A Student Life

So a few posts back I mentioned that this month I was going to live "The Student Life." What does this involve? Well, here in Uppsala it meant for me - numerous lunch and group work dates in the nations, dinner parties with friends in Flogsta, clubbing and salsa dancing nights, movie nights, cooking typical "student" meals, and of course, the gym. Being a student here can get pretty fast-paced if you want it to be. I've found that here on exchange, it really is all up to you. If you don't put yourself out there, you really won't get anywhere. If you take risks, talk to people you don't know in a friendly and open manner, and go to things even if its a little outside your comfort zone - you can find yourself doing some great stuff! It really amazes me sometimes how fortunate I've been to have such close friends who basically guarantee you a social life that it's not so difficult anymore. But a lot of the times, if you want something to happen - you really need to get up off your ass and set the wheels in motion. This photo up top is actually my media class out on a pub crawl which a guy in our class organised so we could all get to know each other.

Speaking of media class, this is me and my group members at Ostgota Nation doing some much needed Uni work. Each work date, we frequented a different nation - Ostgota is a great one in the afternoon as they have a waffle buffet for only some 30kr which is about $4.50 for unlimited waffles. So tasty but having more than 3 makes you feel really quite sick - SOOO MUCH CREAM! So yeah - we basically were together every day for over a week working on a major assignment and had class four days a week together. They are really cool people. A great group to work with!

On the day before the assignment was due, we celebrated finishing it and Allison, (one of our group member's) birthdays with a big dinner party. It was pretty cool - there were in total 14 people all in Allison's kitchen cooking Tacos together and baking a cake. I unfortunately didn't get any photos but there may be some on the way in the future - ah, the joys of Facebook! That was really quite cool!

Another memorable big dinner party was one hosted by an Italian girl in the corridor across the hall from me - whom I had met while busting into their kitchen to make some food. After learning about my love for cooking pasta, she invited me for dinner cooked by her and two Italian girls who were visiting her. Being cooked authentic Italian food by Italians - now that is pretty darn special! It was another big dinner party - in total - I'd say around 12 people were well fed by the end. It was damn tasty and so interesting to meet Italians! I love Italians - they are so friendly, enthusiastic and generous! For one of the Italian girls, I was apparently the first Australian she had ever met - and she found my accent incredibly strange. There are apparently a lot of Americans in Italy now and so she was familiar with the American accent as well as the British one. I explained to her that my Australian accent is not so strong and interestingly, she said that she found me quite difficult to understand! That was a first. I have usually been told my neutral accent is incredibly easy to understand. Incredible! Later on, a true blue Aussie guy rocked up and the Italian girl explained to me that actually, she could not understand a word he said. Hilarious!

The next night, I had dinner with my close friends Mina and Manon at Vikki's place. Vikki, is my German friend - yes I am gloating to such people such as Helen - who would love to have a German friend. The plan was to take an easy night eating dinner together and watching Finding Nemo as Manon had not yet seen it (I KNOW! OMG - as soon as I found out, I made moves to correct this awful sin). Finding Nemo  was - as always - just so good. So many good quotes.... ahh... just keep swimming!

I'm so grateful that in the time that my kitchen has been getting renovated, I have had such generous friends who've taken me in and fed me on multiple occasions! In terms of what I myself have been eating, I have recently started to eat the muesli and yoghurt combo! Yoghurt here comes in, unfortunately large bottles!

I have also been buying a lot of Pringles as they are cheaper here than in Australia and come in quite unusual flavours! Annoyingly, I have been told eating this many Pringles is not good for me. That is a little unfortunate.

So is this:

But it is quite tasty actually, although artificial as crap, but really, American dressing really is a good description for it, haha!

So what else about student life, I hang out with my friends a lot. I think I have told you before about how I have two beds. One which is normal, the same as everyone else, and the other, which is far superior. My friends love it and so any chance they get to be in my room - they like to soak up its comfy-ness!

Mina playing with my "worry dolls!"

Nights out are always interesting. One time this week we decided to veer left and head for a Salsa club instead of our usual route of going to Varmlands on a Friday for clubbing. It was such a cool place filled with people who could really salsa dance, and no students. Mostly they were older but a lot of my friends (who are better salsa dancers than I) danced with a couple of them and got some great tips! The music was awesome. I again was given an opportunity to affirm that I could not salsa dance but my friend Alex did his best to teach me! So nice of him! Oh and it was incredibly hot in there!

Other nights, we go to the nations for clubs. Stockholm Nation is by far the better one - as it is basically a real club whereas the others seem more like old buildings with a few lights and smoke. The music is also better. Here is a quick view of Stockholm Nation which we frequent on a Thursday night.

Varmlands Nation on a Friday on the other hand is special and really quite cool because you get to party it down in the library! Here is a photo I stole off Facebook of that:

To finish up: Today is St Patrick's day! That means lots of parties. Unfortunately, I'm still sick so I opted to stay home and rest as I need to be well for London on Monday. The one good thing about being home is that it is now just past 10:00pm. At 10pm, all the residents in the 15 buildings of Flogsta start screaming. Honestly, it has not been so well done in the last few months but today, I had a feeling it would be special and it was not bad at all! I took a video for you guys out my window to give you guys an idea of the screaming. Now as Flogsta is a street which goes around two loops... you can only faintly hear the screaming from the other buildings but you will get an idea.

THE FLOGSTA SCREAM - St Patrick's Day 2012 in Bld 3:2