Life in Växjö thus far...

Hej everyone!
It's a very rainy day here in Sweden. A good day to start some homework. I started class this week on Tuesday- Perspectives on Globalization. My teacher is from Germany and actually isn't even in Sweden yet. She's finishing up teaching a course in Uganda so she'll be back on Monday. But we already have quite a bit of reading to do for class. I was surprised to find most of the students in my course are Swedish who just want to take some classes in English to improve in the language a little. The past week or so here has been non stop fun. Every night there is something going on somewhere on campus. So we don't even have to leave school. Växjö has 3 pubs on campus, each one's a little different. Sivans, Stallarna, and Stenladan. Each pub is run by a different organization on school. At the University, they have these clubs called "nations." Each nation hosts different activities and events on campus throughout the year. The nations are modeled after different regions throughout Sweden. I became a member of the Norrlands Nation (northern Sweden.) Most students become a member of at least one nation because to get into the campus pubs you actually need a nation membership card. It's really pretty smart actually. In order for a student to go drink in a bar on campus, they need to be active on campus and nations are a good way to do that. Speaking of drinking... the night life and drinking culture in Sweden is really interesting and complex, especially on campus. The legal drinking age here is 18 in bars, but to actually buy alcohol from a store you need to be 20. It's very different than the U.S. Even the teachers and professors make jokes about the bars or ask where the party's at towards the end of class. AND in our student day planners that are given to us by the school, the open and close times for the pubs are written in on the days. Needless to say, all the students from the U.S. are not used to this. Despite how acceptable drinking on campus is, you will almost NEVER see students out of control drunk. That's one thing that isn't really acceptable. So it all seems to work out. :) Outside some of the apartments late at night a food trailer shows up.. kind of like something you'd see at the state fair. A few of us decided to order something (everything on the menu is in Swedish and the guy running the stand doesn't speak English). So we order a Kabob. Meat, veggies, grilled on a stick, right? Wrong. It ended up being lettuce, french fries, and a HUGE hunk of lamb meat all mixed together. It was odd. Moral of the story, it's really hard to buy food here. So... moving on. Tomorrow I get to visit the world's very fist IKEA! haha Not the biggest deal ever, but still exciting because I get to travel a little. It's about 1.5 hours from campus so I'll get to see a little bit more of the surrounding area. Yesterday my friend Allie, from San Fransisco, and I went on a bike ride and stumbled upon an old Swedish cemetery with some graves dating back to the late 1600's, early 1700's. ((I've attached some photos of that to this post.)) ALSO on a previous post I wrote that I was traveling to Gothenburg in a few weeks. Correction: I'm going to GOTLAND in a few weeks, Gothenburg a little later on. If you don't know anything about Gotland, I recommend Googling it because it's REALLY COOL.
Okay! Well, I have to start doing some reading (150 pages by next class), so I better go.
And a quick note, if any of you have skype, please skype me if you are online! My skype name is sjlunde.
Hej då!

-Sara

PS. A couple people have asked how to pronounce Växjö. It is NOT "Vacks-jo". It actually sounds like "Veck-wah".