Back back back again, dear readers.

I’m delirious from the flight, very confused by the sunlight at what feels like 8pm, still without a phone, but I made it.

Traveling is always a challenge, but everything went pretty smoothly for us today. It was my absolute pleasure to travel home with my dear friend and fellow blogger Tess, all the way to the baggage claim at Sea-Tac. Made it through customs like a breeze, found all my bags (yet to check if the contents are in good shape but I am confident), and now I sit in the airport waiting for my family to pick me up.

Tess and I were discussing what it will be like to be back in our country again after being gone for so long, and I’m still processing what it’s like to be home again. When we looked out over the Washington mountains as we descended to the airport, it was like a part of me clicked back into place. I love Sweden and all that she has, but a part of me will always belong to this state and this place. Maybe it was the very emotional end of the book I was reading, but it really brought some feelings back up deep inside of me that I don’t think I knew were really there. It feels good to be home.

It’s been a pleasure to write for you all. Stay safe, get vaccinated, and go study abroad. I can’t recommend it enough.

As I come upon the last days of my time here at DIS, I thought I was prepared to go home. I’m ready for a new adventure with new people, in a new city to call home, and maybe that’s just the Sagittarius in me. But today, as I looked out over the island of Birka in the Stockholm archipelago, in the sunshine with my friends, imagining myself among the rocks and the trees in the Swedish summer, my inner tune changed.

At the beginning of this last week I went to my very last class meetings at DIS Stockholm that I will ever have. It’s a bittersweet thing as it always is, to have the semester end, but even more difficult to process because I may never return to this place and these hallways again. Of course, I’d like to in the future, but at least with Whitman I know I’m coming back, and I’ll always wander around because it’s where my home is, and it’s where I grew up. But with DIS, I’ve poured so much of my energy into this place and may never be able to feel that energy again in the same way, walking into KMH with my card in hand, freezing cold, desperately searching for the nearest cup of coffee, late to class. It’s something I think I’ll miss in a different way than I’ve missed something before. Also, caught my final museum visit!

The week continued with a final DIScovery trip out into the Swedish outdoors, and the trip I happened to go on took us to the Klarälven, a river a couple hours away from Stockholm, where I and some of my good friends built a timber raft and floated down the water at the mercy of the current. Interestingly enough, my dad’s side of the family comes from a long line of loggers, so something about riding a structure of floating logs down a Swedish river struck a chord with me. Maybe it was the wrong chord, because my lovely iPhone also disappeared beneath the waves in the middle of our journey. I will be blaming the lateness of this blog post on that event.

DIS has been able to offer us so many cool and unique opportunities this semester because of our group size, and this is definitely one of them. I would have never signed up for a timber rafting trip of my own accord, so for DIS to be able to offer this was an amazing occurrence. I suppose I have covid to thank for that, in a strange way.

I returned from this trip on Sunday night to wake up the next morning to my host dad’s birthday, my final experience of the Swedish sweets-in-bed birthday presentation. It’s also bittersweet, because in a way it felt normal. Like of course I would wake up early to be a part of the celebration, because it’s what the family does. And I’m part of the family. I’ve inserted myself into the lives of these wonderful people who have sheltered me, fed me, taken me places, loved me, and all these other things. And now I have to leave? I don’t think I’m only leaving a part of my heart behind, but maybe also like I’m taking some other hearts with me.

I performed my final concert at the DIS student showcase yesterday as well. I always leave my heart on stage after performing a little bit, but after not performing live for about a year, the emotion and nerves of being on stage again hit me in a different way. I showed pieces of my music that I truly don’t show to most people, and somehow being in this liminal space with my friends supporting me made me feel at home again. A lot of finalities there, maybe too many.

