Happy Birthday Yenni!

Last night, Saturday, we celebrated a birthday here in Orrefors;  Yenni (her name is really Jenni but we say it with a Y so that is how I am going to write it) turns 30 tomorrow or some day soon and she threw a party upstairs in the boys apartment.  She lives upstairs with Rosanne but their apartment is pretty small and they are both neat freaks and hate germs so it was better to have it in the boy's.

Since the Fins like whiskey this is what I brought to the party:

But, they also had sangria, ciders, more spirits (liquor) and a ton of beer.  The party was pretty small since a lot of the Swedish students went home for their weekend but it was still maybe 15 of us all together, so def enough people.  Rosanne is picture crazy so she took a tons of pics which are probably on facebook if you have that, but I might steal some from her later to help introduce people.  But here are some of the people I talk about and am making good friends with:

This is Rosanne, she was the DJ for most of the night:

Birthday girl, Yenni!

My roommate Sarah on the left, Björn is blond and Jonathan in the background:

Nils looking gangsta with Rosanne's Star Wars ring (he is half Swedish from Atl):

Rosanne is a very creative dancer... she also has a zombie move... but this reminds me of that song "I'm a genie in a bottle, gotta rub me the right way...."

this girl is named Erica and she is in her last year at gymnasium (high school) I think, really hilarious:

This guy in the blue is named Richard... people call him something else with a B but I think he looks like Bart Simpson personally (he is 30ish and was a glass factory person before he started going to the school), Erica in the back, Rosanne on the right and Mua on the left:

This is Mua (Norwegian name I think, pronounced mooo-a) she is in her last year in gymnasium (she has a really great laugh and she laughs often):

This is everyone dancing around in general making fun of one another:

Here is Nick, he is from Ohio and is about 20, I think he jammin' out... but who knows really:

The two girls in the glasses are some Finnish girls who came this year and have been blowing for about 3 years, one is named Anna but I can't remember the other one.  They are both really nice and funny:

This is Jonathan, doing what he does best... He is our resident 16yr old drunkard.  Here he is drinking my Jim Beam, two small shots at a time... we take out shots from egg cups around here:

Here he is drinking water (I think) after his shots... he is soon sick after this if I remember correctly:

This is me with Erika on the left and Natalie in the middle.  They are both in gymnasium and for some reason are really nice to me and super funny. They helped me find the door out of the factory the other day when I was super lost after class:

Richard, Mua and Bjorn dancing like spazzy Swedes:

And, this is me and Richard at the end of the night... he made me promise that since I took the picture upside down that I had to put it on the internet upside down...  I think he was thinking of facebook but this is better:

The party was your normal party, talk about boyfriends who weren't there, look at those boyfriends on facebook, try to play Ring of Fire with people who speak like 4 different languages, dancing to redic disco/rap music, lots of smoking breaks (even the people who don't smoke go outside for the smoking breaks), lots of making fun of one another and throwing of playing cards... Speaking of which those cards were my roommate's who didn't come to the party and I think they ended up soaked in sangria... I will have to buy her some more!  The Danish guys didn't come, and there is a Danish couple too that didn't party... apparently they were playing futbol this morning and didn't want to feel bad I think.  It was a lot of fun and there were enough people that you always had someone to talk to whenever you turned around.  I may have lead Mua on, she is bi, and I have danced with girls at Sweet Briar so much that I don't think anything of it, but probably she was just really drunk!  

So sometime around 12:30 or 1 AM I went downstairs to my apartment to find a water glass but ended up going to bed instead.  It was really sweet Erika came looking for me to make sure I was OK and then went and told everyone that I went to bed so they wouldn't come looking for me.  Apparently the party went on until about 3 AM and the birthday girl, Yenni was the last man standing... and probably the worst looking this morning.  I think everyone had a really good time and some people are already talking about going to Nybro next weekend to a little bar/club together.

This is the part of the blog where I wonder how much to write... nothing scandalous or even very exciting happened, but inside my head I am debating if this is a tell all blog (think Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential except no drugs) or how much of my personal life is left to the imagination or told only to those who I am in regular contact with.  Some people are very closely tied to my personal life and thus what happens to me often has a lot to do with them.  Should I tell you how much they suck at life, or how wonderful they are being, or jerks, or psychos?!?  Then will that effect how you think of that person, judge them on something that had nothing to do with you... or make you seek them out and hug them or yell at them or strangle them... see there is a lot to think about... lots of potential bodily harm to those near and dear to me...  well really probably just unwanted attention more than harm. I have not yet made a decision and this is why most of my posts are kind of just a story of what I am doing, not so much feeling or how my mental stability is b/c it is directly effected by people who didn't sign up to start a blog and so have not signed up to air all of the details of their life to the World Wide Web.  I still have some thinking to do... I will let you know when I decide to start telling you about redic people and their ridiculousness behaviors and how they effect my life... I suppose I really shouldn't let other people have that much of an effect on me?!?  But, how can you say that and still have personal relationships with people?!?!? crap.

OMG, one of the danish guys, Martin, just walked past my bedroom window wearing a stripped teal and black shirt, light blue plaid pants, bright yellow soccer socks and flip flops... I love it here :)

Today I went on a long walk (about 4 kilometers) with Rosanne, we got lost on our short walk, crossed some tiny bridges where we thought we were definitely ending up in the water, through knee high wet grass (I was wearing flip flops of course), and through these awful Swedish plants that make you itch and burn real bad.  Then Rosanne tells me that I better check for ticks b/c there are these ticks here that if you don't get them off of you they will inject this toxin that goes to your brain and drives you crazy and then kills you in about a month.  Great... I am in Sweden where there are no natural disasters, minimal criminal activity and may die from a TICK making my BRIAN ooze out of my ears and kill me after it makes me crazy.  Great.  Luckily, I didn't find any ticks on me!

I have also spent time trying to organize my room properly with the stuff we got to Ikea.  I should finish it tonight and then can show you tomorrow what my apartment looks like and you will be able to better imagine me sitting here watching random people walk past my window while posting to you guys.