Two days ago I had a day which I can only describe as ’sucky’. Today has been what I can only describe as ‘awesome’. Pretty good improvement, huh? The sucky day was just one of those days, I think. I was feeling a bit off because I had to rush to get to class, and then spent the whole time not talking to anybody.
Then yesterday I went to class again (on time), and made sure I did talk to people, even though it’s scary! I met some Spaniards and hung out with them at lunch, and they said I could be in their group for the class and then the lecturer said we got assigned groups. Oh well, not sucky enough to get me down.
This morning I woke up with a sucky throat (still there a little bit), and was tempted to go ‘oh no another sucky day’ but then I decided against it and decided to have an awesome day. So… I did. I went into town to grab a few things (slightly sucky because I bought a mouse and it turned out to be PS/2, but eh it was cheap), took some photos (coming soon, probably to FB), got scared by large explosions (seriously massive, but I think they were maybe firing cannons), saw a group of students wandering around chanting (not sure what about, but a while later I heard them yell ‘aussie, aussie, aussie, oi, oi, oi’ a few times, so who knows who they were. They had some Norwegian flags?). And then, best of all, I met Ylsa. Which is extraordinarily hard to pronounce being Australian, apparently.
Actually, I went to Kalmar nation to join up, because they sounded the coolest. Live music, 80s disco, vegetarian restaurant, etc. Cool! So I found my way in (complicated) and said hi to Ylsa, who was the girl signing people up. We got chatting, and it was just nice to finally have a really nice conversation with a Swede (besides my flatmates), and she seemed really lovely. Turned out I forgot most of the stuff I needed to sign up, though, so I had to pop home and then back again. Eh. So now I am officially part of Kalmar!
Oh! Last but not least, I ordered some food in Swedish properly today! First time! Up until now, I’ve been like “En ***, tack”, which is okay, but not great. So today I said “Kan jag få en ***, tack”, which is like ‘may I have’. I’m not sure if I got it entirely right, and it was really slow, but I got my food fine. The girl didn’t say anything odd, so I have to assume she either realised I was foreign or thought I was retarded. Pretty sure I didn’t fool her for being Swedish, but it feels pretty good. I do feel terrible about not knowing the language, but I’m slowly starting to get the absolute basics.
Hej då! (not 100% sure about the spelling there)
Oh and it gets better! I was going to go to Smålands tonight to see a band (Fibes, Oh Fibes!), but the line went all the way around the block, so I headed over to my (now) home nation, Kalmar, to see what their 80s disco was like. It was not very 80s, as far as I could tell, but they had a special one-off DJ from the UK so hopefully it will be better other nights. But regardless, I met a couple of nice Germans and talked to them for a couple of hours; Julika and some other dude (neither of us could remember his name, he was… interesting). Anyway yeah, but I’m going to go to fika on Sunday to hopefully catch up again with Julika and Ylva, so should be good. I am finally meeting people on my own! Woo!