Category Archives: Sweden

Moving day

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I’m finally back in my own apartment and it feels so good! But I am also exhausted like never before… My whole body hurts after carrying boxes up and down stairs (and I guess last nights “workout” is starting to feel too) and unpacking. I’ve been unpacking since 3pm and no one can tell that I’ve done anything. A few boxes are gone but there is still soooo much to do!

With mom’s tiny Renault Clio it took me and Chad 4 turns back and forth dropping of stuff. That’s pretty impressive! That car is way bigger than most think. If I didn’t have his help this would have been so much harder, probably impossible.

I did some grocery shopping so I have a little food at least. I also did a few hours of laundry. I wrapped my alcohol in my clothes and one of the bottles leaked. It’s a good thing nobody in this house ever do laundry, and that we have two laundry rooms on top of that.

More things than I knew about were lost in the big basement flooding. Like a lot of lamps which I noticed when it got dark outside. My pillow and comforter were in a plastic bag during the event. They don’t smell so bad, but they are all yellow and just looks disgusting, and that faint moldy smell isn’t particuarly nice. So tonight I will have to sleep with my blankets and couch pillows. Mom will be over tomorrow and give me a new set. She will also give me an extra ethernet cable so I can plug in my router. I have access to internet if I have my computer connected straight to the wall. I seriously can’t wait until I canhave my computer by a desk again. It’s been way too long (beginning of January!!).

I have a few things that I really need to do before going to bed and that is to find my phone charger, put away all the tons of clothes in my bed and pick up the last of the laundry in the basement. I will definitely sleep like a baby tonight!

My new/old apartment!

Yoga, pancakes and packing

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And a sick mom. This day just disappeared. I slept until 10am and went to the gym for one hour of yoga. It wasn’t a good class and I really felt that I was wasting my time. The instructor didn’t have any music and she took it way too serious. In the position Downward Facing Dog (standing on all four with the butt up in the air, looking like a triangle) she came up to me and tried to push me down on my heels. I told her I couldn’t do it and she kept going and told me that I could. But I really can’t stretch out my calf that much because of that genetic defect I have.

I want to do yoga to relax and stretch out my muscles and that class didn’t give me much of either. Waste of time.

At home I was supposed tomake pancakes for lunch, but mom was still in bed and we decided to have it for dinner instead. So in the afternoon I out together my power point presentation for the Cultural Care information meetings. It turned out to be pretty good! Now I just have to write down what to say with each picture.

I cooked an early dinner and then started packing all my stuff. It wasn’t that much, just the clothes I unpacked when I got back three weeks ago. And then my mom have used some of my things the last year. She also gave me a lot of food, so very nice of her!

Then we went up the attic and went through what I want to bring to my apartment. I left like four boxes, but the rest I wanted with me. It’s a lot of stuff, but it could be worse. I don’t have any furniture to move this time.

Oh, yeah, right. I’m moving to my own apartment tomorrow! Could be worth mentioning, haha. I am really excited. My mom was supposed to help me, but she gets exhausted from getting out of bed and walking to the couch in the living room. So I managed to get another help, Chad.

A badass workout

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My third time at the gym since I bought the membership two weeks ago. Last time I almost died after 30 minutes of TRX. Today I did 30 minutes of CXWORX and 60 minutes of spinning and this was easier. Well, I am sore all over but I didn’t feel like I was about to die. CXWORX was pretty tough though and I couldn’t do much. I think my stomach and shoulders will be hurting a lot the next few days. CXWORX is a short but very intense class that goes through the whole body but focuses on the core.

The spinnig was easier than in the States. I guess it’s because we have a puls watch and are supposed to be at specific percentages of our max pulse instead of just doing gears. It felt good!

During the day I was downtown buying thick papers and spray glue for that card game. Mom printed it yesterday on normal paper so I glued it to thicker paper today. Tomorrow I will cut them into the right sizes and then laminate them. They are gonna be beer-safe.

After that I spent one hour at Chalmers writing a bit on the thesis. Back home and change my address with the IRS, otherwise I can’t get financial aid with my rent.

And I found a website that turns my photos into canvas on whatever size I want. It wasn’t that expensive so I will do that with a few of my photos from Hawaii and put it on my wall. The painting I had got destroyed so I need to replace it with something and what couldn’t be better than my own photos from the best trip ever?

I also confirmed with a future au pair about a interview tomorrow afternoon at a cafe downtown. And that’s what happened before I tried to kill myself at the gym.

