Jessie Pease

Code Travel Create

Thanksgiving in Lapland!

03 December 2014

I had a fantastically freezing Thanksgiving in Lapland, Sweden. See below a map of the two cities I visited. Kiruna is the blue star, and Abisko is the red star. We started on Wednesday, November 26 with an 18 hour drive going north! We arrived in Kiruna in the morning on Thursday (Thanksgiving), ready for a day of adventure. We started our Lapland adventure with a tour of Kiruna. Fun fact: the most beautiful church in Sweden is in Kiruna! See it below. Also, the town is completely supported by the iron ore mine which is worked on 24 hours per day.

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Bremen, Berlin, and Beers

27 November 2014

Sorry it’s been so long since I updated you all! I am going into my last month of school at KTH, and I’ve been trying to live my life here to the fullest. Last week I traveled to Germany. I traveled with my friends Thomas and Patrick to Bremen first. It was a cute and small town just a train ride away from Berlin. The little old town streets and shops were so cool with tiny back alleys and traditional chocolate shops. I wouldn’t say it was the most beautiful place I’ve been, but we enjoyed some nice food and drinks and had a quick 20 hours there.

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Första snön! ❄

09 November 2014

We had our first day of snow on Thursday of this week! It was so exciting. Ever since we started getting less and less daylight up here, I always look out the window in the mornings. I want to soak in as much light as possible while the sun is up. When I saw snow out the window that morning, I practically freaked out. I spammed my Snapchat story with ridiculous pictures, and I probably woke some of my neighbors with my excited “yayyyyyy”s.

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Trying to COPEnhagen with your life? Ireland you some Scottish Whisky...

02 November 2014

What an amazing last week! I traveled with two other Cal Poly study abroad students to 3 different countries, 4 cities… using 3 planes, 2 trains, many busses, and 6 tired feet. Trica, Roxy, and I got up on Tuesday, October 28 at 3AM and took the night bus to the Stockholm Central Train Station to catch our very early morning train to Copenhagen. After our lovely 5 hour train ride through the Swedish countryside, we arrived in Denmark! City number 1! It was absolutely beautiful. We saw some funny things while we were there. For instance, there is one area called Christiana that basically allows free trade of marijuana. It’s quite the hippy place. Tricia had been to Copenhagen before, so she was our guide. I would have documented that area for you, but there were signs everywhere saying strictly no pictures. In addition to seeing Christiana, we also saw a beautiful view of the city from the parliament building, and walked around the main touristy parts of Copenhagen. The first picture you’ll see is at Nyhaven which is the typical Danish buildings along one of the popular canals in the city. Then, while at the castle, we saw the changing of the guards.

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There's Norway I Can Make Another Good Pun ;)

27 October 2014

Hej hej everyone! Last night I got back from Oslo, Norway. I had 6 days with nothing to do after my trip to London and before my trip to Dublin/Edinburgh, so I traveled to Oslo Solo. I knew that a few of my friends would be arriving into Oslo from Flam on Sunday, and that made it a good reason to go. Oslo was significantly different than Bergen. The one similarity was the HUGE prices. Things I learned about Norway and wealth: 1. After the US, Norway is the next largest customer of Tesla cars. 2. They don’t have income tax in December. Why? Because they can…

  1. There is no minimum wage in Norway, however McDonald’s workers make between 95-140 kr per hour which is about $19-24 per hour in American dollars an hour. No wonder mochas are $9, pizzas are $30, and beers start at $11!

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We all Live in a Yellow Submarine

21 October 2014

Hej hej from London, England! Erik and I had a fabulous time exploring for the past few days. We spent the entire first day on foot and covered 11 miles worth of London. We stayed with an awesome guy named Henry through Airbnb in Battersea. During our first morning we walked over to King’s Street, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, London Eye, and to afternoon tea at Brown’s Hotel. Thanks so much to Erik’s mom for sponsoring eftermiddagste for us :) The food was delicious, the tea was amazing, and of course I finally fulfilled my childhood dream of having a real life tea party. Here’s some pics from that morning’s adventures!

