44 days of adventures: Part 2

Hej hej,

Again I got a little delayed with publishing my blog. I think I’m never going to be a good blogger since I cannot handle deadlines. But as promised: Part 2 of my adventures in Sweden!

In week 44 (funny fact: part 2 of ’44 days of adventures’ starts in week 44) I was really busy. You might be wondering with what… Well, I wrote my article in that week. For the people who don’t know it: I’m a writer for JIBS United Magazine, the magazine of the Business School here in Jönköping. I had to write an article about exchange students from the six different continents. I interviewed six people about their home universities and their home town. It was really nice to do it! I’ve learned a lot about other countries and the school systems there and since I’m going to become a teacher who wants to teach abroad it was really interesting. My deadline was on the 30th of October and on the 27th of October I hadn’t write anything. The stress was overwhelming, but I didn’t mind about that. If there is stress, that means there is a deadline. And if there is a deadline, that means that I have to hand something in on time. And if I have to hand something in on time, I’m working really hard! So conclusion of the story: Stress is not that bad. I managed to hand everything in at exactly 23.57 at night, so I was glad. The proof readers are now going to read my article first and if they are okay with it, it will be published in the December issue of JIBS United Magazine. I’m soooo excited! I’m a writer! Who could’ve ever imagine that! :-D

In week 44 other things happened as well. The 31st of October is known as Halloween evening and of course I celebrated that! I actually had two Halloween parties that week and it was awesome. On Wednesday, after doing my last interview for my article, I went to Råslätt for a pre-party. Afterwards we went to Aka to do some crazy dances. It was fun! On Friday was the second Halloween party. It was held in Cyklamen and Larissa organized it. All the girls from her program came over and we had a great night together! This was actually the first time that I celebrated Halloween and I have to say that I’m a fan of this celebration! It might be not that common in the area where I come from, but that makes it even nicer to celebrate it here. And of course I like to dress up and act crazy. Halloween is the perfect event for that! :-)

Okay, this blog is going to be a little bit messy. I’m already going to do a flashback to the morning and afternoon of the 31st of October. On that day I namely went to Stockholm with my politics-club to visit the South African Embassy and the Iraqi Embassy. It is actually called ‘Utrikespolitiska Föreningen Jönköping’ what you can translate as ‘Society of International Affairs’. I signed up for the club at the Involvement Day in September and the trip to Stockholm was the first trip they planned in this semester. The plan was to leave at 05.00 in the morning. That was a real HELL, because there are no busses at that time… So that meant that I had to walk for 45 minutes to get there on time. My alarm went off at 03.30 and after finishing my article the night before at midnight you can maybe imagine that I was really tired. Since I’m here I’m a lot of times hangovered from tiredness and that is not really nice when you have to sit in a car for four hours. Well, so I had done my sports for the day and I was on time at the campus. My other club-members were already there. I was kind of nervous, because I didn’t know anybody of the group and since a lot of them were Swedish I was kind of afraid that they would just speak in Swedish with each other. BUT, that didn’t happen. I was apparently not the only international, so the Swedes were kind of forced to speak in English. No, I’m kidding. :-) They were willing to speak in English and that was super nice. I worried for nothing! We arrived around 9 o’clock in the morning and Stockholm was sooo beautiful at that time of the day! No tourists because it was a weekday and the sun was shining. Perfect! Eventually the South African Embassy had cancelled, so we had the chance to walk around in the city and to get a fika. After the fika we went to the Nobel Museet. I’ve been there before on my Stockholm-trip with the girls, but back then it was not that interesting. With the people from the Society of International Affairs it wás actually interesting. I think the reason for that is that those people are all really interested in ‘the bigger meaning of life’ instead of being a tourist as I was the first time. They knew a lot about the different winners of the Nobel Prize and that was kind of a motivation for me to get involved with it and ask for more information about their knowledge. In the afternoon we finally reached the goal of our trip: The Iraqi Embassy! I didn’t know what to expect from it, because I’ve never visited an embassy before and I’ve never met important people as an ambassador. The ambassador of Iraqi was a friendly man. He first told us something about Iraqi itself and after that we had the opportunity to ask questions while enjoying a cup of Arabic tea. The questions we asked were more or less about America, the ISIS-crisis and how the Iraqi government is handling everything what is happening in the country. It was interesting to hear what the ambassador told us. I’m not really interested in politics and everything what has something to do with it, but I think it is good to know what is happening in the world. Since I don’t watch television and since I’m not able to read the Swedish newspapers, I barely have an idea what is actually happening in the world. Now I’m kind of a little bit more up to date about the ISIS-crisis and that is nice.

