Thank God for Sweden. If you haven’t been here, go buy your plane ticket right now and drop everything. You truly haven’t lived until you’ve seen sweden.
After being here for almost one full week, I am settled in and already feel at home. My apartment is amazing! Myself and 3 of my friends live in a two story apartment with two huge bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, a TV room and a playground right outside!!! We all get along so well and we are so happy with our living situation. Also, all the international students studying at Jonkoping this semester are living in the same area as us, so we have already made friends from sweden, german, romania, france, australia, finland, austria and poland. It’s unbelievable!
Every morning we wake up to a beautiful view of a swedish lake and crisp mountain air. We hop on a train and ride into Jonkoping town (we are actually living in a smaller area near Jonkoping called Huskvarna). Our travel time is only about 15 minutes to the university and its a great walk.
The school is amazing, as well. The education building is huge, and there are cafes and sitting lounges in every building. There is also an amazing library, equipped with its own meditation room!!!
I also recently joined a local gym that offers classes, cardio equipment, weights, a pool, and a JACUZZI AND SAUNA!!! Lots of cute swedish boys there, too, working out! 🙂
I also was recently sent an email from my cousin, Jen, who has done significant research on our family’s ancestors from Sweden, and we found that my great great grandfather was from a small town called Vanersborg, which is only about an hour away from me!! I will definitely try to make a trip out that way for a weekend.
Another trip I would love to take part in is a school sponsored trip to a place called Kiruna, which is at the north of Sweden, where you can visit the ice palace hotel, go dog-sledding and snow mobiling, and you can see one of the clearest views of the northern lights!
Hopefully I’ll get my camera up and running so I can post some pictures of this amazing place! Until next time, peace love and sweden.
Location: Jonkoping, Sweden
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I can’t wait to visit!!!! 😀
Hey Kristen,
I am glad you are having that experience up in Sweden. I wish I can say the same thing about State College; but well I can’t! I have not been in Sweden so far, but I have heard a lot of good things about the country and their culture; I am also planning to go there soon. I really recommend you to take advantage of your semester in Europe and visit many other countries; it is really easy to travel from one country to the other, either by train or airplane, and the tickets are really cheap! You can gain a lot from there, I LOVE Europe as well.
Now that you bring up the topic of how well you are doing over there and your experience, I think it is a good opportunity for me to express that I totally agreed with you in that having a good college experience also depends in the amenities, social life and social places around the place that you study. I think State College is a good area for students to live, it is safe, small, and I can say that it have a lot of things to do; but not fairly enough for different tastes and people. One thing that really bothers me are the apartments over here, you are having a great experience in your apartment over there and I am almost sure that it makes you feel more happy, the same can happen if better apartments can be done in State College; we need beautiful places to live, with social areas, study rooms, and other amenities, such as the one were Kristin is, and here in UP campus there is an scarcity of those places. Also, it is awesome that you have a JACUZZI and a SAUNA over there!!!.. I wish I could have one here, I used to go everyday to the SPA in my country, but I cannot do it right now. I think at least a sauna should be made in one of the PSU gyms and available for students, and a SPA would not be bad, we can pay memberships for gaining those services! Even without these things State College is an awesome place, but we can do it even better. I’m really glad you brought up this!
It was nice to read your blog! I hope you are still doing so well and have fun!
Ajö (bye)…
Sara!
Kristen,
We will have to do another skype session so we can see! Have you started classes yet?
Melissa