Fall has really snuck up on me here in Lund. While it is still pretty warm, the leaves have begun to turn bright red, making everything a bit more beautiful. Here are some pictures from around Lund.

There are more Fall shots of Lund here.

Yesterday was my birthday. My 25th birthday. I am officially getting old. It was a nice birthday. Better than I'd excected. I was able to talk with several loved ones abroad who wanted to wish me a happy birthday. However, I have to admit that I was saddened by the substitutions of email for the more personal, traditional telephone call from close friends or relatives. I shudder to think what the future of communication will be like with all this technology bringing us 'closer' together.

Anyways, so, every Thursday my seminar group and I meet to prepare for Friday morning's presentation. So, I figured that would be all my birthday had in store -writing a report and powerpoint presentation.

I'm not one of those people who runs around 'preparing' everyone for their birthdays weeks in advance. In fact, I don't think I purposely told anyone here about my birthday. It's not that I mind getting old or anything like that. It's just that I honestly don't know anyway to bring it into conversation naturally without making it look like I'm saying, 'Hey, my birthday is coming up! Won't you buy me a gift?" Also, I figured that I don't really know anyone here that should care if it's my birthday aside from the polite, obligatory 'congratulations.' I suppose I'm just being pessimistic. I've heard that before a few times.

So, you can imagine my surprise when I opened the door to my study group and they presented me with a HUGE bottle of champaigne and a hearty 'Happy Birthday!' Also, I recieved a gift from one of the girls: Kyung-Wha, a card and a cake from everyone. I was shocked and amazed at how giving these people were. True, out of everyone I've met here, I've gotten to know them best of all, but still! They knew about my birthday because on one of the first days we met, the question was asked to each of us. Also, a few days ago, Kyung-Wha happened to be in my room when I recieved my birthday gift from Jin. Still, I never expected anything like this. It was certainly a pleasant surprise.

I didn't take as many pictures as I should have but here are a few...if I'd known that it would be such an occasion I would have made myself more presentable. I swear, I don't normally look this bad!...I hope.

I had quite the busy weekend last weekend. With 'parties' on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, it has taken till today for me to finally recouperate. Thursday it was my seminar group from my economics class. We 'partied' all night till 5am as we prepared our presentation for Friday morning. I suppose if we hadn't 'partied' so much we could have finished a lot earlier.

Friday night was a 'party' for everyone in the Asian Studies department. There are about 30 people in the East/ South-East Asian course (my course) and only about 20 in the South Asian course. We were expecting a pretty big turnout since everyone had seemed enthusiastic about it earlier in the day. I guess it wasn't too bad. I had a good time until everyone decided they would rather go out to a pub and pay lots of money to drink beer and talk to each other over the loud music and pushing people. I would have prefered to stay where we were with the beer we had and talk to each other without shouting but I lost the vote. It's strange though, even though I was there only for one beer, I was one of the last people from our group to leave.

Finally, Saturday night was the most exciting of all!!! My corridor had decided to host a 'party'. So, after preparing music and food (chips and salsa) we waited for the people to come...and we waited... Turns out we're not as popular as we thought. Actually some of my friends and another guy's friends came but left quickly mumbling something about needing to get up early in the morning or forgetting another promise they'd made. right.

Here are a few pictures of the crazyness from last weekend. If you think you can handle it, take a look at my gallery for more.

About a week ago, I went with a couple of friends to the nearby city of Malmo. It takes just about 15 minutes by train to get there and I've heard that it's a wonderful city so I was really looking forward to it.

I suppose it was pretty nice. We walked around a bit to take in the sites around the train station. Then went to see a very historical castle. You might notice that I didn't take any pictures of the castle and, although I regret it now, that's because I was really dissappointed. When I went to see historical castles in Japan, I knew what to expect--a castle built 30-40 years ago in the place where a really old castle used to be. For some reason I guess I thought Europe was different. I thought that, for the most part, the historical sites were actually old. This castle was painted red like a barn with new-looking windows where the gun-holes used to be. It also had a huge, brand new museum in the courtyard. I don't recommed this museum to anyone.

To finish the day, we headed to the IKEA. If you didn't know, IKEA is a Swedish company and, according to my economics professor, is the largest export of Sweden. I've never been to an IKEA before and I guess it was alright. It would have been better if I'd actually needed something there. But, it's good to keep in mind for my next apartment, I suppose.

In any case, here are a few pictures from the trip:

On the way

An old church

A guy reading a paper

There are a couple more shots here

I thought I'd take this time to flashback to before I moved here and put some picures. These are from early August when I went with Jin to Korea. We went there for a week to visit his family and friends and just to have fun. I had a really good time and, as always, I ate waaaaaay too much.

When we got to the house, Jin's mother was making kimchi. Watching her make it makes me realize why my kimchi-making experience failed. It takes a lot of skill and years of experience to make good kimchi. This particular kind, made with raw oysters, is one of my favorites.

