While I have the time, I thought I'd put up a few more pictures. These are from Wednesday night when I went out in Malmo with a couple of friends from my Japanese class. We decided to check out the local karaoke bar. It was great! I was nervous because I knew they wouldn't have the individual karaoke boxes like in Japan and when I've karaoked in the States it was always in small bars with few people. At this bar there were many, many people. But, it turned out to be fine because there is no stage. You just stand by the bar and sing so not everyone can see who's singing. And, of course, if you pick a good song everyone will be so busy singing along that they don't care how good you are! So, I did a few songs then headed for the dance floor when my voice was hoarse (not that it is any better when it isn't hoarse but...)

More Karaoke pictures here!

For the first month or so after I arrived in Sweden, I was worried that it was going to be a boring life here. Lund is a pretty small town with not a lot to do...especially when you don't have any money to spend. What worried me most was that my classes were only 3 days a week, 7 hours per week. What in the world would I do with the rest of my time?!

Problem solved. These days I'm running around all day everyday. My 'free days' are even busier than my school days. In addition to my regular classes I've picked up some Japanese classes on Mondays and Wednesdays. Swedish classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays (it's also kind of far away so in total it takes up about 4-5 hours of my evening to go to them). Then there's kickboxing 3-4 days a week. My first english student seems to have dissappeared because our schedules don't work together and i think he got fed up. But, I've picked up a new prospective student and a couple people looking for me to edit their thesis.

I've also got a couple papers for my new 'class'. It is just about the worst class ever. I thought it was just me that didn't like it but yesterday i got an email calling for a revolt. The problem is that the teacher seems to know nothing about the subject. She changes her opinion of the material 2-3 times in the course of a 1 1/2 hour class depending on comments from students. She didn't even read the course books before assigning them so many are not even relevant to the course. she assigns papers on anything of our choice dealing with globalisation ('from prostitution to environmental degredation to the failing furnature industry in Indonesia--anything that interests you!') and then tells us to re-write them because they didn't follow the topic assigned.sigh...

On a happy note though, last Friday we all got a chance to relax. Our department had a party. It was fun. Free food. There's a couple more pictures here.

Since I've been fairly busy these past few weeks with school and tutoring and other things, I couldn't help but think again and again how nice it would be to spend one full day in bed doing nothing but sleeping. But, unfortunatly for me, even when I do have free time, I feel guilty wasting it on TV or sleeping and have even gotten into the crazy habit of setting my alarm for 9 or 10am on Saturday mornings!

Well, my dream of guiltless sloth came true this week. On Wednesday morning, during my class, I began to feel not-so-good. By the time I got home I was in pain from head to toe! Headache, sore throat that felt like i'd swallowed a baseball...Every muscle in my body ached (even some wierd little chin muscle i didn't know existed!) So, I thought I'd take a short nap before I headed out to the gym and then to my other plans for the evening. I never made it. I didn't get out of bed again until about 11am Thursday morning...when I just got up to break my afternoon plans. Back to bed. Later I was feeling quite a bit better so I decided to venture out to my Swedish class in the evening. Big mistake. After class I headed straight for bed again with the same headache and sore throat i thought I'd gotten rid of earlier. And, another 16 hours of sleep later...I could hardly swallow tea this morning so I didn't make it to class.

So, I've been sitting around the house for 3 guilt-free days now, sleeping, watching TV, reading a book...all of the things I'd dreamed of doing before...and it's terrible! I'm bored to tears, watching Oprah, getting bed sores, my room stinks because it's too cold to open a window, I'm hungry, there's no one to make me soup and my soup is gross, and I can't stop thinking about all the things I've missed out on (although I'm pretty sure there was nothing too extra-ordinary, I'll never know now, will I?)

But, I'm sure next week or in another two weeks or so, I'll be wishing again for just one day to spend sleeping...

My vacation's almost over. I've had the past 2 weeks 'free.' Of couse, 1 week of that was taken up working at the conference and working on my take home exam. I was planning on taking a trip up north with a friend but at the last minutes she asked for a change of plans, that we go to Copenhagen on the weekend instead...and now it's the weekend and I'm still here! But, it's ok I suppose because I got the chance to celebrate Halloween. I got all dressed up and went to a really crazy party on the 5th floor of my building. It just doesn't get more wild...there was beer, there was candy corn, there was Trivial Pursuit! All I can say is-good thing I didn't invest in a costume! So, Here are a couple pictures of the craziness. See if you can guess what I was. Most people got it on the first try.