An ordinary day in Lund

Hello all! Today, I did not have the most interesting day, but it was a very nice day. I started going to a lecture about Cognitive Behavioural Therapy with one of my friends (also called Anna) from my corridor. Afterwards, I attended a seminar about intelligent life in space, which practically was about whether there would be other creatures out there in the Universe with which we would be able to communicate. It was a little bit complicated to investigate, I think. However, it was fun to listen to what was told.

From the beginning, the wheels of my mountainbike had not been entirely straight, so I had to get this fixed before I can go on any mountainbike adventures. So I brought my bike to one of the bike shops in town and had a nice 30min walk back home. As I was walking through the old part of the city, I crossed this door, which I am going to remember for future shoots!

Now I am about to have a nice and calm evening. Tomorrow, my family from both Sweden and the Netherlands are gathering here in Lund to celebrate my birthday over the weekend! I am very much looking forward to this! Tomorrow I am going to do the grocery shopping for this! Can't wait to see everybody after two weeks! So nice to see them again!

Goodnight everybody! Cheers!

Kräfskiva

Allright, so far for the good intentions, already one day too late again. But I most definitely want to tell you about last nights festivities. Last night, me and all members of my corridor celebrated kräfskiva, which is a Swedish tradition. It is a lobster party, usually celebrated in late summertime (like now!). The party is because of the season of lobster catching. As a main course, you thus eat lobster. We ate a sort of mini lobsters yesterday, with shrimps, salad, home made bread, quiches and a lot of other very delicious things! In between eating, you sing traditional songs. It is a whole lot of fun! And I actually peeled my own lobsters, which I have always been afraid of! After dinner, we had a nice desert. Then it was game time! We did some serious corridor-bonding, with funny games where you have to switch seats constantly. It is a miracle that we did not broke a chair. Anyways, this was a great day to be in Sweden. I would definitely recommend people to come to Sweden for these delightful festivities!

I will keep you updated on all other festivities and adventures! Cheers!

P.S. We had such a lot of fun that I forgot to take pictures before we ate everything, hence the picture of the lobsters I found online :)

Catching Up

Okay, I have been absent for a while now, because the last two weeks were a heavy rollercoaster for me. But here I am and I will catch up on everything that you have missed in these two weeks.

So, first of all, the last two days of America. In these days, we have been traveling along the pacific coast route, which is honestly very beautiful. Pictures of this track will come up later ;). We have been traveling this way all the way up to Los Angeles. There, we all did some final shopping to buy some souvenirs for people at home. The last night, we stayed at the Crown Plaza Hotel. This is a beautiful hotel, in the western part of LA, pretty close to the airport. I must say, I have probably never slept as well as I did in this hotel. Tired an exhausted we fell asleep on one of the most comfortable king size beds ever. And then our alarm clocks went off at approximately seven o clock in the morning. To leave LA. To leave the USA. To leave America, and go home.

We dropped our cars off and went to the airport, where a long trip was awaiting us. We had to transfer planes on Detroit. So it was a 3,5 hour trip to Detroit, and then another 7 or 8 hours to Amsterdam. The good thing is that they have the best movies available on the plane. So we were in Detroit in no time. We got off the plane, walked across the airport, and almost immediately had to board our other plane. Now the long flight was coming up. And it took very long. I couldn't sleep, so I was incredibly tired when we got home. As we were on the airport in Amsterdam, we grabbed our bags and got on a train to go home. It was only when we got home that we realized that some of our bags had been searched, so that was a nice mess!

I then immediately started unpacking, since it was only 5 days until I would move to Sweden. Stressful? A bit...

So I unpacked, washed, said goodbye to family and friends, and got on a plane to Sweden by Saturday morning. My sister accompanied me to help me decorate my new place and help me get settled. When we got to Sweden, we were immediately invited by relatives to have a nice lunch, and later on dinner. My sister really helped me get started, and I was pretty much done with decorating by the time she went home on Sunday.

Sunday night, I got to meet all my roommates, and there are 20 of them! I live at a corridor here in Sweden, with 20 other students. We all share a kitchen, but have our own bathrooms. And then on Monday my first week of work started.

I am working at the Cognitive Science department of the University of Lund. Here, I work in a research team that is called the primate research group. They investigate evolutionary subjects, and often work with different kind of apes, such as chimpansees, bonobos and orang-utans. I will tell you all much more about this any time soon! So far, everybody has been really kind to me. I have been invited to parties, seminars, lectures, thesis defenses, and so on. So that is why I hadn't had the time to tell you all about this!

All together, this has been a really long and extensive blog. I will try to get back to my usual once a day posting, so it is not as much as this is. And this was even a short version of it all!

I wish you all the best and I will talk to you all tomorrow! Cheers from Sweden!