San Diego <3

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This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

I am sorry readers, I will get better at updating this thing again. I promise I will try at least!

This weekend is a long weekend (President’s Day on Monday) and I decided it was long overdue to go down to Carlsbad and visit my former hostfamily. As soon as I got here I realized I needed this getaway very badly. I got so happy when I started to recognize everything, and when I came to the house, saw my old room looking exactly like it did when I lived there, my hostmom, and the day after the kids. I am happy here and I am so glad I came down this weekend!

 

San Diego Zoo Safari Park

Yesterday I woke up at 8am to have breakfast with my hostmom and the kids (my host dad was on a business trip up until today) and then went to San Diego Zoo Safari Park. I never went when I was here in 2013 (which was stupid when I had a membership). But I got 50% off, so it was not big deal. And it was a very nice day with the family. The weather was amazing, probably 85F, it was still a little bit breezy and we saw a lot of animals. Seeing animals make me happy. We saw a baby rhino that was born on November 27th last year, it weighed 159lbs then. It was super cute. We saw a lot of other “safari” animals like cute lemurs, all the savannah animals, one of the last five White Rhino’s in the world, tigers, and bats. And of course a lot of other animals too. It was a great day! Too bad the boy rolled in some kind of nettles and got rashes all over his body. Poor kid, but he was a champ and didn’t complain at all. He got a cream and it made it all go away very fast.

When we came home I took a nap for a couple of hours while they went to a beach party for one of the girl’s friends’ birthday. Then the plan was to study, but I just couldn’t find the motivation.

 

Beach and surf and sun

Today was all about the beach and an old au pair friend from my year here in Carlsbad. We met up at La Jolla Shores Beach, so many people, so it was hard to find parking. My old car (my silver Volvo V70) was here and for me to use this weekend. Very nice of my hostparents to let me use it. SD is bigger than SLO, and without a car here you can’t do anything. I met three of Johanna’s Swedish friends and they were all very nice and we had a nice day together at the beach.  We went in the water pretty early on, it couldn’t have been much more than 60F, but with the 90F (or something) in the air it was not hard at all going all the way in. It was refreshing. I love the ocean! And it is February! I love California! I love the sun! In the afternoon four of us put on wetsuits and went out to surf for a while with one of the guys in charge of the tent renting out wetsuits and surfboards for free and giving free lessons. It was the best surf session I have ever had. I caught almost every wave I try to catch and even if I didn’t stand up every time I still feel very satisfied and proud of myself. A few times I actually managed to stand up all the way in to the shore, which has never happened before! I don’t think I have ever stood up for more than 3 seconds before and today I did so much better than that almost every time I stood up. I am pretty sure I stood up more today in the hour I was out than in my whole life up until this point. So exhilarating! The last wave of the day was the best one and I drove home smiling like never before. In my old car, good music on the radio, singing, smiling, with the sunset in the west. It was a good, normal day (I don’t like Valentine’s Day, and it has nothing to do with relationship status, it is just a stupid commercial holiday when companies want to earn money, I learned today that Bulgarians celebrate wine on this particular day, I will start doing that too, wine is good).

 

Au-pairing again

My hostparents went out on a date tonight while I stayed in with the kids. Just like old times and I really enjoyed it! We started the evening with watching a movie called Step Dogs, the girl braided my hair in a very cool way, she also baked chocolate chip cookies (some kind of dessert on this “special” day felt needed), the boy played with the 7 month old Portugese Waterdog puppy they have. Then the three of us played the game I got them for Christmas, Totally Gross. It was a fun game where kids learn fun and interesting science facts. And when you earned points you stretched your slime clump from your characters nose, haha! The kids loved the booger/slime.

It is after 1am and I still haven’t started studying. I suck so bad! I am embarrassed by myself for being this bad at studying. But it is hard to find motivation when you are not sure what it is you have to do. Tomorrow evening! I will turn off all my social media devices and just study when the kids have gone to bed!!

If I will be able to wake up at 8 tomorrow I should probably go to bed now. I am not catching up on sleep at all this weekend, haha! Goodnight! And I promise to start this spiderweb of a blog up again!

