Good News!

Highlight of the day was the letter from Kela (the social security system) in Finland letting me know they will pay me some study allowance. At least that is settled.

Two first days of lessons are also behind and it feels good. Teacher is excellent:-) Our class is very small-only about 20 students and so far very few once in my program. Mostly there are exchangestudents or students from other programs about to acctually finish their degree.

Now I better go to bed as lessons start at 9:00 am tomorrow.

Weekend trip

Our friend gave us this book (Underbara utflykter runt Uppsala/Lovely trips around Uppsala) before we came here.

As we are new here we though that we might as well drive around a bit so yesterday we already checked out two places.

Österbybruk


and Syltkrukan, where we had waffles and bought homemade honey and jam.

Today I learned

that there's a place called Vittulsberg on the way to Uppsala.

There is also 100's of roundabouts with two lanes and you don't wanna go in the wrong one. Neither do you wanna trust that people are driving in the direction they are blinking but most likely they wanna go exactly where they are not.

Snails and Shells

Lena wrote about how the snails on the street have no shells (and therefore looks like poop). I know exactly the ones she means, long black one that are slimy.

In our garden here (or our landlords garden, however you wanna put it) there is heaps, heaps of snails with nice shells acctually. I really don't like snails very much as they are so slimy but I like the shell of these ones, I think you could almost mistake them for something you picked up on a sandy beach (the shells that is).

Here some pics


Faro also needs to inspect it:

Stefan is not scared to take them in his hands. Yäk!

Over Optimistic Planning

This moving and settling down in a new country is taking more energy from both of us than what we expected, I think. It's only small things that needs to get fixed but in the end they pile up and going to this office and that office and so on takes more time than you calculated.

Well, tomorrow I'll boycott everything that is related to Uni or registration or tax offices.

Tomorrow we will go IKEA, and for this I have reserved half a day because I know we won't get out of there in half an hour. Somehow I was over optimistic in my planning for today and had acctually thought we'd manage to go there after all the "small things we needed to fix".

(Stefan noted that the Swedes could spend some more time on their branding, Ica/Ikea, get easily mixed)

BTW, anyone with experience, is Ica or Coop the better alternative for grocery shopping? Or is there any other stores you can recommend?

Better little by little

Had introduction day today at school and even if we really haven't solved much of our problems I do feel better. At least my phone's Internet works now so let's hope the blogging is ok:)

As the professor said today: if you can't get what you want make sure you get what you need.

On request here is some pics of our Sweden countryside house.



Faro and the garden.



Our landlords' house next to ours.


Once we get things sorted indoors I'll take some pics there as well.

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Frustration!

Looks like we are in for some bittersweet bureaucracy war.

Seems it's impossible to do anything in this country unless you have the personal number, which means you are registered here.

I had even thought about this in advance and when we were moving stuff in July I went to register myself. They called me though a day after to tell me that if the moving date is in August I cannot register myself until the same week. Which means that now that we wanna sign up for phones and internet etc. it doesn't work. Holy Moses, if I would have known I would have changed the date on the form!

*sigh*

Sweden vs Catta 1-0

Here we go

Now we are all packed and ready to start driving towards Sweden and this song keeps buzzing in my head.

See you all soon I hope!

när någon viskar så spetsar alla andra öronen

There is a saying in Swedish that when somebody whispers everybody else sharpen up their hearing.

That is so true.

Soon I will also realize we are on the way

Got my school book and the introduction program for the master studies today.

Slowly it's starting to feel more real, but my mind still haven't quite hit reality. It will feel real when we are on the way.

Agua

You know when sometimes the perfect song plays at the perfect moment. On Sunday when driving back to the city from the country-side at 11 pm, just me and Stefan, Jarabe de Palo's "agua" started playing and it was just a beatuful moment. We were both sad to leave the country-side as it is one of our favorite places and we had had a perfect party the day before. We were also nostalgic as we are now experiences the last days in Finland before our move.

Tip of the day

Like the humor in Josephine Bornebush's blogposts!

Humorist in i döden: | Josephine Bornebusch

Iphone is back!

My iphone is back! Or acctually it's not my iphone it's a brand new iphone 4, seems like they didn't manage/couldn't be bothered to fix my old one. So I'll be back the phone in a week when we are in Sweden and I'll configure it with my new Swedish sim-card.

Changes!

Finally I got around to change the blogg a bit.

Now I won't bother you with my study subject on this blog anymore as I started a new blog called Rules of Green where I will gather some thoughts on that. Feel free to follow that one as well if you like.

I thought here I would continue writing about our daily life-which in a weeks time will be starting in Uppsala so I changed the whole outlook of the blog to something I thought more suitable.

I felt the pic of Faro symbolises at the moment my feelings pretty well. He's checking out the unknown that will be a great adventure but at the same time we are a bit sad to leave. Well it's suppose to be only for two years. On Monday we are leaving! iiik!

BTW, check out Cia's blog for some pics from the weekend goodbye/engagement party.

Holy Monkey!

As you know I like orangutangs so I have to share this link with you.

Café de Nopal

Had dinner in Cafe de Nopal today and it was fantastic! Really recommend it if you are in Helsinki and feel like having real mexican food.

You can read more about it here: Authentic Mexican restaurant in Finland: Café de Nopal

Another one

Another blogg on the same subject as my last bloggpost.

"Black Friday"

As the stock exchanges are crashing I can't resist linking to this blogg that I read some time ago.

The link is in Swedish but it's a link about how our economic system is built up around growth and how we are already living over our resources. I've been following some bloggs on the subject lately and a lot of people are already talking about a different economy model that is not built up on getting more and better.

I read somewhere that we have been consuming over the earth's limits since year 1984. I think that's a scary thought.

Phone-less

My iphone got some problem with the microphone so it's in repair. As I'm used to doing updates from my phone it will probably be pretty quite here for 2-3 weeks, as it was during my holiday anyway...

I've been thinking of creating something new in the bloggosphere for the sweden adventure, I just need to find some time and inspiration-and perhaps some help.

Packing

Spent most of my holidays packing stuff from Helsinki to the countryside or Sweden. We also cleaned out the attic and other fun stuff.

Second day back at work and what are we doing?

Yes, packing! We're moving office to the other side of the street. At least I'm getting in shape! Just a shame that I will only work for 3 more weeks...

Some lovely stuff you might find in an old attic:






Lucky, the were all dead.

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