As I said in the last entry, I havn't had any time to do anything fun lately. That's because I've been working on a take-home exam to finish up this drated economics class I've been taking. To be honest, it's gotten a bit better and I can actually attempt to have a discussion now whereas in the beginning I knew less than nothing about economics.

I've also been busy because over the weekend I was helping out with the Swedish School of Advanced Asia Pacific Studies (SSAAPS) conference held here in Lund. As somehow often happens to me, I'm still not really sure how I managed to get into that job. About a month ago the center asked my class for volunteers to help with this conference. Being the selfish person I am, I was the only person in my class who didn't volunteer (it is an economics conference and I was also hoping to take a vacation instead)

Anyways, on Thrusday the coordinator called me up and said she had heard that I was really good with computers and could I be one of their 2 technical assistants? (I'm sure if you know me you must be almost as shocked as I was) But, apparently my professor recommended me for some unknown reason. I was about to turn her down when she said the magic words, "We'll pay you." I was still a little unsure since I don't know how much money it would take to make me stand in front of 100 of the world's formost economists when the computer breaks down and admit that I have absolutely no knowledge of computers. As it turned out my only job would be to assist with powerpoint presentations and I actually do have enough experience with that to feel comfortable...even if something goes a little wrong. So I accepted...but I was still nervous about staying awake during all the presentations!

Well, luckily there were only about 60 people there, some PhD students, some professors, some the writers of my course reading materials! Some of the presentations were pretty interesting. And, for those that were not, I could keep myself entertained by watching all of the 'important people' sleeping, drooling, picking thier noses (i didn't particularily enjoy that one but the guy was doing it for 45 minutes and I couldn't keep myself from checking to see if he'd stopped yet.) Also, there were one or two occasions when disagreements lead to heated arguments and I (and, I suspect, everyone else) were secretly rooting for an all-out brawl.

The best part of the experience was that the other assistant and I were invited to dinner both Friday and Saturday evening at the 2 most expensive, most luxurious restaurants in Lund. There we ate creamy soup, lobster, elk, duck, the best apple crumble dessert ever and some darn good ice cream. We drank red wine, white wine and dessert wine....and were getting paid besides!

All I can say is that it was hard to go back to spaghetti for this evening's dinner and I can't wait till the next conference.

I havn't had much time to do anything fun lately but the other day it was so beautiful and crisp, I took a short walk around town and this is what I came up with. Lund is getting kind of boring since it is so small I can walk anywhere within 30 minutes and nothing too exciting happens here. I thought maybe mom & dad might want to look at it at the pictures at least. There is a pretty tree and some colorful fruit.

As promised I've put up some pictures of the Chinese dumpling party at my friend Stephanie's house on Sunday. It was great! Actually, she lives just 4 floors above me so it was an easy walk for me and it turned out that almost my entire class was there. We all made Chinese dumplings by hand. And we had some Chinese Tea Eggs--they're just eggs boiled in tea instead of water but OH! they were SO good!!!

Also, another Chinese classmate of mine did a traditional Chinese folk dance. You can see the pictures below.

As for the photos, I decided to make most of these black and white just to play around. Also, I've always liked black and white better than color. For some reason though, this batch of pictures all came out a little fuzzy. It could be because I accidentally dropped the camera saturday night.

Here are the rest. I recommend watching it in slideshow format once because the last 15 pictures or so are a series and look better if you can watch them move together.

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)

Things have been going alright lately. As I mentioned in the last entry, the weather has been beautiful. There hasn't been a cloud in the sky all week!

I've also gotten a job, finally. From now on I'll be tutoring English to a man from Poland. He already speaks very good English but doesn't seem to believe it so he'd like to take lessons...who am I to disagree with him? So, although it isn't a lot of money it will certainly help out. Best of all, this means that I don't have to take the job I was applying for, sticking junk mail in people's mailboxes!!! I was once a fund-raiser for the University of Michigan and I know what it feels like to have people curse you because of the way you make your money. At least that time it was over the phone, I was really not looking forward to dealing with that face to face.

