Happy Australia Day!

Tonight the Aussies are throwing a big barbie. Make sure to wear your boarders and thongs!

As you can see from the above, my world language skills are improving already. Although I am sad to say after talking with Emma and Sarah (Ekeby's resident Aussies) that Australians hardly ever say 'G'day' and never actually say 'crikey'.

Last night I went out to Karaoke night at Värmlands. And let me tell you, brother, you haven't lived until you've sung "It's Raining Men" next to a Belgian and an Italian with a less than perfect grasp of English. It's quite wonderful. I now have two groups I seem to hang out with, the Ekeby group (mostly Aussies and Americans, with an odd Fin, Dutch, or German thrown in the mix) and what I'll call the French group. The French group are people living in different dorms, unified initially by their common French language (containing both French and Belgians). There are others too, now. Joel, a Dutch, two Italians, Rita and Andreas, another American, Stephan. But like 6 or 7 odd French speakers. This group will randomly congregate at different events- pub nights, karaoke, etc. This weekend they are going to Stockholm, and I will go with them. Maybe I can finally by a plug adapter.

You ever have one of those moments in a foreign country where you think to yourself "how the hell did I end up in this situation?" I had one of those yesterday as I was doing low-intensity water aerobics with a bunch of old Swedish ladies at the University pool. See, I had this free pass to try out the gym. I'm not really a free weights guy anymore, so I decided to take a swim. I get changed and go to the pool but there are people in it. I ask a man on the side "Is the pool unavailable" and he was quite convinced that I could go in, despite the fact that there was clearly a class going on. Woman up front, oldies music blaring, old woman in lines, the whole bit (to be fair, it was only like 60% old women. But it was all women). No wanting to contradict the man, I went over to the deep end of the pool (only 7 feet deep) and started kinda swimming laps and treading water. Then the women all went to the sides of the pool and did some leg lifts. It looked like fun, so (way over on the deep end, away from everybody) also went to the side, and did some leg lifts. That being done, the instructor started handing out these webbed gloved for resistance arm work. She handed me some. So what the hell, I said, I'm joining the class. After class me and the ladies put away our equipment and we all went in the sauna. I struck up a conversation with a lady from Iran. She emigrated to Sweden when she was a little girl. I asked her all about Sweden and Uppsala, and I talked about American.

This afternoon I suppose I should get some reading done. Maybe try out Kalmar nation to study. Time to sign out of this public computer so the dude behind me can have a turn (he's been very patient).

-The Wandering Norseman-