Let the hockey begin!

I'm back on the ice for the 2012/2013 season. It feels so good. I have switched hockey teams and now play for LHC (Linkoping). I'm going to miss Vita Hästen, but I'm looking forward to the better hockey. Thankfully, there were no hard feelings for me switching. We just started on-ice practices. The team is very international. Players from Norway, Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, and America. Lots of national team players. We start games in September. I can't wait. We have a big squad. 25. 15 of which are forwards. So there is going to be a lot of competing for spots. I like it that way though. Makes it more interesting. I think it will be a fun, challenging season.

I am taking down my traps for my thesis now. Back to running from cows. Today I tried to face my fear and approached a huge herd. I was feeling pretty confident until a cow started to walk towards me. I took a step back. It started to run. I sprinted to the fence and slid under the barbed wire before it could catch me. I don't believe the people who tell me cows are harmless. If they were harmless, they would slowly walk up to me. Not charge full speed. So I got the car stuck in a ditch at one site while I was putting the trap up. I was backing down a farm road and got to close to the edge and the car slid into the ditch. I found a farmer to pull me out with a tractor. So I was back at that site today taking the trap down and guess what? I got the car stuck in the ditch again. I couldn't believe it. Well, actually I could. I am horrible and backing up. So I found the same farmer and told him I got stuck again. He straight up laughed at me. Swedes are very reserved, don't show much emotion, and don't like to make a big deal of things. So for him to laugh like he did meant that he thought it was hilarious. I was so embarrassed to have to ask him to help me again. Such a nice guy. Taking the traps down is going a lot faster than putting the traps up which is nice. Except for when I get stuck in ditches. I think I'll finish on Friday. After the traps are down, I will look through all of them to see whether the species occurred or not at each site. From there I will relate oak density data to occurrence data and search for an oak density which explains the species occurrence. Ecology stuff.

Gentile and Elsa are coming to visit me next month! I am so excited. I am going to treat them like Egyptian princesses making their first trip to Scandinavia. I hope I am a good host for them.

That's really all that's going on. Hockey, thesis, a little bit of work at the warehouse. Chillin. I went camping with Daniel and Lyndal which was a lot of fun. In Sweden the land is open for anyone to use. So basically you can camp anywhere that isn't in plain site of a house. We went just 10 minutes from Linkoping to a place by a lake. I had bought a tent at a 2nd hand store for like $7 and it worked great. I hope to camp some more before winter comes. I have enjoyed the Swedish summer. When it isn't raining it is really nice. 70, sunny, little breeze. It does rain a lot though. Business hours change in the summer because everyone gets like 5 weeks of vacation. You really have to plan in advance because most likely the store that you want will only be open from 10-3 and even less on the weekends. Deb is moving out so we have found a new roommate. A French girl named Mel. She will be moving in in September. I will miss Deb, but she will still be in Linkoping. I think Mel will be fun and I am looking forward to her cooking ha.