IMG_20150211_152548 After my infection/cold or whatever it was, my left wrist got filled with liquid and started hurting like never before in the beginning of this week. When it was at its worse I couldn’t move it the tiniest bit. The doctor told me to rest it and that it could take up to 2 months for it to go away. But luckily it is almost 100% restored today, four-five days later. It still hurts when I flex it to the max, but I could surf today without any problems. I have to go back in two weeks for a check up though. Hope it is all good then!IMG_20150211_193005 On Wednesday I went out to the restaurant on Avila Pier with Jason and after dinner we watched the big fat sea lions under the pier. They are way bigger than they appear to be. This one was withing touching limit and probably as big as a three seat couch. A little bit scary. There were also normal grey seals and an otter swimming in the water. A starry night at the ocean was very nice.IMG_20150213_115220 IMG_20150213_120359 Baby rhino!IMG_20150213_122207 Bats are actually kinda cute.IMG_20150213_131743 Lemurs are adorably cute!IMG_20150213_132950 IMG_20150213_134853 One of the five last White Rhino’s in the world. One was at another zoo somewhere and the last three in a reserve in Africa and have armed guards 24/7. So sad! And all except one are too old to reproduce. This one was 40 years old.IMG_20150213_143212 Baby rhino again! (rhinosaurus)IMG_20150213_145537 We timed the feeding of one of the tigers perfectly. These animals are so beautiful and majesticIMG_20150213_145713 IMG_20150213_145840 IMG_20150213_150149 A cool waterfall on the Tiger Trail. Pretty good camera my phone has, which can capture the drips in a waterfall.IMG_20150214_104500 I did get my share of Valentine Day chocolate. From one of my roommates and my wonderful hostfamily. My not-eating-candy rule this year has a few exception days :). I haven’t had any candy in more than two months and this was divine today!IMG_20150214_120244 I have missed southern California’s beaches so much!! This is La Jolla Shores where I actually only went one time last year, and that was to take a surf class. It was a packed beach on this wonderful summer day in February, but I loved every second of it. This is where I belong, on a sunny beach!PANO_20150214_162304 Snapchat-1987100777812013018 I definitely got color today, yay! Nothing burned, just a pretty tan :).IMG_20150214_214531 This is what the girl did to my hair. I hope it will survive the night so I can showoff on the beach tomorrow!PANO_20150213_003105My room looks exactly the same. I was so happy when I saw this on Thursday late night. I really needed this weekend to get away from everything up in SLO for a bit to get perspective on life again!

Extension of my visa

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I thought it was time to write something again. I have several reasons why it’s been empty here for the past week, the main one is that I’ve been going through a breakup and it’s still pretty rough for me. But I am getting there. The school has also been drowning me in midterms, reports, reading, quizzes. It’s been really bad. But the week is over, I got a little more energy today after finding out a lot about my visa and how I might continue to stay in California.

The day started with me talking to my Urban Planning professor about internships. He told me he would help me reach out to people at the different cities around here. He will also help me with my resume and cover letter. So very nice of him! I am gonna send it to him as soon as it is done and he will give it back with feedback on improvements and then send it out sometime next week or week after. I can’t believe a professor would do that for a student. I am grateful.

My next stop of the day was at the International Center to ask questions about the internship. The professor told me that I can do the internship even without the class, and if I want the credit anyway (I don’t need it, but why not?!), he would help me work it out so I can do individual work on the side. Since the “weekly meeting” for the Planning Internship class is colliding with another class, this was great news. So I don’t have to worry about that class. So if I feel like getting credits I can do it on my own. This school is so flexible! I will get the schedule I wanted for next quarter. I will have no class on Fridays which opens up a whole day for the internship. Yay! But I wanted to make sure that this worked with my visa. And apparently it does with the J-1 (not F-1 though). Double yay! So, I can get an internship, and I can even get paid. The hard part about that was that I would have to get a SSN, but I already have that, easy peasy then! I actually don’t have to do anything in this process except for finding the internship. Another awesome (maybe sad for my mom) thing that I found out today is that I can extend my DS-2019 for up to 9 months to do “academic training” as long as it is within my major. So it is not technically my visa that will be renewed. It is my DS-2019 where it says what I am doing here, and for how long I will do it. But if I leave the country during that time I would have to go to the American Embassy in Stockholm to renew my visa. But I am considering going home in June for two weeks, see my mom again and then go back to start the internship. Or if I start the internship now during school and just take a vacation and continue when I get back. It would be nice to go home for a bit.

