Livin' and Learnin'

Dearest readers, My sincerest apologies on taking a while to tell you just how awesome my trip to Geneva was. I know you have been losing sleep over this so here I am to tell you all about how it went! 


My whirlwind weekend in Geneva was fantastic. The first thing I noticed was the warm weather! I walked around with only a t-shirt on. I couldn't believe it! It was so much warmer than Stockholm! I was excited to say the least. Our first adventure after finding our hostel was to see the United Nations building! They let us in to go on a guided tour. The interesting thing was that they let in two people per one passport. It was so strange, but Kelsey and I were just happy to get in! 


The tour was so cool. We learned so much about the UN and got to see most of the rooms where they have big conference meetings. I even got to learn some Swedish history. One of the first conflicts ever successfully resolved by the League of Nations was a dispute between Sweden and Finland over the Aland Islands. The islands now belong to Finland and a war was avoided between two neighboring states. There was a picture of this hanging in the UN which is what we got to see. My favorite thing about the UN was that I felt like I could solve all of the world's problems by cooperation. It was a cool feeling! 

The next day was the day we had both been waiting for: CERN TOUR!! We woke up early and got some delicious breakfast at the cafe near by. I had a nutella crepe, a delicious croissant, and fresh squeezed OJ! YUM! Then we got on the tram and then the bus to take us to CERN. We couldn't believe we were actually there! Our tour started at 10:30 and we watched a video about 50 years at CERN. CERN was built in 1954 as a big particle physics lab and has been making big discoveries in particle physics ever since. The W and Z particles were discovered there. If you want more info on those you could either go to CERN's website or google it! :) Of course, the biggest thing to come to CERN since then has been the LHC, the large hadron collider. This was started in 2008 after some difficulties with the magnets and today they are looking to make some big discoveries. The guy who gave our tour, Bill Murray, is one of the leaders on the ATLAS project which is looking for the Higgs Boson particle. If found, this particle will confirm the presence of the Higgs field and will tell particle physicists why some subatomic particles have mass. It would be a big find. That is why they are running a lot of experiments now. They were running experiments when we were there so we didn't get to see the LHC up close and personal but we learned a whole lot about the ATLAS project! I bought a book about the LHC to bring home with me so I could learn all about the projects. It should be some pretty nice leisure reading. :) After spending all day at CERN and learning lots about particle physics, we were pooped so we bough some groceries and made dinner in our hostel and ended the night with a game of yahtzee! I love that groceries stores are so close so we can easily buy groceries and have a delicious dinner in our hostel kitchen! I will miss that a lot when I go home. 

The ATlAS project building. This was a painting of their detector. Way complicated!

Bill Murray, our tour guide, showing off the particle detector he spent 6 months developing!

LHC woo woo! 

A model of the LHC

Dinner! :) Yum!

Our last day in Geneva was full of more sightseeing. We saw the St. Pierre Cathedral which is in the heart of the old town. It was beautiful. There was an archeological site below the church where we learned a lot about  how the church used to look. Kelsey and I were just surprised at how archeologists knew what they were looking at...it all looked like rock to me! We saw other big Geneva sights like the Reformation Wall and the world's longest bench! We ended our day by going up to the top of the tower and had a great view of the town! 

the world's largest bench. it just keeps going...

The view from the top! 

It was a fantastic trip. I got to enjoy nice weather, see the coolest and biggest particle physics lab in the world, hang out with a great friend, and eat some yummy food. Successful? I think so! :) If you want to see more pictures go here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=275858&id=575993715&l=d1acf72a07. 


Since getting back to Stockholm, I have been busy planning some other trips and hanging out with friends and my host family. I had some reading to do (of course) but I also had time to bake the most delicious rhubarb recipes with a friend from church and go shopping at the mall with my host siblings! It has been fun just chillin in Stockholm! I'm excited that the weather is getting warmer and I can not wear my big poofy coat anymore! :) hooray! 


I'm really excited because this weekend I am going to London! I am going to see Sherlock Holmes' home and Stonehenge! it is gonna be awesome! I've also been planning the trip that mom and I are going to take. She gets here in 3 weeks! woo! 


The last thing I should mention is that on Friday I get to go on a tour of the biochemistry labs here. I have a full day there and I have no idea what to expect but I imagine I get to see the labs and find out what they are doing. It should be awesome! :) 


That's all for now. I'm gonna do some homework before class today! 

Is my life real right now?

That was the question I was asking myself as I walked to the bus stop at 5 am to catch the bus to the airport. Why am I going to the airport you might ask? Well, I am going to Geneva, Switzerland this weekend to visit CERN and hang out with the one and only science nerd, Kelsey Smith! We are going to have a great weekend. I can't believe that I actually get to see the largest particle accelerator in the world...for free (after travel expenses). I am ready to learn all about how it works! woo! Don't worry, lots of photos will be taken and I will tell you all about it. Just hold on until Monday!

I am especially excited about this trip after the week that I had. I actually had homework to do. I had a paper to write for my film class. I wrote about the Swedish crime genre. If you want to read it, I can send it to you, but it's 6 pages and not that thrilling. It would be more exciting to watch a Swedish crime movie! :) I can recommend some of those..."man on the roof" and "girl with the dragon tattoo" are good choices! I also had to prepare discussion questions for my Gender in Swedish Society class. That went well. I had everyone draw pictures of the material we had to read to present to the class. Then we had some questions to answer. I am just glad it's over with though...I also had to read for my two other classes and write a response to the reading for one of them. It was a lot to do on top of planning this trip. I would tell you I am busy over here but it's not the same busy at at Bradley. I don't spend hours in the library. Instead, I am busy sitting on the bus, or reading a book (for class usually), or planning trips, or hanging out with friends. I don't mind it at all, but class would be much more interesting if it was a science class! :) of course!

Well, I'm gonna get back to my busy waiting! I have about 1 hour before my flight leaves. Bon voyage!

You did what? Saw the northern lights on a dog sled. What about it?

Hi all my lovely readers! Sorry to keep you on the edge of your seats about my trip to Kiruna. If you are friends with me on facebook, I'm sure you've seen all the 300 pictures I took. Yea, I think I went a little camera happy. I didn't have enough window photography opportunities yet so I had an itch that needed scratching if you know what I mean! :) Anyway, I returned to Stockholm and had to prepare for an in class and a take home exam so that kept me pretty busy and away from typing up this delightful blog. Oh and the responsibilities of laundry and other classes too. In case you were wondering, I do actually do things over here! :) However, that's not what you want to hear about right now so we'll save that for another post and I'll tell you all about Kiruna and Lapland right now! 


First we need a lesson on Swedish geography. Kiruna is above the arctic circle in, yep you guessed it, northern Sweden. From Stockholm it took about 18 hours on train to get there. You might be surprised that we even opted to take a train for that long but it was overnight and was actually quite nice. My favorite part was that we got to see the Swedish country side when it was light out. This is where a lot of my window photography came into play. I was really intrigued by the types of trees that we saw. There were tall red pines and birch trees for most of the way and as we got farther north there were more birch trees. I was trying to figure out why the bottoms of all the trees were black and appeared to have no bark. Here are a couple pictures from the train and see if you have any idea. 

Views from the window. See the trunks of the trees?

This was taken closer to Kiruna. The landscape is a bit different and you see the awesome Swedish MOUNTAINS in the distance! :)

The train! 

Because of Kiruna's northern location we were able to experience a lot of winter things at their best which is just how I like to do it! Our first winter adventure was dog sledding. We checked into our hostel and went grocery shopping (to buy our favorite cereal ICA Crunchy!) before the guide picked us up at our hostel to get all bundled up for our 3 hour dog sledding adventure. We got into these big red coveralls and big boots before hopping on sleds (4 people per sled) with 14 dogs each. The dogs were so eager to get going that they were barking up a storm but they were so cute! All of the dogs were Alaskan Huskies and were anywhere from 1 to 12 years old. I was most surprised by how quite the guide (his name was Mikael) spoke all the commands. He talked louder to us sitting on the sled than to the dogs way ahead of the sled! They still heard his commands and responded at once! We just rode and didn't get to drive but it was still so cool because the dogs were fast dogs - they used to race. We saw the lights too. They were beautiful and I was surprised by how much they moved. I don't know why I expected them to be stagnat but they definitely weren't. They swirled and moved around and made quite a beautiful picture! I don't have any pictures of them because I was either watching them or they were took weak to get a good photo with my camera. One of my friends did so I am going to get the pictures from her! My other favorite part of this was that we got to eat some traditional Lapland (that is the name of the northern region of Sweden) food - reindeer meat and cloudberries. They were both delicious! 

My view from the sled. I got front seat! 

Petting the super cute dogs! Don't worry, I was warm the whole time in all my gear!

The next day was full of more winter wonderland. The highlights were feeding reindeer and then visiting the Ice Hotel. We traveled to Jukkasjvärvi which is about 30 minutes to the east of Kiruna by bus. We walked around in the sunshine to the Sami Culture Museum. The Sami and the indigenous people to Lapland so we got to learn all about their life. One of their teepee structures is used as a basis for current camping tents today! We even got to feed the cutest reindeer while we were there. The hysterical thing was that they only wanted to get food from us. They had no interest in being petted and they would crowd around if they thought we had food. It is quite intimidating to have reindeer come at you! haha! Right after that we got a snack of reindeer sandwiches again before heading to the Ice Hotel. Yes, we fed then ate reindeer. 

the sun and snow in the small, beautiful town of Jukkasjvarvi

The church built by the missionaries to convert the Sami peoples to Christianity with the gang minus one in front!

The reindeer were attacking! Annie (left) and Lucy were trying to escape! 

Sami sandwiches with reindeer meat!

If you didn't guess already, the Ice Hotel is cold. It is a constant -5C all the time inside. There are about 100 rooms I think and the building is made of artificial snow to keep the shape and to keep it the same temperature all the time. The snow in Lapland is to dry to use which is why the snow is artificial but the ice is natural is is actually from the river right behind the ice hotel. The ice (the clearest ever) is harvested in huge blocks and then sculpted for the hotel. The ice is stored for a year before it is used in a big warehouse (the guide told us why but I can't remember!). Each year, artists apply to design rooms in the ice hotel and 20 win. They submit their designs and then they have 2-3 weeks to actually build the rooms. After seeing the rooms, that was pretty incredible because they seemed like they would take a lot more time than that to build. OK, now to answer the question you are all dying to ask. How do people sleep here? Well, there are actually mattresses on the beds of ice and they have reindeer skins on top of them. Guests are given sleeping bags to use and wear long underwear and such..just enough to keep the sleeping bag warm. If guests survive the night then they are awarded a diploma saying they survived a night in the ice hotel! After visiting, I don't think I would want to stay there. It was just too cold and not comfortable at all! They have "warm rooms" for those who want to stay in the area but not the ice hotel. 

The gang in front of the ice hotel. 

One of my favorite art rooms..a fridge called "deep freeze"

The ice hotel ice freshly harvested from the river!

The next day we did more exploring around Kiruna and finished seeing the sights of the town. Kiruna was founded because of the large iron ore bodies in the two mountains nearby so the town owes its existence to the mine. We got a guided tour of the mine which was so legit! We were 540 meters below the top of the mountain where they had a museum and a film telling us all about the mine. We saw equipment and learned how they mined the ore and how that is resulting in having to move the town. In a quick explanation, the iron ore that is removed from the mine is replaced by the rock on the other side and this displacement is causing the surrounding land to be unstable. This includes the town so in the next 40 years, they need to move the town. Some buildings will actually be moved some will be destroyed and rebuilt. The tour guide said that most people were ok with the move because they knew it was the best thing for the town and needed to be done. I found it fascinating! We also got to have coffee and cookies in the mine. Those Swedes love to fika and now I do too! I'm bringing it back so get excited everyone! We all got to leave the mine with our own samples of iron ore pellets made from the mine! They make enough to share! 

The levels of the mine and our lovely tour guide! The dark gray part is the iron ore body. 

How they mine the iron ore...explosion after explosion.

The gang in front of the big loader! Yea, it was huge!

Fika in the mine! :) Tea and cookies, yum!

There were a couple buildings in the town that were modeled after the mine. These tall buildings are the mountains. They each have different colored sections in the middle that represent the iron ore and the balconies are the mine elevators, skipps. There are buildings below them (not seen here) that represent the terraces on the side of the mountain. It was so cool to see buildings built after the two mines in the town!

We also saw some of the sights around Kiruna: the city hall which is the most beautiful public building in Sweden, the church donated by the mine, and the cute houses all around! I really liked Kiruna and Lapland and I would love to go back! :) Here are some more pics: 

Sun, the other mountain (not being mined currently), and the snow get a thumbs up from me!

The City Hall. This will have to be destroyed and rebuilt for the town to move by 2022.

Yep, an ice throne! They had lots of ice sculptures all over town! 

The church. It was donated to the town by the mine. It was very pretty inside as well.

Aside from all these awesome touristy things, we hung out at the hostel and made dinners and enjoyed food at a delicious cafe called "Cafe Safari." I really enjoyed hanging out with my fellow students and seeing a new side of Sweden! If you want to see the rest of my pictures from the trip, you can look at these two links: 
album 1: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=272114&id=575993715&l=c76e641cc8
album 2: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=272142&id=575993715&l=a0d339e35c


I would highly recommend going up to Kiruna is you are ever in Sweden! It is awesome. Now, I'm sure you've had enough since this post is so long! Thanks for reading and there will be more to come! :) Let me know if you have any more questions and I would be glad to answer them! 

What have you been doing lately? Why, visiting museums!