But it doesn’t end there, of course. Today, we took our final DIS trip, all as a group, to Birka (incidentally one of the sights I named as a must-see in my pre-departure instagram takeover for those day 1 fans), where we viewed our last viking sight and had a big outdoor lunch put together by the island restaurant. It’s one thing to ride out into the archipelago any old day, but it’s another thing entirely when for at least some of us, this may be our last time to be on a Swedish boat, hearing about the history of the vikings, as we hear the birds chirping on the first real day of summer sunshine. I have the sunburns to prove it. The hugs at the end of the journey and the “see you back home”-s are almost a dissonance for me. We can’t be leaving, this is our life now. What does it even mean to leave Stockholm? Is that even possible?

Like I’ve said before, there’s a rush and a feeling of needing to get everything done here before this emotion disappears again forever. But truly, I find myself just going places while I still have them, and chasing the feeling of being normal here, just one last little bit.

Not sure how much I have left to say about everything still. I’ve poured out my thoughts on this blog more than is probably necessary, and I think that now that my time writing here is coming to a close, I’ll miss it. Even as I sit here writing this at the moment that I literally should be asleep, I’ll miss it. Thank you all for sticking around all this long. We’ll see if I do another update when I get home. I might just be all fresh out of notes by then.

But until then, treasure these moments.

T-minus 13 days. Less than two weeks. I’ve been thinking recently about how I felt when I was two weeks away from arriving in Sweden, and those two weeks felt like the longest weeks of my life. Now, these two weeks feel like they’re going to disappear in my hands like fog if I try to grab them. Maybe that’s also because I have so many major papers to do in a very short period. Who could say?

It really is beginning to feel like the beginning of the end of my semester at this point. It’s been feeling like that for a month, but now classes are coming to a close, I’m starting to return my books, and I’m having final assignments thrown at me left and right! Now it’s impossible to deny: we actually do have to leave quite soon. How tragic. Also, the logistics of returning to the USA after being abroad for a not-insignificant amount of time I’m sure is normally difficult, but during pandemic times seems to be quite exacerbated. Remember way back at the beginning of this blog when I was complaining about all the papers I had to carry when leaving the US? Try coming back after a good amount of the general population has finally gotten vaccinated. It’s definitely a situation and a half to figure out. There’s also a big Swedish holiday the weekend that we’re leaving, so that certainly doesn’t make anything any easier. Whether or not you like it state of Washington, I’m comin’ for ya!

I wanted to take this post of my few blog posts left to give you a more academic insight into my time here at DIS, because I don’t think I’ve really done that much on this blog. I’ve written a lot about the fun and unique parts of taking classes at DIS, but I don’t think I’ve really written much academically about what it’s like to study at this program. At the close of my core course, let me earn my Whitman blog writing stipend and give you some academic thoughts.

One of the most interesting parts about studying at DIS, and I think actually the most giving, is the difference in credit weight than when taking classes back home. For me at least, in a general history class back at Whitman one earns about four credits, and for an upper-level class like I take, this usually includes several small writing assignments, quite substantive reading before each class, maybe a presentation or two, and a pretty major final research paper for each course. Here at DIS, most classes transfer over as three credits, and this translates into a more relaxed class environment in terms of papers and assignments. Of course I have quite a few projects (which I should be working on currently but blog is more fun), but compared to back home, I don’t spend hours upon hours in the library working on research and source collection. Classes, on average, are less work than they are back home.

But here’s why: learning at DIS certainly does not most often take place in a classroom. Of course taking physical (or online) classes in the DIS building is a big part of the experience, but I’ve also been to several different cities in Sweden, traveled all over the countryside, seen so many different old buildings, studied so many old rocks, that I couldn’t even recount them all if I tried. And if this were a more normal DIS semester, I would have visited different cities and countries in Europe as well throughout the term. Part of the learning is traveling, sightseeing, experiencing, and it’s truly integral to the DIS mission. The credit weights may be different, but it’s certainly just as much time/work as things would be back home. I don’t need to travel around Washington State every weekend visiting sights and places, because I’ve grown up there. Here, just taking a day trip out to the countryside to see some castles with my family is a learning experience.

