Last Full Week

First of all, I could not be more delighted that the lilacs are blooming! I have been collecting a bunch every single day and my room smells amazing.

I realized this morning that this is my last FULL week in Sweden. Wow! Where has the time gone? I was completely wired last night and did not go to sleep until after 5:00 am. That was rather inconvenient, but I discovered that it is completely light outside at 4:00 am! I am really excited to travel up north with Dad and Kenyon in a few weeks to see the midnight sun. I think that Northern Sweden in the summer time could be the perfect place for Relay!

Last week was rather awful, so I would prefer not to talk about it. I started and finished my home exam for Economic and Institutional Development this weekend and am really glad to have that out of the way. The first part was regurgitation, but the second section actually required critical thinking and I sort of enjoyed it. How sad is that? I need to finish up the group paper for that class this week, but there is not too much more to do for that. I cannot take my final for Economic Geography of Southeast Asia early, so I will have to endure that on June 2. I have really been enjoying that class because it is so much better than the Economic Geography course that I took last quarter. The one thing that bothers me though is that we do not discuss current events. Last week there was not one word said on the earthquake in China or the cyclone in Burma. I could not believe it...I mean, people know about that...right? My last class Swedish, is on my hate list at the moment. I am still irritated about my presentation. In addition, we had to take the essay exam on Thursday and I know that I did poorly on it. I was extremely tired and my brain completely checked out. Oh well. I do not get credit for that course from CC anyways (thanks a lot, CC). I still have to take the nasty final for that class on Friday, which I already know is going to be three hours of awful.

It has been kind of chilly and rainy here, but the sun is out today! I have not been able to walk on the trail along the lake due to massive amounts of bugs! I feel like a windshield in the Midwest when I brave the journey. My alternative is walking on the path along the road, which is much less enjoyable but bug free. I hope that we have an extremely short cold snap to fix that little problem! It is really a bummer because I have to walk from home to downtown at least two time a day, but more often three or four. I have become so used to walking here that it almost seems strange to me to think of driving! I suppose that I will not be driving much this summer anyways, so it does not matter.

The other day when I was walking into town and picking up trash, I had this really interesting thought. I try to pick up trash wherever I am walking if I am not in a hurry, even though it makes me grumpy that I will completely clean up an area and it will be gross the next day. Anyways, I was thinking about the TYPE of trash that I always see: candy bar wrappers, cigarettes, soda and alcohol bottles, bags from fast food restaurants...and thought: is there a correlation between IQ and littering? I mean, everyone knows that littering is wrong and usually a little enforced criminal offense. However, people still do it. Furthermore, the type of people who litter are also the ones stuffing themselves with soda and hamburgers and all other types of junk, along with alcohol and tobacco. That sounds pretty idiotic to me. When was the last time that you saw a soymilk container on the side of the road? I have never seen that! I think that someone should do a study on this topic because I hypothesize that there is a definite correlation.