In week 46 we had a huge event at Högskolan i Jönköping! It was time for INTERNATIONAL WEEK! International Week is a week where all the exchange students represent their countries, their traditions, their universities, etc. On Monday it was HLK’s turn, so that means that my faculty was the first one. Rachelle and me were all dressed up in orange and we prepared the Dutch dishes ‘boerenkool’ and ‘hutspot’. It felt like coming home and it was really hard to not eat the dishes before the day actually started. We also served our famous ‘stroopwafels’, ‘pepernoten’, ‘dropjes (sweet and salt)’ and ‘bread with hagelslag’. It was amazing! I love Dutch food! At 11.00 the start-sign was given. People came more or less for the food, but hey, what would you do around lunchtime? :-) All the people who came to our table asked about the ‘boerenkool’ and the ‘hutspot’ because it looked a little bit different than the food they normally eat. The ‘stroopwafels’ and the ‘pepernoten’ were popular as well. At some point we ran out of plates and spoons, what meant that we couldn’t serve the warm dishes anymore. I wasn’t sad about it at all. More leftovers for us! :-D I ate a lot that day. I had ‘pasta carbonara’ from the Italians, typical Chinese vegetables, lovely Korean food, Belgian waffles, brownies made by the girls from the USA and a lot more. It was amazing to have all those different kinds of food around me. I love food! And at the end of the day my stomach and my Dutch-ness were satisfied and happy.

That week on Wednesday I had a really nice visitor: My aunt Ans! Ans had a working meeting in Göteborg and because she was already in the neighbourhood (two hours away from Jönköping) she decided to spend her last free evening in another town, in my town. It was sooo nice to see her again! And I also appreciate it sooo much that she came all the way to have dinner with me! It was just amazing! :-D We had dinner at a restaurant called ‘Twin City’. It is located in the centre of the city and it’s known as a nice place with good food. I cannot deny that. My fajitas were amazing and Ans enjoyed her pizza as well! If It is actually quite funny that we ate Spanish and Italian food in a Swedish restaurant, but in Scandinavia everything is possible! It was really nice to have my lovely auntie around me for the evening. Complaining in Dutch is still the best way to complain, haha. Not that I complained all evening long, but you know what I mean. I could really feel that we didn’t speak with each other for a few months, because we had to tell each other a lot and the evening was over before I could say ‘aardappelpuree’. No, that’s a joke. But it went really fast. It was just really nice. I realized that family members always be your family members and it doesn’t matter if you’re living far away, it feels like home when you have them around you for a while. Ans, if you’re reading this: Ik vond het heel fijn om je te zien en ik heb genoten van je oer-Hollandse gevoel humor en je geweldige accent als je communiceert in het Engels!

The final event of the International Week was the One World Sittning and Akademien afterwards. The sittning was an example of a not really well organized event if I may say that. There was not enough food and the presenters were kind of acting like idiots with not even a sense of humor in their jokes. Contrariwise Akademien was again nice. That evening was the beginning of a week full of parties and enjoying the time with the people around me. The parties were awesome! I got to know a lot of people better and that was cool. Also the first people left Jönköping for real. My lovely friend Alina finished her internship here and is now back in the USA. Thank god I had the chance to meet her before she was leaving. We had a really nice brunch at Condeco, my favourite coffee place for just 89 SEK! Although the food was good, I had mixed feelings about the whole thing. She was the first of my friends who is leaving and I know that there are many others leaving in less than three weeks. :-( Right now I feel like having people around me all the time. It feels like the best thing to do. Normally I enjoy being on my own as well, but since there are just a few weeks left for a lot of internationals here in Jönköping, I want to spend the time we have left as well as possible.

Oh and by the way, I went to the cinema with my roommates Larisa, Sergej, Simeon, Koushik, Krišs and their friend Cody! I paid 145 SEK(!) for a ticket, but I’ve seen the most amazing movie of the year! Maybe you can already guess what movie I’m talking about. Yes…? No…? Correct…! Indeed I mean ‘Interstellar’. Oh my god, it was so amazing to see that movie on the big screen. The movie is about the space and finding a new planet because in a few years the earth will collapse. It was just amazing. At one point there is an explosion and there was no noise. It was so weird, but on the other hand you could really let your imagination work. I’m not going to reveal anything more, but I would really recommend it! It’s a movie with Matthew McConaughey and it takes 169 minutes, what is quite long. You don’t need more for a nice night out, except a bucket of popcorn then!

I’m almost at the end of my story, but I have one more thing to tell you. It’s kind of a ‘last but not least’ thing. I PASSED MY SWEDISH EXAM! :-D I had 98 points out of 107, so that means that I have an VG/A. I’m soooo happy! I was afraid to get it back, but now I’m more confident about my Swedish skills and I’m having the feeling that I will pass Swedish 2 as well. Or well, I hope that I’m going to pass it because I didn’t start studying yet…

So well, that was kind of the summary of ’44 days of adventures: Part 2’. It’s a long story, I know. I think that’s because I’m doing a lot of things here and I always postpone to write it down. Next week I’m going to write another blog. As many of you have seen on Facebook, I’ve been to Finnish Lapland! The pictures are super great, but the story is even more amazing!

Tack så mycket och liten kyss från mig för dig!