A broken computer

I have no idea what happened, the screen just didn’t want to cooperate so I had to send it in to the shop to get it fixed. Unfortunately they couldn’t recreated the faults so they just kept it for three days and now I have it back, all fixed (except lots of virus or something, but I can’t install Windows 10 yet, I have to wait a few days or weeks….).

I haven’t updated since Marseille, so I can first tell you about my last day there. It was beautiful weather, we got up early in the morning to spend three hours by the ocean, catching the last rays of sun. We sat by the cliffs by the entrance to the harbor and the water was so warm and nice. Then we spent three hours at the airport and I slept most of the way home.

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And since then I have worked four days, three extremely long days so those four days summed up to a full normal work week. I was exhausted. Right after work on Sunday I went to the preparty to the last Bunny Party of the year. I didn’t drink anything, but had a great time with my colleagues anyway. I didn’t stay too late since I had a German test the day after.

IMG_20150814_142008 In one of the gondolas at Lisebergshjulet.IMG_20150814_204059The sunsets behind Lisebergshjulet can be really really beautiful!

At 1pm on Monday I had the German test. I was prepared to spend at least two hours on it, but I was done after 40 minutes. It was a diagnostic test to see if I was good enough to get accepted to the German course at Gothenburg University. I don’t have any grades from Sweden and they didn’t think I had taken enough in the US. Honestly, the test didn’t go that well. Mostly because my vocabulary isn’t big enough. I was really good at the grammar part, but the words failed me. We will see. If I don’t get accepted there I can always take the English course or just stick with the Solar Systems course I also got accepted to.

Jesper and I sat down by the canal in downtown and had ice cream in the beautiful summer weather. At 4pm we borrowed mom’s car and drove out to Gråbo where we drove to his friend and swam in a lake for a while before going to his mom and had dinner with all of his siblings. It was a nice evening. The lake was 22C and it was so nice. We played games in the evening and it was just nice.

IMG_20150817_185642A small Swedish lake in the woods outside of Gothenburg.

On Tuesday Berget had its annual Crawfish party. I had half a bottle of wine before realizing for sure this time that alcohol is not for me anymore. I just can’t drink it. But I had fun anyway. I left pretty early once again because I had a job interview at 9 am the morning after. On the way home I stopped by Nordstan to hang out with Jesper for an hour, he was working night as a security guard there.

IMG_20150818_191718Crawfish party with the best people!

So yesterday I didn’t know what to expect. I had been in contact with this lady for a while, and she asked me to stop by. Not saying if it was an interview or not. But once I got there it was oretty much just to meet and talk and book a course in working at a cash register and book two introduction days for next week. So from now on I have two jobs, one as an attraction operator at Liseberg and one as a Receptionist at Gothenburg’s Sports utilities.

After that meeting I went home to Jesper and went back to bed. He just got home from his night shift so we slept until 2pm and then went out to pick up my computer, eat lunch/early dinner and then the whole evening we sat and tried to figure out what we are gonna do. Our plan A is to move to California next fall to go to school. But if that doesn’t work out we will probably try to do something here. We will see. We are gonna look more at it tonight.

 

Now I am going to work, only 6 hours today, that will be chill in this beautiful summer weather! I hope this will last so Kelsey will see how nice the Swedish summer can be! I am seriously so excited for her to get here on August 31!!!

Dolphins

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.

June Gloom continues and I am not too happy about spending my last few days in California with cloudy weather. It is not very cold, but it would be so much more enjoyable with burning sun. I spent a couple of hours at the beach today after I ran some errands. First I went to the library to print the liability form for tomorrow’s scuba dive tour. Then I went to the post office because I can not make an online shipping label, but they couldn’t help me. So I will have to call technical support because something is wrong with the website. My third stop was the bank to close my account. Everyone there were so helpful and friendly and I could even change all my stupid coins to real money without any troubles. My bank account is closed, I have some cash now, but that will be nice to exchange to Swedish Crowns once I am back home because of the exchange rate right now.

The weather wasn’t nice, but I decided that I wanted to be at the beach anyway. And I am glad I went. I finished my book, the third Guild Wars book, and started on the third Fifty Shades book. I felt like it was time to finish that series now. As always I was looking out to the water too and saw dolphins today again! Many more today and they were playing and some of them were even surfing on the waves. I love dolphins :).

