Life in Lund: Flooding in Longmont, the Language Cafe, Dalby National Park and Gangsters

The weeks really do fly by here in Lund. My goal is to publish a blog post every Monday!

This past week, I have felt extremely far from home for the first time since being here. If you've been reading the news, or if you've been online really, you may have seen what's happening in my hometown. I am from Longmont, Colorado which is just outside of Boulder (a more well-known town in Colorado). As we are completely landlocked and right next to mountains, my town does not experience natural disasters. Last Thursday, my mom texted me that all schools and most roads were closed, bridges had collapsed, and hundreds of people had been evacuated due to intense flooding in the area. Colorado is a notoriously dry state, so I was shocked when I saw some of the pictures of my poor hometown and the surrounding area. The situation is so severe that President Obama approved federal disaster assistance for our county (and surrounding counties) and National Guard trucks/helicopters have been evacuating people, especially from more remote locations.

One of my favorite bike paths to run on at home

Our area received more rain in a week than it would usually receive from July-December

My family is lucky - our house has not been flooded and my parents haven't had to evacuate (we're up a hill from where most of the flooding has happened). My grandparents' basement was flooded and my Mom said that they were staying up all night with their Wet-Vac trying to minimize the damage. I feel so distant watching familiar places be washed away in the span of a week. I've talked to my friend Mackenzie, who is studying abroad in Brussels and who is originally from Longmont as well, about how helpless we feel being so far away and how sad it is to see. Right now I think it's easier to distance myself when I look at pictures of the destruction, but I think it will be devastating to return home in a few months to a town that I expected to be the same as I left it. The pictures below were sent from my Mom:

My Mom and brother in front of the military vehicles stationed at a major flood entry point (a few blocks from my house)

About five minutes from my house - my usual route to work

Just down the hill from my house (Bowen & 1st Ave)

On a happier note, Sweden has been great and slightly more dry (though I get to look forward to a week-long forecast of nothing but rain.)

Classes are enjoyable, though I still feel like I attend so little actual class time during the week (I only have class on Tuesdays and Thursdays). I had my first real psychology seminar - we talked about the Wason Selection task, which I've learned about in previous psychology classes. Here is an example of the puzzle (pulled from wikipedia): Your hypothesis is that if a card has the number 2 on it, then it must have a letter B on the other side. You are given four cards - 2, 7, D and B. Which two cards must you turn over to prove or disprove your hypothesis? The answer is the cards 2 and D, because obviously you want to see if there is a B on the card that has a 2, and if the card D has a 2 on the other side, then your hypothesis is disproved.

The interesting part of the seminar wasn't really the selection task - it was going out in groups of five or six and asking random people which cards they would need to turn over. We usually tried to first explain to people in English what the task was, but there were also two Swedish girls in my group, so they would explain further if the individual still didn't understand the task. I was one of the ones to explain in English, but I didn't feel like I was doing a very good job. We were supposed to observe which sets of cards were easier for the person to pick the right two - but mostly we just struggled to explain the task.

In Swedish Film, we watched a film called "Korkarlen" or "The Phantom Carriage." It was based off of a book by Selma Lagerlof (a very famous author in Sweden). I thought the movie was really interesting - the ghosts and the carriage were filmed using double exposure, where the actor is first shot with a black background (so part of the film isn't exposed), then the tape is carefully rewinded and used to film again - this time with the ghost's image.

Here is an example (the actor -Victor Sjorstrum - is rising out of his body after he has been killed):

The Phantom Carriage is a silent film from 1921 and the story would pause every so often to display text on the screen of dialogue or narration. The story was similar to A Christmas Carol, where the man dies and a ghost forces him to reevaluate his life up to that point. I thought it was an entertaining film, but I think it would have been much better if it was shorter. Stopping to display words and the lack of sound (besides the soundtrack - which wasn't bad) made the film go much slower than it would have otherwise.

On Wednesday, Linde and I decided to bike to Dalby National Park, which was about 7 miles away. The weather was nice and we biked slowly - partially because a lot of the ride was uphill and partially to appreciate how scenic everything was. Like the ride to the beach, there were beautiful landscapes the whole way.

Being away from the city was incredibly peaceful. Once we got away from the road, it was like being in the middle of no where. We had a little picnic in the forest with grapes, bananas, and kanelbullar of course. The trees in the forest were absolutely amazing - their branches were spiraled and everything was incredibly green.

"They look like antlers!"

Slugs!

The sun was setting on our ride back

On Friday, a group of us went to a "Language Cafe" set up by one of the middle schools in Lund for young students to practice their English with international students. It was about a 15 minute bike ride away and the school was amazing. Though it was a public school, it looked like the private schools at home - the buildings were on a campus with numerous areas for different sports. The kids in the English class had made Swedish pastries and prepared coffee for us to have while we talked to them.

When we arrived, we were paired up and matched with students to talk to. Lucia and I were matched with Diem and Gregory, two boys who were fourteen and fifteen. Both were accompanied by helpers, since they had some kind of special needs. Gregory spoke perfect English and Diem was able to communicate to some extent - his English was still far better than my Swedish. They asked us where we were from, what we liked to do, etc. Gregory talked about how he had lived in Australia for four years, before returning back to Sweden. He talked about WWI and WWII and about how much he loves history. He also proclaimed "The United States is my favorite country!" When I asked if he had been he said no, so I suggested he visit Colorado :)

Diem was adopted from Vietnam and had lived in Sweden since he was two years old. He was extremely smiley and told us about the competitive soccer (football) team he plays for. Both boys gave us a tour around the school - we saw their music room (SO many guitars!) and art classroom.

After both Diem and Gregory had to leave (Diem had to catch a train and Gregory a taxi), we talked briefly to three of the boys that Alice and Kate had been talking to. One of the boys was SO confident - especially for a fourteen-year-old. They talked about ice hockey and places to get tickets for football matches. I REALLY want to go to a football or hockey game soon. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures at the school.

That night a huge group of us went to a party that was at a chapel that had been turned into an accommodation. The building itself was amazing, but it was really far away - about 25 minutes by bike. On the way there Mathias directed us (looking at Google Maps on his phone while riding precariously close to everyone with no hands), but on the way back we took a wrong turn and ended up in the middle of a creepy Swedish forest. Lucia decided that she was tired - in the middle of riding through the forest - and wanted to stop, but we all yelled that this was the point in the story where we would all get murdered if we stopped moving. We ended up making it back to the apartment okay :)

Leaving the chapel party!

On Saturday, there was a party at Spoletorp South that was gangster-themed. The party itself was pretty small and a little awkward, but Alice, Regina, Yoana and I dressed up as gangsters and wrote things on our knuckles (mine just said "GANG-STER"). We tried to take a series of serious pictures, but most of them turned out ridiculous.