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August 24, 2004
Long Lost Post
Today was a rollercoaster of activity. I got a great night's sleep, and woke up feeling totally refreshed. I took a long bath/shower and was just getting dressed when my roommate arrived!! Her name is Roya and she's from Toronto, Canada. She's actually been here a couple days, but has been staying at the youth hostel while she looked around for apartments. She brought Tomomi with her, who is another Sustainability student staying at the hostel until she could check into her apartment. We had a run-in with one of our Swedish neighbors, who was extremely rude when Tomomi mistakenly tried to enter her apartment (thinking it was her own). We high-tailed it out of Kungsmarksvägen after depositing Roya's and Tomomi's luggage in our living room, and caught the bus downtown. I was unaware that we had a Sustainability meeting at 11:30 on campus, but happily Roya and Tomomi were better informed. I swear, the lack of communication is driving me crazy!!
At any rate, we made it to campus only a few minutes late and met David Waldron, who coordinates the Sustainability program. He gave us a list of tasks to complete before class on Monday, all designed to get us acquainted with the school, the town, and each other. We also saw our classroom, which will be solely reserved for Sustainability students. Right now it’s a mess, but we hope to make it a comfortable place to hang out and work.
After the meeting, a bunch of us walked down to the park and discussed plans for the rest of the week. Tomorrow morning, people will meet at the Karlskrona Marine Museum and then proceed to Aspö to try and answer some of the questions on our task list. I will probably not be joining them, as I will be eagerly awaiting the arrival of the long-delayed furniture. But I will join up with people tomorrow evening for a night of pool (billiards, not swimming) to celebrate Laura's (from Canada) birthday. With any luck, I will come home to a permanent bed and desk.
The group disbanded and went their separate ways, with several of us going to Wokie Dokie for lunch—a fun Asian-inspired take-away place. The six of us took up the whole seating area, but we got cheap ($6—about the cheapest you'll find anywhere) meals of rice, vegetables, and meat. I had the Tandori Chicken Curry, and I recommend it to anyone desperate for some vegetables.
After lunch, I met up with Susan (from New Mexico), another Sustainability student. We visited a couple secondhand shops (I was not impressed) and walked back to campus together. She checked into the International Office while I checked email (realizing that once again I had been left off of several crucial group emails from school). Afterwards, we hopped the bus to Amiralen and went shopping for cleaning supplies and some additional groceries (more tomatoes!!). We parted ways at the bus stop, and I came back to the apartment to find Roya and Laura (from Canada) there eating dinner. I unpacked the groceries and started to eat dinner (crackers with cheese and ham) when I got my first telephone call! It was my mom, of course, and while the connection was terrible (and the delay was awful), it was great to hear her voice and get caught up on the news. Or lack of news, seeing as how my parents' world has stopped now that Jess and I (and Janie, of course) are out of the house.
Roya and I chatted for a bit, figuring out how we are going to approach the furniture situation tomorrow, and getting to know each other. Right now the sun has gone down, so there's not a lot we can do other than go to sleep.
So, I've been struggling with writing about my feelings so far. Part of me is really self-conscious about sharing my emotions with the world at large (and more importantly, my friends and family!), and part of me wants a record of how I felt these first few days in Sweden. But when I sit down to write about my feelings thus far, I come up short. Part of this problem comes from the fact that I am just not an emotional person. For most of the day, I just do what needs to be done and don't really experience "moods" like those listed at the bottom of each journal entry. I'm excited to be here in Sweden, I'm happy to have met some fellow international students, I'm frustrated by the lack of organization and initiative shown by the school, and I'm worried about fitting in. But beyond those very basic feelings, I don't have much to say. Except, perhaps, that as time goes on, I'm getting less excited and happy, and more frustrated about the organizational problem. I've been just about as flexible and patient as I can possibly be—now it's time for things to start falling into place. For instance, I need to get on the Sustainability email list IMMEDIATELY—it drives me crazy to be missing out on what little organization there is because of an oversight by the school which prevented me from being on the list in the first place!
