Parties and Sightseeing

My Swedish class is going very well. I love the people in my class. There is only one other American in the class, and to me, our Swedish accents sound terrible. It sounds like all of the various European accents are so much closer to Swedish, but I have been assured that we all sound about the same. By the end of week one, I can introduce myself, count to 1000, name the days of the week, months, and seasons, I can tell the time, and name conjugate a list of verbs. It was a long week with 3.5 hours of class a day, but I have come to know the coffee shops around my classroom well, and I frequent them on our two fifteen-minute breaks. I have class in the afternoon, so I have been able to sleep in, and give myself enough time to bike down to campus. I have one more week of this class and then my regular classes will commence.
Somehow, I have not figured out the quickest way to bike down to the center, and I go a different way each time. I look forward to being confidant that I am going the right way. Last night I think I took a route that I had taken before with someone, and if I can do it again, I think I will be set. There are amazing bike paths everywhere, and it is much faster to bike than to drive or take the bus. The bike paths are very well planned, which goes to show that if cities in the US really wanted to become bike-friendly, they could do it.
On Friday night I went to the International Student Welcome Party. It was a lot of fun to be with people from all around the world. I spent most of the night with friends from my Swedish class. They are from, Holland, Germany, Austria, and France. It seems like it will be more challenging to meet people from Sweden since so many international students surround us. I am very thankful that I live in a Swedish corridor. When I got home from the party, the guys in my corridor were having a little after-party and singing Swedish drinking songs. Everyone had a little book with the words to a lot of festive drinking songs (you can’t find this happening in any international corridor). I look forward to getting to know my neighbors better, but it seems as though they are all very busy and hardly ever in their rooms, other than to sleep.
On Saturday I went on an excursion with international students. We visited a castle from the middle ages, and saw a Viking monument that looks like a little Stonehenge. My German friend Eva, and I hung out and had lunch and walked around the monument. The benches above, looking out over the ocean is where we had lunch. It was very beautiful, but I was pretty tired from a very late night, and I felt like such a tourist as I got out of the bus with my camera and a hundred other students. There are other trips planned for this fall for all of the UC students, which will be a lot of fun.
Today, Sunday, it is raining on and off, and it is pretty cold out. I was planning on going on a long bike-ride with Susan and Maria, but that plan has been ruined by the weather. I guess I have to get used to being flexible with plans.
I miss all of you very much and I would love to hear how you are all doing! Email me updates in your lives! I love you and I will post more soon.