I'm slowly but surely recouperating from my hectic weekend. It kicked off on Friday night when I attended a Japanese/Swedish (and one American) dinner. I started taking a Japanese class at the University about a month ago. I am not allowed to attend any day except Mondays because I'm not actually registered in the class but the teachers were nice enough to let me join once a week just to practice. The others in the class all seem very close as they meet eachother in class every day. Until they invited me to the party, no one had actually ever talked to me much and I always felt a little uncomfortable and unwelcome. So, it was a pleasant surprise to be invited. I was still a little nervous about going though since I didn't really know anybody. It's a stereotype that Swedes are a bit reserved and hard to get to know unless they have a beer in thier hand...I found out just how true that stereotype can be. For the first half hour or so, nobody was talking much...then the alcohol came out and suddenly people were coming out of the woodwork and I felt like a star for the evening. Everyone wanted to know Where am I from? What am I studying? Don't I think it's a bit strange to move from Japan to Sweden to study Asian Studies? How is my Swedish? In a little while I had people who I'd never even met yet, people who weren't in our class at all coming up and asking me questions about things they'd heard about me. As I said, it was a Japanese/Swedish dinner so that means there were also Japanese exchange students there to talk to but I didn't really get a chance to talk much. I think it's because they were all Japanese girls and most of the student's in the Japanese language classes are big, tall, kakkoiiiii Swedish guys.

So, then on Saturday I had another party-a Sittning. Sittning is a Lund tradition in the Fall where everyone dresses up-suits for guys, dresses for girls-and we have a 3 course meal with snaps (a swedish shot) and lots of singing. It was a good time, although the guy sitting across from me was a little creapy. He seemed to like the candle and fire a little too much and when I asked him if he liked tea (he kept taking out a tea bag wrapper, holding it over his nose and sniffing it deeply) he just told me I was wasting my life by not doing drugs. That was about all he said to anyone the whole evening...but he did a lot of leering up and down the table.

After the dinner they let other people in and it just turned into a regular night club. There was a lot of dancing to 90s hip-hop that I havn't heard since the 6th grade. All in all, a good night! You can check out the pictures here!

This entry is kind of long so I'll save Sunday night's Chinese Dumpling Party for next time.

Oh! One final thing...it snowed here last night!! Not just a flake here and there but a real blizzard! It even stayed on the ground until this morning (from what I hear, it was long gone by the time I woke up)