Just this week, we finally finished up our World of the Vikings Core Course, and I was reflecting on my experience and what I’d learned over the semester. Besides getting to know an absolutely fantastic professor, I was able to apply my own historical process that I’ve acquired back home to an entirely new situation and geographical context and come out with so much. Not only did I learn some fascinating interdisciplinary theory about how to analyze the Vikings, but I was also able to experience firsthand the effects of that history, on the land, the people, and the modern state that exists within that historical context. I got to see places like Sigtuna, Uppsala, Gotland, and Öland that are direct links to this historical past, and that’s not an experience I often have with my ancient history studies in Walla Walla, Washington.

This all goes to say that I certainly will have a difficult time readjusting to having to sit in the library for 12 hours on a Sunday to get all my homework done and not being able to run off to an ancient cathedral for a day. That I truly will miss. The glimpse of another country’s academics that I have had over these past couple of months was certainly a breath of fresh air, and I like to think that it will revitalize me to go home and begin my last year of college. I haven’t exactly come up with a fantastic original and groundbreaking senior project idea yet, but I still have two weeks. And to Kim, Tess, and James, you all have made this absolutely wacko semester the absolute best! Definitely need to visit more Viking and medieval-themed eating establishments in the future to relive our experiences.

Oh also, I ran a half marathon today instead of doing my homework? Definitely not a part of the curriculum but very giving all the same.

Last week of classes this week! Final exams! Say it isn’t so!!!!

In my last post I mentioned how much I am going to miss this country, as I begin to make myself ready to return home. Well, I have found a memory of this country that I am not going to miss.

Murphy’s law has really been proven by my existence lately I would say. Yet again, I have been struck by the long arm of the coronavirus, and this time it hit a little closer to home. Last week, just as I was getting ready to head out of my house to class, I got the news that a family member of mine was feeling quite symptomatic. You can imagine how my heart rate jumped after reading that text. Since it was someone who I had been in direct contact with, I was given the option of staying home or leaving to an isolation apartment, since it was likely that I had been infected either way. A difficult decision to be faced with especially under pressing circumstances.

You see, I would have just stayed home, but currently as I sit here writing, it is the first day of our DIS long Study Tour, where all students take an extended trip with their core courses to go more in-depth in their subject towards the end of the semester. One of the hallmarks of the program, I would say. I chose to leave my house with the hope that I may test negative, be able to join back with my group again by the time the beginning of study tour rolled around. So I packed my bags, more intentionally than last time, and took the long cab ride back to the isolation apartments.

If you can’t tell by my compositional tone, I did not, in fact, make it to the beginning of study tour. My family member who was feeling symptomatic tested positive for Covid. Thus according to the testing rules here in Sweden, if you’re identified as a household contact, versus a regular close contact, you must test negative twice over a span of 5 days in isolation in order to be cleared to leave. And since one has to wait 4 days after exposure to get tested the first time, the timing was absolutely, impeccably poor. Luckily half of the members of my family tested negative, and those that are sick are on the mend, but in terms of following proper isolation timelines, things were not looking very good. And yet again, I have been defeated by a lost test in the Swedish public testing system.

Two out of three times taking a test with the public stations, I have been the victim of a lost test. Two times I have been tested with no result ever reaching me, which makes things extremely difficult. If I were part of the system, I could just look up my past results and see if they were processed alright, but since I don’t have results attached to a unique personnummer, I can’t. Out of all the students here at DIS who’ve had to take a test at the public stations, I am the only one this has happened to. And it happened twice.

Regardless, I would have had to take a second test due to the household contact rules which I’m going to be taking on Monday, but you can imagine the frustration I feel when knowing that I’ve slipped through the cracks in the testing system twice. I still haven’t even found out if I got Covid after being directly exposed, since I haven’t really been heavily symptomatic. This does great things for one’s psyche, truly.

