Hej! Hur står det till?

Well I made it Sweden!  I arrived in Stockholm on Monday August 16.  It has been an incredible 1.5 weeks.  I will do my best to sum it up here and then hopefully get back into the habit of regularly updating this blog...

I don't even know where to begin (I don't think I can shorten this all that much...sorry!).

My apartment:
I share a one room apartment in Kista, a suburb of Stockholm.  The room has a corner kitchen, a bathroom, two beds, and two small desks.  My roommate's name is Anna (with a long A) - she is 28 years old and from Greece.  She is very nice and we seem to get along well.  Her favorite word is definitely "Okaaay."  I am still getting settled in, but I think it will be an alright place to live for the first semester or year.  (NOTE: if you were planning to visit me at any point this year you will most def have to get a hostel...unless you want to sleep on a floor without sheets or a pillow).  The huge downside to the apartment (besides sharing a room) is that it takes close to an hour to get to school everyday.  I have to walk 15 minutes to the metro then take two trains to get to campus.  Oh and my bathroom doesn't have a proper shower, just a shower head mounted on the wall - got to love wet floors all the time...

People:
I have met a lot of amazing people already and am excited to get to know them all better.  There are very few Americans here, which is great, but everyone else seems to group together by country.  This mean that if you call me to ask what my plans are I will probably give you a response like, "I am going to hang out with the Croatians/Greeks/Italians/Persians/etc."  Most people's English is absolutely perfect, so communication is not a problem at all and yet again I am shocked at how small the world is - people here are the same as people everywhere.  I should note, the one group of people I have not joined are the Swedes!  We have a running joke in our little group that if anyone mentions talking to a Swede we practically bow down to them since it is such a rare occurrence!

A quick note about the Swedes:  They are as beautiful as rumored!  I mean my grandma might read this so I won't elaborate, but the men here are BEAutiful.  I have fallen in love like 600 times already!  And don't get me started on the women they are all 6'tall and stick thin...

Logistics:
There is so much to do when you move to another country!  I have stood in line for 50% of the time I have been here.  I  have had to get a Civic Registration Number (= to a social sec. number), a 90-day metro pass, a bank account, plus all of the things to get done for school and figuring out how society works in general.

I have been working on learning Swedish.  I have tried to utilize my two-hour daily minimum on the metro by listening to Swedish lessons on my i pod.  I am also planning on signing up for an online course through the university and will be taking night "Swedish for Immigrants" courses through the Swedish government.  All of these things are free!  (which explains why everything else in Sweden is so expensive!)

Did you catch that?  Things here are expensive!  I can't even explain this to you in any way that will get the point across - you just need to accept it and move on.  (Example, don't try to go out to a bar and get a beer for anything less than 40Kr (approx $5) - and this is the Bud Light quality beer...)

School:
I start school on Monday.  We had an orientation to the program today and I am super excited!  I will let you know more as we go, but we have an incredible studio space, the teachers seem great, and we will be going on trips to Berlin, Prague?, and possible a few other places.  I will be studying Urban Planning and Design under the Sustainable Urban Planning and Design department.  There are about 20 of us?? Seems like a good group to spend all of my time with!  Oh and I learned that over 400 people applied for the same program as me - I am feeling pretty good about myself right now!

I have gotten to know a little more about KTH since I have been here.  It is ranked somewhere around 140th in the world and is considered one of the top five universities in Europe for engineering related fields (which is what they consider me here)...I need to find some reputable sources that say this to put on my resume/website!

I will take some pics of the campus soon to post.

And now of I kept your attention long enough - Fun events thus far:
Cottage Party: Bon fire, dancing, swimming, sauna...
Coffee and backgammon with the Greeks
Block Party with The Very Best (a South African rap group...yes, you read that right)
BBQ at Lappis with good friends, mystery meat, and hot air balloons overhead.
a trip to the world's largest IKEA!!

...now that I think of it I haven't done that many actual things (we wonder around a lot), but have been having an awesome time just being here.

(the internet connection is terrible at my apt, so I will upload some pictures when I am at the school)