I had a very good weekend this past weekend. I guess so good that it took me until Thursday night to write this blog about my weekend. Anyways, I went on a camping trip with a rather large group of Swedish and foreign students. When we first came to Sweden, each foreign student was assigned to a 'mentor group.' The leaders of these groups are either Swedish students or longtime exchange students looking to help foreigners adapt to life in Lund. I ended up not being very compatable with my mentor group but was adopted by a friend's. The mentor of this group invited us all (about 25 in total) to go up to his home town of Vaxjo for some camping and canoing.

So, we headed out early (not too early) Saturday morning. We traveled from the rolling plains of Skane (the southern most province of Sweden) to the wooded forests of Smollands (the bordering province to the north-east). It was actually a lot like being in Michigan. I have thought before that there are not so many differences between the landscape of Sweden and the landscape of Michigan but if i didn't know better, I could have sworn I was driving up to the U.P....except instead of deer crossing signs they had elk crossing signs.

Anyways, the camping was great. Really great. His parents prepared a fabulous salmon lunch for us all before we set out to the island on which we'd be camping. Once there we set up camp and just enjoyed nature. Not only was it nice to get away from Lund for once, it was a good opportunity to relax and meet a few new people. There were people there from all over the world but for me, i think the most interesting people were 3 young guys from Iraq. The'd just arrived in Sweden 4 months ago and, although they undertand English they don't speak it. We muddled through a little bit in Swedish but unfortunatly i didn't get to ask some of the questions I really wanted to ask (both because of language problems and because I didn't want to ruin a peaceful camping trip with talk of the war...i've noticed that in Sweden, whenever someone asks me my feelings about the war everyone around us gets angry with that person for 'bringing down the mood'). But, as they were the first Iraqi people I've met (perhaps ever but definatly since this war business has been going on) and since they came recently from Iraq under unknown circumstances, I was happy to see that they didn't seem to harbor any ill will towards me. Actually, some of the others on the trip seemed a bit more hung up on my being American than they did.

Anyways, I was happy to be back home after just one night of camping, however. Although the days were warm, the nights got pretty dang cold and my sleeping bag seems to be loosing it thermal ability yearly.

Here are a few pictures from the trip. I would have taken more but my batteries were low and, although i remembered extras, I forgot to bring tape to hold the battery compartment shut so a switch was not possible.