Electric fences DO shock you

So my thesis field work has become quite the adventure. Basically every site I go to has a fence I have to get through. All are electric to keep the cows in and then some add barbed wire to that. I have mastered getting past fences…kind of. The other day I was trying to be very quite getting through the fence because there were cows in the distance. I don’t care what people say, cows are f-ing scary. So if the cows see me, I turn around and don’t set traps up at that site. Anyway, I was getting through the electric and barbed wire fence when I lost my balance and my lower back landed on the electric fence. Of course it shocked me and I screamed which made the cows be aware of my existence. All that work and pain to get over the fence and I had to go right back through it because the cows were coming. Ugh. Some pastures are wetter than others. A few times I have gotten a boot stuck in the mud and my foot has pulled fully out of the boot. I then have to balance on one foot while I try to pry the boot out of the mud. I have been lucky not to fall into the mud…yet. When I am not being chased by cows or electrocuted, I am falling because the ground is covered with rocks and roots. I was setting traps in a forest and I got lost for about a half hour before I found the car. My heart was racing. I knew I was going to be ok because I had a gps, but I was still freaking out that I was never going to get out of there. I was parking on the side of a dirt road and I didn’t see that there was a small ditch. I got the car stuck in it. I had to walk 2 km to the nearest houe and bother the cutest Swedish couple on their holiday to help me. Thank god the dude was a car guy. They pulled my car out with a rope. They were really nice. When I go back to take the traps down I am going to bring them a present for saving my life. Another encouter happened today when I got a flat tire. My first flat tire. I looked for the car manual to find directions on how to change a tire and I couldn’t find it anywhere. So I googled “how to change a tire.” I was in the process of lifting the car with the jack in the pouring rain when a guy pulled over to help me. He didn’t speak English so I had to speak in Swedish. It was awesome. I am confident that I can survive on Swedish now. He was a pro at changing the tire. I have been very lucky to not have these problem out in the middle of nowhere, where some of my sites are. I have been seeing a lot of wild life. Deer, rabbits, a weasel, and a muskrat looking thing. I have a good time doing my thesis, but it is a lot of hours driving and being out. I am trying to get all the traps up as fast as possible so I have been pulling 10-12 hour days. I think I have 3-4 days left and then I will be able to chill for about 2 weeks before I have to go back out and take the traps down. Enough of thesis stories. Our apartment threw a 4^th of July party and it rocked. There were like 12 of us and we had a nice bbq paired with American drinking games and American song singing. We made s’mores for the Swedes. They liked them. We had sparklers too. It doesn’t get pitch black here ever  in the summer and the darkest point in the night is at like midnight so we did the sparklers in the light. But they were still awesome. We ran out of beer so I had to keep the party going. I chose to get everyone to play Catch Phrase. It became so intense. It is really fun to play with people who don’t speak English as their first language because the way they try to explain words can be quite funny. I took a day off from thesis the other day to chill and went to Berg which is like 15 minutes away from Linkoping. There is a small beach by a lock in a canal. It was really nice. The other relax time I spend watching Games of Thrones (which is awesome). That is all for now. I am going to go be so Swedish and eat some salmon and potatoes. Peace and Love.

Sommar i Sverige

So my master’s thesis (graduate project) has begun. I have been planning and doing some things since March, but now the fieldwork is here. For some reason, I choose projects that involve me having to do nightly tick checks. Good thing I brought my “tick removing” tweezers with me to Sweden. I have removed 4 ticks so far I think. Here is a quick explanation of what I’m doing. Old oaks in Sweden are host plants to many species. One species is the yellow-legged clearwing moth. Due to humans, oaks have been declining and thus the species dependent on oaks have been affected. The aim of my project is to determine how many oaks and at what scale provide a suitable habitat for the moth. This information can be used to create conservation plans and so on. This involves driving around the region setting up sex pheromone traps to get occurrence data of the moth. Then, I will relate that data to oak density data and find for a certain density of oaks that explains the moths occurrence. Enough of the boring stuff. The fun stuff is having absolutely no life while doing this fieldwork. I now understand what everyone in grad school meant about having no other life. I train in the mornings and then go out all day to random sites in Östergötland. I get home around 11pm and then do it all over again the next day. I’m basically living out of a car. I am renting a car from the university. I have about 120 sites to visit for my project. I aim for setting up 15-20 traps a day. So optimistically it should take me 6-8 days to set up all the traps. Then later on this summer I will go back out and take the traps down. Cows scare the shit out of me. I have never been around them before and they are a lot bigger than I thought. I have to walk in pastures at a lot of my sites and some of them have cows. The first time was scary. About 8 cows approached me while I was hanging traps in a tree. As I started walking back to the car they started to follow me. One cow in particular was not very fond of me. I think she was the mom and her calf was around so she was being very protective. She would start to charge at me but I would hold my hand out and yell NEJ! and she would stop. The moment she first began to charge at me I legit thought I was going to die. I carry a small knife on me, but that wouldn’t do much to a momma cow protective of her young. I slowly backwards walked about 200 m keeping an eye on the angry cow. She kept attempting to charge at me but she would then get scared once she got about 3 m away (yes, I use the metric system now). Once I was about 20 m from the barbed wire fence, I turned around and booked it. The cow followed. I ripped my shirt and pants on the barbed wire fence trying to get through it as fast as possible. I laid on the ground on the other side of the fence for a couple minutes because my heart was beating so fast. F-ing cows man. Another funny story was when I was putting traps up near a persons property. A woman came out and was curious about what I was doing. I explained to her and she asked me if I would like to take a break and have a “fika” with her. SO Swedish haha. Anyway, on top of my project I am helping a group from a different university in Skåne, (SLU) put up sex pheromone traps for other insect species around the region. Since I am helping them now, they will help me with my project later on this summer. So a lot of fieldwork needs to be done this summer, but it will keep me busy. 

