22 August 2014
The last 48 hours were busy and a blur. I flew out from Sacramento International Airport and landed in Stockholm, Sweden 19 hours later. Anna Andersson, my parent’s friend who lives in Enkoping picked me up and took amazing care of me. We ate lunch in a cute little town not far from the Stockholm Arlanda Airport. After an awesome lunch, we visited the mothership… I mean IKEA. Packing your life into 2 suitcases for 5 months is a challenge, so IKEA came to the rescue for me. Later in the afternoon we picked up Anna’s sister Maria and her family from the airport and went home for dinner. Anna’s kids are the absolute cutest. Even though we could not communicate very well, they taught me a few words that will hopefully come in handy:
Eye: oga Ear: orat Hair: har Tooth: tand (not to be confused with “tant” which means old grandma… awk)
My mom visited Anna 7 years ago, and since then, Anna put a new remodel to her garage. In the upstairs she put in a party room and bar area. It is absolutely gorgeous… be jealous.
Today, August 22, 2015, Anna took me into Enkoping where they are having a park exhibit this time of year. The theme is Fairytales, and my favorite one was Robin Hood themed with one section that has a circle of mirrors:
After the park, Anna and I drove into the city of Stockholm to pick up all my important information from KTH. We waited for 1.5 hours for a binder and a piece of paper that said I could pick up keys. We drove to my apartment right outside of town, and Anna helped me carry all my luggage upstairs. After a long afternoon of exploring the local grocery store and unpacking, my room looks like this! #simplelife (Disclaimer: Some of the words are Swedish and should have accent marks, but I haven’t quite figured out how to make them show up as the correct symbols online yet. Updates to come…)
With every traveling experience comes culture shock. I’ve only been here for 48 hours, but already there are many differences between Sweden and the states. 1) Money, temperature, and metric conversions. My mental math skills are being pushed REAL hard as I am constantly dividing numbers by 7, multiplying numbers by 9/5 and adding 32, and referencing my Metric to US App when talking about height, length, and weight. Come on USA, let’s get over it and switch… science already has. 2) Food: I’ll keep you more posted on this, but they have some interesting new foods in Sweden that I’m excited to keep exploring. For example, Fil is a thicker milky yogurty liquid that people put in cereal. Not so sure about that one yet… 3) Many many more to come for sure!
