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.

I'm sort of famous

My regular readers (the thousands of you) may have noticed a slew of new visitors today. I counted 27 just now. Seems someone over on thenest.com was asking about someone who has a screen name that includes T&A, someone found this here little blog, and posted a link asking if I'm that person. Alas, I am not. I feel sort of sorry for all those people who trek over here, hoping to find someone they know and miss, and only find me. I used to frequent a couple of the boards there for awhile, though not the particular board that had this post, and my screen name didn't have T&A in it. Plus I didn't actually post much. Sorry, ladies.

Big TV news: Scrubs is back on! I think it was on Monday night, although with DVR it's hard to remember. 2 episodes though, and both were pretty good, I thought. The last couple of seasons have only been so-so, but these were much better. This is supposedly the last season, although there are rumors of a spin off, in Cheers/Frasier fashion. I'd watch. I watched Joey, after all.

Speaking of TV... I think I've mentioned my love of the show Ghost Hunters here before. (Yup, I looked it up and linked to it in case you were curious. There's 2 separate links there, folks. Just doing my job.) The girl who worked in the store today (Chrissy) also works at the wax museum downtown. She's told me (and others have told me) a few creepy ghostly stories about the place before. Anyway, she told me today that one of the guys from Ghost Hunters (Jason) and his wife came into the wax museum last month! She met them and talked to them and stuff! They were just in town on vacation and stopped in. They went through the museum, then asked her if there were any ghost stories about the place. So she told them a bunch. Then they asked if they could stick around after she closed and turned off the lights, so she said sure. They brought in one of their cameras and she walked them back into one section where there are a bunch of presidents set up. She was telling them a story about the wax face of Abraham Lincoln, and about how it was made from one of his death masks. After she finished talking, Jason's wife told her that during her story, a light came out from behind her, where the wax head was, swirled around her head, then went back behind her toward the wax head. Kind of weird. The wife said she'd post it on her myspace page, but I just looked and it wasn't there, but she hasn't logged in for a few weeks. Chrissy gave them the owner's card and told them they should come back and investigate. If they do, I am SO there! I'll be such a dork, I'd totally just stand around and grin like a goofball. It would totally make my day. No, month at least.

Ok, now that you've read all that drivel, here's a fun little series of pictures of me getting my tattoo. First, the last picture ever taken of my un-tattooed back:

Now a couple of action shots. Look how hard I'm holding onto that seat back. It hurt, yo.

And finally, the finished product. I think it took about an hour. I was considering a butterfly until I saw this little guy, I'm so glad I found him. He's my Swedish souvenir. If he had a name, it would be "Chompers" in Swedish.