Tag Archives: travel planning

Weekend

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This weekend of mine was over so quickly.  But I feel rested and did a lot of fun things.

On Sunday I had my last day of work, only 6 hours and the day was over so fast.

Yesterday I finished my room, took all the boxes to the basement and now my room is done. It feels great. I still have tons of stuff I want to do, like go through all my clothes and give away stuff I don’t use anymore. I also want to order canvases with pictures from the Caribbean trip. And more smaller things.  At 5pm I went downtown to meet up with Jesper after he got off work. He is a guy I’ve kinda been seeing since I came home. I know it’s early to mention him here, but it feels right with him and I haven’t had this feeling in a very long time. I know he feels the same, so we will see where this goes. Anyway, we went to his place where we cooked dinner together, feta/bellpepper filled minute steak (is that what it’s called? A very thin beef) with potato wedges and rosépepper sauce. It was delicious.

Today was a fun day as well. I left bed at 12:30, went to 4-Gott to buy a bag of candy (it is my weekend, and I needed to refill my energy before 6 days of work which is ahead of me). Then I played some The Sims 4. Didn’t have time to do more than just one family.

At 5:30pm I went downtown to go to the movies with Axel, we saw Minions in 3D. Super fun movie! Grabbed a beer before the movie too. He came with me to my place after where we looked into where we should go in August. We had talked about going to Florence, Italy, but it was kinda expensive. So we found flight tickets for half that price with RyanAir to Marseille so we took that instead. Then we booked an apartment right next to the ocean with Airbnb and it all ended at 3,200 SEK per person in total for four days. Not bad at all! Yesterday I also booked my flight to Paris in September with mom. I am going to France twice in just a month, that will be fun!

Now that that is all booked and done I think I should probably go to bed. It will be nice with a long night of sleep before this new week at work. I hope my body and especially feet and legs are used to this hard work now.

Midterm, flight ticket

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I am not waiting too long between my posts now, but I still have a ton of stuff to write about.

First, I had my last midterm ever today (not that I have had many in my life). I didn’t study too much for it, but I would say that it went pretty well, maybe not A+ or 99% (which I got on my Digital Cities midterm), but hopefully at least A-.

No filming today for the video project, so I just played beach volleyball for almost two hours instead of having the lesson. I wasn’t very good, but I blame the wind, haha!

When I got home I repainted my nails, watched Grimm and Once Upon a Time and then did German homework and started reading the papers I got for the scuba class that starts tomorrow. They told me that I would get the course material at least 3 days before start so I had time to read it through. I got it today and have 170 pages to read before tomorrow evening’s class. I am taking this for fun, but I really can’t read that much in one night, I am too slow at reading.

Another big thing I did today was to book my flight back home to Sweden. I will fly from San Diego early morning on June 20th. And I will fly almost exactly the same route as I did when I flew from there last time. First to Chicago, then to Berlin instead of Frankfurt, and then to Gothenburg. I will land 9:45 am on the day after.

I am excited to go home!

A+

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It is ”Friday”, 11pm, and I am ready to go to bed. I need to be better at using time during the week so I am not so tired all the time. Since I moved to SLO I haven’t been tired enough to fall asleep, but now I really have to try to stay awake by taking notes until my hand hurts from writing more than I need too.

Today we had a midterm review in Land Use and Transportation Studies (I can’t find a short for that course name) and it actually doesn’t feel like a completely lost cause. I just need to review it myself, write it down at least one time with my own words and then I should be good. I will do that tomorrow. We didn’t get our midterms back in Digital Cities like the professor said, but hopefully through PolyLearn tomorrow. In German we got the results on our midterm after class. We couldn’t get the actual tests back, so when class was done a bunch of us went up to the professor to give us our results. He saw me and just said that I got an A. I was surprised. I mean, it felt great writing the tests, but this week when we went over it, I got insecure in my answers, so I was actually a little bit surprised. When I was back at my seat to put my stuff in my backpack and the professor went through the pile of tests to find the other students’ results he looked at me and said: “Oh, add a plus to that letter!” What? I got an A+?! How does that even work? Shouldn’t A be the highest? I am super happy anyway, he must have seen that I tried a little bit extra on some problems, even if I probably missed a few minor adjective endings and stuff. I am curious to get that test back.

As soon as I got home I baked cookies, just normal cookies but with a click of Nutella in them. They flattened out so much in the oven so they are boring cookies with a little bit of Nutella. Still pretty good.

