Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Sunnersta Uppsala life

The past few days I have been meeting good friends of my host family and settling in to everyday life in Sunnersta. Two families that are good friends of Anna's (my host sister) came over the other night to give her a farewell party (she leaves for Taiwan on Thursday). There was so much food! I have found that almost always swedes go back for seconds so I have learned not to fill my plate the first time round.  Also swedes drink coffee, tea, or sparkling water. That's it. I have tea for breakfast, water for lunch and tea or coffee for dinner and a coffee or water for fika somewhere in the day.
 I learned to play a swedish backyard game called kubb (pictures below). The goal of the game is to knock down the other teams towers and then the king who stands in the middle.  But you must knock the king over by throwing backwards between your legs.  It's a little bit more complicated than that but hard to explain.
In Uppsala people either ride their bikes to town or take the bus and then walk around.  So today I managed to ride my bike from our house to the center of Uppsala (6km round trip) alone without getting lost! Sweden is very flat and there were only gradual inclines so it wasn't too hard.  But since it is very flat and not much around there is a lot of wind to deal with.
I also stopped by the school that I will be attending starting Thursday and tried to make sense of the schedule. I still am not quiet sure how it works so I will tell you after my first day of school.
I have noticed that there are a lot of people who smoke here. It comes as a shock when I see a guy, who I think is younger than me, casually smoking while walking down the street.  People don't really look different from Americans. The blonde hair blue eyes stereotype is not actually as common as people think it is.
 My host father and a family friend 
Neighbor and I playing Kubb
Neighbors playing Kubb with us
The "king" is the one on the right of this last picture
 

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