I am happy to be staying here over the summer. It does rain a lot though. At the moment I don’t have time to work, but maybe when I have a break from my fieldwork I will get some work at the warehouse. Deb and I are going to have a 4^th of July party on Wednesday. A little BBQ action. Show the Swedes what Independence is all about. Fireworks aren’t sold here except around Christmas and New Years so we will have to find other things to light on fire. We bought marshmallows but graham crackers and herseys chocolate are not available here so we wont be able to do s’mores. Sad. I have been spreading beer pong and other solo cup drinking games around my Swedish friends. They love it. Mandy brought me a wiffle ball bat back from American in the spring, but my dizzy bat fun was very short lived. Midsommar is a holiday here where people celebrate the summer with drinking, eating, singing, and dancing. It was last week and I celebrated it with my dizzy bat. Somehow the dizzy bat didn’t make it home with me and is lost somewhere in Linköping. Bummer. Hope everyone's summer is going well. Miss you all. 

Jag är tillbaka! (I'm back!)

It has been WAY too long since I have blogged. Sorry guys. Lets see, I went to Dublin/Amsterdam with Daniele and it was so much fun. We drank so much Guinness. It is like chocolate milk there. We partied with a crazy bachelor party from England and had an unspeakable night. I loved how every single bar played live music in Dublin. Everyone was very happy and drunk there. On the weekend there were tons of bachelor and bachelorette parties out which was unexpected. All the local Irish guys were out taking pictures and making fun of the drunk tourists. Irish breakfast = survival. We only survived Dublin because of it. So much meat on that plate. And loads of bread. Beans, black and white pudding, eggs, tea, orange juice, coffee, mushrooms, bacon, sausage, etc. I have learned that quickly drinking a bottle of Jameson is not the best idea if you want to remember your night. Daniele and I learned that the hard way. We basically pieced together our trip based on the pictures and when we took them. Not that I see anything wrong with that ha. It felt so nice to be back in Amsterdam. I think that's my happy place. It was so great to see Daniele. We got some good laughs in.

I'm not going to lie, I missed Sweden while I was gone. I have really gotten used to my life here. I am also starting to really grasp the language. Things are so much easier when I can read and understand Swedish. My weakness is speaking, but that will come with practice. I put a lot of time into learning Swedish and it is really paying off. My goal is to be speaking more Swedish than English with people by the Fall. Being in Ireland made me realize how well Swedes are put together. Their fashion and style seems so much trendier/classier than other places. I stick out SO bad, but I don't care. I'm going to buy a pair of black jeans to try to fit in better. And to fit in even more, I may even roll the bottoms. Guys where short shorts here. It's funny looking. Everyone has Ray Bans. And Converse.

School is going well. Lately, I have been focusing on my thesis details. I will start trapping moths in June so I need to get all the methods sorted out before. Along with thesis, I am taking a seminar course on different ecological topics. Every seminar a different student presents a 45 minute lecture and holds a discussion afterwords. The topics are related to everyones thesis topic. It is nice having the students be in charge of the lectures. We can really jump into our thesis topics and share our knowledge with the class. The campus is crazy when it is nice weather. Everyone is outside hanging out taking advantage of the good weather. Swedes are all about BBQs. I have a backyard with a BBQ which is awesome. Just the other day was a holiday called "valborg". Huge bonfires are made the night before the 1st of May. Our apartment had a nice big BBQ. It is so hard to do school work when the weather is so nice. I just want to play outside and take in the sun. But I really need to focus and get a paper done, prepare for seminars, and work on my thesis. UGH.