IMG_20150615_162929I got a pretty good video of several of them, but I have to pay to be able to upload videos and I don’t have enough to want to pay, so this picture will have to do :).

I came back to the house at 6pm, took a shower and hung out with the boy for a bit before eating dinner. I also played with the dog. I really don’t understand why tug-o-war is that fun.

Tonight I have done some more fixing. I sent an email to the international center at Cal Poly and asked what it means to be on the Dean’s List and if I will get any proof of that for future job applications. And speaking of grades, spring quarters grades were posted today and I did really good this quarter too. Two A’s and one B+, exactly like winter quarter. My overall GPA after a year at Cal Poly is 3.597 (of 4). As an engineer I am very happy with that! I sent another email and asked about what I need to do if I want to apply for a master at Cal Poly. I decided today that that is what I want to do. I feel like one year at Cal Poly wasn’t enough. And I don’t wanna start working yet, so why not get more loans and get a master and stay another two years in California? I think it is a good plan. If I can get scholarships or financial aid from the US, then I hope the 2 year rule doesn’t add more years to it. So that means that I could get a real job right away after. I hope this will work. I would start the City and Regional Planning master next fall if everything goes according to my new plan.

I also canceled my cell phone plan, changed my uber account to my Swedish bank account, and I think that was it. I don’t think I have anything else I need to take care of before leaving now. That’s a relief. Just repacking a little bit.

I don’t like this waiting time. I know that I have one fun thing to do tomorrow, and the beach and the dolphins always make me happy. But I also kinda just want to be done with this and be home. I hate waiting. I am ready to go home now (at least for a while).

German midterm and hike

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.

So yesterday I had my first midterm of this quarter, the German one, and I have to say that it felt really good. I answered everything and that’s all I can do.

In the evening I went to a presentation given by an immigration attorney from LA who talked about the H-1B visa and permanent residency. It was interesting, and now it feels pretty hopeless to ever be able to move here in the future. Even if I would find a job, there is not even sure that I would get the visa since only 65,000 get it every year and more than 200,000 apply for it. Maybe I should just try to see myself living in Sweden now. Why should it be so hard to move here?

After that meeting I went to Farmer’s Market with David, walked around for a bit and then went for dinner at wunderbar Firestone. The rest of the evening I was just at home, not doing anything special.

Today I was supposed to go surfing in Morro Bay at 8am, but my surf partner lost his car keys so that didn’t happen. Instead, I went back to bed and then skyped with mom. It was her birthday today! Happy birthday once again :).

Then I made an adventure of going grocery shopping. No one was home and I needed food pretty bad, so I picked up my new headphones at the post office (they are amazing! My old ones broke a couple of days ago, but at least 3 years for a pair of in-ear is not bad at all, go Sennheiser), picked up my bike on campus and rode to Haggen (former Albertson’s) on Foothill. As a second breakfast I got a donut from Slodoco and then a bunch of baking ingredients. Since I am all alone (Rachel’s at Stagecoach and Lauren was home in Solvang, but she came back tonight) I knew I would be bored so I decided to bake, or rather make, rocky road fudge.

Right after I came home from the bad bike ride home from the grocery store David texted me and asked if I wanted to hike Serenity Swing and Architecture Graveyard. I never say nay to a beautiful hike, so off we went. First to the swing. As beautiful as always up there. The hills are getting browner and browner. It is sad. Why can’t Sweden send some of its rain here to California? I wonder if I would win the Nobel Prize if I invented something that would transfer the rain from there to here. Maybe that’s what I am destined to do instead of something else that I don’t know yet?

We explored around the different constructions at Architecture Graveyard for a while, took some cool photos, didn’t see any horses (bummer), and then went back where we started making the rocky road fudge. He left at 8 to watch the end of the Cal Poly baseball game but was back at 9:30 and I cooked dinner for the three of us, because he brought Alex with him. Then we just hung out until after midnight. It was a nice and relaxed evening.

Now for some reason, the time is already past 2 in the morning. I am really tired, but still have to make my bed after doing laundry tonight. It will be so nice laying down in newly washed sheets!