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Kanelbulle, Dragons, and Rage Cage. OH MY!

11 October 2014

Sorry for not posting in a while! Things haven’t been too busy around here except for the school work… crazy I know. There have been some fun things in the past couple of weeks. First, Saturday October 4 was Kanelbulle day! Did you know that the cinnamon roll originated in Sweden? Roxy and I decided to bake some ourselves on that Saturday. It was so much fun, and they were delicious :P

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I Went Through a lot of RIGAmarole to Get Here

30 September 2014

“There are a Latvia better puns to use, but that’s the best I could come up with…” - Sam Brown. If it wasn’t already painfully obvious, I spent the weekend on a cruise to Riga, Latvia. It was an interesting experience in many ways. I shared a tiny cabin with 3 of my friends from KTH. The first night we played games and went to the dance club on the boat. Interestingly enough, a big reason many people go on these cruises is to get duty free alcohol, so I’m sure you can understand the culture on the boat. We had a ton of fun that night and woke up in Riga the next morning.

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Nøllan No More

22 September 2014

This was the first week where I actually had a good amount of class and homework. Did you even know I went to school? It seems like I just travel and have fun… Yeah I was just as surprised as you. :) At the beginning of the week I was at T-Centralen with Roxy and we came across this protest in the middle of the main square. For those of you who don’t know, the election ended in a lot of controversy here in Sweden. I recommend checking out this link.

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Happy election week!

14 September 2014

This past week was the best week I’ve had here thus far. On Monday I went canoeing around some of the islands in Stockholm with my friends Ben, Paul, and Elaine. We went out for about an hour. We went under bridges, circled an island with a small university, and saw the amusement park from a different view. It was a ton of fun to see part of the city from a different angle.

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Uppsala I Did it Again

14 September 2014

This past week was the best week I’ve had here thus far. On Monday I went canoeing around some of the islands in Stockholm with my friends Ben, Paul, and Elaine. We went out for about an hour. We went under bridges, circled an island with a small university, and saw the amusement park from a different view. It was a ton of fun to see part of the city from a different angle.

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Utforksa (x2)

07 September 2014

This past week was the first week of classes at KTH. During this study period I am taking Human Computer Interaction, Swedish Society and Culture, and Swedish Language. Next study period I’ll also add Computer Security. The system for adding, dropping, and trying out courses is so weird here. To me it seems quite disorganized, but somehow everyone gets the classes they need in the end. The other part of this education style that is different is that your final grade is almost solely based on your final exam grade. Many of the courses are taught in huge lecture halls. It is very different than Cal Poly Engineering. It will be a great experience to learn in a different way, but I’ll let you all know in 4 months if it is a style I enjoy. One positive of this type of system is that during my first week I had practically no work and hardly any class. I was able to explore and relax. Yesterday I tagged along to a BBQ with my friends Ana, Enrique, and Fernando. We made s’mores for desert. Some of them had never had it before, so it was fun to play typical American for an afternoon.

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Utforska

01 September 2014

As the first week of exploring wraps up, I want to share a few more pictures with everyone! What I’ve noticed is that most people when traveling only take pictures of the scenery and the buildings. When you look back through photographs many years later, you want to see YOU in those places, so I’m starting to make an active effort to put me and my friends in our photos. Exhibit A:

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Utländske NØlla

27 August 2014

Utländske means Foreign in Swedish, and nØlla means Zero. Here at KTH all of the incoming students are called nØllan because they are technically not in their first semester yet. They spend two weeks before school starts going through “Reception” aka organized hazing. For those of you reading this from Cal Poly, they are basically wowies. They have to wear silly things on their head, and they are lead around by groups of older students wearing funny clothes. In Sweden, all of the older students wear colored jumpers/overalls. Each program has a different color (Computer Science is hot pink). They look like this:

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