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September 30, 2004
The Tipping Point
Things definitely are looking up today. First of all, I found my airplane tickets. They were hanging around the school's shipping office, along with the previously "missing" amazon.com package. Strangely enough, it *had* cleared customs after all, and had been sitting there for a couple of days. Who knows when they would have contacted me.
In another strange twist of events, Amazon.com send me a notice that they had re-shipped a replacement package of these books. But when I looked at the shipping list, I realized that they sent the WRONG shipment. The original shipment had been split into three lots, and the re-order to fix the "missing" shipment mistakenly identified the books to be sent. So I'm getting a double set of books, which I will donate to the common room of our program, so that everyone can benefit from Amazon's mix-up.
What else? The neighbors had only a 3 minute screaming match today. If I interpreted the tone of voice and the bit of Swedish I could hear, I believe it had something to do with getting all the children to sit down for dinner. Thankfully, it quickly stopped.
Class today was brief, and afterwards I biked down to Centrum and did a little shopping. I got a fleece headband that will cover my ears while I'm biking. The "bare ears problem" was getting worrisome, as each time I stepped off the bike my ears would ring from the wind. If I wore my wool "tuque" (Canadian slang for a winter hat) I would get too hot. So a headband was the obvious solution.
I also made a stop in at The Body Shop. I was in dire need of some personal care replenishments, and have decided to buy "sustainable" products where ever possible. Well, who knew that environmentally-friendly, not tested on animals, community-supported fair trade, stuff was so freakishly expensive? I think part of it is the Swedish "everything is expensive" thing, but still. I walked out of the store with a small bag and $150 poorer. I hope those communities in Brazil are getting solar-powered internet or something.
So anyway, I'm feeling much better. I had a brief moment of moral outrage when catching up on email, but it quickly disappated once I decided it was just better to remove myself from the email thread. I'm not sure if I would have had the same reaction if I had been living in Maryland, but somehow being removed from everything makes me want to avoid "bad friend" patterns. It seems that the same people in our group (and I'm sorry to say that I'm usually first among them) are quick to make snarky comments about others. The problem is that these comments are phrased in such an amusing and entertaining way that a large part of me wants to join in the fun. And all too often, that is how we get caught up in a mean-spirited group discussion--which I don't think was anyone's real intention. And now I'm discouraged because part of me still wants to be in on the conversation--but at the same time it made me physically uncomfortable to read that string of emails. Sigh. Why can't we just all get along?
Tomorrow morning I will embark on a journey downtown to the local Hertz office, where I will join a dozen of my classmates in renting cars so we can carpool down to Ysdra (or something like that). It's a town a couple hours away, where Kristoffer's parents have a get-away house that we can use. It's close to the beach (the longest in Sweden--a whole 18 km!), hiking, a castle, antiques, flea markets, and a host of other entertaining activities. I'll be gone for the weekend, and back on Monday. It will be SO nice to get out of town for a bit. Karlskrona is becoming a little claustrophobic. And now I can put off finding a new place to live until Monday!
