"Hoppet heter Barack Obama"

En amerikansk president, oavsett partifärg, kommer alltid att bevaka det USA uppfattar som sitt nationella intresse. Obama erkänner ändå att världen har blivit annorlunda, och att även det starkaste landet behöver samarbete med andra för att lösa dagens problem.

Trollywood

some good looking apples


one of the many villas along the river


in a lock!


approaching the lock!


Sverige är best!

on the river

Älven at dusk

how i've been feeling lately

Yes! Finally we have internet at home!! Things are going well, though I've been feeling a little bit useless. Getting started with a language class has been a really slow process. I wake up in the morning and wonder sometimes what I am doing here in Sweden!? I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere and I don't really have the opportunity to meet a lot of people. Suk! (Sigh!) Jag borde igentligen börja skriva på Svenska! (I should start writing my blog in both Swedish and English.) Above are some pictures from last weekend's trip to Trollhättan, Västen (the place is nicknamed "Trollywood" because many Swedish and American movies are filmed there). Alice and I went mushroom picking, took a boat ride on the river Älven (we went locking! in Swedish its "slussa"; its like an elevator for a boat. The water level slowly rises and lifts the boat up so you can travel along different canals and avoid waterfalls!), and Erik (Alice's father) gave us a tour of the construction site of his new country home. We ate great meals, enjoyed being outdoors, and I learned all about hunting!

The House, Zenith, and Dahlias

The house on SärÖ

Zenith, the crazy German Shepherd!

This weekend Alice and I went to Kungsbacka, a nearby town, to do some shopping and on the way home we stopped by her favourite florist. He is 96 years old and still going! He also sold us delicious potatoes, cucumbers, and carrots which he grows in his own garden.

Hälsningar från Göteborg

Finally, I get to update my blog! Getting to use the Internet has been tricky. Alice, my hostess, does not have internet at the moment (though we should be getting wireless soon). Things were a little stressfull the first few days but now I have been here for 5 days and its going a lot better. I got a bus card so I can finally move around on my own but getting into a language course has been a little complicated but I will sort it out soon. Its very windy here (and I thought I finally got away from the wind when I moved out of Chicago!) I have been doing lots of reading to help expand my vocabulary and here are some of my favorite new Swedish words:

utkristallisera (crystallize), skönliltterature (fiction), fika (to drink coffee)

And the pictures above are ones I took of Goteborg the first day I got here and a picture of my room in Särö (the town where I live, about 45 minutes outside the city by bus).