FROM: Lynn Yoshikawa

Well, I've finally settled into Uppsala and finished the first week of regular classes. It was pretty hectic for awhile, stepping off the plane and immediately being thrown into a 10-day intensive program (IP) with all 140 students in Europe taking the course and trying to set-up a new life in Sweden. The latter is quite difficult and hardly finished as the Swedes are uber-organized about everything, which requires a lot of running around getting different passwords, swipe cards, tax numbers, registrations...!

Sunset

Anyways, the IP was an amazing collection of over 80 nationalities, mostly European and about 1/3 with extremely diverse experience in the field. Some worked in Darfur, Afghanistan, others have backgrounds in the military, medicine, engineering, etc. We had pretty intense days of lectures with aid workers and managers from all levels of the business, swapping war stories and late nights at the student "nations" which are student-run pubs with relatively cheap alcohol. Everything is expensive here: a beer at a normal bar costs a minimum $8, a cafe meal $10 and groceries are twice as much as at home. The food is pretty crap here. I've never eaten so much cheese (the smallest package you can buy seems to be a kilo - 2.2 lbs). The food's pretty good quality but they don't know the first thing about flavoring, my God.

I'm living in student housing which is interesting. I have a good-sized room, bathroom and share a kitchen with 11 Swedish undergrads on my corridor. They're about 19-23 years old, so I feel like Aunt Lynn over here when they are partying and playing air-guitar in the hallway. That said, they are more mature and worldly than I was at their age and quite friendly. Sweden just had an election, which was quite revolutionary as they have a new party in power after over 40 years of Social Democrats. Sweden is surprisingly diverse, especially Uppsala. I find all the bits of languages that I know coming to the surface, Arabic, Spanish, French, Burmese, Japanese, etc. You could easily use all these languages in the day. There's a lot of immigrants; the African and Arabs are most visible but there are even more from other parts of Europe. There are, of course, plenty of blondes too and on the whole people are really attractive as both men and women are crazy about exercise and fashion.

Lynn

The surroundings are pristinely beautiful here. The city is over 600 years old and has the largest cathedral in Scandinavia. The streets are cobblestone with a lovely river running through, cute shops and cafes. Everything closes by 6 pm though. It's a pretty small city and you can get everywhere on bike, but the 4th largest in Sweden. We are surrounded by pine forests and fields dotted with red and white traditional Swedish houses, lakes and creeks. And the weather! I'm (usually) cold, but according to locals we are having unusually warm summer-like weather. I think the high is in the upper-60s now but will get down to -5F. I can't even imagine what that will be like. We still have plenty of sunlight though the sun doesn't come up very high off the horizon. I've been trying to acclimate so I just wear a t-shirt, light jacket and scarf. No flip flops though. My feet are very sad, but the cleanest they've been in years =P

I'm looking forward to traveling around Europe and will be off to Paris for a wedding next weekend. Oh la la! I can't wait to sample the patisseries, the Louvre and hanging out with other Mae Sot friends who are coming. I've tapped into the Burma scene here and will also be seeing some colleagues from Mae Sot tonight. The further I go, it seems the world gets smaller.

Sweden

Oh yes, classes....Almost forgot =P We started our regular coursework this week in Public Health and Management but the lecturer manages to make it as boring as possible. The material is fine but doesn't seem too rigorous. Here, we take one course at a time for 3-6 weeks. The next course is Anthro, then geopolitics and international law. Next term I will specialize in Peace and Conflict Resolution...

Well there's a brief overview of my new life here. Come and visit or meet up elsewhere in Europe!

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