August 20
Now that much of the basic info has been noted, these journal entries will be considerably shorter. No luck on the internet for my room yet, the office closes too early and I am at other required meetings. I was able to use the hotspots in the AF building and Kårhuset, so at least the email backlog was taken care of. After the meeting I walked home and then took my bike to the supermarket and dropped 280 kr on groceries. I got vegetables and snacks, and I will be making pizza for the corridor dinner we will be having tomorrow evening. Oh yes, and today we had a mini Christmas in the kitchen today. We discovered two Ikea Starter Kits and tableware in our kitchen, and we opened them to find a whole array of vital essentials. We have plates, glasses, flatware, frying pans, pots, containers, mixing bowls, spatulas, etc. etc. It is great! We arranged the kitchen, and Yoko had three of her Japanese friends and they tried cooking some Japanese food. I also learned that ‘yaki’ means fried, so Yaki Soba is fried noodles! While I am here I will try to learn some basics in French, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese. Mind you, this is basics as in ‘hello’, ‘thank you’, ‘excuse me’, ‘bye’, ‘please’, and some simple phrases. We were all going to go to a welcome party at the AF building for exchange students and had a pre-party in the kitchen. We waited an hour to get into the party ($10 entrance fee) and the cheapest beer at the bar was 48 kr. The music was typical dance-hip-hop, and it was very crowded. I bounced out after two hours, and walked back to the dorm with Nick.