But I am super stoked about this opportunity that I just learned about. The International Center also told me that there is a way of waiving the exchange visitor (J-1) 2-year home-country physical presence requirement. I am not completely sure how, but this website explains it. And I am sure the city of SLO (or wherever I end up) knows how to so I don’t have to stay in Sweden for the next two years when I am done here on this visa. And if I am staying, then I have a cheap car I can buy down in San Diego from one of my au pair friends who is leaving in June. Everything is getting better. Almost everything.

When I came home I was so happy that I baked two loafs of banana bread. Rachel could smell it in the hallway and came into my room and told me I was queen for baking. That made me happy too.

Study at the library

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This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

I don’t know if you guys know this, but I am not very fond of the library. I don’t know why, but I guess I like my own room better even if there are more distractions here. But today I had too much that needed to be done so I spent four hours there with Matt. I actually got a lot of stuff done. First I looked at what my partner had written for the report that is due tomorrow afternoon. It looked good, so I finished the reading for the Urban Planning quiz (we have one quiz before every class (twice a week)) and then did the quiz. 97%, not too bad. Then I wrote down ten German verbs and conjugated all of them. We have a quiz tomorrow on the prepositions and ten verbs. I hope that will go well. I feel like I know it all, but I am not good at forming sentences. Cross your fingers for me!

At 11 I felt that I was done, so I went out in the cold and headed home. Here I have watched funny cat videos and put together several different potential schedules for next quarter. I am waiting for responses from several people about different classes. But I have all my options saved so when February 10th comes, I will be ready to enroll. I am hoping for CRP 214 – Land Use and Transportation Studies, ENVE 331 – Introduction to Environmental Engineering, GER 103 – Elementary German III, and CRP 409 – Planning Internship. I am also considering KINE 181 – First Aid/CPR/AED on top of all of those to renew my certification. But I am not sure about that yet (it is two extra hours every week). The Environmental Planning Methods that I wanted to take only covers the California laws when it comes to planning, so it might not benefit be at all if I don’t end up here. And that one was also early mornings and 4 hours each time, so I want to take the Land Use class instead. Better times and seems better suited for me no matter where I end up. I hope I can take the Environmental Engineering class too, but that is completely up to my advisor at Chalmers. I think that environmental engineering is definitely good for all types of engineers. But I am patiently waiting for my advisor’s email reply. If it is not okay, then I will just take a class called CE 421 – Traffic Engineering and have three out of five very early mornings, and also have class on Friday’s. Let’s cross all your fingers again for this NOT to happen! I also want to take the Planning Internship class which will give me at least 60 hours of work experience in planning, and also 2 units to my transcript. But it might be too late to find a company to work for even if I got a thumbs-up from my advisors here at Cal Poly regarding my visa status. If I get that internship, it could be my way in to stay permanently in California. But if I don’t, it just means that I have to contact companies directly and apply for a real job directly instead. Probably more work, but since I really want this, I am ready to put the effort into it.

I’ve been very productive today, and I will end this long day with the latest episode of The Flash and then prepare for a long long day tomorrow (Thursday’s are the worst, 6 hours of consecutive lectures, no breaks, and all in different parts of campus of course).

German quiz 2 This is my German quiz #2. Don’t mind all the errors. But read the questions. My German teacher is the best! Today in class he had brought a light saber and a sonic screwdriver, he also went on an on about a guy’s feral cat invasion in his house and joked about it. I have never laughed in class as much as I do in his class (he is a good teacher too and teach us so much). Heil Edler Graf von Anderson!California sunsetI can’t get enough of beautiful sunsets and they seem to be endless here. I love it! They make me happy.

Still not 100%

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The last two mornings when I woke up I was feeling great, like nothing was wrong. But as the days progressed I got worse and the day ended with me feeling sick again. It is not too bad, but I do feel dizzy and it is hard to focus in class. Especially yesterday afternoon in Public Transportation. It was an interesting class because we had a guest speaker. But he was in Oakland and presented over the computer. Impressive technology. It was not a very interesting subject, but still pretty cool that that is do-able.

