First 36 Hours

I arrived in Stockholm just over 36 hours ago, and my experience so far has been nothing but wonderful. When I arrived here after my overnight flight from the States, the sun was starting to rise and the colors were so rich in pinks and purples that I was standing there in awe because I often don’t see sunrises that beautiful back home. They say the colors are vibrant here is due to the high latitude.

Once I arrived at my housing, I was shocked by how my place is above and beyond my expectations. For example, there is a bathroom in our room! Typically in American colleges, the expectation is to have communal bathrooms, so being the naive American that I am, I brought shower shoes! This room is fantastic and when I met my roommate there was an instant connection, so I know the next four months is going to be nothing but good memories here.

Additionally, I decided to live in the Outdoor Living Learning Community (LLC) and we all had our first group meeting today. Hearing all the activities planned makes me extremely glad to have joined this LLC because I will get to experience Stockholm in a way that I would never have if I weren’t a part of this group. I think the main activity I’m excited about is to go ice skating!

Finally, I met my visiting host family today. I thought that having a host family while abroad will be the best way for me to learn the culture through local Swedes and I am so glad that I decided to do this because this family is so wonderful and so kind. Hopefully once I start practicing the language again I can engage in a basic conversation with them! Fingers crossed.

Being thrown into a new country on your own does come with some of its own set of challenges. I think the biggest challenge for me is trying to understand what all the signs and labels mean because almost all of it is in Swedish. While I did have some exposure to the Swedish language and culture, it has been over a year since I’ve seen or practiced it (and I was never good at it to begin with lol), so hopefully as time goes on some Swedish words and phrases will come back to me. But like I mentioned, I have a host family and they will definitely be able to help with my Swedish!

Overall, the people here are so nice and I am looking forward to next few months of my stay. I don’t think reality has hit me yet that I am here in Sweden but I think it’ll hit me once classes start rolling and I get settled in.

With that being said, I’m off to bed since it’s been an exciting two days but I will leave you with a picture that I took while exploring the neighborhood. The photo below was taken just a block from where I live!

Hejdå! (Bye!)