At 5pm I got picked up by Ralph and Cathy. Ralph is a 60+ guy in my German class, and him and his wife are going to Sweden for a week this summer and wanted some tips on what to do. I gave them a ton after eating a really good tacos dinner at Taco Temple in Morro Bay. It was a very nice dinner and they are really fun and interesting people. I wanna be like them when I grow up, adventurous, still traveling, finding new friends all over the world, just living to the fullest. If I am in Gothenburg when they are there we will probably meet up. I got really inspired by doing this research and I have already plans on being a tourist back home, I might as well do some stuff with them if they would be up to it. I got really excited about coming home and do all of these things. I also wanna go to Öland again. Maybe to camp this time? That will be a well-planned trip though and sometime in the future.

Old me am getting tired, so I think I will head to bed now, maybe watch another episode of iZombie and hopefully get a good night’s sleep so I have energy to deal with midterm studying and the awful homework we have in Land Use. I worked on it forever yesterday (we are analyzing 16 intersections downtown and are eventually gonna determine the future Level of Service for all of them). In the lab I discovered a lot of errors in the data material we got from the teacher so I had to go through it all and correct it and then send it to the teacher. In the afternoon I managed to get 14 out of the 16 correct for the current Level of Service. One of them, just doesn’t make any sense. I did everything correct, but I just don’t get the answer the teacher got. Probably because the data flows didn’t match the intersections directions… And the second intersection I don’t even know what is wrong with it… So annoying! My group is meeting up tomorrow afternoon again to hopefully fix that and work on the next step.

A boring day

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I had looked forward to this weekend for quite a while, my alone time. But now when it is here I can’t wait for my roommates to get back here. I’ve been so very bored today I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was gonna study, but I only did one of the many things I should have done. Well, when I think about it, it isn’t too bad since I don’t care about the grades. But now anyway, my two projects are more or less done. I didn’t start to look at the homework, but I will do that all day tomorrow.

I started to pack today and I also did a little research on weather and such, apparently it will be awesome weather all the time (80F in the air, 77F in the water), maybe some rain on Puerto Rico, but December is a very nice time to go there according to the Internet. Even if I ordered a new suitcase today, I decided to try the challenge of living in a carry-on suitcase and a backpack for 23 days. I think it will work. But all the hostels have laundry facilities so I might just pack lighter and use the washing machines there. I don’t wanna pack too much, I wanna be able to bring home stuff I buy too. I have gotten really excited again and actually a bit nervous. I am doing this all by myself! It is a long trip, more than three weeks, all on my own. I feel that this should give me some grownup points. And I am pretty sure that I will find people to hang out with while I am there.

Oh, by the way, I think they shut of the heat in the apartments this week. I’ve been freezing my toes off all day!

No, I think I will go to bed now and hope for a more productive day tomorrow. Goodnight!

Last day of class for a week

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I like the random American holiday’s. Next Tuesday we don’t have any class because of Veteran’s Day. So that means a very long weekend. Which means more time to study for the two midterms coming up on Thursday.

It feels like studying is all I do lately. I really don’t mind, but I feel like a boring person for repeating myself in this blog. But it will get better! This Sat-Sun is my surf trip with Poly Escapes. Next Friday is Six Flags Magic Mountain, the Monday after that I am going skydiving, the next weekend is nothing so far. Then comes Thanksgiving and I think I will go down to LA to be with Kelsey’s aunt and cousin since I don’t have anything else to do (my host family had plans so I have to come down and visit them in the beginning of January instead), or maybe just stay at home alone (I miss spending time with myself). Weekend after that will be all about studying because that next upcoming week (five weeks from now) is finals week! And after my final final is written I will go to the Caribbean. I love having lots of things to look forward to. In there I hope I will be good enough to play beach volleyball and work out at the gym. Maybe do a hike?

Tomorrow morning I will skype with mom, then study some, run some errands with Kelsey, study some more, and then probably go to a frat party with Jungle theme. That will be fun. But I am really super excited about the surf trip!! I can’t wait to use my wetsuit again and see if I miraculously got better at surfing while being in Sweden and away from waves.

Halloween 2014

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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.

Well, this evening did not turn out as I was hoping. I have to say that I am pretty disappointed. For the first time in like 200 days the rain finally came and that made everyone crazy. First, everyone hated it and didn’t wanna go out in the “freezing cold”. So after like one and a half hour of discussing how we were gonna go downtown (which was after a long discussion on whether we were going to a house party first, but then decided no because we had heard rumors that they were full) and we finally found a ride, the three girls I was with decided to skip the whole thing. That’s when my party mode totally disappeared so I just went to my room, wrote a little on my field trip thinking paper for Sustainable Environments. Then I started thinking about the Caribbean and started researching what to do there. I have a nice list now. So many beautiful beaches, and I’ve found many tours that sound nice. But I’ve decided that I will need a car most of the days on Puerto Rico. I might skip the car the last two days if I take tours on those. I will start looking into Jamaica now, unless I fall asleep, I am kinda tired. These lists will be updated, but it feels good to have something already. I am still very very excited about this. For example, google Flamenco Beach, Puerto Rico. I am totally going there!