I am going to train with LHC (Linköping Hockey Club) over the summer. I went to their tryout a couple weeks ago to get a feel for what teams in Riksserien (top ladies league in Sweden) are like. They asked me to train with them for the summer and will decide if they want to keep me for the season later in August. I am not sure what I am going to do. I want to play for Vita Hästen again, but the organization is shit right now and it is not very secure at the moment. We will see. Tomorrow is the end of the year party for VH and hopefully good news will come out of it.

I worked a ton in April at the Stadium warehouse so I can take a break from work and focus on school until June. I will be around all summer and will have plenty of time to work and save up for traveling. Who knows where I'll go next. Maybe Italy? There is the update on my life for you. I'll get back into blogging weekly so you can follow my groove. Peace and Love

Swedes being Swedes

There is a funny joke about Swedes that they like to keep to themselves and not interact with anyone so at bus stops people are spread out like 5 feet from the next person. I got a perfect picture of it today on my way to the campus bus stop. Funny stuff.

My trip to Ireland with Daniele is booked! April 20-26 with a pit stop in Amsterdam Apring 22-24. I can't even express how excited I am. Guinness all day all night. MMMM. I also have booked a trip to Copenhagen with Mandy and her classmate/friend Erin. Mandy needs to check out some Dutch museums for her thesis and she asked if I wanted to tag along. Of course I do. I have been wanting to go to Copenhagen really bad since it is so close (3.5 hour train ride). The free city tours that Court and I did everywhere on our Eurotrip are in Dublin and Copenhagen so I am definitely going to do those. I have definitely caught the travel bug and I love it. 

I have been helping with construction work at the golf course. I like it. The floor is being done at the moment so we have been leveling out the gravel and laying foam blocks on top. Lots of chainsaws, measuring tape, and rocks. Using a chainsaw is badass. I have also gotten myself back into working at the warehouse for Stadium (sports store). So I am going to be busy with work and planning my thesis at the same time as well as still having hockey practice for a couple more weeks.

I am a little nervous about next year's hockey season. First off, I am worried we aren't going to have enough girls to have a team. I have been hearing rumors about girls leaving and we were only 12 consistently throughout the year this season. However, I think the coaches have been trying to bring new girls in so I hope we have enough. It is sad because we have now moved up to the higher division and this is when we really need the girls' commitment. Secondly, I am worried there are problems with money and management. The guys team did not make it through the playoffs so there is a good chance that sponsors are going to pull out. Us being the girls team I think will really be hit hard from that. But this is all me speculating and being a negative nancy. I have faith that my coaches will fight hard enough for us. They are really invested in the team and I don't think they will give up.

It is SO spring here and I love it. The days are getting longer and I no longer need to where my hat and gloves. Those were definitely my best friends this winter. Time for the flip flops, sunglasses, and drinking beers outside. Mmm. My Swedish is coming along well. I have learned how sentences are structured which makes everything a lot easier. I've also learned the rules of things. Like why nouns end certain ways and stuff like that. The big thing left is learning vocab. I need to watch Swedish shows/movies to get the sounds down better. Some of the sounds are impossible to make. One of the sounds is very simular to the way Stewie on Family Guy says coolHWhip. The It is also good to watch shows in English and read the Swedish subtitles to learn vocab. I was thinking the other day about being fluent in another language. I am nothing close to being fluent in Swedish, but I was thinking about how when my Swedish friends speak English they are just freely talking and listening without thinking about it in Swedish first. I find that crazy. Mostly because I am trying so hard at Swedish but still I am so slow and bad. Oh well. It will come with practice. 

Vi ses (See you)!

Spring?

So all the snow has melted, it has been sunny and warm, and stuff is green. I am confused. I am in Scandinavia in the beginning of March and it is Spring conditions. I am not complaining, I am just confused. I am about to pull out my flip flops. But I have a feeling it is only teasing me and there will be another month cold spell where it is freezing to the point where I won't go outside unless I absolutely have to and I wear like 3 layers.

I just had a two day home exam that drained me. I spent way to much time thinking and doing school work. Like 14 hours in two days. Not fun. But now it is over and I am very relieved and excited for the weekend. I have one more week of Conservation Biology. It will consist of a debate. I have to argue against people being able to utilize/live in national parks/reserves in the tropics. Meh. I have never done a debate so I will probably suck. After this course I have a 4 week thesis planning course where I get everything figured out for my thesis. I have changed my mind on my project. Instead of wetlands I am going to study an endangered beetle that relies on old oaks. Oaks are declining so I am doing a survey on the population of the beetle. I'll walk around old oak forests and find beetles. My kind of thing. I always seem to be involved in things dealing with forests. I like them. Maybe I'll end up in some kind of forestry job/research in Sweden and never leave. Yeahhhh. I have been thinking since education is free as long as I have a work permit that I will stay and get my PhD here. Maybe. Why not?

So two teammates decided to prank me and put tiger balm on my lufa. I showered and it burned. I decided to get them back and put a laxative in their water bottles during practice. Yup, payback is a bitch. The next morning they were best friends with the toilet. Don't mess with me. However, I am scared to experience their payback to this. I think this is going to be an on-going battle until someone goes to far. I hope it's me who gets the last one in.

Daniel plays pick-up floorball (innebandy) on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I have gone with him a couple times. It's a good time. I am not good at running with the ball yet but I will get better. It is like competitive floor hockey with a wiffleball and plastic sticks. Basically what we play in P.E. in elementary school in America but it is a real sport here. Most kids play it and continue into high school with it.

My next travel plans are Ireland and Copenhagen. I need to work a lot this month to save up. Daniele and I are planning to go together. What a shit show. We are thinking to go the week of April 16th and take a day trip to Amsterdam on the 20th. No reason. Ha. If anyone is traveling to Europe let me know because I will so meet you where ever you are.

Everything is good. Every once in a while I'll be riding my bike in beautiful weather and just think about how awesome it is to be in Sweden. It's like so chill. I am looking forward to the next phase here. No hockey, no school (maybe a little thesis work), a lot of work, and a lot of traveling. My brother wants to come out this summer and backpack/camp here. I think that will be really fun. Sweden is full of nature. I love it.

Undefeated Season!

That's right! 14-0 this season. A team in Division 1 South declined their position so we got moved up to Div. 1 without needing to qualify since we won our division (Div. 2 South). I am sad the season is over. I love my girls! We are practicing through March and may have some scrimmages. Then off-season training starts. I am excited to play in a higher level with more competitive teams. I have no idea who is coming back so next season will be interesting. We had an end of the year party and played laser tag. So intense.

My parent's visit was great. I missed them. It kind of sucked that I had school and hockey because I couldn't do much with them but we still had a nice time. Lots of home-cooked meals that I had been missing and nice days walking around downtown. They went to Stockholm and Gothenburg while I was busy. I am sad they are gone. I asked them what they thought of Sweden and they responded with "expensive and cold" ha. Pretty accurate. I think there is so much more to Sweden though. I love the flow here. No one is in a rush, no one cares about your business, everything is clean and efficient, and the Swedish race is beautiful. It's my kind of speed here. Enough preaching. I'll have to get my mom to come visit this summer. I don't think I will be going home until Christmas. I would rather travel Europe in the summer than in the winter and snowboarding is the best at home so I think I'll wait until Christmas break to go back to the States for a visit.

I'm pretty busy with school right now. I have an intense 3 weeks coming up in Conservation Biology but then it calms down for the rest of the school year. It is now time to start thinking about my thesis UGH. I have decided to pick a project pertaining to wetlands and phosphorous retention. I will be collecting data starting in the spring and throughout the summer and into the next school year. WOOF.

I worked at the golf course on Thursday. A barn is being remodeled into a club house so there is a lot to be done. I was scraping dirt off of stone walls with a metal brush to prepare them to be painted. It sounds unappealing, but it actually isn't that bad. But that might be because I was working with Mandy and we have a fun time together. And it's Sweden so they gave us 2 weeks to finish something that took 3 days to do. It is hard to not work as efficiently as possible, but Mandy and I are learning to stretch work out so we continue to have it ha. Lots of fika breaks.

There was a 3 week cold spell where it was not higher than like 10 degrees. Bhurrrr. It has warmed up a little bit. Still not that much snow. There is a good half a foot layer but I'm surprised by how little it has snowed here. It is so pretty. The snow stays white. I don't know how, but it doesn't get dirty. That's all I got for you. Sweden rules, America drools.