eh...
Just performed the most pathetic feat ever-
I need a cheap country in Europe to go to stat, someone to go with, and someone's place to crash on. Payment: one bottle of Swedish vanilla vodka and a can of snus (bags of nicotine that you hold behind your upper lip).
Unrelated, but Scandinavia was one of the later parts of Europe to be converted to Christianity. Apparently, according to a book by Winston Churchill, some Vikings would get into fighs with Christians,but if they came out on the losing side the opponents would offer forgiveness if the Vikings would agree to be baptized and repent. They weren't dumb fucks so of course they agreed to a no-brainer deal. After some later hacking and feasting on the innards of some more vanquished Christians, the older Vikings would remember with fondness their 5th or 6th baptizing.
This is where heroes are made and where I spend my time living. It's the main student part of Uppsala, a 30-minute walk from town and probably the site of the majority of Uppsala's debauchery. Also, word on the street is that Elin from building 5 shoplifts gum, knocks over molting robins' nests out of spite, and sticks large stones in dolphins' blowholes.
This is the view from bathhouse-in the foreground is the river, behind that are some buildings, and behind that is the 800-year old church that forms the skyline of Uppsala. Well, part of it are 800 years old. I believe it's the main church of the official Swedish church, which all Swedes were born into as recently as a few years ago.
This is the graveyard that lies in front of Engelska Parken, the group of buildings that host my rigorous one-hour-per week courseload. I'm pretty sure that Carol Linneas, the famous scientist adventurer who came up with the binomial nomenclature system of classification ("homo sapiens", "argus teribilus" etc..), is buried here. Behind that graveyard is where the main part of the city of Uppsala begins.
This is Uppsala from the roof of Flogsta, which requires a key and card to get to, something which adds to the annoyance of an otherwise enjoyable experience. Flogsta used to be a ward, apparently, for mental patients. It was thought that corridor living would provide a healthy atmosphere for social interaction and mental status, but the addition of balconies and an accessible roof hindered that goal. There is nothing that could possibly be stolen from the balcony, so it seems that the only rationale for the additional hassles is the idea that you must be a resident if you want to kill yourself.
In Swedish grocery stores there is none of, and nobody has heard of, okra, ground turkey (come to think of it I couldn't find turkey of any kind), cilantro, pinto beans (though people do know what they are when described as Mexican beans), and for the pepper selection there is a small number of prepackaged mixed assortment of very sterile looking peppers that look like they're wrapped in bags made for syringes. On the bright side, most food is fairly fresh and seems to be low in preservatives, aside from the obvious things.
First person in the matatu, waiting for it to be filled up so we could go to Kakamega, Kenya's only rainforest, the place that had monkeys and bats and cats and Rhinocarus birds, among other living things.
Eighteen kids fit into the back of this truck- I was one of them. Riding in the back on Kenya roads, which ar a bit wavy, was a balancing act.
didn't even care. Granted, some of this apparent apathy is due to the zoom on my camera, but I was nonetheless pretty close. The zebras seemed to know this was their territory. Furthermore, I hadn't seen any people for the hour before and the hour after I took this picture, so perhaps I was a novelty, rather than something to be scared of.
This was the church a half-hour walk from the farm where I joined the kids occasionally. The service was held in Swahili which I hadn't learned, so I missed my opportunity to be saved.
He was one of the more hilarious toddlers-one of the only three-year olds I've met who would cry, not because he was upset, and not to get pity-party attention, but to mock the other children.
This is Mark spelling motorcycle. The kids in Kenya speak Swahili from the age that they're able to speak, but English, being one of the national languages of Kenya, is taught from the nursery schools. So I didn't have problems getting along with the older kids. The little kids were pretty funny- I made do with the little Swahili I knew, getting by with una sawa ("you're ok") and mmmm....chakula ("mmmm...food") which Gosia and I said when implying that we were going to eat the children. They got a kick out of that.
This was in Hell's Gate National Park. This was a bit pathetic. See of course this is a very cool area, much more than the picture describes but we were walking along in a pretty mellow way until the Kenyan guide informed us that a portion of Laura Croft's Tomb Raider was filmed. Only then did I and the others bust out the cameras.
I like politics so I'm glad to be temporarily out of the country. My favorite practical joke is to fill a mixed nuts can with Brazil nuts only, then leave it out. Today my class watched a nature documentary on predation that had a killer whale getting a baby seal. We were sad and disappointed at first, which increased when the whale flung the seal into the air but by the time it was batting it into the air with its tail 30 ft up and spinning, we just couldn't stop laughing.
