PB Capt Crunch tastes better in Sweden

I'd like to give a shout out to Jenna, Elin, Kristor and Adrianna (newest people I've learned are following my blog)

But today is a great day! I was woken up by the doorbell and I got to sign for TWO packages from home!! One box was basically filled with snacks...

PB Capt Crunch
Special K bars
Granola Bars
Instant Pudding
Kraft Mac and Cheese
Vanilla Extract
Non fat cooking spray
Reese's Pieces
Peanut Butter Cups
(amazing so far right!?)

And the other stuff I got was...
Tights from Target
Stationary
the DVD left behind that Kelly made me
Halloween Decorations (I already hung the Scarecrow wreath on my door mom!)
Self Magazine
Baking cups (for muffins)
Measuring cups (for AMERICAN recipes, none of this deciliter stuff anymore!)
Microwavable Wax... because Nair just isn't cutting it!
Beauty products (liquid foundation, Stridex pads, eye makeup remover!!)
And I'm sure I'm forgetting some stuff, but it was like Christmas!!

THANKS AGAIN MOM!

Friday night people came over... I thought it was mainly gunna be guys from Jonas' program... but a few girls showed up too, so it was a good time. Judith made this snacks for the party LOL and she basically just took ingredients lying around Anders apartment... ham, cheese, crackers... and made these little 'German ham puffs' or thats what I started calling them anyway. One of the guys that I met that came over was from Boston (all american... but hes half swedish) He totally loved my pumpkins... and understood my love/need for the fall decorations. So he took us to this chill lounge with laid back music that changes each night... so not your typical swedish hang out, but i liked it.

Saturday night I got more tips than usual from the Swedes... and two of them were because I was confusing them... hah so they tipped me because they felt bad? Not sure... but this other guy gave me 100 kronor ($15) for getting his phone out of his coat for him... VERY NIIICE!

So lets see, Sunday Jonas' mom and husband were stopping by, so we all got together for dinner. It was her birthday so I made some zucchini bread... it was very tasty! I started watching a new TV serious from back home, Vampire Diaries. It is a total rip off from Twilight... but its a new guilty pleasure! Classes are just about done for Autumn 1. I just have one group project, a paper and an exam... easy breezy. Tonight we are having dinner at Caroline's and I'll get to meet her good friend Sybil from Switzerland. THATS IT. Miss everyone back home, hope you're enjoying the fall weather and Happy October tomorrow.

Pumpkins and Pie Charts

Monday night we went to Ikea for a date night. Who doesn't love $2 meatballs and cheap Scandinavian designs :) I am now a proud owner of the perfect dendrobium orchid (Caroline, we have to water when you get back from Stockholm!!) Poor Jonas, it took me at least 15 minutes to pick it out... and then right before check out we came to a new selection, and I spent another 15 minutes and switched plants.





Here is a picture of the super talented pumpkins I made since 1. I can't afford cute fall decor and 2. since they don't really sell it here anyway.










Here is a pie chart of how the 2009 international students break down (at my school). There were about 1000 new international students. Go North America!


As promised... two funny memories, and oops they arent from recruitment but initiation...

When Natalie broke the clothes hamper during her skit (winter initiation) and I started laughing inappropriately. and couldnt stop.

My discussion with Kat about peeing in the field house showers and picking noses... fall 2008

I wish it was October.

Things that made me happy this weekend:

-Taco buffet at the student pub w/ all my good friends
-The sun still shining, although its supposed to be cold/dark outside
-The joy on Chris and Anders face when I offered them homemade kladdkaka (Swedish brownies) when they came over to borrow a basketball.
- Extremely long facebook messages with Melissa
-When Judith kept coming to talk to me when I was working in the coatroom, but then would run off not to get me in trouble
-My debate with Jonas whether the 'pizza' we made was really pizza or a hamburger pot pie
-Talking on the phone with Kelly
-Getting an e-mail about my Swedish ancestor Celia (see below)

Things that made me sad this weekend:

-Realizing again, I am supposed to be Whitneys Maid of Honor, and cant afford to get to the wedding
- Being yelled at by drunk Swedish people wanting their coats
- Knowing that somebody hurt one of my best friends feelings back home
- Internet still not working for Skype

More happy than sad, thats good!!

For my own personal record... Cecelia Rasmusson Peterson Bott born September 28, 1857 in Gislof, Tralenberg, Malmö Sweden. Her parents were Martin Rasmusson Peterson and Meita Maria Hansen Peterson who joined the church in 1862. Cecelia joined in 1869. The family was baptized in the Baltic Sea. Family began immigrating to Utah in 1874. Cecilia and her sister were the last to leave in 1876. Wooo!

Oh, and I wish it was October, because then I can break into my October funds... I'm a girl on a budget ya know!

Good luck with recruitment girlies :) I miss and love you!!