I know how to survive in this apartment at this point. I’ve done my time to know how to make it work (and as much as I hate to admit it, forcing me to work on my final papers that are due alarmingly soon since I have nothing better to do is probably a good thing.) But the fact that this has happened again, that my test has been lost again, after having so much trouble the first time is infuriating. And there’s not even anything I can do about it. I really try not to rant about things like this on this blog because it’s not evergreen content. With even an ounce of luck, dear reader who may be considering studying abroad with DIS in the future, this won’t even be a concern of yours, so I feel bad taking up blog entries like this. But it’s hard to sit here and write a list of my favorite places to study in the DIS building when I can’t leave my apartment for a week for the second time in a month. This has been my experience, ridiculous has my luck has been, and I would feel bad not sharing my full circumstances.

Living in another country has its ups and downs, and the highs that I’ve been able to enjoy here with my family and friends have been exquisite memories that I’ll take with me forever, as I’ve shared before. But the times that I’ve spent in this apartment, closed off from the rest of the world while living on borrowed time here have been some of my lowest moments in a long time. I wish I could write here and say that everything will come up roses in the next last few weeks that I’m here. But as I sit, currently set to miss half of my long study tour by sheer happenstance, it’s hard for me to say. If anything, I hope to be a great example of the way DIS and those in charge can keep us safe and sound while trying to find a solution to an absolutely horrible situation. Our spirits have been tested in this pandemic, time and time again, and with any luck, we’ll all come out on the other side with our faith and hope intact. But my luck hasn’t been the greatest lately. Hoping for a turnaround on that one. I blame the new moon.

Here’s to a new week, dear readers! Take not for granted the sunny days and spring feelings that exist in this world! And wish me luck with my continued interaction in the Swedish healthcare system. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, wow, what the heck??? that’s so rude of you to fool me like that again

I feel as if I probably say this every post, but now it really is starting to feel real. We leave in almost one month.

It still seems as if I’ve been here for barely any time at all, as I stare at my homework planner, filled to the brim with research and papers I still have yet to write. But as hard as it is to believe, we’ve reached the point where I think it’s probably valid to try to start fitting as many things in as possible before I have to float away out of the liminal existence I’ve been in for the past semester. It truly is terrifying.

I’ve been extremely lucky to have been able to pin down an internship back home for this summer in the lovely city of Seattle, but part of getting ready for that time is needing to find housing in one of the most costly places to live in the US. For the past month or so, I’ve been telling myself that I still have time, I don’t need to worry about it yet. But this week, I was reminded by my internship company that, no, I actually do need to worry about it now. Unfortunately, my return approaches. I don’t recommend the impossible task of trying to find an affordable place to live while halfway across the world in another country. That task is hard enough as it is. So as I get my ducks in a row for coming back in a horribly short amount of time, I have been thinking about my time here and what I have to show for it. What will I take back with me from Sweden, other than several ill-advised habit purchases and a superiority complex?

I often think about language learning and linguistics, and one of the things I’ve been most grateful for in Sweden is being exposed to the language that I’ve been trying to learn for several years now, and having the opportunity to speak it and listen to all kinds of new words. People often describe language learning as an exponential curve, where at the beginning, you learn so much so quickly and improve incredibly fast. I felt that too, in my first months of being here when my comprehension of spoken language and pronunciation skyrocketed. My years of studying paid off! I can read the signs in the café and help when my friends look at me after being spoken at in rapid Swedish by a service employee!

But then comes the long part of the curve. I’ve been reminded recently, by how wonderfully fluent my siblings are among other things, about how far I really have to go. There’s a certain jealousy to it, when thinking about how everyone in this country has been learning three languages from a very young age, about what could have been had I been offered the same opportunities. It is almost unacceptable here to not be fluent in at least two languages, and I really have been resenting my past upbringing back home to where I haven’t had that. The best time to learn a language is as a child, and unfortunately I think I might be past that period.

The journey to fluency is a long road, and no one can really say when one is “fluent” or not. But it stresses me out to think that just now, as I’m really starting to get the hang of speaking this language and finding my place in this community, I have to get ready to go again. I don’t even think I remember what it’s like to be in the grocery store and be greeted by the cashier in my own native tongue. The only way to really master a language is time and immersion, and I’m about to leave behind both of those things. I would like to be fluent in Swedish. I’ve dedicated too much of my life to this to leave it behind now. But I’m trying to make myself comfortable with the fact that that can’t happen now, and it may not happen for quite some time. Just like leaving this country, it is an inevitability, and no amount of yearning can change that. Only time.