My nose is still very congested at times and I am coughing. I don’t even know why! But it feels like something is stuck in my chest and I can’t get it out of there. Annoying like nothing else.

I wrote a list today of what I have coming up and it is actually a long list. And it made me realize that I have two midterms next week. Oops. I did not know that until today! But I am sure it will be fine.

This afternoon I felt better than yesterday so I actually managed to do a lot of things. I started on the Planning assignment where I will answer questions about my hometown. The German homework is done. Prepositions are hard, but this went better than the Perfect Tense. I also finished my part of the San Diego public transit report that’s due on Thursday. A productive afternoon/evening. Now I am thinking of calling it a night. I don’t have to get up early tomorrow or anything, but the bed is calling more than usual tonight.

Getting better

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Yesterday and today I’ve seen a lot of improvement in my health. Yesterday when I woke up I could breathe. I wasn’t feeling like I usually do, but definitely better than the day before that when I was in bed all day. Today was even better, I coughed a lot this morning, but my nose was clear and I only had a little headache. It is so awesome that it is going in the right direction! I just hope it stays this way and I won’t get it back in three days.

Today I did a lot of German homework, watched TV shows and then played some Guild Wars 2. The big announcement yesterday morning was the first expansion pack. It seems really cool, but I don’t know when it will be out. No date was announced. Today I finally learned how to use the crafting system, long overdue, I know. I actually managed to get a character to level 40 (from 27) by doing it for like an hour.  Definitely the easiest way to level a character.

I am going to eat some ice cream now, watch Big Hero 6 and then go to bed. School tomorrow again. I am crossing all my fingers and toes that I will be fully recovered tomorrow.

Guild Wars 2

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Being sick has made me start playing GW2 again. Tonight I finished the latest Living World Season episode and it was crazy! Tomorrow morning there will be a big announcement for what is coming. It is something big, that’s for sure.

The whole day, I was in bed reading. I slept really badly and am still pretty sick, so a day in bed seemed right. I finished the last third of Fire, the second book of Graceling Realm Triology. It wasn’t exactly a sequel to the first one, all of the books takes place in the same world, but at different times. The third and first seems to be connected though. A good series!

I have felt better today than the days before, but my nose is still very congested, but I didn’t feel feverish today so that is good. My eyes have been runny though, which is a little bit weird.

For dinner I had pulled chicken which had been cooking the whole day. I actually smelled it, but couldn’t taste as much. The little I tasted though was really good.

I can’t believe it is already midnight. But the bed didn’t seem that inviting after spending almost the whole day in it. But I think I have to give in now and start reading Bitterblue. Tomorrow will probably be a similar day to today. I really want to get rid of this cold!

Sick again

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Why does this keep happening to me? How can I be sick again?? It was like the cold took vacation with me in the Caribbean and now it’s like: Hey, guess who’s back?!

My sinuses are all messed up, my nose is runny and I’ve been feverish this whole day. And tomorrow will be a busy day and also the day I say goodbye to Toby. He leaves SLO tomorrow and I still can’t really believe it. But I know for sure though that I will see him in the summer and fall again. Sweden and Germany are very close to each other. It will be very empty when he is gone.

Except realizing the truth about my health today I went to two classes. I got my quiz back in German, I was several points above average and only one point away from max score. Go me! Public Transportation is not as interesting as I thought it would be. The teacher is hard to follow (he is Indian and speaks very fast with an accent). Maybe it will get better.

In the evening we were a bunch of people going to Firestone for Toby’s goodbye dinner. I just love their pulled pork sandwich. The best! And today I saved half for tomorrow. Then we had a little bit of froyo and the rest of the evening we all hung out in Toby’s room playing Cards Against Humanity. Even sober, that game is hilarious! I came third, not too bad.

Now it is really late, I don’t feel too well, so I should probably go to bed so I can wake up early and say goodbye to my best friend here. I am gonna miss him so much!!

Hike and drive-in movie

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This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

The summer keeps going on and I love it. I slept until noon today (I didn’t end up in bed until 3am). I was planning on doing laundry but realized I would barely make it til 2pm when we were going on a hike. So I postponed it once again. But tomorrow morning it will most definitely happen.

