Wednesday 10 October 2012

Jag Heter Elise Och Jag Tycker Om Göteborg

I have big news today, BIG news: it is not raining.  Yes, you heard right.  After weeks and weeks of endless downpours and thunderstorms, the whole weekend and the past couple of days have been mostly rain free, give or take a few showers.  I never thought there would be a day when I got this excited about any weather conditions but good Lord I am.  In all honesty, I think most of my excitement has come from being able to wear what I want without lugging a raincoat and practical boots around.  Naturally, this led a slightly pretentious  weekend of blazers and floppy hats.  It was wonderful.

In fact, I had a wonderful weekend in general.  On Friday, the first 'invasion of the Scots' took place (although on a very minor scale compared to what I hear is occurring in two weekends) as Nikki came to visit, who studies Law with Suzanne, Rebecca and Kenneth in Dundee.  We had a dinner party on Friday night and despite Suzanne and Rebecca being convinced that they were going to poison us all, we all survived with the only ailment being how ridiculously full we were after an enormous amount of pasta, cottage pie and salad.  By the end of the evening, we were all a little drunk - a condition that we have now started referring to as being "trammed" - and seemed to think it was a good idea to cartwheel around the stair wells.  In retrospect, it was a decidedly bad idea: I was wearing a skirt.  I guess dignity is overrated anyway.

On Saturday, I turned down a lunch and shopping trip as I was lying to myself that I would study for the Swedish exam.  Unsurprisingly, I did absolutely nothing of the sort and ended up venturing out and spending far too long in Ahlens City buying lipstick instead.  Some things never change.  I hadn't properly explored Ahlens City before then but I was pleasantly surprised.  It's just a department store really but there's something so calming about the atmosphere in there.  Floating around drawing stripes of lipstick in every imaginable colour onto my hand was a much more enjoyable experience than the usual Saturday afternoon spent playing sardines in Boots.  My bank balance would probably disagree, however.  

The second Druty meeting also took place late on Saturday afternoon, however I had to miss it in order to be ready on time for - yep, you guessed it - a night out at Sticky Fingers.  We rushed to Birger Jarl almost an hour late (I hate bad time keeping) to find a spread of food for us - pizza, bread, salads, potatoes - and we all dived in and washed it down with perhaps a little too much alcohol.  I was in my element as Kristen had been absolutely amazing and brought me back some normal priced gin from Germany and I finally got to have a gin and tonic (and yes, by "a" I do actually mean plural).  I can't explain how happy I was not to be drinking wine for the first time in six weeks.  As usual the night was good fun, mostly featuring tequila, Lederhosen and bounding around the dance floor in six inch heels.  We all seemed to leave quite early though and perhaps the most entertaining part of the evening was an impromptu Dutch lesson in McDonald's of which there are far too many videos.  Once again, my natural aptitude for languages did not shine through.

Sunday was, quite frankly, a beautiful day.  I awoke at 8am for some reason and spent the first few hours of the day nervously awaiting news that friends in Plymouth had managed to secure Glastonbury tickets for us.  They did - hallelujah!  I was very excitable after this and joined the Scots for lunch in Haga.  We went to my favourite place, En Deli Haga, and whilst it was delicious as ever, I think I may have been slightly ambitious with the amount of food I ordered post-night out.  We then meandered around, attempted to go to some vintage shops but found them to be all closed, looked around a fancy dress shop and Topshop and eventually went home, suffering slightly from our overly energetic hangovers.  Again, I had every intention to study for my Swedish exam but actually crawled into bed, ate ice cream and watched Gallery Girls.  That's what Sundays are made for though, right?

This left Monday, the day of the exam, to learn a whole course of Swedish.  Of course, I was fully motivated and definitely didn't lounge around all morning finishing my ice cream, internet shopping and catching up on TV... oh no, of course not.  I did eventually start studying around lunch time and, if I say so myself, I think I learnt quite an impressive amount of Swedish in such a small time frame.  By five pm I could write a page and a half about myself, my friends and my family, however some of it was fairly fictional; my friends were all in hotch potch, mostly lesbian, couples who all ate breakfast together at seven am each day, my brother and sister's favourite activities were to study and listen to the radio on a Saturday - what an exciting pair - and the rest of my family didn't really exist, except to participate in many activities in a forest.  Oh, the joys of a limited vocabulary.  I overlooked the parts of the course about Swedish geography and the royal family though, thinking that these had simply been included as linguistic examples.  How wrong I was.  Half of the test were questions about these facts, which I couldn't answer in English let alone Swedish.  I did write a lovely little story about a chap named John and his Saturday nights in Sticky Fingers followed by breakfasts with many friends though so hopefully that will redeem me.  It will be very embarrassing indeed if I have to tell you next week about the time I failed the easiest test in the world.

I have my first piece of actual coursework due in on Friday which has coincided nicely with me not having any classes  this week.  In a strange turn of events, I woke up this morning feeling slightly panicked that I haven't started the essay yet, when usually I wouldn't start until 11pm the night before, and this one is half the length that I'm used to.  I'm choosing to embrace this panic though and use it to start planning the essay now and maybe, just maybe, it can be my first ever piece of university coursework that doesn't involve an all nighter to complete.  Wish me luck.

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