A signed contract

It’s official, I am an attraction operator at Liseberg! I am so excited about this job and I start in less than a week, I can’t wait!! Today was actually my first workday, three hours paid introduction evening. I was there one hour earlier to sign my contract and fill out some forms and get clothes, my card, name tags and locker. I guess I haven’t thought about how the people at Liseberg looks like in many many years because I was surprised when I saw the clothes I got. They were red instead of an ugly shade of purple/green like I remembered. Good!

At 4pm we were 8 girls and we did some group exercises and got lots of information. It was interesting and I ammore excited about the job now. I think I ended up in a very good department at Liseberg. I’ve met a few of my new co-workers, but I am in the pool (is it called that?), so I will be moving around and work where I am needed instead of being in the same area.

At 7pm we were done and I headed in to downtown to vote in the upcoming EU election. I don’t care about politics, but I don’t want one specific party in there so I voted for another.

Back home, had a skagentoast for dinner and then I studied for a couple of hours. I have now rewritten all the teoretic questions so they are understandable. Now I just have to read them through several times a day and start solving the problems and go through old tests. I don’t think I will pass it on Monday, but it will help me when I redo it for the fourth time in August. That time I will be serious about it!!

Liseberg Alexandra

Surprise party

Yesterday was a very nice day in almost every way. It started with four hours of work as an au pair recruiter. We were part of a “after  graduation” fair at a high school in Gothenburg where we talked to students about what to do after graduation. Some were interested, most not. Maybe a bunch of people will come to the next meeting because of it, we will see. I had a great time there and four hours just flew by. And when I got there I was met by the receptionist who I recognized a lot. It was the old receptionist at my high school many years ago. She recognized me after a few moments of thinking. She is very nice, I like her!

We got free lunch and a lot of fika. Right after I had a thesis meeting with Veidekke to attend to. They are very pleased with the result so far. We are gonna make some minor changes before Wednesday and then we should be done. Except for the writing part of course…

And right after that I met up with my cousin and her friend in downtown and showed them how to get home to me. They left some things, changed clothes like four times and then went to a concert with The Fooo. A Swedish boyband. And I mean boyband, they are 16 year olds… They have been famous for a year since they were up on stage before Justin Bieber when he was here a year ago. And girls are crazy about them for some unknown reason! They had been lining up outside the place where the concert took place since Tuesday! Apparently the first in line got to meet the band before the concert, but yesterday afternoon the band had walked along the line and hugged everyone. I guess those girls in the front felt kinda stupid. I think these guys are famous because they are so nice to their fans. And that’s not a bad thing. But they do look awfully a lot like Justin Bieber and that is a big no no for me.

When they had left I prepared the rest of the cake and called mom and asked her to pick me up at 17:45. She thought we were going to her friends to plan our trip to London, but it was a surprise party. She had no idea what was going on. Didn’t thought about the big bag I brought with me, or the cake (which was supposed to be there originally but then cancelled because of allergies, but I told mom I talked to the allergic person and it was fine), or the fact that I was doing the dishes while she waited downstairs to give the people at the party more time, or that my brother wanted me, not mom who were living with him, to drive him to his girlfriend (the party really) on a night before he had to work at 5am and when he just spent the entire week with her in Rome. Clueless and surprised when she saw everyone!

It was fun being part of that! So we ordered Greek food for dinner, drank wine, ate my cake and then mom opened her gifts. From me she got a new pair of sweatpants and two pairs of earrings. I bought the same ones because they were so cute. She never noticed me wearing them this last week though.

I got a lot of book tips from Gudrun, one of mom’s friends, who has the same taste of books, movies and TV shows. We had a great night, but I got tired quickly. I got home at 0:30am and tried to be as quiet as possible. My cousin were already home since two hours and had gone to bed. I am surprised. She is fifteen, she should be able to stay up all night, right?

Anyway, I was extremely tired, but still couldn’t resist playing 2048 on my phone in my bed for half an hour before finally falling asleep with the phone in my hand. That game is seriously addicting. The goal of the game is to get one tile with the number of 2048 and you do that by putting two equal tiles together. So two 2s become a 4, and two 4s become a 8 and so on. I’ve played it a lot lately, but I can’t get a tile with more than 1024. Stupid…

Anyway, it was a very nice day and I think today will be as good. BBQ in Slottskogen and a lecture from the architects of the new city library as part of the opening ceremony. Or maybe I will skip that and go back to bed? It’s not human to get up at 7:30am on a Saturday.

My cousin and her friend were satisfied with the concert and had a great time and no problem finding their way back to my place. They tried to be extremely quiet when making breakfast, but I am a light sleeper and wake up from pretty much anything. I wonder when they were planning on waking me up, haha.

Birthday cakeThe cake I made for mom was a success!

Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients
*400g of condensed milk
*150g butter
*300g Digestive crackers
*1l of fresh fruit (like strawberries, raspberries, blueberries or whatever)
*1,5 double Daim (á 56g) (Daim=Heath bar but better)
*3dl whipped cream

How to
*Boil the can of condensed milk for 2,5 hours. The water is supposed to cover the can at all times. (Or you can buy a can of preboiled condensed milk, called Caramellised condensed milk)
*Let it cool off completely under cold water. The milk is now a caramel cream.
*Cover the inside of a pie form, diameter 24cm, about 8 pieces, with plastic sheeting.
*Melt the butter. Crumble the Digestive crackers into tiny tiny crumbs and mix it with the butter. Put the mix in the pie form and put it in the fridge for an hour.
*Remove the cake base from the form and plastic and put it on a plate.
*Put the caramel cream on the cake base as an even layer.
*Mince the Daim and whip the cream. Put 2/3 of the Daim in the cream. Put the whipped cream on the caramel cream.
*Last, put the rest of the minced Daim on the cake and then decorate with fruit.

Here is a link to the Swedish version of the recipe.

Tooth ache for the last time

So bad timing for another stupid tooth ache. It started a few days ago but today I woke up and it really hurt. And it is still getting worse. I am so glad that these problems will be gone forever in two days!

The right one that got pulled almost four weeks ago stopped hurting like a week after, but I am not sure it healed properly. There is a hole there and I am afraid that food will stuck. I have to ask them if that is how it is supposed to be like on Tuesday.

Today I was at IKEA with mom after a short 40 minutes of work. Not many people wanted to be interview today so I had only one. At IKEA we had lunch and then bought a few things each, like potato smashers, candles and a new and bigger box for Cards Against Humanity.

The rest of the afternoon I was on the couch and accidently fell asleep watching Once Upon a Time. I hate being this tired all the time!!

Next week will be a short one and after that I need to start studying structural engineering for real. I thought I was gonna be better at studying this time since I only have one class, but I am just too lazy, so it will probably be like normal, the last two weeks before the exam, 24/7…

Thursday

I got woken up today at noon because ComHem called me at noon and offered a digital box with all their TV channels for free for three months. I didn’t say no to that. Even if I don’t watch TV, a lot of extra channels could be fun.

After that my day was very lazy again. And I am definitely not complaining, I like it! I watched some episodes of Arrow and booked a full body massage on April 6th. 200kr for one hour is pretty awesome!

Yesterday I got a mail from Försäkringskassan telling me that I will get money to help me pay rent, 600kr/month, that’s not too bad! I will get it at the end of the month and every month until I’m leaving.

Tonight was my second au pair information meeting and I told the future au pairs about my year and it went really well! I was nervous before, but it was no biggie at all when I was done. Two interviews, one guy actually, and I was home by 9pm.

I’ve paied the next three months rent and I’ve finished the interview forms and now I think I will take place in the couch and watch some more Arrows. Tomorrow I have to be home the whole day. My last painting, the one of San Diego skyline, is being delivered between 8am and 5pm… Stupid DHL who can’t give me a more specific time! I hope they get here early so I can go out for a walk in the hopefully beautiful weather.

New TV

Another fullpacked day. It takes so much time to move. Today I got up at 8am to try to wash the cover and pillows and it worked. At 1pm I had an interview and at 2pm I had a meeting at Chalmers. Right after that I printed my resume for tomorrow’s scrutiny. A company is coming to Chalmers tomorrow to take a look at resumés and give tips.

To mom, and take the car. She actually came along. First stop, IKEA to buy some hangers/gallows whatever they are called. But you can’t just go to IKEA for one thing. I had a bunch of things when I was done…

Second stop was Maxi where I, once again, bought some food. And third stop Siba where I wanted to take a look at a TV. It seemed nice so I bought it. A 40″ Philips.

But I can’t really do anything with it right now. I need to get my router to work first because the Internet hole i the wall is right behind the big furniture the TV’s gonna be on later. And that fucking router refuses to work and I’ve been in a really bad mood tonight because of it. I have Internet if I use the cable directly from the hole to my computer, but when I plug the router in it doesn’t work. The router works, all the correct lights are on with the right color, but I can’t reach routerlogin.net where I need to configure the stupid thing. I think it might be because Bredbandsbolaget (my Internet Service Provider) wants to give me a username and password (which 1st, theyshould have given me on like last Thursday and which 2nd shouldn’t be needed since I already have Internet). This is all so retarted and confusing. It’s free for fuck sake!! It shouldn’t be this complicated when I don’t even pay for it. STUPID!!

I’ll call those assholes tomorrow and I sure hope they have a sollution to this ridiculous problem.

CCAP meeting

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…

City Library of Gothenburg

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 :).