PANO_20150424_165850 IMG_20150424_183942 IMG_20150424_180042 IMG_20150424_175229 IMG_20150424_175144 IMG_20150424_180739 IMG_20150424_181532 IMG_20150424_181619

Lost Aion account

Well, this sucks. Today I felt like playing some Aion again for the first time in like 7 months. But I couldn’t log in and it said something about having to migrate the account to an email address or something. I tried logging in to the website instead to do this, but it said that my account wasn’t available anymore. WHAT? I sent them an email asking how this was possible, is all of my progress lost? That would suck real bad.

With lack of motivation to do anything tonight I created a new account (apparently Aion is completely free of charge now) and started over. I hope that my other stuff can be recovered, I miss my little panda I had walking next to me. But it was pretty fun playing from the beginning. But from the Asmodian side this time. Last time I played Elyos “the good guys”. Asmodian are the “bad”. Fun.

But I am gonna have to focus on my midterm first and most. Good luck to me with two fun computer games, haha!

Also, today I got my full schedule for Liseberg this summer. I will be working all the way to closing in October, yay! They also changed it so I don’t start working until July 1st, before it was June 22nd. This means I can spend more time in San Diego before going home :).

Another thing that has happened is that Three Days Grace’s new album is out and it is so good! I’ve been listening to them for the past two days. Great band! Even with the new singer!

German at University of Gothenburg?

Last night I spontaneously applied to a fulltime German class at GU for the whole fall semester. I won’t have anything else to do, so why not? Now I just have to figure out how I will send in transcripts of my American grades for all the German classes I have taken/am currently taking. I don’t have any prerequisites from Sweden. I think it will work out, otherwise I have to come up with something else to do after the summer. More than just living with mom and read.

First week of this quarter is over now and I have had my classes. It will be a good quarter, very similar to the last one. I am taking one fun planning class Digital Cities, German 103 and then a transportation/land use planning class. I think the workload will be like the last one. A lot of stuff to do, but it shouldn’t be a problem. Ten more weeks and then I will have a Bachelor of Science in Building and Civil Engineering. Yay!

St. Patrick’s Day

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 really get the hype with this St. Patrick. Someone told me today that St Patrick was part of getting Christianity to Ireland. Why is that something to celebrate? And get shitfaced over? At 6 in the morning? I don’t get it. So I slept until 11 am today, had a final at 1pm, worked on a project after that, Target, and then a beach bonfire. It was a nice day. I was done with the final after 40 minutes and it went pretty well. Not as well as the last one. But this time it felt like the multiple choice questions were easier, but the short answer ones were not. I definitely passed it though and will get a good grade in the class. The project in Public Transportation is not quite done yet, we are gonna put together the last parts tomorrow after my German final. Tomorrow evening is gonna be so awesome when I am done with all of this horrible quarter. I guess it hasn’t been too bad, just a lot of work, and a lot of stuff going on outside of school. I correct myself, it will be nice to put the last ten weeks behind me and start over new for my last quarter ever in school (until I decide to get my master of science degree). The thought hit me today, that if I go back to Sweden, I could get my master, spend two years in school in Sweden and wait out the 2-year rule and then try to move to San Diego and earn A LOT LOT LOT of money! And also live close to the beach and have a year-long tan.

Kelsey and her friends decided to have a bonfire at the beach today, but Rachel, Lauren, Ciara, Cody, and I only stayed for an hour. I’m glad, because now I don’t smell as bad as I would have if I stayed the whole time. And I had time to watch some episodes of Welcome to Sweden and then work on the project. That TV show is by the way very funny. It is about a guy who moves to Sweden from New York to live there with his girlfriend (who is Swedish), and it is so stereotypical Swedish it’s hilarious. I love that show.

At Target I did something bad, I bought a bag of white chocolate M&M’s (it’s Easter soon). As long as this doesn’t turn into a habit, I am good. I never promised myself to not eat any candy at all. But every now and then I feel like I need it. Like now. I needed it.

Now it is past 2 am and I should probably go to bed. Last day of the finals week for me tomorrow, whoop whoop!

Oceano dunesWe went to Oceano Dunes which is just south of Pismo.