So, Halloween didn’t turn out what I was hoping, but I think we are a bunch going out tomorrow, so I guess I can use my $50 costume then.

The day in general was pretty okay. I finally sent those two packages, it was a bit annoying since I had to go downtown to do it. And it was even more annoying that I got an email when I got home telling me that I got a thing that should have been in one of the packages I just sent to my brother. Stupid!

I started writing the paper in the afternoon and I made a spinach/mushroom omelet which turned out really well. The only thing missing was the feta cheese. Next time!

Halloween 2014, viking The British boysThe two British boys living a floor above us. Adorable!

I am going to the CARIBBEAN

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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.

In 43 days I will be sitting on a plane on my way to my biggest adventure so far. Sure, moving to San Diego for 13 months was pretty big, and moving to San Luis Obispo to try out the life of an American college student was too. But going on a more-than-three-week-vacation alone to the Caribbean is pretty frickin big! It is still not completely 100% certain that I will go all by myself, I am still trying to convince my mom and Toby and his brother. And I will of course meet lots of people at the hostels, but I will go there by myself. And I couldn’t be more excited!!

So, on the late evening of December 11th (my last day of finals) I will jump on a plane to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. It is pretty far away so it will take me 14 hours before I land at 2pm on December 12th, and that’s when my adventure will begin. I will stay in Punta Cana for 8 nights (Dec 12-20), then fly for an hour to San Juan in Puerto Rico. The hostel there has a 7 night rule so I will be on my way to my third and last destination on December 27, to Montego Bay on Jamaica. I will stay there for 8 nights and then a 12 hour flight back to San Luis Obispo on January 4th. I am beyond excited and I was literally shaking when everything was booked this afternoon. In total everything will end up at $3000 and I think that is a fair amount of money to pay for 23 days in paradise.

I’ve started googling on what there is to do and I have a feeling that the planning is gonna take a while. There are so many things to do, and so many amazing beaches!! Have you ever heard about the Blue Flag Organization? Me neither. But that is a ranking thing in Europe and they rank the best beaches in the world. Punta Cana has several and the Dominican Republic in general has more Blue Flag ranked beaches than any other Caribbean island. I think I will be in for a treat (since I love beaches).

I just started looking into it so I haven’t really come up with anything yet except that there is a Hard Rock Cafe in Punta Cana and that there is a catamaran cruise to a very beautiful island. It costs $90 but it looks awesome. And since I will be traveling alone I think tours would be good for me. But I will of course have plenty of lazy days by myself at the beach too. And I am planning to go ziplining on one of the islands.

I’ve also decided that I am gonna invest in a GoPro camera for $399. I am going to the Caribbean, crystal clear waters and hopefully nice fish and turtles (dolphins?) and the new series are waterproof. And with a stick I would be able to take selfies without looking too ugly up close. I don’t wanna go to several paradise islands without having proof that I was there. So I will buy it, hopefully soon. And when it comes to money, I’m not short of it. A few days ago I got the stipend from Chalmers for going here. It’s pretty great that my school pays me 25 000 SEK ($3400) to go to California to study for a year. And in a month I will get my financial aid of 46 000 SEK. I am not gonna be wasting money on unnecessary things, but I also don’t wanna feel like I did on Hawaii this January when I couldn’t buy things because of lack of money. So I am not gonna feel bad for renting a car for a whole week on Puerto Rico for example. I will save money on food, since it is a bit awkward to go to restaurants on your own.

I’m sure you can tell that I am excited since I’ve been writing almost a whole page in word about this already. I just can’t believe this is happening. I am going to the Caribbean for 23 days in just 43 days!!! 😀 I don’t want time to go faster than it already is, but I want Winter Break to be here NOW! And I guess time goes slower when you really look forward to something? So that’s good too, because I still don’t wanna leave SLO. And when this trip is over I have Spring Break to look forward to. I’m hoping for Cancun!

Anyway, this morning I couldn’t sleep in because I had a field trip in Paso Robles at 8:30am. It was an interesting field trip as well. They had transformed a street (21st Street) into a “Complete Street” I think it was called.

When I came home at 11am I booked the trip and then I went with Kelsey and Toby for some errands. Lauren had to study so she couldn’t come with. We bought pumpkins, carving tools and some other things. It was a successful trip. I got home, just had time to make dinner and then off to class. I almost fell asleep today, but I managed to stay awake by eating my dark chocolate pieces flavored with pomegranate I accidently bought today. Good thing I did though, because they kept me awake. It’s so embarrassing falling asleep in class…

Now I am home and I know I should go to bed, but I so want to go to google and look up amazing things to see and do on DR. Stupid excitement!

