Jag skulle vilja ha en ol tack (I would like to have one beer thanks)

Day 2 and 3 were a success. I got a bed for 15 bucks and checked out downtown Linkoping which is such a cool place with tons of shops, cafes, and sweet architecture. I went to the local student bar/club last night to finish off the night right. It's funny because Swedes are all about their personal space so the dance floor is just a ton of people standing next to each other but not touching and swaying back and forth and dancing basically with themselves. Emily, I brought the finger point dance to Sweden and it's a hit :) The music was really good also. I learned my first Swedish phrase as you can see and I am very excited about it. The bartender understood me! More to come, more to come.

Today I met a Pakistani dude named Ethan who I became friends with when looking to buy stuff online over the summer. He turns out to be AWESOME and is going to be my information bank and handy man. He knows all about Linkoping and Sweden because he has lived here for like 10 years (he's like 28). He is a funny guy. You know the Pakistani guy on The Simpsons? His english kind of sounds like that and its hilarious. It's not that intense but here and there his voice gets high pitched with some words and I love it. Gentile, his high pitched words kind of sound like our Econometrics professer...I'm blanking on his name. He knows all about bikes, were to get the best cheapest stuff around, how to get places, and basically everything. I find him to be very important for my initial survival.

I registered today so I am now considered a real person here. I will get my personnumner (SSN) in a couple weeks and with that I can get a bank account and get stuff from the pharmacy. 1st thing I've found to diss American on...from the time I walked in and grabbed a number (in Sweden there are no such thing as lines, people take a ticket and when your number is called it's your turn like they sometimes have at delis in grocery stores) to the time I left registered as a Swedish citizen was 15 minutes. It took me 6 hours to get an expedited passport in NYC. F you America :)

So I found out what the dinosaur girl was all about. Apparently every program at Linkoping University makes their first year students do weird/embarrassing things in order to be considered "one of them." This girl happens to be apart of the technical biology program and they wear dinosaur suits...Why not I guess. These "hazing" things apply across the whole school so we will see what ridiculous thing the natural sciences got going. I am kind of excited because I love dressing up and going out in public.

Overalls. They are "in" here. Really "in." I probably saw 1 out of every 10 young person wearing a colored overall suit yesterday. But not like the overalls we have. Like full body painters suits. Sort of like the white suit I wore for work if any of you got the pleasure to see that. And they come in all different colors. Sort of like the dinosaur thing, each school department has a designated overall color and they wear them for events they throw and such. Like tonight, I am going to Deb's (roommate) boyfriend's (Bjorn, which means "bear" in Swedish) program get together thing in a grass field where they all wear their overalls and sit around and drink beer and eat outside. The new first year students don't have their overalls yet so everyone at the event can tell who the newbies are. I guess seniority is a big thing here. There is a drinking game called caps which I will learn tonight. As a joke, the party throwers are holding a lecture to teach the new students how to play. I'm so getting in on that. Also, there are rules to the overalls. 1) They must never be washed...ever. The only exception is if they get somebody else's bodily fluids on it and that gives them permission to wash it by jumping into the water with it on to clean it. 2) If you are dating somebody from a different colored program you cut the bottom 1/3 of the legs off and switch with your gf/bf and sew their colors onto yours. Weird. I wonder what happens if they break up. 3) They decorate them crazily with patches, drawings, fur, etc. The brown overalls that I am borrowing tonight (so I don't look like a newbie) have Garfield painted on the back and random patches.

I checked out the campus today. An interesting thing is that all over the walking/bike paths and some buildings there are paintings of the different department's logos. But they are funny. I have taken some pictures of them.  I'll upload one big album after I take enough pictures and caption them. There are also random paper machete figures all around campus and they get painted over constantly by different departments (comprable to the idol at Union). 

In the grocery store there is food in tubes. Its weird. The weather has been really nice. Perfect temperature and sunny with some clouds. Lovin it. Ethan is letting me borrow his bike until I find one. I might by it off of him. Everyone rides bikes. You're not cool unless you have a bike...and overalls.

Miss you all