I’m excited to come back to my country and return to a place I know and love. But I love this place too, and the way people speak and think in different ways from me. I’ll miss feeling like an island in a sea of word puzzles, waiting to be solved. Anyway, this is a lot of philosophizing to just say that I haven’t been as diligent in learning my vocabulary as I should be. But as I get ready to pack up again, mentally and physically, I want to do my best to not forget this place. So if anyone in Seattle is looking for a Swedish café conversation buddy, you’ve got one right here.

Åh Sverige, vad mycket skall jag sakna er!

Not to be confused with Easter Island. Entirely different.

Well last post was a doozy wasn’t it! Sorry you all had to read my extremely unedited thoughts under duress last week. Let’s make this post a little lighter and a little shorter on account of the holiday.

So it’s Easter! Here in Stockholm the exodus for the break begins on the Thursday of Easter weekend and lasts through Monday-ish. As it was explained to me, there are two holidays where everyone with the means to gets out of the city; Easter and Midsummer. Makes sense, in a country where one must treasure every bit of the warm sunny months by being outside as much as possible. I’ve had the absolute pleasure of getting to be a part of that crowd by getting away to two lovely destinations this weekend, the islands of Marö and Sandhamn.

I don’t know how many ways I can ever express my gratitude to my host family that will be enough to recognize all the wonderful opportunities they’ve given me over the past couple of months. Hosting a foreign student isn’t easy, and hosting a student in the middle of a pandemic must be insane. But I have had the distinct pleasure of getting to see parts of Sweden as the locals do, and getting to enjoy them with an extended loving family that welcomed me in and has made me feel at home. I’ll always be grateful for how I’ve been nurtured and taken care of while trying my best to fit in in this society, and I don’t think there’s anything I can do to pay that back. If any of you are reading this, I love you dearly and always will.

But Easter! What a lovely time we’ve had. After finally being released from my quarantine and getting to head back to school for the last day before break, we took off from home to head to the island of Marö, and my host family’s summer house, on Thursday (incidentally also my youngest host brother’s birthday. Grattis Gabriel!!!!!)

To get to the island, like many other of the smaller ones in the Stockholm archipelago, you can only go by boat. Incidentally, you can take one of the archipelago ferries all the way to Marö on the SL system and pay with your transit card, and you know that was extremely exciting to me. But we took my family’s boat and also picked up my dear friend Elsa’s family later that day, with who we were celebrating easter.

Stockholm is a city comprised of islands, but let me certify that those islands come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. When you’re in Stockholm, it doesn’t really feel like an island if you’re just hopping about on the train. But on Marö, where you can walk from one end to the other in under 15 minutes and there are less than 50 families in residence, you really feel the island life. One begins to understand the summer house culture if you have the opportunity to get a taste of it.

It truly was the perfect place to celebrate Easter and spend some time with the family after being separated for so long, and to recuperate after a hectic couple of months. Sweden is a pretty secular country and the holiday is pretty separate from its religious connotations, but you really feel the spring feelings (vårkänslor) when in a setting like this. It forces you to refocus and get a grip on what holidays are vacations are supposed to be about, which we know I need. Couldn’t have asked for more!

After a lovely couple days on Marö, we hopped back into the city for the evening to refresh our bags and get ready to head out to Sandhamn by ferry (we were going to take the boat but the lovely wind picked up just a bit too much.) But I’m not complaining! It was a wonderful trip over and gave me very Washington State ferry feelings. Just a hop skip and a jump on over to our next island, which luckily gave us many more sunny days and nature hikes!