Punta-Cana-BeachThis is the closest beach to the hostel I will stay at on Dominican Republic! EXCITED!!!!!

DMV and quarter schedules

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Today was not a very productive day. The only thing I did was some ARCH reading before biking down to the DMV on the south end of SLO. I was prepared to just show my old CA driver license and take a new photo and then be done with it. But apparently I forgot to bring my I-94 paper, which I never got this year (but now you’re supposed to print it yourself). So we had to make a new appointment for next week. AND I can’t just renew it since my application period expired. So I need to retake both the written test and the behind the wheel test. I’m not cool with that so I am gonna call to the Sacramento head office and tell them my story and hopefully I will get away with it. But I got the Driver License Handbook just in case. I am getting a driver license this year, doesn’t matter how!

The way back was hard. Up almost all the way. I stopped in downtown for a bit to buy body lotion (my skin is so dry in this weather! I will get used to it eventually, but it might take time). I got home and had 15 minutes before I had to be at the library, so I grabbed a small snack and then jumped on the bike again. I was so sweaty. It was hot today again, but not as hot. I was at the library with Johanna and Courtney to work on our homework in Sustainable Environments which is due Wednesday. We sat there togetherfor an hour and then I sat alone finishing for another two hours. It felt good to study for once.

When I got back I had dinner, hung at at Ryan’s for a bit and then got back home where I talked to Tobi about my winterbreak trip. He wants to join me for Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. And another guy from Brazil messaged me on Facebook today telling me he was interested too. It would be so great if we could be four people, it would be cheaper and more fun. I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS TRIP! I am guessing it will be more epic than my Hawaii trip in January.

Last night I also stayed up late, but I actually did something productive. I decided what classes I want to take. I am not gonna have as awesome schedule as I have now, but I will have a three-day weekend at least. So for Winter quarter I will take ”Intro to Environmental Engineering”, ”Public Transportation”, and ”Elementary German II”. 12 units in total. Monday’s+Wednesday’s 12-17:30, Tuesday’s 14-15, and Thursday’s 14-18. Not too bad. And in Spring quarter I will take ”Water Chemistry and Quality Measurements”, ”Traffic Engineering”, and ”Elementary German III”. Also 12 units. Monday’s 15-16, Tuesday’s+Thursday’s 7:30-16 with a gap between 11 and 15, and Wednesday’s 8-16 (no gaps). Not too bad either. The early Wednesday mornings won’t be too fun, but I guess I will be bored with Pint Night by then. All of those courses sound interesting. And I hope that we will have Professor Bertini on both Public Transportation and Traffic Engineering. He is a good teacher (from what I can tell after two weeks of class with him).
I can register for class on November 10th, so it’s far away. But I wanted to be sure of what to do so I don’t have to stress about it later.

It is way past my bedtime now, I should have been in bed like 1,5 hours ago. I have a long day ahead of me tomorrow… My first TRX session is coming up, exciting :).

Vacation planning

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This Monday has been super lazy. I got out of bed at 11am because something was going on in the apartment. One of my roommates, Lauren had a very bad back muscle spasm and I helped her get through it until herm om came. It looked so painful but there was nothing I could do really, except try to talk to her and make her think of other things than the pain. It went away after a while fortunately. When it did she went to the library to study and then I went back to bed and watched the season premiere of Once Upon a Time. It is available first the day after it airs on the TV apparently.

When I got bored I started looking into what I will do on Winter Break. And that’s what I did for the rest of the day. It took me probably 6 hours to plan that 23 day vacation. But now I have it all figured out. I haven’t booked anything yet, I am waiting for people who wants to go with me so we can book together and so. But in a couple of weeks I will book anyway. I want to have it done, I want to have something definite to look forward to. Okay, so on December 12 I will go from San Luis Obispo to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic and stay there until December 20. December 20-27 I will be in San Juan, Puerto Rico and December 27 – January 4 I will be in Montego Bay, Jamaica. I am more than excited. I want to book it now!!! But I will have to be patient and wait at least one week. I think Julianne (a girl from my WoW-group) wants to come with me to DR and my roommate Kelsey really wants to go with me to Jamaica. I think it will be hard finding someone who wants to go to Puerto Rico over Christmas, but what do I know, there are probably people here in California who doesn’t want to celebrate Christmas. Let’s hope so.

I spent a little time with Julianne in her room, and then I just hung out with my roommates, who by the way are the best. I love them! ❤