When I came home mom had dinner ready and I started googling on where to go during Christmas. I know it’s far away. But there are so many islands in the Caribbean and I have no idea which to go to! If anyone has any knowledge about the Caribbean, please don’t hesitate to tell me. Central America would be fine too.

I think I need to go to bed now. I have a lot of things to do tomorrow. Have lunch with an old coworker at SCA for example :).

CCAP meeting

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My first night as ex-au pair/interviewer for Cultural Care is over. It was a surprisingly long night and a lot of future au pairs! I didn’t get home until 10:30pm.

An hour before the meeting started the recruit leader, Johanna told me and another new girl about what this was all about. So now and then, not every meeting, we will have like a ten minute presentation about our year in USA and after we will interview all of the future aupairs. Or those who want to do the interview after. Some of them want to do it another time and those are we also responsible of doing.

I listened to the whole presentation Johanna held and the ex-au pair story of Malin. After I did two interviews which both took a lot of time. I think for the next time I will have a clock next to me so it doesn’t take more than 20 minutes. But it was really fun doing the interviews! Sitting behind the questions for once. It’s not very well paid, but it was fun. At the meetings I will get 70kr/interview and the private interviews is 90kr/interview. I really look forward to making my presentation and doing it.

I think it’s time for me to go to bed now. I’m more tired than I thought I would be after a very relaxed day…

Bake a little cake

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This morning I decided to have a long sleep in, it was so nice. I started the day with watching some Doctor Who but got bored and baked a white chocolate mudpie. I really don’t like mom’s gas oven. The sides ofthe cake got almost dry and the middle was still batter. It was delicious, but I have to give it another try when I’m back in my own apartment with a normal oven.

Soon I will head downtown for my first Cultural Care Au Pair meeting. This first meeting I will pretty much just observe and learn, maybe do one interview. I am excited.

White mudpie Chip in the bathtub Chip is weird. As soon as I’ve gone into the bathroom and locked the door he scratches on it from the outside and wants to get in. He jumps in the bathtub and wants to drink…Stuff in her box Stuff isn’t much better. She loves sitting in this box. She is completely still and just sits there!Chip in the bathtubLike I said, I have very normal cats!

City Library of Gothenburg

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Today was a pretty productive day for me. I got up at 9, showered, had a small breakfast and went to Chalmers to leave all the papers for the official application to CalPoly. Compared to what I had to give Cultural Care, this was nothing. The only thing I had to do was fill out the application form, find the copy of my passport on my computer, get a bank statement and a list of courses I want to take. That last document took the longest time. Find the right courses and they had to be in the right quarters. I just hope they are good enough and that I will be able to transfer the credits to Chalmers. It’s a bit confusing that whole thing…

After that I went to a meeting at Veidekke. We put up a time plan and now I know what we have to do. It’s not a lot of time until it has to be done. I thought this thesis would be bigger. But it’s nice that it’s not.

I didn’t even knew I had plans after that until I was on the tramon my way to downtown. I can’t remember if I ever wrote about that awesome drinking game Cards Against Humanity. I probably did. Well, I need thick paper to print it on, so I was looking after that. It turned out though that the printer at mom’s job couldn’t print on that thick paper so I didn’t buy anything. She came with the brilliant idea to laminate thin papers. That would be even better! She is so smart, my mom!

My fourth and last stop of the day was at the city library. When I knocked on the door and my old boss opened she asked me what I wanted. Haha, she didn’t recognize me! I had to introduce myself again. My other coworkers didn’t recognize me either. I’m not that different. They asked me how my year had been and offered to give me a tour of the inside of the library. They told me that it was supposed to be completely done by the end of the week. I find that a bit had to believe to be honest. A lot were done, but there were still a lot to do. But what do I know after a hang-loose lifestyle in SoCal. They have done an amazing job though and I’m sure it will be amazing when they open it on April 23rd (the international book day). The plaster walls that I drew on the ground were three dimensional now and that was so cool to see. When I watched the done I labored on that floor for so many hours and now I saw the results. I will always be the one who did that. It’s awesome! Maybe I will enjoy being a building and civil engineer after all :).

New computer

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I am too addicted to my computer so it didn’t take me more than a day to get a new one. Yesterday I went with mom to her job and then borrowed her car to drive around and look for a new computer. Well, first to the support and see if they could fix it. They could, but that would have cost me like 4000 SEK (and my new one was 6000). First 1000 to send it in to find out what was wrong with it. The guy who helped me at Inet told me that it was probably something wrong with the motherboard. It might have been the keyboard too, but to find that out I would have to pay 1000. I bought my old computer when I graduated high school which is almost four years ago so neither he nor I thought it was worth spending that much money on that old thing. But I can’t really say that I was super sad about it.

