Bison and reindeer and bears oh my!

Last weekend was a long weekend due to Saturday being All Saints Day, which apparently the Swedes spend remembering dead family members and lighting candles on their graves. Preethi and I got Friday off uni so headed off to Stockholm to see some sights. Upon arrival we legged it to the Malaysia Airlines office to organise our tickets home, before heading over to Skansen, a large open-air museum. Here they have old buildings from all over Sweden which they have relocated here to display to the public as examples of what buildings were like in the good old days. They also have a zoo of Swedish animals, and also some craft shops. We had a really good day, though by the end my legs were in agony from all the walking.
On Saturday we had a big dinner in my corridor, with the theme of 'Homeland Food'. I couldn't bring myself to make some meat pies, so I figured that I was representing Asia as well as Australia and so I made sushi. We all stuffed ourselves on really good food, and then played stupid games for a few hours. I don't think I've ever had a good experience of playing charades. We got through 1 round before finding it too dull and moving on to another game. Of course I had already done my go before this was decided. The other team got me to enact "Terminator 3" which was very difficult and involved me blowing away lots of imaginary bad guys. When this didn't work I acted out the bad guy from Terminator 2 as I haven't even seen Terminator 3, and fell to the ground, falling to pieces, before the pieces came back together and I stood up again. Needless to say my team failed to guess the film before time was called. I later found out that Stella had recorded all of this, though I have yet to see the evidence.

A game we then played which was quite good, involved taking cards at the start, which decided whether you were a murderer, policeman, bitch or citizen. Everyone then 'goes to sleep', during which time the murderers kill someone, who the bitch may or may not save. It's a bit difficult to explain here, but the aim of the game is to kill the murderers and save the policeman. During the last round of the game I was a murderer, and suspected by most people, but managed to talk myself out of this situation and throw suspicion onto someone else who was then killed instead of me. Muhahaha.

I've been working hard at uni this week as Preethi and I are off to Russia on Thursday, and thus missing a few classes. Which reminds me, I finally got my result from my last unit, and got a "VG" which stands for something in Swedish, but basically means "Very Good" and is apparently the highest score you can get, so yay for me.

I have a big day ahead of me tomorrow - have to go into uni all morning, then do all my laundry for Russia in the arvo. Doing your laundry here can really be a pain in the arse. It generally involves taking all your clothes down to the laundry room only to find no machines free so you go back up to your room. This is repeated a few times before you get a machine. As you actually need 2 or 3 machines, you do one load, then come back when this is finished, put it in the dryer, and put your next load in to wash etc etc. So you get quite a lot of exercise, and need to be home for a few hours during this process. Add to this the nerves brought on by the possibility of your clothes getting stolen while you're not there, and it's a really pleasant experience.

Well next time you hear from me I'll hopefully have lots of exciting tales of my time in Russia, hopefully without having any run-ins with the scary military, and with a furry hat in hand (or on head).