Getting into the swing of things
September 19, 2022
This post marks the conclusion of my second full week of classes! My apologies for the delay in posting – I got wrapped up in cooking a feast Sunday night and then had to pack prior to my departure for my core-course week travel to the city of Lund, in southern Sweden!
This week was fairly uneventful all things considered. Weather has cooled off substantially in Stockholm, with temps never getting above the mid-60s and gray skies becoming the new normal. I’m beginning to get back into the headspace of doing academic work, but its a slow process. Swedish is slowly improving as well – I’ve finally figured out how to tell people I don’t know Swedish! “Jag talar inte Svenska”. That’s come in handy more than once recently.
Some of the highlights of this week included:
A crayfish party hosted by one of the local swedes living in my building!
A crayfish party is a traditional Scandinavian (originally Swedish) celebration typically in the end of the summer, when friends gather for a variety of Swedish foods as well as enjoying snaps (which felt odd for 1pm on a Sunday). I couldn’t bear the thought of eating the crayfish themselves, but I enjoyed some of the other food as well as spending time with many of the friends from my building.
My roommate and I really wanted to check out a few of the thousands of islands in the greater Stockholm archipelago at the end of the week, and the public transit cards provided by DIS give us free access to dozens of ferries leaving out of central locations in Stockholm. We were getting a fairly late start to the day and didn’t want to have our hopes too high, but we were lucky enough to find a ferry that was supposed to be heading to a far western island within the archipelago which would have been roughly a one hour ride away. Much to our dismay, though, when the ferry arrived they didn’t allow us to board and instead hurriedly disembarked from the harbor and carried on their way.
Refusing to end the day without taking a ferry somewhere, we traveled to the other main ferry port in downtown Stockholm and hopped onto a boat which took us to the far side of Djurgården, one of the larger and more beautiful islands within the heart of Stockholm which is home to many museums, an amusement park, and a zoo!
Stockholm’s very own amusement park, Gröna Lund, on the island of Djurgården
Overall it was quite a mellow week, which was fine with me because next week I’ll be doing quite a bit of traveling!! I’ll be going to Lund, a city in southern Sweden, as part of my core course through DIS as well as many more exciting adventures. My apologies for the one week delay in uploading this post – I’ve been super busy. Stay tuned for a recap of my experience with Core Course week!