"You're SO American!"

Well thank you, because I am proud of my country. BUT you meant it as an insult.

Ugh, sooo on a few occasions I have had people decide to point at me and say, "oh that's so American!" It is really offensive, because its like they view me as a walking stereo type or something. I would never point at someone (lets say from Holland if they were wearing wooden shoes... haha) "You're SO Dutch!" or to someone from China eating rice, "You're SO ASIAN!" (Well unless they told me they have no brothers or sisters... haha Kat, I might have some of the Chinese girls over to my apartment soon... long story. I'll write about it if it happens... and I'll totally find out, this has been my one and only mission since getting here) It just doesn't seem nice to me, so why do people think they can point at me and tell me I'm SO American? Today Jonas invited me out to lunch with some of his classmates. The one guy was asking me what I missed most from home (besides the obvious). And I was trying to explain I miss having my money go far (everything is SO expensive here) and that is when he decided to point to me, adding that all Americans care about is spending money and buying/consuming. He didn't say it nicely either. SO I asked him, well have you ever been to the States (because if they haven't, I tell them they shouldn't believe all stereotypes) and he said yes (only California, where all Europeans seem to go...) and then continues to explain, "where the fattest people in the world live! Everyone is America is fat! OH, I mean you're not fat!" SERIOUSLY PEOPLE!? I just can't believe someone would be so rude. Anyway... enough about that.

Let me just say, we are loved here (Americans) and... not loved. It is just really strange to learn how the rest of the world views your country. Because like my friend Jake told me once, the whole world is here in Jonkoping (which is true). Well I don't want to get in it much more than that.

Funny story, so for the past couple days Jonas has been complaining about an Indian guy in his group. When I went to meet up him and his classmates... IT WAS THE SAME GUY THAT YELLED AT ME LAST WEEK! We all had a good laugh about it. Then it kinda made me sad that so many people dislike this guy :( We went to a yummy yummy Asian buffet for lunch where we got to have cheap ice cream for dessert... Pear flavor... not so good!

BUT I WANNA GIVE A BIG HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHOUT OUT TO MY AMAZING DZ ANDREA!! MWAH MWAH MWAH!!

"Are you going to blog this?!"

First off, let me start by saying hello and welcoming Sarah Bobby as my newest follower :) :) :) Second, the title of my blog is exactly what Caroline said to me this evening after we went tanning together. And by 'tanning together' I literally mean we went tanning together!! YIKES! So here in Sweden they have drop in solariums (tanning beds) meaning... no one operates them, you just put your money in and the bed starts. It is pretty expensive to tan here, and Caroline told me that she and her friends used to get in the biggest bed and share it, splitting the cost! Well I really have been wanting to go tanning and today was our day. I'm glad Caroline and I are close enough to be comfortable with being that close to one another! It was pretty fun, and we were laughing a lot about the situation... which made me think that this was something I totally could see myself doing with Kat. Lets just hope the Eurobeds don't burn me! MISS YOU ALL

Did you know Giraffes speak Swedish :)

i thought this was highly amusing and wanted to share... last night i dreamed that jonas and i bought a house together. the best part of this house was that through our living room window we had a giraffe always outside watching us. and this giraffe spoke swedish to me. HAHA all he said was 'god nat,' which is Swedish for 'good night,' but I consider it an honor to have dreamed (even if just a little) in Swedish.

On a side note, I have been trying to work on my Swedish a lot since last Friday. Jonas and I will speak Swedish to each other often after dinner, or I am always practicing new phrases with friends. I mentioned watching Swedish Idol (which is in Swedish, but I understand bits and pieces) and tonight we watched another all Swedish-speaking program. Jonas' cousin Tina is a famous celebrity cook here, and she started a new show 'Tina's Cook-along.' We watched it tonight, and Jonas' other cousin Karin and her daughter were on the show because Tina and a celebrity guest was cooking for them (and a few other celebrities.) My new goal is to get Jonas to get us on Tina's show... come on, who wouldn't love the American girl trying to speak Swedish?!

editors note: I would like to thank Kat for making this beautiful picture for me, which now can help everyone vision my giraffe. Also, for any swedish speaking blog followers, I have been informed (by Jonas) that I spelled 'god natt' wrong, my apologies... but me and my giraffe have an english accent! :)

DAMN SWEDISH 'CRACKERS!!!'

