Rainy days, Night walks, Almost burning the building down and Gotëborg!

The weather has definitely taken a turn for the worse in Sweden. There is the occasional day of sun, but most of the time it's pretty gray and rainy. I thought that this kind of weather would depress me, but it hasn't been so bad. It does have the effect of making all of us not want to leave the house, but we just make ourselves. The leaves are still incredibly beautiful, but biking in the rain is just not very enjoyable.

Here are some pictures from my run on the one sunny day this week :)

A few of my roommates and I did go for a night walk this week - we went up to my favorite hill to run up and the view was absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately, I don't have any good pictures of the view, but I have a nice one of us (minus Kate) lying on the ground laughing hysterically...

So cute :)

I went to the middle school again this week - this time I got to talk with three boys: Felix, Erik and Jakob. Erik was very talkative and the other two were very shy. We talked about movies we liked and they asked a lot about the differences between my school and theirs. They were all completely adorable and SO smart. It still really blows my mind how well they all speak English, but I guess it shouldn't since they start learning in third grade. 

In other news, I don't recommend plugging a heating pad into any outlets abroad. I wanted to use the one I had brought from home because my back was hurting. I plugged it in and immediately there was a loud popping noise, the lights in my room went out and it smelled like burning. The buttons on the remote of my heating pad had flown off and it all looked a little singed, so I'm just counting myself lucky for not getting electrocuted :)

Friday night, we all went to Hallands Nation for Sigrid's birthday. It was definitely one of the most fun nights I've had since getting here. There wasn't anything particularly special about the night (besides our awesome countdown to midnight and singing happy birthday :)), but almost everyone was out (minus Linde, who was in Copenhagen) and we all just danced crazily - there was a lot of jumping with our arms around each other involved. I don't actually have any pictures from the night - only a video of Alice singing "Stay" by Rihanna when Regina and I got an email saying that we could stay in Lund for a year if we wanted. I don't think that should go on the internet though...

On Saturday morning, Regina and I got up at 8am to board a bus to Gotëborg (Gothenburg), the second largest city in Sweden - after Stockholm. The bus was double-decker and the bus ride was three hours long - we were both completely exhausted after the night before. We stopped midway through to get some food at a shopping mall/grocery store.

When we got to Gothenburg, we first went to a giant park which doubled as a zoo. There were ducks, chickens, sheep, horses moose, etc. The animals seemed to be more of ones that would naturally live in that habitat, so there weren't any really exotic ones. The moose was exciting though and the park itself was really pretty - Gothenburg is more mountainous so it felt a little like being back in Colorado.

There's a sea otter in there somewhere!

After the park, we did more of a bus tour around the city. I was bummed that we didn't do more walking, but the weather wasn't very nice and the city seemed to be pretty spread out. We did get out to see the Gotëborg Opera House, which was right next to a harbour with lots of very large boats. Plus a hilarious statue of a sailor.

At the end of the bus tour, we stopped at a very large hill with a few hundred stairs up to the top. I was pretty sure I was going to fall and die the entire time - the stairs were extremely steep and crowded - but the view at the top was absolutely beautiful. You could see the city on both sides and all of the roofs were red.

Afterwards, Regina and I just walked around for a bit, then sat in a café once we got too cold. I really did like the city in general - it was a nice mix of the mountains with all the beautiful buildings. We had falafel for dinner (not the greatest idea) then met up with the rest of the group to go to an Australian themed bar called The Dancing Dingo. 

Coincidentally, we also met up with Jussi who had been with family all day but decided to join our group. 

After The Dancing Dingo, we headed to a club called Sticky Fingers. It was three stories, with metal/rock in the bottom floor, pop music in the middle, and house/dance music at the top. It was incredibly fun! The music they played seemed to be very American-oriented and a lot of it was pretty old, but awesome. There was Beyonce, Outkast, Black-Eyed Peas, and many more. There was also a live Swedish band in the middle floor.

As usual, Jussi decided to spontaneously pick someone up :)

Live music in the middle floor

 The bus back to Lund left at 2:30am and we didn't get back until 5:30am. I was definitely glad we had gone!