Grattis På Födelsedagen!

Last weekend was Maxime's 21st birthday, but his girlfriend flew in from London to visit him (everyone now: awwwwwww), so we delayed the festivities until this past weekend, throwing him a wildly successful surprise party:

SURPRISE! He seemed really genuinely shocked and delighted. Mission accomplished. We made it a veritable Swedish celebration, with a Swedish flag, Swedish souvenirs, Swedish elk brew and this peculiar Swedish culinary practice of putting mashed potatoes on hot dogs. I was at first repulsed by the idea, but it really wasn't half bad, although a bit difficult to eat. I ended the night with a good deal of potato on my dress.

Jasmien showcases the Swedish flag, noisemaker

I'm still mad at that Hard Rock for not letting us in because we were under 25

Swedish Elk Brew may be 7,5%, but it still tastes like water, a true sign of Swedish beer

the unjustifiable amount of hot dogs we had reminded me of APO semiformal

nom nom nom, korv och potatis

Pardon the Hallmark Moment, but it was heartwarming to know that we have only been here for 6 weeks, but we've already become close enough to organize surprise parties, yadda yadda, friendship, whatever, "insights," blah blah, I also got stuck in an elevator for 45 minutes:

Fortunately, Dusjan and I were on our way to Laura's (we got there via shopping cart) for a post-party feast, so we were prepared with vegetarian tacos. The elevator repairman gave us a bit of a dirty look when he finally got around to rescuing us. I don't think he was expecting such a veritably delicious fajita picnic.

In other news, I took my Swedish entrance exam today; I forgot the words for "to read" and "spring," and I said that "you're welcome" is "nej problem," but all in all I think I did well enough to continue on to the next level. I've been picking up quite a bit of Swedish just from, well, living here, but so far it's been reading signs, backs of boxes, menus, etc.; even the introductory classes have been 200-person lectures based on Powerpoint slides, so this was the first time I've had to move beyond reading comprehension and actually apply what I've learned. Hopefully I'll get better once we move to smaller classes with real textbooks and software for pronunciation practice and listening comprehension. If I had a kronor for every time my attempts to order a cider in Swedish were met with a blank stare from the bartender, I'd have enough money for another cider. I'm crossing my fingers, though, that I'll get extra points for looking genuinely Swedish while taking the exam. Short dress with ruffled hem, leggings, boots, hoodie under black H&M jacket with interesting zipper detail. The only thing missing was blonde hair, a few extra inches of height, and a body that looks like it hasn't seen a kanelbulle in weeks. No curves allowed in Sweden. Anyways, is hysterical in how well it represents the at-once delightful (so sing-song!) and frustrating (oh my god, why can you just flip the word order of the subject and object? how is that even remotely logical? verb-second languages are proving to be a burden) nature of the Swedish language: