Hej Då, Sverige, Pt. 1

It's hard to believe that I only have 17 days left in Sweden. That's crazy talk! While five months ago, as I sat in my bed watching the sun set at 3 PM, popping vitamin D pills and desperately clutching to my last iotas of sanity in twenty layers of thermal underwear and ski socks, I mostly likely would have accepted a one-way ticket back to the United States of AWESOME. Now, with less than three weeks to go, I'm more than tempted to sell my return ticket and put the money towards one of those super cute Swedish houses with the red roofs, and maybe even a pair of high-top white Converse. Yes, folks, the Study Abroad Syndrome (SAS) is creeping in. I'm beginning to feel the emerging symptoms of hyper-nostalgic sentiment and romanticization of all things abroad. SAS is breathtakingly (that's my new favorite adverb!) obnoxious when it manifests itself at home. No one really wants to hear how much better the food/partying/progressive attitudes/weather/light bulbs/cars/toothpaste/style/anything in your study abroad country is than in your home country. It's gratuitous and annoying, and I've rolled my eyes at many an ex-abroad wonk. I vowed never to become that person, because while I have grown to love Sweden, we have had, like any healthy, normal relationship, our good and bad moments, and I've realized more than ever that there is no place like home. I can feel myself moving into sappy territory, and I am no maple tree (Anthony...), so let me just say that, upon my return, whenever I talk about Gothenburg unprompted ("Well, in Gothenburg...), not only do you have my explicit permission, but I encourage you to punch me in the face. I don't remember a lot from PSYC-105, but I think that might help with the SAS.

Anyways, in order to work through SAS before arriving in Richmond, I've decided to get the nostalgia out of my system by dedicating the next week's posts to things I'm going to miss dearly from Gothenburg or just general abroad life. While it's totally rude to check out of a face-to-face conversation with me, if you don't want to read to my SAS-inspired posts, you can just x-out of my blog and I will neither know nor care. Isn't narcissism a beautiful thing?

Three cheers for the internet! Anyways, moving on. This post is already pretty long, so I'll keep the first installation brief :

Hej Då, Sverige, Pt. 1: Pourable Yogurt

Cereal will never be the same again. Everything after pourable yogurt will just seem so...wet. Soggy. Miss you already, ICA yogurt.