Australia Day and Folk Dancing

Haha, what did I get myself into? I'm not sure exactly what I was thinking, but I signed up for a traditional Swedish folk dancing class...yes, Swedish folk dancing. It's put on by the university chaplain for the foreign students every semester and about 30 people showed up. Nothing against Swedish folk dancing but that teacher could probably put anyone to sleep. The first thing we did was listen to some Swedish songs (Final Countdown by Europe is actually from Sweden) but we didn't just listen to a few seconds, no, we listened to the entire thing. Six songs later we were finally moving. I'm not opposed to going back, but Trevor had a pretty good suggestion of pre-gaming a little harder next time, maybe a lot harder. We'll see what happens next week.

Yesterday was Australia Day, which means basically nothing except some guy named James Cook bumped into a big island (our Columbus Day). I'm not sure why it's such a big celebration, but at the least it was an excuse to have another party, not that anyone has needed an excuse before. Anyway, Mary (an Australian) had the party at her place in Mariehem with real Australian food and beer. Among the food was this weird bread that I swear is a poor mans version of cake. It was buttered bread with sprinkles on top, but I think it was actually pretty good. You can't have more than two pieces, but still pretty good. Julia or Hugh, do you have any idea what this stuff is called?

By 10:00 we headed out to another pub that most of us hadn't been to. I believe it was called Villa. It's the medical student union's pub (yes, each union has it's own pub - take note those of you in the Wisconsin Union, I know you're reading this). I don't know if you could guess by the name but this place was basically an old villa converted into a bar and dance club. It was actually a pretty cool looking place, I liked it. Again though with the stupid cover charge and coat check, what's the deal with that?? Regardless, there were quite a few people that showed up that I hadn't talked to in a while (I've been there all of what? Three weeks now?) The only problem was that Hannah didn't have her student union card when she came later on so they didn't let her in. Instead she and Hugh headed back to her place. Trevor and I headed over there a bit later and we ended up watching Bring It On (the worst cheer leading movie I've ever seen, not that, you know, I've seen a lot of them or anything). By the end of it we had crammed me, Lyndsey, Hugh, Hannah, Lauren, Seb, and Lyndsey's corridor mate around a laptop screen. Tight squeeze, but a good night nonetheless.

Today it's off to Nydala (the lake near campus) to roast some s'mores, assuming we can find the marshmallows and graham crackers. The place we're going is basically picnic point in the winter (except with decent fire pits and wood stores)...pretty sure this place feels like home more and more everyday.