Sweden

Looking at my Sweden pictures last night made me want to post more of them! So here's a mostly picture post for you. Hard to believe this was already 7 years ago.

These first couple of pictures was from our first weekend there as a group. We visited this island called Marstrand, it was this old fashioned little island, no cars, everyone rode bikes and stuff. And there was this cool fort thing right smack in the middle.

We're imitating this statue. I was the horse.

This was taken our last official day of the program. From left to right, it's Laura, me, Kimberly, Meredith, and Safi. This was later in the same day that I got my tattoo. Meredith got one too, but Kimberly backed out.

This is us with our professors. The two on the left are from Cornell, the two standing in the middle were from Goteborg University, and the one sort of next to me was a friend of our female Swedish professor. She was a preschool teacher, we visited her school and she helped with some language classes.

Here's my kids! This is about 2/3 of the class, the 3 and 4 year olds. The class I was in ranged from 18 months to 5 years old. There were only 2 full blooded Swedes among the 18 kids in the class. The one in the very center of this picture, the little blond boy with the big smile, is one of them. Most of the kids spoke another language at home, several were from the Middle East. This picture was from our field trip to the zoo.

Here's a good Goteborg landmark: the statue of Poseidon. Apparently the sculptor wanted to give him a nice big penis, befitting the god of the seas, but wasn't allowed to. So he gave him a little penis, conveniently tinted peach in this picture (no, I didn't do it), but gave him that big fish to hold in his hand. Very innocent from the front.

But from the side, it looks like Poseidon has a giant wang. I wish this picture was better, because it really is hilarious to see.

There's a funny story to go with this picture. First, yes I'm holding a cigarette. I smoked a little bit in Sweden. Just a little bit, honest. Anyway, one of our last weekends there, we decided to go to a club downtown. So we started at our little local bar, Olof's (it was right in our dorm complex, quite handy), did some pregaming, then started walking downtown. Partway there I really had to pee. We came across this building with these nice tall, thick hedges all around on a not-too-busy street. I was a bit drunk, so I went behind the hedges, dropped trou, and started to pee. I'm pretty sure Kimberly and Meredith were mortified, but laughing their asses off at me. While I'm back there, totally hidden, a group of guys come up and have the same idea. Instead of going behind the bushes though, they just stand out in front and go to town. Yes, peeing into the hedges that I am hiding behind. I'm done by now, hiding and trying not to laugh and give myself away. Finally I ran out towards my friends, laughing hysterically, practically giving the Swedish guys heart attacks. We all had quite a chuckle. Turns out they were going to the same place we were, so we walked the rest of the way together, and of course got a picture.

This is just kind of funny, there was a big hockey tournament or something one weekend and they had all these ads talking smack about all the other teams. Sahlgrenska is the name of the hospital in Goteborg, and tack means please.

And one last one: Goteborg at sunset.