Calm and Comfortable

(photo credit: Jen Fox)









For those of you who also are following the Gustavus Term In Sweden blog (http://gustavusterminsweden.blogspot.com/) you will find some overlap between my post on that blog earlier today and this one on my personal one. I will try to add in some variation.

Our first week in Jönköping has passed quite successfully. I am so happy to be back with the group and I feel more relaxed than I have in a while. After our incredibly long and stressful day of traveling from London back to Sweden, we arrived here on Sunday evening and walked into our dorm rooms which were complete with personal bathrooms and closets! I almost fell over with joy. Though we were exhausted, Sonja and I immediately turned up the Frank Sinatra and went about unpacking our overweight suitcases and then shoving the empty counterparts into a corner where they will remain until May 17th. Coming from sharing a room with 20 people in London, this little bit of privacy seems like such a luxury. I have no idea what I will do when I return home and have an entire basement to myself.

Being together with the group feels so very wonderful. After we unpacked on Sunday night, we could all be found in one room, laughing loudly and sharing all of our Spring Break adventures. We are calmer and comfortable.

Jönköping is wonderful. The students are quite excited to meet us and hear our story of why we are in Sweden. Everyday more of them approach us at lunch or dinner. Even on our first night, there were knocks on our doors, curious to who these new loud English speakers might be. The city is gorgeous. The school is located on top of a huge hill which looks down into the valley. Every night that I walk outside to go to the sauna, my breath gets taken away a little bit with the view.

I am also loving our classes! We are engaged in our Sweden Today class and our Nobel Laureates class. We have already read quite a bit and have pretty top notch class discussions. This rhythm of classes and homework feels natural and pleasant. If was fun to be a tourist, but this feels better.

I am beginning to worry what it will feel like to leave this place and these people that I have fallen pretty deeply in love with. There is a growing realization in my mind of how when I return home, no one else will understand my experiences than these eleven others. I can show pictures and tell stories, yes, but no one else will really grasp what these 5 months were.