I am not happy right now... I've spent a lot of time figuring out how to calculate the nutritional information from Swedish packaging. Instead of giving the nutritional information per serving, they give the information per ever 100 grams. This has pros and cons. Pros are you can turn everything into a percentage. For instance if the package says there is 10gram of fat, then you know that 10% of whatever amount of the thing you eat is fat. It helps put nutritional info in a different perspective... but like I said, there are cons (its not quick to figure out the information per serving.) Lets just get into why I'm irritated. Here in Sweden they have something called Kex. Sometimes its more like a cookie and sometimes its more like a cracker. Its very irritating that people can't seem to define it. Anyway, Jonas told me they were crackers, and I thought that meant they weren't cookies... ah. Anyway this afternoon I took the time to figure out how many calories were in each one of these little devil crackers. There are 400 grams in the package, and for 100 grams there was 490 cals (WHOA! never read that before!!) So I counted how many damn flat cracker/cookie/biscuits were in the package (28) So I divided that by 4 (the 400g/100g) so 100g equals 7 cookies, and each of those cookies had 70 calories. I AM SO PISSED, because they are good... but not that good. And I've been eating these cracker/cookies as a snack... and that is an awful snack! BOO! Damn you Swedish cracker/cookies!

(Hah I just reread that whole little math section, and it takes me back to middle school math problems haha! Oh and I really miss Kraft macaroni and cheese... I have the blue box blues!)

LOVE

So, I am officially freaked out by my hair dryer. I still only have my dryer from home... so it works when I plug it in the converter plug, but voltage here is much more powerful, so even when I have my dryer on the lowest setting.. its still really powerful and gets really hot. Last night my hair dryer officially turned itself into a death ray. IT WAS FLASHING NEON GREEN LIGHTS! that is not normal!! My heart would literally skip a beat everytime it did it... and I only used it for maybe 4 minutes and it flashed at least 3 times. I'm not talking a little spark, I mean I could see the light out of the corner of my eye, and then freakishly in the mirror as well. Eh, I get freaked out just thinking about my hair bursting into green flames haha.

Last night was day 2 of work. I really don't get many hours there, but its better than nothing. I met another new girl there and she was pretty cool. I just really miss my old coworkers (especially Mandy) and being at a job I love :( But I did make $15 in tips (I'm not supposed to make any) because drunk people don't take their change! NICE!! So, I am dedicating this blog to Jonas, although he doesn't read it... but he deserves it. He truly is the most wonderful boyfriend and I love him more everyday because of it. First, he went out with some new friends from class and was pretty bummed I wouldn't be able to go to the party with him. So when it was time to go out, Jonas suggested that the whole group go to Harry's (where I work.) So he came to see me :) He was so cute (I didn't hear this til afterwards) but when they got in, before I saw them and they were waiting for me to take their coats... he kept saying, "theres my girl! theres my girl! that one, with the brown hair!" haha he's so sweet, and one of his classmates said he was talking about me all night. Well I didn't get home til a little after 3am and when I did I noticed all my lights were on. Jonas had been in my apartment and when I walked into the kitchen to get a snack, I found a plate prepared with the cutest Swedish snack for me! (2 slices of our homemade bread, each with cream cheese, sliced cheese and blueberry jam on them... sounds weird, actually delicious!) It melted my heart how sweet he is, and it makes up for all the days when I'm homesick missing you all.

So today I have to catch up on some reading, workout (inspired by my girl Andrea) and then maybe hang out with Anders' girlfriend Judith some more. I hate when the weekend is over, because I love having so much free time! OH and GO BLUE, was thrilled when I heard about our victory over Notre Damn! YAY!!

its a beautiful daaay!

Well ever since I blogged about the cold weather here... its been super nice! Today felt like summer, not even kidding (its kinda a big deal here). Yesterday Jonas and I took a walk around the lake yesterday (yes... the same lake I claimed I was going to run around.. that still hasn't happen haha) Last night Caroline came over and had dinner with us. The game plan was to have grilled cheese and tomato soup. yaaa... Jonas made some weird version of tomato soup (kinda distorted my American sandwich/soup classic). His soup had onion, macaroni noodles... garlic lol. It was good but more like a goulash. And then we watched Idol (aka, Swedish Idol) Obviously its in Swedish, but they sing in English so its still pretty good for me to watch. (Btw, heard that Ellen is replacing Paula on American Idol!)

Okay, so I would like to discuss my adventures in cooking. Before moving here, I had never really cooked a meal on my own. Now, I cook meals a couple nights a week now. So here is how I've progressed. Meal 1: I burned the potato-fries. Meal 2. I burned rice (is that even possible?) Meal 3. Didn't burn any food... but I burned a corkboard pot holder. It was under a pot, on the stove top... annnnnd I let that baby cook! Haha That was week 2. Now after week 3 of trying to cook I have improved a lot. Tuesday I made AWESOME cheeseburgers. I even spent the big bucks for kraft singles (the cheese haha) It cost $3 for 10 slices. YIKES, at Kroger's its $1 for 24 slices. Wednesday I made a crunchy cornflake chicken that tasted like chicken fingers (but much healthier) and Thursday I made scones for breakfast, and then Jonas and I made two loaves of a apricot/nut bread. Tonight I'm baking a special treat for Anders and his gf Judith (shes visiting from Berlin and they are coming over for tacos and I am teaching them Euchre). He loves cinnamon and apples so I found a cookie that will be really good :) So why am I cooking so much? It is really expensive to eat out here! An average lunch costs $10-$12... now that I'm buying my own groceries I know that money could go towards some items that will last me a few days, rather than one meal. WOW look at me growing up!

