Thursday, August 2, 2012

Aug 1, 2012 – 12:38pm


 It is officially the first day of August! I can’t believe this day has come – the first day of the last month of my stay here in Europe. At the start of the year, I couldn’t even imagine this day coming, as all I could think about were the overwhelming experiences I’d enjoy or even have to overcome. I am nearing the end of this journey but I still feel as if there is still so much more to experience. I haven’t even gone through half way of this French program yet, and there is still much to enjoy in Stockholm when I return in a few weeks. However, I’m feeling pretty homesick. I feel like I’d be ready to leave at any moment just to be home. But I must remind myself that this trip is far from over, and there is still so much more to learn, so much more to see, and so much more growing I can do.

On another note, the Wi-Fi has once again been cut off! The power went out for a few seconds yesterday and since then, no one has been able to connect. An issue like this could easily be solved in mere minutes in Canada. Here, it could take days. Word of mouth says that the expert of Wi-Fi connections for our residence is on vacation until August 13th. If this issue isn’t fixed until then, we’ll technically be paying a month’s worth of Wi-Fi but in reality, only be using one week of it. Fortunately, word of mouth has also passed around a password to access another network that we can use just outside our building. Last night, a group of students huddled around outside our residence with their laptops – resembling a large study group. It’s better than forming a group of people on laptops at McDonalds.
 
The second week here has been okay so far. The theme of the week at school is architecture and heritage. Yesterday, an activity was planned to go to museum. Well, we thought they were going to take us to a museum. The works of art of this “museum” were actually placed around the city on street walls. Our task was to find as many as we could, take photos with it, and submit your best two photos for a competition. I have no idea what all this had to do with architecture and heritage, but at least it was fun! We had two hours to do this, but my group and I mostly went for ice cream and did some shopping, haha. And after that, we did some groceries and planned to have a real dinner – none of that microwaved good-to-go crap. I’ve been living on those for about a week straight. It was nice to have a home-cooked meal again. We had baguettes with brie cheese and honey, and salad wraps for appetizers, stir-fry (chicken and beef marinated in Korean bbq sauce) and rice for the main meal, and watermelon for dessert. Yum!

Ps. They say the home is where the heart is.

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