I have failed to mention to all of you what I do with most of my time (outside of the reading  for school). I go to museums galore! I arrived and was given a list of 75 museums in the greater Stockholm area to visit. I read through the list and plan on visiting most of them! I have kind of lost track of how many I have gone to but probably like 10-15 I would guess. I wanted to tell you about the best of them so you know which ones to go to!


Top museums so far: Vasa Museum, The Royal Armoury, and Technical Museum
Favorite Places to visit that aren't really classified as "museums:" Drottingholm Palace, Kunglia Operan (The Opera House)


The Vasa Museum: 


This museum houses a real ship from 1628 that sank in the harbor in Stockholm 20 min after leaving the dock. There is still no definitive answer as to why this ship sank but it did. It might have been because the proportions were wrong or because not enough crew members were on board. Whatever the reason it sank. Luckily for us, it was discovered in 1965 and later brought to the museum in 1988 after years of cleaning and restoring. It was probably the coolest thing ever. We enjoyed the guided tour as well as a film about getting the ship out of the harbor. There were 5 floors of interesting stuff to explore as well. I really enjoyed it. I should also say that the Vasa was quite a ship. She was brightly painted and had frightening carvings all over her. She was a warship after all and king Gustav Aldof II did not want anyone to defeat Sweden! The museum had a scale model of the the Vasa which was a sight to see. If you ever come to Stockholm, the Vasa Museum is a must see. It was well worth the money I spent! Oh and the restaurant was very nice as well if you are hankering for some food! 

Vasa replica

The real deal! 

Close up of the canon

The Royal Armoury: 

Located in the basement of the Royal Palace, this small museum has the gems of the city! It was so cool to see weapons and clothes from kings and queens of the past! I love that kind of stuff so I just ate it up! The coolest thing was the blood stained clothes that Gustav III died in at a masquerade ball. I bought my first book from Sweden here because it had pictures of all of the royalty. If anyone likes royalty stuff, they should go here. Way cool!! 

The Technical Museum: 

This museum was awesome!! It contained the exhibit "NASA-A Human Adventure" that had the coolest stuff about space travel, the space race, and other neat stuff. I went with a friend and we just geeked out at the whole space travel stuff. Plus we had rented the audio guides which were cheap and were the best investment! They were iPod touches and had video and pictures to go along with the audio and music. It was so neat! There was a lot of cool stuff at this exhibit. The museum also had exhibits about inventions, energy use, telephones and lots of cool stuff for kids to do that I tried out, of course! It was pretty great. Once again, this is a good museum to go to if you like technology and stuff. A lot of the permanent exhibits were mostly in Swedish but we still looked at lots of cool stuff! 

Space Salt and Pepper shakers! I want these!

Space ship models. I believe this was the Gemini ship.

A current space suit

Drottingholm Palace: 

The residence of the royal family is only a 15 min bus ride from my house! That is so awesome! It is a beautiful palace both inside and out. They didn't allow pictures inside but i bought a book and you could probably google it to find some online! The palace has 100 rooms and we got to see about 25 of them. They were beautiful! The palace is mostly baroque style but also has other styles depending on which king or queen decided to redecorate the rooms. Outside there is a huge garden. Huge doesn't even begin to describe the size. I didn't walk the whole thing because it was so large. There are trees and statues everywhere. Mind you, there was snow all around but it was still really cool. I plan on returning to see it when the snow has melted! I can't wait! :) 

The front of the palace

The back

the back again. they were doing some "yard work" in the gardens on the lime trees they have there.

View from the garden. 

I think I already blogged about the opera house but if I didn't just tell me and I'll fill you all in! :) 

I have visited some other museums that were pretty good, but not my favorite. I am still glad I went for the experience. The Museum of Ethnography, the Modern Museum, and the Architecture Museum. 

Now I think if I just go to at least 2 museums a weekend then I can manage to see most of the museums in the area! That will be great! Did I mention I love museums?! 

Visit http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=270451&id=575993715&l=2acbe2b2b7 or http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=267899&id=575993715&l=c71bc77928 if you want to view more museum photos on facebook. 

Now, I just need to pack for my trip to Kiruna. You probably have 2 questions. What is that and what are we doing there? Well, Kiruna is a mining town in the very northern part of Sweden known as Lapland. It is close to the Ice Hotel (the hotel made completely from ice). We (myself and 5 other friends from the program) are going up tomorrow night and are going to see the northern lights by dog sled, tour the ice hotel, maybe have a tour of the mine, and enjoy the sauna in the hostel. Oh and eat some delicious food! :) It should be a great trip! 

That's all for now! Thanks for reading!