So we talked about what new computer I should get and he showed me a pretty good Asus (Intel core i5-4200U, 8GB RAM (upgradeable to 16), 500GB, 15.6″, GeForce GT 740M, 2kg (my old one was probably like 4)) . I had googled some the night before and found one at Elgiganten, an Acer with tuochscreen. It would have been so awesome to have a touchscreen, but it would have made the computer slower so I didn’t want that one in the end. I drove to MediaMarkt but they didn’t have anything and after I took a quick look on the plastic Acer at Elgiganten I decided to go for the Asus at Inet. I love that store and it feels good to buy electronics there.

I called mom andI picked her up so both of us could go to Inet. I can’t part pay because I don’t have a fixed income.

I’ve been working with the computer for two days now and I have to say that I actually like Windows 8. I’m still installing programs and stuff, but it will be nice with this computer the next years!

 

Last night was the first omsits for me in a very long time and I had such a great time. Pregaming, three course dinner, after party and keps. The sittning was really big this time. More alumni than normal.There were even two guys from VIRUS 1995! The next one is on March 29th and it’sa fancy dinner (ugly-fancy as we call it, we are nicely dressed, eat nice food, but drink a lot of wine). I really look forward to it!

VIRUS omsits

Stupd cmputer

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1 am prbably n0t gnna update th1s bl0g f0r a wh1le nw. Ths mrnng my computer decded t shut ff sme f the keys n my keybard and 1 am really upset abut t. S0 1 wll sk1p y0ga tmrrw and g0 t0 1net and ask them 1f they can help me, therwse ‘ll have t buy a new computer whch s a bt exctng t be hnest.  Ths ne’s 4 years ld s0 1t’s almst abut tme t0 get a new ne. ‘ve fund ne that 1 want, but that means 1 wuld have t0 brrw mney. Whch  1 wll need t0 d0 anyway fr the Calfrna taxes… and prbably rent…

Stupd computer!

(the keys 1 can’t use are: i and o, backspace, ctrl, and mst f the numbers. Extremely rrtatng)

Gym membership

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Two days and I haven’t even thought about updating the blog. It’s not that I’ve done a lot of things.

On Monday I bought a six months membership at Fysiken Gym and went to two classes with mom. First some weird stretching with a foam roll. That hurt, and not in a good way, so I probably won’t do that anytime soon again. At least not until I know how to do it correctly.

Right after we did a Body Control class. You have a pilates ball and then use it to work on the inner muscles in your core. It feels kina ridiculous jumping around on it, but I am still sore, two days later.

Yesterday I had lunch at Chalmers with Hanna and the two other people who are going to CalPoly with me. Hanna talked about a lot of things and I don’t remember it all. But I don’t need to think about that much right now. I just have to finish my application so I can hand it in tomorrow.

Last night I realized I don’t want to go home during Christmas. Johanna wanted to go to Hawaii, but I don’t want to go there again, so I decided I want to go to the Caribbean instead. I have a lot of ideas, but can’t decide just yet. Jamaica, Costa Rica, Bahamas, Cayman Islands, Cuba? It’s not easy!

This morning I had a meeting with Chalmers about my thesis. It went well and I have now a much better idea of what to do. And I’m guessing it will be a lot clearer on Monday when we will talk to Veidekke again. I and Johan went through everything after the meeting, came up with a rough time plan and a description of the project. I think we will manage to do this!

I am tired now, I just had lunch, and am watching TV shows. I’ll probably take a nap…

Rainy and foggy The weather’s been awful since I came home. One or two days was pretty okay with a little sun. This is depressing!

Birthday party in Sjövik

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My day started with som studying actually. I am almost done with that stupid library online course. I still haven’t read through all of the papers Veidekke sent me about old environmental impact data. Maybe tomorrow.

At 2pm my dad’s girlfriend’s son picked me up and together with his girlfriend we drove out to Sjövik where dad and Karin lives. There we had chili for dinner and then pies for dessert. The chili was amazing! And so was the apple pie with marzipan too. I love birthday parties :). Anyway, the birthday boy was Karin’s middle son who turned 22.

It was a nice Sunday afternoon and now I am really tired. I don’t know why I am still awake… Go to bed, stupid!