today is the day (or yesterday, i suppose)

august 16, 2004
stockholm, 15.40

arrived....

(that in itself, deserves a few lines of space, thought, and respect).

the trip, while rather uniteresting, was quite long. in all the late nights that i have had, none can compare to sitting next to a 5-year old-poker-playing-irish boy and his father. i laughed through his karaoke style, "i like the way you move," a la raffi (with the moves of the jackson five... well, not all of them, perhaps just michael).

would never have thought that an "overnight flight" meant back-to-back meals and an endless cycle of friends and seinfeld re-runs. it was quite odd to leave the u.s. in the dark of the night, and to, only hours later, see light beaming through the windows.

stepping into the world of the swedes, gave me a twinge of uneasiness. while not exactly finding my presence discouraged, i felt oddly out of place... a spectator among a group of people not too keen on being watched. nevertheless, i suppressed the urge to sprint back to the concourse, jump on the plane, and forget any of this had ever happened.

i spent the remainder of the afternoon and evening trying to extract some sense out of this city and deposit it into my exhausted brain. eric and i toured different areas of stockholm, though where we went and what he said are mere smudges in my memory.

i do remember a quite valuable realization, however. Packing all of one's belongings into a rather bulky bag, is not necessarily something for which one should strive, mostly because it is quite cumbersome to navigate said item around a huge city with the sole use of public transportation. i now understand the appeal of these hiking backpacks. my whole body worships the rolley-luggage inventors, oh how i long for thee.

kungshamara is a nice little area for student housing. my room has its own bath and two big windows. funny, all of my corridor mates seem rather old. i haven't asked their ages, as that somehow seems like it would be rude, but most have traveled quite a bit and seem more like my parents than my peers. they certainly seem to have a pile of advice to share. i feel a cell phone will be calling itself into my life....