Beerfest!

So I'll hopefully stop using facebook soon and only write on this blog. I talked to my sister yesterday and she said that I'm spending too much time on the computer, and not enough time socializing with the family. Probably true, so I'm going to take that talk as a wake-up call.

I went to a Beerfest last night, which was pretty fun. My drinking buddies put together a team and competed in a variety of intense physically demanding games such as; beer-pong, drink 8 beers out of a giant cup as fast as you can, drink 1 beer as fast as you can, drink 8 beers in a bunch of small cups as fast as you can, etc. It was a ridiculous night of total beer-auchery. It was also interesting though, because it was the first time that I met some Swedish people who had some real hatred towards the U.S. I'm lucky I'm from California, because one person I talked to said that if I was from anywhere else in the U.S. she wouldn't have had any interest in talking to me. And some other guy was drunkinly ranting about everyone's favorite topic to bash US on...The war. For as much as Swedish people complain about Basshunter, they sure do listen to him a lot. Every single party or club I've been to has played fucking "Botten Anna,"
or something equally as shitty. And people go crazy to it.

Girls here are super frustrating. Literally every single girl that I've met and made friends with has a boyfriend. But they don't really like to tell me these things until about 2 weeks after I've met them. Just enough time to get my hopes up. I'll get a random text asking how my day was yesterday (which is usually a sign that a girl is interested in you. At least I thought), and then at the end of the quick text conversation and after 2 weeks without the slightest hint that this guy even existed she'll say; "oh, I'm just going to meet my boyfriend." And this isn't just a single occurence. It's happened maybe 4 or 5 times. They should just start driving stakes into my fragile exchange student heart.

I've started swimming again, thank God. I was getting really restless and started having trouble sleeping. It's a small group with very friendly people. I like it a lot, and the pool is really nice. It's completely surrounded by windows so you can see the lovely Swedish weather. It almost makes it more cozy though, being able to see a stormy day, but swim in a pool like it was spring break in Miami. Also, the bottom of the pool is metal, so you can watch yourself swim from a bottom feeder perspective.

Speaking of sleeping, I've been having some really weird dreams recently. They sort of make sense though because they ALL have my friends in them. One dream, I have a really vivid memory of a quick second. I was at the top of a giant hill that looked pretty much exactly like Moeser in EC. Except that I was on the UCSC campus. I was at the top trying to comfort Sarah Hsieh about something when I started biking down the hill with EO. The right side of the road suddenly turned into a steep cliff leading to a gravel pit, which I promptly fell into and skidded all over the place. Then my Dad drove up in a limosine next to the gravel pit, and then I don't remember anything. Last night after Beerfest, I dreamt that my English teacher in Sweden told me to drink less, less often.

The language here is still really frustrating, but I'm slowly getting better. It's so funny trying to communicate with Bianca (the Brazilian exchange student who only speaks Portugese). I talk through a series of broken Spanish mixed with some Swedish, rude gestures, and animated facial expressions. But it's actually really amazing how much of a conversation I can have with her now. When we go out I'm usually her translator, which is really unfortunate for her. A good part of the evening consists of Swedes telling me to say stuf to her and then her laughing at me and my horrible accent.