We had a lovely evening in Sandhamn enjoying ourselves and a lovely dinner, and continued our theme of winding down and taking it easy. And today, the last day of our trip, we took another lap around the island and caught our ferry back home. If anyone knows how to make the most of a short trip to a beautiful bucolic location, it’s this family.

And that’s about it! Back to the school grind for me, after a disturbing amount of time away. I hope everyone had an absolutely splendid Easter holiday and took a moment to appreciate the scenes around you. A bit rich coming from me in this amazing Swedish island paradise, I know, but after being stuck inside for a week I’m still trying to make the most of my gratefulness. Take a breath and smell the newly-blooming air!

So you know how in my last post I went on a super fun trip and everything was great and I hoped for many more safe adventures? Well, I jinxed myself. Be prepared for a text-heavy rant.

Boy have things changed since we talked last dear blog readers. Currently this past week I have been isolated in a fantastically demoralizing apartment here in the Stockholm suburb of Sollentuna, because of a potential covid exposure over the weekend of my trip to Kiruna. Let me tell you all about it.

When we returned from Kiruna last Monday morning, I went straight to DIS since I had an early morning class. I had been there for about ten minutes when Marcel pulled me out and told me to head home because someone in our travel group was showing covid symptoms. Not an ideal situation. I gathered up all my bags and made my way to the train station, while also texting my host family about the situation. I was about halfway home when I got a text saying they were uncomfortable with having me come back if I was exposed to covid, which makes perfect sense. So there I was, sitting at the subway stop, exhausted, and with a thousand bags trying to figure out what my next move was.

After talking with our lovely DIS staff, they decided my best option was to take a cab up to Sollentuna where DIS has our reserved isolation apartments for this very situation. So I made my little way up here, met McKenna to get the keys to one of the rooms, and closed the door behind me. Little did I know how comfortable I would have to become with this silly little room.

My dear friend Lis, the one experiencing symptoms and a fellow blogger, got her test results on Tuesday of last week, confirming that she was in fact covid positive. Did not look too good for the rest of our covid prognoses, especially me, since we had the most sustained contact between class on Friday and our trip this weekend. The rest of us, per the Swedish Health Authority’s instructions, had to wait four days before getting a test ourselves to give the potential virus time to show up on test results. So I settled in to wait for the long haul.

Let me clarify that Kim, there’s people that are dying. I realize that there are many things worse in this world than having to be locked in a very acceptable Swedish apartment and having food provided for me while I still attend my classes on Zoom. I haven’t had any symptoms from the day that I stepped in here up through this very moment that I’m writing this. Things could be much worse and I realize that.

But as a pretty extroverted person on a study abroad semester in a foreign country, this really really sucks. I do not like to be alone by myself for this long with the inability to see anyone. It reminded me too strongly of all the similar situations I found myself in last year, and that affects my mental health very negatively. I thrive off of being able to see people, to see things, to go places, to experience new feelings, and being stuck in here for a week has robbed me of all that.

It wouldn’t even be that bad if I didn’t also have beef with the Swedish healthcare process. First of all, since none of us have a personnummer, the Swedish equivalent of a social security number, we aren’t able to benefit from the extremely quick and efficient home testing network, where the Swedish government provides you with a test delivered to your home that you do yourself, and get results often within a day or two. Since we aren’t able to use that system, those of us needing a test had to go to mobile testing stations placed around the Stockholm suburbs, and wait in line for potentially several hours to get a test result. Get into the systemic discrimination and healthcare inequity with that one.

And since we had to take our tests that way, there’s also no way to track your result or if it has been processed, one just has to wait for the magic text saying your results are available. We all got our tests on Friday of this past week, and almost everyone got their results Friday evening or Saturday morning, all negative. Except for one person. Guess who. As I write this here on this Sunday morning, I still have not yet received any result.

It hasn’t been all bad. I’m extremely lucky to have a program that supports me with food and shelter while I have to do this, to protect my family and everyone else at the program. It’s been nice to see another part of town and some different scenery for a change. And I’ve had some very lovely visitors and friends bring me gifts and kind tidings that have made things quite a bit easier.