I may need the extra money after all, though. The strangest thing happened two nights ago when i noticed something crunchy in my glass of juice. As it turns out, it was part of my tooth! I have enjoyed 25 cavity-free years. I've never had any dental problems, I've been drinking more milk than ever before and suddenly part of my tooth flakes off! Luckily it's not a big piece and I can't even really see it in the mirror but i can feel it and it is driving me crazy!! Also, since I don't know why it did that I've been afraid to eat crunchy things in case my other teeth start crumbling. If anyone knows anything about dentistry, can you give me some advice? I'd go to a dentist here but I hear that that's the only medical service not covered by my insurance.

Here are just a few random pictures taken on my walk home from school the other day. The weather has been so beautiful here all week so I've been doing my best to stay outdoors. According to the locals, in two weeks winter will probably be here bringing cold, darkness, and rain. Apparently, here in Lund it doesn't snow so much as sleet.

What a week. I have been trying to write on here all week but something always comes up. I had an extra-special treat Tuesday. A friend from down the hall had an extra ticket to The Cardigans concert here in Lund. It was a bit expensive, seeing as I haven't really listened to their music for quite a long time now, but I couldn't pass it up. When they first became popular in the U.S. about 7 or 8 years ago with their first album, First Band on the Moon, I was a big fan. In fact, theirs was the first concert I ever went to and, as they are from Sweden (Malmo!), it was meant to be.

So, for the past week, I've been psyching myself up, listening to their newest album, Long Gone Before Daylight. I have to say, I really enjoy it! I think it is their best yet. The title of this blog, No Sleep, is also the title of one of my favorite songs on the CD. If I knew how to put music blurbs on here I would but I'm not that computer savvy and frankly, I'm a bit too lazy too figure it out right now...maybe I'll work on that this weekend.

By Tuesday evening I was getting pretty excited about the concert. The thing that really surprised me when I got to the concert hall was how small it was. When I saw them before, it was also in a very small hall but I guess for some reason I figured they would have moved on to bigger venues-especially in their home country. My friends and I arrived a little late so we didn't get front row seats and since all these Swedes are so darn tall we decided to head up to the mezzanine to get a view. While my pictures didn't turn out very good and we couldn't see the drummer, it was a pretty good spot to watch from.

The concert turned out even better than I had expected and now I can't wait for my CDs to get here so I can listen to their older albums I've been neglecting.

As I said, my pictures didn't turn out so well but here are a couple anyway. Ah, I almost forgot. The opening band was a Danish band called 'Mew'. They weren't too bad...but I'm about to run out and buy a CD.

Yesterday I went with some friends to Malmo again. I've been there before but this time we had a native from Malmo, Gustav, to give us the detailed tour.

We actually ended up going to the castle again, which was good because this time he got us into the museum for student prices (even though i don't have a student card). Since almost everything is in Swedish, it was nice to have someone to translate the important details. I retract my previous statement saying, 'I don't reccommend this museum to anybody.' It was very nice and there was even an aquarium/zoo hidden in the basement. I highly reccommend the museum to everybody...if you can get in on the students' rate.

So, we ended up spending too long in the museum so by the time we left everything was closed. We walked back to the center and had some really good Indian food, then to an 'American pub' and on to Gustav's house to hang out and watch TV for a while.

On the way home we did a little crime-fighting. As we walked along the street full of staggering, liquered-up people, we noticed a sinister-looking man sliding a long, metal object covertly up his sleeve. After he was satisfied that it was concealed properly, he stumbled off in the direction of one of the bars. (towards the one Gustav said is famous for brawls) I suggested we wrestle him to the ground and take the object before he can kill anyone with it but the others out-voted me so we kept walking till we found some police officers. The said they'd check it out. Who knows if they ever did or if they were in time but I felt good knowing that maybe we saved someone's life (but then again, maybe we ruined that sinister-looking man's life.) But, I prefer not to dwell on that.

See more here!

Well, I don't really have anything to say since nothing much has been going on. Just going to school. Still taking kickboxing classes and Japanese classes. Tomorrow I am going to check on my Swedish classes. Since I'm going to be here for over a year I am entitled to take the free Swedish classes for immigrants. I'm really looking forward to that. My 'self-studying' has tappered off a bit more than I'd like to admit.

So, I thought I'd just throw a few pictures up for people to look at. Nothing too exciting.