Hej, Hej

    I have not kept up with the blog as much as I would have liked, but I will try again now. I guess that is pretty normal for things like this though. I made it to Sweden a little over a week ago. To get here, I flew SAS, Scandinavian Airlines. First, I left Orlando airport to Chicago(where I couldn't get wifi for some reason). Then, from Chicago, I flew into Arlanda, which is a little outside of Stockholm. I could bring one backpack, one carry-on (17lbs.), and one checked bag(50lbs.). I will look up the price and post it next time. I can't remember right now. It took about an hour and a half to get from Arlanda to Västerås by Swebus.

    Unfortunately, once we got to Västerås Centralen, we had no idea where to go since everything was in Swedish. I finally decided to go into what was luckily the ticketing station for the buses and trains, and ask someone what the was best way to get to the university. We bought two tickets to the university, and got there 4 hours before the expected pick-up time for exchange students so we just waited with our luggage in front of the office. Once, the registration started at 2pm, we were given our keys for the apartment, along with a temporary id card that would eventually allows us to make a real university card. Again, there was some difficulty with that not being ready until the end of the week because we weren't all registered in the university system properly. It wasn't all bad news. We got free coffee! The best part about the exchange registration was that everyone was speaking English. It really is the common language.

    After talking to people from Germany, the Netherlands, and the U.K., we were told to get into one of the vans so we could be taken to our apartment complex. I should have started this by saying the first day did not leave the best impression. Our complex was 30 minutes away from the university(walking), once an old hotel, and kind of small. I was with my friend from home Kevin, and as far as we could tell, we were the only people living in this place. The people from the university left us at the desk with no idea how to get back to the university haha. The first night was rough. We had no internet because we were told we had to wait to get a real university card to purchase it, and we were alone without knowing what the signs meant.

  The next day, we were saved. Our savior, Antonio from a small town in Italy, was waiting for us patiently at the university! Well, he happened to be on a bench in front of the university, and I had overheard him speaking English so I gave it a shot...and we won everything. He introduced us to a Swedish girl, Maya, who showed us the town, and helped us get internet, and bus passes, and understand what was going on. She was great. The rest of the Swedish people are very reserved though they do understand English so once you get over the fact that you sound like a stupid American for having to ask them for the price in English, things get a little easier.