You know you've been in Sweden too long, when..

I found this online, and believe it or not, most of the points are true!  Here are my favourites:

1. You rummage through your plastic bag collection to see which ones you should keep to take to the store and which can be sacrificed to garbage.
2. The first thing you do on entering a bank/post office/pharmacy etc. is look for the queue number machine.
3. You accept that you will have to queue to take a queue number.
4. A sharp intake of breath has become part of your vocabulary, as has the sound 'ahh'.
5. Silence is fun.
6. Your front door step is beginning to resemble a shoe shop.
7. You give up on trying to find fat-free food and pile on the butter, cream and sugar.
   
8. Wearing black leggings with floral dresses is fashionable.
   
9. The only thing in your quick memory is “Hej” and “Hej Hej” in Swedish.
   
10. The reason you take the ferry to Finland is:
       a. duty free vodka
       b. duty free beer
       c. to party
11. The fact that all of the "v's" and the "w's" are together in the phone directory seems right.
12. Your old habit of being "fashionably late" is no longer acceptable. You are always on time.
13. You use mmmm as a conversation filler.
14. Christmas has changed so much that you only associate it with rice porridge, lucia cats, and Donald Duck
    
15. You start to differentiate between types of snow
    
16. You happily engage in a conversation about the weather. 
17. You wear sandals with socks.
18. You don't mind letting people know what you're planning on doing when you go to the bathroom.
19. You can use bra, fart, and slut in the same sentence without giggling
    
20. You start to miss falukorv when you go on vacation.
21. You eat jam with savoury dishes.
22. You put ketchup on your macaroni. Just ketchup. And love it
    
23. After eating at a café/restaurant, you think it's completely normal to tidy your table, collect all your stuff onto a tray and carry it over a trolley so that the staff doesn't have to do it.
24. You split the bill by the exact penny after eating at a restaurant.
25. You have only two facial expressions, smiling or blank.
26. You think riding a racing bike in the snow is a perfectly sensible thing to do.
27. Your wife watches TV while you look after the kids.
28. When a stranger asks you a question in the streets, you think it's normal to just keep walking, saying nothing.
29. You wonder how people afford beer.
30. You always carry a pocket full of coins to pay for public toilets or the toilets at McDonalds
31. You plan every second of your day, including the visits to the bathroom.
32. Your wardrobe now consists of 20 different shades of black and grey..
33. You eat unlimited amounts of sausage products without worrying about your nitrate intake.
34. You assume that anyone who apologizes after bumping into you is a tourist..
35. Paying $5 for a cup of coffee seems reasonable.
36. You get offended if, at a dinner party, someone fails to look you in the eyes after raising their glass for a toast.
37. Seeing a young woman with lit candles stuck to her head no longer disturbs you.
38. You become extremely skilled at assembling pre-packaged furniture kits.
39. "Candles" are a permanent fixture on your weekly shopping list.
40. Most of your friends have the same names and you must use both names to distinguish between them.

We slide over sparkling tracks as the sun shines upon us

A beautiful weekend with a beautiful friend.

Goodbye, but not forever.

The worst part about going on exchange is having to say goodbye to some wonderful people I've met in the past five months.

You know it will happen eventually.  But you kind of push that thought aside and stop thinking about the few days remaining with them, until you're suddently at the point where you have to give them one last hug, one last goodbye, and "have a safe flight."  It still hasn't sunk in yet, but I know it will soon.

To every one of you who in the past few days has left Uppsala to return home, I wish you all the best and will sincerely miss you for the rest of the year.  We may be saying farewell today, but this is not goodbye forever.

Fresh New Start

My 2010 academic year ended on a bit of sour note.  I had one of my exams on December 22nd, which was pretty bad.  Actually, it was pretty terrible.

I realized over the holidays that I never took the time to tell you what I was taking in my second session at SLU. My excuse is that my blog is supposed to take me away from my stresses, which explains why I never rarely mention my classes when I write here.

Anyway, the course was actually really interesting, titled, "Safe Nutrient Cycling."  As in biowaste. Manure. Sewage sludge.  Compost.  Human manure.  

We learned a lot about proper composting and treatment of waste, which actually (and to my surprise) really interested me.  Unlike the previous engineering-based course on soil conservation that I struggled with, this one was based a lot on biology, which is more geared towards what I feel comfortable with studying.  Trust me, I'm not, and never will be, and engineer.  So this course was really interesting, especially in our little "class excursion" (a bike ride) to our prof's home, where pretty much everything he preaches about, he does!  I'm talking separate peeing and pooping toilets, storing his family's urine and watering his gardens with it during the spring and summer months,  separating his family's faeces with a special toilet geared only for the purpose of #2, and incorporating the faeces in his compost bin.  Human manure is a bit disgusting in theory, but is pretty amazing when you see it being successfully done in real life.  His reason for using human manure is valid - your shit is very valuable!  And so is your urine!  So much nitrogen comes out, in a readily available form for plants to take up, and as many agriculturalists know, nitrogen is a macronutrient that is deficient in just about every field.  

This was the course I took, really enjoyed, but unfortunately gave me a really hard time in the final.  I kind of felt like crying when I saw the calculations that I had prepared myself for, seeing that they were calculations we had never seen before in previous exercises.

Bring on the New Year!  I had my second (and last exam for this semester) exam today, and am pleased to say it went well - I should hold my breath until my mark comes out - soil biology was not quite as exciting as learning about pee and poop, but it was alright, particularly when we talked about fungi and symbiosis that forms with plant roots.  Who knew that little microbes in the soil could be so intelligent, forming a bond with plants so that both sides benefit and receive the nutrients and energy they each need?

Setting my inner soil nerd aside, I've finished my first semester, fresh and ready for a new start.  Next week, new classes start, and I'm looking forward to seeing what's in store for me. 

Canadian Food

Don't replay this too many times, your arteries may start to clog!

Reflections on Twenty-Ten

My year 2010 included:

~ Just going for it: Co-chairing NOW! UBC climate action conference.

~ Being so proud to be Canadian, a Vancouverite, when the world watched us in February.