UGH I feel like this blog is so boring! Hmmm I got in a confrontation with this Indian guy in my class. He interupted me and a friend talking, and was really hard to understand. After I understood what he asked, I still told him I didn't know what he was talking about... meaning... I didn't know the answer to his question and he freaked out on me saying "I AM SPEAKING TO YOU" Whoa! Easy buddy! So I busted out with some Kropp attitude and told this guy what was up. Omg I'm ending this blog til I can think of some more interesting stuff to talk about.

Hmm so I finally had time this morning to check out the fiction section at the school library. So depressing! They only had 3 small book shelves with literature in english.. boo! So I checked out Jane Eyre... they had all those books you always hated reading in American Lit, or Humanities (A Raisin in the Sun, A Tale of Two Cities, Canterbury Tales) haha well if thats the only choices I have... I might become very educated in English classics haha

Alright, boring entry over. Have a good weekend everyone... and it is weird not being in America to have all the reminders of 9/11. Take care :)

ONLY UPDATE WORTH WRITING: I LOVE ANDREA :)

Hello Autumn in Sweden

Hi everyone! So fall is definitely here in Jonkoping... and some days are better than others. On Thursday, the day of my job interview it was pouring, and pouring.. and pouring. And then the next day was so windy I literally thought I might fall over! They don't tell you this on the website... but the general consensus is the weather is pretty awful here. Yay! So anyway, I mentioned my job interview... it was more of a meet and great because I guess I had the job before I even said much. I was really lucky, this woman in Jonas' group for a class project just hooked the job up for me. So anyway, last night was my first night. I am working in "the closet" as they call it. Now I have to describe the differences about Swedish pubs/clubs. 1. No one tips ever for anything. They might tip the bar a little bit, or the waitress a little bit if its a nicer place... but that's it. 2. Coat checks are a huge thing. Everyone checks their coats, purses, umbrellas, whatever. It costs 20 SEK (about... $2.50) and no tips. The only way I get a tip is if a drunk person walks away without their change... (which happened last night.. ya!!) Let me tell you... checkin coats got crazy!! Well 1. everyone is speaking Swedish... some of it loved that I was American and remembered and talked to me in English on their way out. Some were just drunk and super confused that I couldn't understand them haha. I think I did really good for my first night. I was much quicker at retrieving the jackets at the end of the night verses hanging them... but quick none the less. It felt good to be back in a restaurant, since that's what I know. But none of the girls introduced themselves to me... of course, typically Swedish girls. But hopefully that will change over the next few weeks. I'm only really working the weekends. At they are late hours, I didn't get off work til 3am last night!

So I am going to write about my nightmareish experience trying to shop in Sweden. I wanted to buy normal black work pants... nope. Can't do it. They ONLY sell skinny legged pants. I was disgusted and mad at the whole country. So after trying on a zillion skinny legged pants, I found one pair that didn't make me want to commit suicide. But then I looked ridiculous with the shoes I had to wear with them. It was pretty depressing all day. I had to peel the pants off me after work last night because they are so tight. And its a good thing I'm not working til next weekend because Jonas and I ate homemade scones for breakfast and I ate so many I doubt I could fit into those pants right now haha.

Other highlights from the week:

Wednesday: We went to an 'American Beer Pong Tournament' everyone had to dress up which was fun, Jonas and I went as the Detroit Pistons. They served pan pizza (which they had to special order from a place like 15 minutes away by bus, Sweden really only makes thin crust pizza with goofy toppings) and Doritos.

Thursday: Job interview. Stood in the pouring rain outside for about 45 minutes because the woman told me the wrong time for the interview. The doors were locked. FML

Friday: Me and this girl walked around the city for an hour looking for this store I passed earlier in the week. In the window of the shop they were selling limited edition Italian soda with painted pinup girls on the bottle. I fell in love with them. We finally found the store and I bought $15 worth of Italian soda just so I could have the bottles haha, crazy. They didn't have the purple-pinkish bottle, but I have the other 5. We also went to a crayfish party... we kinda went really late because I'm super sick of crayfish.

Saturday: Worked. Sweden won their soccer game verses Hungary... the bar went insane!

Sunday: Being lazy all day, a little homework, maybe pop in a DVD... I feel like I should be doing more HW. Well everyone enjoy their labor day weekend before school starts! We don't celebrate that here... oh well! MISS YOU GUYS!!