A temple near Kwangju, Jin's home town.

See more pictures from Korea here.

Well, I havn't exactly gotten the hang of posting the pictures directly on the page yet. I'll get it one of these days. In the meantime, I've put some more pictures in the gallery. The new ones are of Lund, the town I'm living in. There will be more to come!!!

Here they are, my first pictures from Sweden...actually, these are all from my trip to Copenhagen in Denmark just an hour away. I'll post some of Lund later.

Ok, I'll just test out 2 pictures for now. You can check out the photo gallery my web-guru brother made for me in the meantime.

Well, I've been in Sweden now for just over a month and things are finally coming together nicely. Until now I've had so many frustrations: my internet blinking off and on then finally being cut off completely last week, phone cards not working properly, a really boring class that I have no idea what the teacher is talking about, a growing list of things I needed to take care of in my first weeks here, etc.

But, now those things have finally all been taken care of, although the class is still a bit boring and over my head.

I joined a gym the other day. On Tuesday I had my first aerobics class...ever. I'm not much of a dancer and I have little coordination so the class was humiliating for me. Of course I stood in the back so no one could see me. I even found another girl who'd never done it before so that we could bond through our lack of skill. She floundered with me for the first 10 mintues and then was 'samba-ing' in time with the rest. I don't know how she did it because I was lost for the entire hour. I could laugh it off but every once in a while everyone would turn around suddenly leaving me to face them alone. So, yesterday I chose a kickboxing class. The teacher thought everything I did was 'bara bra!' (very good!). I guess I should stick to the violent sports.

So much more has happened but since I'll have to fill in the blanks later. I'm going to try to post my first pictures now...hope it works!

I've been in Sweden now for just under 1 month. Hard to believe that much time has gone by and I've yet to venture outside of Lund. I have, however, explored just about every nook and cranny within walking distance of my apartment.

I tried to walk to the beach last weekend. It is about 10km from the city center and I thought it would be a nice walk, that I could rest and, if I felt up to it, I could walk back or else I could take the bus. Well, after just 1 hour of walking the walking path disappeared. I spent another hour following false trails until I finally gave up. Whenever I asked anyone they just looked at me and said, "Oh no, you can't walk there...it's at least 6 km from here!" and they couldn't tell me how to walk there.

So, I never made it to the beach. I hear that the warm sunny weather we're having now will soon turn to cold, dark days and colder, darker nights. I hope my winter coat gets here soon. Jin sent it just after I arrived here so hopefully within the month it'll get here.

I would really like to travel more since I have so much free time. My classes have begun and I am bored out of my mind. I have just 6 hours of class per week. As of yet, I have no assignments. I have just started reading some of the course work but the teacher says it's more of a reference, not to be read cover to cover. So, I spend my days inventing important things for me to do.

Today's mission was to find a job. This is not an easy task since I don't speak Swedish very well yet. I've been studying by myself and would like to take a course but I'm afraid that it is too expensive unless I find a job...the funny thing there is that I can't find a job until I can speak Swedish. One hotel said they'd 'let me know' in the next 2 weeks. Other than that...oh, I'm also going to stop at Burger King in a little bit. I figure maybe since I have some Burger King experience from my high school days I'll have a shot.

I may have had a lucky break. I stopped in a shop to buy something and standing in line I met a guy from Uganda who's a teacher at the university. We were talking and I "happened" to mention that I'm looking for a job and sure enough, he seemed gung-ho about trying to get me a job in the Univeristy doing something. We'll see. I'm also going to plaster signs around the university offering my experienced editorial skills for papers or dissertations since there are over 1000 foreign students here who all need to write in English. Back in Japan I've had several of my 'clients' works published in journals. Not bad!

I'm also working on putting pictures on this page. It is a problem because the internet is very skitterish, not just in my room but in the whole dorm it would appear. On good days it stays connected for 5 minutes, disconnects for 10, then comes back on. Other days it stays off for hours, and some days doesn't work at all. Today seems to be a good day so I can type this and wait for it to connect again to publish it. That doesn't work with the pictures. I've tried to upload them 3 times now and everytime I get shut down. So, hopefully the internet problem will get fixed and I can get those pictures up soon.

Alright, I know it's been a really long time since the last time I wrote and I'd like to say that I've just been too busy but that would be a lie...sort of. I was busy but to say that I was too busy would be an overstatement.

In the begining of August I spent a week in Korea with Jin at his mother's house near Seoul. It was a lot of fun, lots of good food.

Then after just one day back in Japan I boarded a plane again, this time for Sweden. It was a rough trip. By the time I reached Lund, I was actually greatful that the airlines wouldn't let me go with one of my suitcases! I would have never managed if I'd had it with me.

So, I'll write more soon about life here in Sweden so far and include some pictures from the digital camera that my brother Kevin gave me before I left. I just wanted to write something to get rid of that ugly blank page on my site.