That's not a crayfish..._this_ is a crayfish!

Although I didn't have time to make a comical hat, our crayfish party was a roaring success! Most of the people from my corridor, plus a few friends crowded around some tables in our lounge, to feast upon crayfish, prawns, freshly baked bread, salad, and a selection of cheeses. Fine fare indeed! The crayfish here are quite cute, in comparison to the huge monsters I am accustomed to. I have always said that you seem to burn more energy getting the meat out of crayfish than you ingest, and I think that certainly applies to these little ones. You buy them at the supermarket already cooked, and frozen, so you just defrost them and they're ready to eat. Same applies with the prawns, though everyone else called them shrimp.

You are meant to drink lots of schnapps whilst all of this is going on, but I drank some nice Australian chardonnay :)

One of the guys in my corridor, Tomas, made his hat out of balloons. It was amazing! He actually made a little red crayfish. Once I get the photos on Flickr you'll be able to see what I mean. I did my usual trick of taking a couple of photos then forgetting to take any more, so I'll be getting the photos from one of the other guys in my corridor, Anders.

The singing of Swedish songs continued throughout the evening too, and although I couldn't join in it was quite amusing. They have little books of songs, as it is a tradition at such events, and at gasques, to sing many songs. Some of the songs have tunes that I recognised, such as 'the bare necessities' and 'how much is that doggy in the window'.

So all in all it was a great night and now I feel as though I know my corridor mates better too :)

Last night Preethi and myself went out for dinner with Stella, an Italian girl in my corridor, and Kate and Niels. Kate is a law student from UWA who has helped us out with various things since our arrival, and Niels is her Swedish boyfriend. We managed to get in a tour of the city before dinner, as the first nation we went to was very full so we moved on to the next one. This was shut, so we went to another, which was also very full! So on to another, which was shut. Hmmm. We ended up going back to the first one we started at, to be told that dinner would take about 1 1/2 hours. After all our traversing of the city however we decided to stay, and only had to wait about 15-20 minutes for a table. Another good night.

Today is kulturnatten, the 'Night of Culture' which is the biggest cultural event in Uppsala. The program is huge but in Swedish so we're not sure where we'll end up, but should be good wherever we go.

Well I best go do some laundry so I have something to wear. Best wishes to you all.

Conor
xx