but I forgot how :( Too bad he's leaving!
You can use it to mean "Hey, what's up?" "I'm chill." or "CALM HOCKEY PUCKS!"

More about J.A. He used to have a lot of hair, and then he cut it off.

Actually I like all three of the people in this picture. But J.A. is the one that's leaving, so I am writing about him.

(soggy) Autumn Leaves

This isn't so interesting, but in the course of an evening spent reflecting on random things instead of writing this stupid essay (anger! chomp chomp! gnashing teeth!) I was thinking about fall, and what it is like at home. I realized that a prime adjective for autumn-time at home is "crisp", as in "the crisp autumn air" or "the crisp smell of leaves" or "crisp fall apples". But in Sweden, so far, autumn has been rather damp. There's a lot of rain. So you wouldn't really say "crisp" then, would you? This has huge ramifications! Can you really make "apple crisp" in a place where the fall isn't genuinely crispy?! I don't know! We must go to a higher authority on crispiness:

Kia Shine, crispy (*krispy) expert. or, perhaps the Urban Dictionary, source of infinite wisdom has an aswer?

Reader comments always welcome!!!

Have can, will soup

Wow! I just made some black bean soup which should have been awful, but I love it!
I started out with only a can of black beans. I was hungry. What can you do with a can of beans?
I thought about just warming them up (that's still food, right?), but instead I ended up with this:

1 can black beans, in beanie-water
1 clove garlic, chopped up into bits
generous portion of oregano
2 spoonfuls of the olive oil left over from the stuffed olives I've been eating since sometime before I went to Latvia
cayenne pepper
salt
another spice that smelled good at the time
creme fraiche

And I like it! Or maybe I just like black beans, and you can't really mess them up. I wouldn't serve it to company, but I sure would make it again if I find myself alone with a can of beans!

Another post? Oh my!

Just one more thing. Sweden is getting dark. Next week is midsems week, and Erik is coming for some quality brother-sister bonding time. Then I have a week off, to do what? Hopefully take a train around Sweden, but also to get my act together! I feel like the time is slipping away from me, and I have been spending too much time staying up half the night working at pubs with crazy Swedes. Let me qualify that - crazy Swedes who I love! but still - it makes me feel kind of lost to spend at least part of every week sleeping until 1 or 2pm.

I think I would feel less melancholic right now if I could just complete some piece of work, like a paper, or start knitting a scarf for winter, or do a thorough analysis of my finances. It's strange, but even though I feel more accepted and well-liked as a whole by the group of friends I have met working at Gula Villan (student pub) than I do with my study abroad group, it feels sad not to be spending time with the people on my program. I don't understand, but I guess we have a common experience being exchange students that I don't have with the Swedish students. There's actually a big difference in how it feels to go wandering around the city with another American college student compared to going out with a student who grew up in Stockholm. And its not just that you know where you are going when you go out with a native Stockholmer. Its a difference of perspective. I don't know if I can explain it. But lately I have been feeling strangely ungrounded. I just REALLY need to make muffins with/for someone! It's not like I don't get this feeling back home when I'm at school too. I'm never baking enough with people :(

Here is my proposed travel plans for the winter break:

1. Take a plane or train down to the southern tip of Sweden to Malmö, where I will see one of the largest immigrant communities in Sweden.
2. Take a train North to the university town of Lund.
3. Continue North up the West coast to Göteborg.
4. Somewhere in this area (?) visit the home of Selma Lagerlöf, Swedish author
5. Continue North to Mora to visit the museum/home of Swedish painter Anders Zorn
6. Somewhere in this area, visit Carl Larsson's home

the rest not in coherent order yet:

- visit the town where they make Orrefors crystal
- visit a town in Dalarna region where someone told me there is a cool copper mine
- visit a town in the South where someone told me they make good candy
- visit Uppsala
- make a trip to Okelbo!
- I don't think I can make it on this tour, but I would love to go to Northern Sweden, maybe to Abisko.

We shall see - I haven't bought any tickets yet, and I think financial and time restraints will limit this itinerary a little bit.