The other day, Valentine's Day, I went to a party at a nearby nation (student group). I have never been to this nation and have heard that it is usually full of freaky people so I should dress a little strange. Well, i wasn't exactly sure to what extent i should dress 'strange' so I decided to be the brooding girl in black. About 90% of the the students were wearing black so i guess i made the right choice by not wearing my feather T-shirt and cat hair skirt.
The party was actually to welcome new students who had arrived this semester but judging from the red lights, heart-shaped balloons, and the big poster that says: 'Smollands Loves you!!! Who do you Love?' it became a new people/valentines party. Not too bad. I got some good vegitarian lasagna and ice cream out of it.
Didn't stay too late because i had to walk back and I didn't want to drink too much...but I stayed longer than I'd planned. Here are some more pictures of the good time at Smollands-the 'Rebel Nation'
Just a few pictures from last weekend's corridor party. It wasn't in my corridor but on the other side of the first floor. It was funny because i was actually invited by someone in my Japanese class... they asked if I wanted to go to a party and while she was giving directions I was sure they were inviting themselves to my house for a party! Turns out it was next door which was even better because I didn't have to worry about cleaning up afterwards!
After I arrived I realized it was a theme party and 'Asia' was the theme. but, I didn't have my yukata with me so I had to settle for my red shirt representing the sun on the Japanese flag. You can see my festive dress here.
I got some disturbing news over the weekend...Young-Hoon's beloved pet turtle, Kamma, has mysteriously dissappeared. It seems that he was not there after we came back from Korea back in July, just before my coming here but I completely forgot since I had so much on my mind and at the time, I thought that his roomate had taken him for some reason and he would be returned later. Well, it turns out his roomate didn't take him and they never saw Kamma again...the only clues to his fate were several feathers scattered near the open window and around the aquarium. Although Kamma had canabalistic tendencies and we actually thought he had died back in April, he will be missed (by me at least...for the next week or so). I had wanted to put some pictures of Kamma up but it turns out that I don't have any with me here...or I can't find them now.
Anyways, instead I thought I'd try an experiment instead. The following pictures are digital pictures of photos from before I left for Sweden. I know they won't look great but I just want to see. If anyone has any advice on how I can improve them, I'd like to put up some more I took before I left Japan but I don't have access to a scanner.
Nothing much is happening in my part of the world but I just want to say 'CONGRATULATIONS' to Young-Hoon for successfully defending his dissertation yesterday. Now it's free sailing until graduation in March, right? Next stop, Lund!
Nothing much has been happening around here lately...just school and that's about it. I'm pretty proud of myself because I've actually been keeping ahead of the readings for class in addition to doing my extra homework for Japanese and Swedish classes. I guess you could look at that and say, 'Well! Good for her! What a great student and she really seems to be pulled together!' But I think It'd be more realistic to say, 'MAN! That girl needs to get a life!'
The ting is, I'm not dissatisfied with my life now (although I'm sure other people are looking at me thinking that I must be either a terribly boring person or be miserable) I don't think I'm either. I'm enjoying the good feeling of accomplishing something and hey, I'm here to learn darn it! Also, on the occasions that I do go to the pubs, I have fun, I enjoy it...until the next morning when I wonder why I paid SO much money to feel like crap the next day. But the thing is, I always feel so guilty when i turn down an invitation to go to a party but I've decided no more...I'm through. I've got to study and save what little money I have for when Jin comes or when my family comes to visit this summer. I'll have a whole lot better time traveling with them or drinking with them than I will going to some crowded dance club where people are just trying to pick up one another.
But, on that note, small private parties are ok. And, just this week I've had two. The first was just a dinner party for a couple of my classmates. Because we divided into groups this semester I rarely get to see some of the people who I talked to a lot last semester so I thought I'd be a nice chance to catch up and show off my new place. It was a TexMex theme and I made tacos and Mexican corn soup. I even made my own salsa and guacamole! I've become a real 'gourmet' chef since I came back here from Christmas....actually, oddly enough, my Swedish has also improved by leaps and bounds since I came back from Christmas...something happened to me back in Michigan...I'm studying harder, cooking better, and learning quicker than ever before! Strange...
Anyways, it was a good time, the TexMex dinner party. We got to catch up a little bit.
On Friday, my corridor got together and cooked some dinner together for a 'corridor party.' I thought it would be a lot bigger than it was. There are just 11 people living in my corridor and 5 of them couldn't make it. Then 3 of those that did come left to go to a party. So, then there wre three. We played Trivial Pursuit in Swedish. Unforunatly about 1/2 the questions were actually about Sweden and Swedih things so I couldn't do much there.
So, here are just a few pictures from those exciting nights. Acually, the reason there are never many pictures of a given even anymore is because I am really not satisfied with my photo taking recently. I don't want to blame it on the camera because I know that a the camera is only as good as the picture taker (and also because it was a gift from my brother and I really appreciate it!) Nonetheless, I just remember back to when I used to really enjoy taking pictures, trying to compose a nice photo, that satisified feeling of getting my photos back from the store (or the even more satisfied feeling of developing them myself). I just don't feel that anymore so, I think that I'll be switching back to my old cameras for a while. The only problem is that it will be more money to develop...what to do, what to do?
