December 4
Today was a great day, despite the difficulty I had sleeping in the early morning. A party started up in full swing at 4:00am and woke me up. It was bad…I felt I had been lying in bed for 12 hours between 1am and 6am. Then, the sleep I got between 7am and 10am was bliss. Oh, two days ago some Swedes hurled a TV out of the 4th floor balcony onto the main pathway before. Yeah. They do that here.
Christian and I have developed a plausible explanation for this Swedish college custom, though some might call it a ‘conspiracy theory’. IKEA (which as a design center right here in Lund, so it KNOWs college students) develops cheap affordable furniture that is easy to assemble (and thus, disassemble) and has a lot of stores everywhere in Sweden. The state-run alcohol system, Systembolaget, restricts the sale of alcohol so instead of it being mainstream and normal, Swedes go crazy with alcohol. They thus drink a lot at one sitting, becoming very very drunk. Combine drunken I.Q.-lowering group behavior with cheap furniture in a student dorm area, and the natural outcome is the wanton destruction of said furniture, often with flames involved. So much of Sweden is forested, so wood is not a problem. Efficient Swedish recycling returns the wood to the soil, and the cycle begins again. It’s a rather ingenious scheme for a self-sustaining economy.
Anyway, today was a good day. We went to Copenhagen and saw the FC Copenhagen vs. Viborg football game.
More pictures can be seen at http://www4.ncsu.edu/~srvora/pics/fc_copenhagen
It was good. Copenhagen demolished the other team 3-1. Me, Christian, his friend Jorge, Frieder, Laure, and her boyfriend Laurent (who had flown in from London) was there. Afterward we met up with Paul at the central train station and Laure and Laurent went back to Lund. We walked over to the pedestrian district and stumbled across an Indian restaurant. The Germans were up for it so we went in. I had baigan burtha (though the Chana Masala was tempting..but I can make a reasonable chana masala at home), Christian had Lamb Sabzi, Frieder at Chicken sabzi, and at my recommendation Jorge had butter chicken. I ordered mine spicy but it really came out spicy. The food was fairly authentic, the naan too not like that Indian restaurant in Lund. I ate very well (see Mom, I’m eating here!), and for $26 for myself it was ridiculously expensive but good. I mean…$26. Whew.
Yesterday I busted out close to 3-4 pages of my essay, and I’m just getting started. Hehe. The topic is endlessly fascinating. Everyone should read “From Beirut to Jerusalem” by Thomas Friedman. By this Friday I aim to finish it, a good ten days from the due date. We have our last class tomorrow evening. I am also going to check in with my advisor about my course transcript, mail back a package with some things I want to send home (like my souvenier and rather realistic fake plastic gun), buy a Lunds Universitet hoodie, and prepare for the Europe trip in more detail. Oh. And cut my hair. It’s atrocious now. Oh, and a Franz Ferdinand concert in Copenhagen on Friday! Ahhhhhh. :)
On Thursday we are having a goodbye dinner for Lishuang, then at 10pm we are having the premiere for our movie. After that Frieder and I will finish up the DVD production and start burning copies. Whew. Busy week ahead! Bye.