But it really makes you remember how short our time is here. I’ve basically had a week pulled out from underneath me with no warning, and nothing to be done. When time is in short supply here in Sweden, it’s hard not to spiral with the implications of what could have been done in this week had I not been trapped inside. Especially since I have not had any symptoms and everyone else has tested negative, I feel a bit like I got the short end of the stick.

I tend to get really angry at unchangeable events in bursts. I had a wave of frustration in the shower last night about this. There’s no one to blame for this situation, and no one’s at fault, which almost makes it worse. I know this is the right thing to do to keep everyone safe, and I’m willing to bite the bullet for that. But it sucks to know deep down, that when I walk into school on Monday after a week of this, that it will all have been moot. If it were someone’s fault, like mine, or DIS’s, or Lis’s, or anyone’s, it would be easier to process. But the fact of the matter is that this is simply how the cookie has crumbled. And I don’t do well with that.

I am very much looking forward to being rid of this place, and returning to my somewhat-normal life here. But this has been a stark reminder of how the world still is reeling from the effects of this pandemic. I can say that I hope that this won’t happen again, but I really don’t know. Anything could change between now and my next post. But after taking my time in here, and having an opportunity to be confronted with my situation, I think I’ll have learned yet even better how to treasure all the little moments in this country. I don’t want to take this opportunity for granted again.

in short, GET VACCINATED!

The trips don’t stop! Not even a little! It feels as if I’m in a bit of a contest with myself to see as much as Sweden as possible in this short amount of time. Great for the soul, not as great for the body. However I yet still live!

This week’s adventure is Kiruna, Sweden! The northernmost town in the country with the tundra landscape to prove it. The city was originally built at the end of the 19th century to serve the Kiruna Mine, the largest underground iron ore mine in the world. It’s so big in fact that the town is now being picked up and moved away from the mine site, so that as it begins to sink parts of the town don’t go with it. Truly a marvel of engineering, hatred of fossil fuels aside.

Like true college students, we planned a quick turnaround of taking the overnight train after classes on Friday, spent Saturday in Kiruna where we stayed the night, and came back Sunday afternoon on the same train to make it back Monday morning before classes start. And yes, I am exhausted. But it was worth it!

Our main goal driving us to make it to Kiruna was to see the northern lights, which we did do! It was a bit cloudy and not the best of conditions, but we saw the signature streak of green across the sky that one would imagine it looks like. It was a fantastic experience, especially since we saw it from dog sled!

Seeing the northern lights from the northernmost town in Sweden from a dog sled sounds a bit insane, now that I’m typing it out. But I promise it happened! We also slept in an igloo too, if that wasn’t enough.

It was an absolute once-in-a-lifetime experience. The small group of us that went had so much fun and I can say was definitely worth suffering sleeping on the train for. Going to Kiruna was also academically valuable for me, because the parliamentary body for the Sámi people, Sweden’s indigenous population, is also located in Kiruna which is traditionally Sámi land. I’ve been studying a lot about indigenous politics in Sweden and the Nordics, and getting to see the town and actually observe the geopolitical climate was fascinating. Sweden has a very different (for better or for worse) relationship with the indigenous people than we do in the US and to see the impacts of that on the town and the land was very enlightening. I do recommend reading up on the Sámi as a people group, especially for those living on stolen Native American land like I do.

We slept in igloos, rode on dog sleds, traveled to the north of Sweden, … why we might just end up as real Swedes after this! Like I said last week about Uppsala, being here in Sweden during this time really opens up opportunities otherwise missed, and this is definitely one of them. Even just riding on the train, talking to friends, seeing the beautiful blue sky from our collection of igloos; all are memories that I will treasure and can be grateful for in spite of all the closures from covid. It really goes to show how just a bit of creativity and willingness can create fun even when one can’t travel to Paris, Athens, or to Reykjavik. Go visit some dogs instead!

We’re now into the second half of DIS and boy am I feeling some type of way about it. Here’s to continued safe and silly adventures!