September 16
It’s been an interesting week so far. I’m getting a slight bit nervous about my digital communications class - we have less than a month to go and I really don’t know how much of the material is expected for us know. The good news is that our professor is back from his conference trip to Australia so I think it will pick up from here on. The Swedish language course is going well - the professor is good and there are several cool students in the class. On Wednesday we had a lecture on the Scandinavian Culture class about the history of Scandinavia. It was quite interesting for we saw the maps of the age and how it influenced the way people thought about Sweden. Scandinavia is actually a misspelling; the original was Scadinavia, and the ‘Scadin’ part is based loosely off the German ’schaden’, which means to damage or ‘dangerous’. Scandinavia was referred to as the ‘dangerous island’. The Romans never quite got up there due to the Visigoths, and thus the region was not well explored. Today, many Swedes still think of themselves as not part of the ‘continent’, though it is firmly attached. There was also an interesting origin myth that Scandinavia was the first bit of land to appear after the biblical flood and it was here that civilization started and that the civilized peoples of Europe originated from Scandinavia. Yesterday the corridor threw a big party for Helene, who had her 21st birthday party. 
We had a lot of food - I made two pizzas; Lishuang, Lishuang’s friend (it’s a difficult name), Yuko, and Judith made Chinese dumplings; Laure had a variety salad starter, Pablo made Spanish pancakes and a lemon cake; Christian made apfelstudel; and there were two or three other cakes and deserts. Christian brought his stereo in and kept the music flowing with his powerbook and ipod.
I was so busy playing host that I really didn’t take a whole lot of pictures. But there were 10 cameras there snapping away, so I’m gonna get some pictures and add them to my site. Pretty soon a LOT of people started coming, people that we didn’t even know. Word must have spread through the Delphi compound (where there are 23+ buildings) that a great party was being thrown down in building N. Pablo had a huge continent of his Spanish friends out in the corridor singing Spanish drinking songs. Lots of French people there, and the French got the most hammered from the alcohol. It was great fun to watch. 
Later on, I was sitting with Lishuang and Frieder and Paul on the sofas by the table. The conversation got to languages, and we spent a good hour with Lishuang showing us the Chinese language and all the characters. Lishuang has extremely good handwriting and her Chinese letters were really great to look at. Frieder and I agreed that we wouldn’t even know how to start drawing a character. We challenged her to write our names in Chinese, and sometimes she would have to find an analogy. Paul’s name in Chinese loosely translated to ‘protect’, while Frieder’s name was “to fly arrive”. My name was more difficult. She showed us how they write numbers and Frieder challenged us to count to 31 using just one hand (the trick is to use binary). With Chinese you count to ten with one hand, because the numbers 6 through 10 are represented with hand signals. Before we leave we want Lishuang to write all of our names big on nice paper. I will try to write their names in Gujurati.
A great moment happened actually when most of the people left. The people living in corridor and a few close friends were left, and we all started to clean up. The result was impressive: with 12 people working together, we had all the pots, plates, glasses, pans, utensils, counters, and stove cleaned and dried and put back on the shelf, and the floor swept and mopped. The kitchen, after sustaining a huge party, looked ready for an open-house. We called it a night at around 3am, but I stayed up talking with friends until 4:15am. I went to bed and ended up getting up at 1pm. My internal clock has gotten so screwed so I’m gonna stay up the whole night studying and working engineering problems (just had two cups of coffe). At 5am I’m gonna bike to the hill and watch the sunrise over Skåne. The laundry time slot is at 7am too. By Saturday evening I’ll be exhausted and thus get back on the normal cycle.