At 2 we were a bunch of people hiking up to Serenity Swing. It was the perfect day for a hike, the sun was out, but not too warm. The hike was not too bad, but we did take shortcuts over the hills and that was hard on my calves. But I survived. We will see how bad they are tomorrow. The view from the top was amazing as last time. Except this time it was greener. So very very pretty.

The way back was hard on the thighs since it was downhill all the way. I didn’t have much time at home after that before Matt picked me up. We went to Sunset drive in. I have never been to one before, but it was really cool. He had borrowed his mom’s car in which you can take down the back seats so you can lay down. He had a lot of blankets and it was very romantic. We saw two movies, Taken 3 and Unbroken. The first one was okay, but the second one was really good. Extremely sad, but a very good movie.

After he dropped me off I hung out with Toby, David, and Rachel for a bit, but now it is definitely time to go to bed. School tomorrow again. Today we were off because of Martin Luther King day. I like these American holidays!

Serenity Swing SLO is so beautiful!Serenity Swing roomies The girls of 310! ❤Serenity Swing This time I actually went on the swing.Serenity Swing

Beach and banana bread

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It is January, isn’t it? Today it definitely didn’t feel like it. The afternoon was spent at Avila Beach with Matt and his friends and it was like any other Swedish summer days. Maybe a little bit colder, but not much. We played a lot of beach volleyball, Kan Jam (which is a Frisbee game, actually pretty fun), and then ended the day by going in the water. I still find it incredible that it is even possible to be at the beach in January, and go in the water even! I can’t say that it was warm, but after a while of just standing there, watching the sun get lower and lower in the sky, it didn’t feel cold anymore and I jumped in. According to internet it was 60F (15.5C), which is cold. But definitely not too cold. Maybe I am embracing my Swedish Viking heritage more when I am away from home?

We stayed until the sun set and on our way back the whole sky was the most amazing pink color I have ever seen a sunset be. It was so beautiful!

It was a very fun day anyway. I spent two hours at Matt house trying to get warm, he cooked dinner for me and then drove me home. The plan tonight was to hit downtown, but no one wanted to except me and Toby, so we will do it tomorrow instead and try to recruit more people.

So instead of going downtown I spent a lot of my time awake baking. First I baked white chocolate macadamia nut cookies for Rachel (and I got two) so she could pay with that instead of money to the line dancing thing. And then I baked banana bread for the very first time, and also from scratch. It turned out delicious! Why haven’t I ever baked that before?

I made my sweet cravings go down, now I am very super full and totally ready to go to bed and watch an episode of The 100. It is Saturday, 11pm, and there is nothing wrong with that even for a college student!

Friday night bowling

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This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

This morning Toby and I went for our second run this week. I wasn’t too excited when waking up at noon (after 12 hours of sleep), with hurting calves, but we did it, pretty much the same as last time, some walking, mostly running, and then walked through all of Architecture Graveyard. Up there we found some horses and slowly approached them and we even pet them. That was so cool. I have a huge respect for horses (they are huge and strong and love to bite and kick so I have my reasons), but these guys were friendly and didn’t mind posing with us. It was pretty awesome.

After a well-deserved shower my roommates and I went downtown for a little bit of shopping and then I just spent an hour or two in my bed watching Arrow. At 8pm we were a bunch of people going to the UU to bowl. For once I sucked big time! Like really really much! The person who came second to last had 30 more points than I. Embarrassing. I am usually pretty good at bowling and at least get over 100p, but today it was just 52. We played another game and I did as bad. BUT, my second to last turn I got a spare with zero the first try (so that is a strike). And my next time, the last of the whole game, I made two strikes in a row (three in total in a row which must be a record for me), and I ended up third instead of sixth. That was amazing! It was a very great evening.

We walked home and now I am ready for bed. The beach (and Matt, I haven’t seen him since Wednesday morning) is waiting for me tomorrow.

Architecture Graveyard SLO is so beautiful and green in the winter!Architecture Graveyard Toby and the horse Toby to the left, and the horse to the right. Or wait, was it the other way around?!The horse and I Bowling game 2Toby, David, me, Rachel, Lauren, Cody. I played as Zlatan since he is from Sweden. And this shows how badly he sucks! Look at my last two boxes!!