2002-03-26 Tisdag

Akademibokhandeln is finishing off their giant book sale with 50% off of the sale prices. Unfortunately, even at such significant discounts, books still aren't cheap here. There weren't many books left, but a few caught my eye:

• The Pursuit of Perfect Packing by Tomaso Aste and D. L. Weaire. (strangely, the full text of this seems to be online) (amazon)
• A Random Walk in Science compiled by Robert L. Weber. (amazon)
• A History of the English Language by Norman Francis Blake.
• More C++ Gems, edited by Robert C. Martin. (amazon)

I found the bright-eyed girl! She was working at Kalmar Nation! Apparently she really does live in K:324... I told her about how I tried to find her back in February (after meeting her at Blekingska) and how the person who answered the korridor door said that no Austrian girls lived there... and she assurred me that she really does live there, and she told me to `try again' on finding her. Hopefully she means it! Oh yeah, she also remarked that she saw me once a couple weeks ago when she was flying by on her bicycle... which I noted on 2002-03-11 as ``possible sighting of the bright-eyed girl''!

Rose talked to the people in the International Office, and she's decided to stay here and finish her degree here at Lund. They don't require the TISUS exam as her classes will be in English. This gave me the following really crazy idea, but I love it: Chris could come here for a semester too! He wants to get a degree in Physics too, but that requires an extra semester. See? Then we could both finish at Berkeley in Spring 2003! It's perfect! The only thing that will probably get in the way is that he (understandably) won't want to leave Helen for a semester... But a semester is only 15 weeks, so maybe it's possible! Oh my oh my it would be great if this worked out.

Kebab	SEK 35
Ice cream	SEK 17
Dinner, Kalmar Nation	SEK 35

2002-03-26 Tisdag: Rose

So Rose is planning on staying here more or less indefinitely now. She's an interesting person. She once admitted that, although she knew that she was undeniably American, she'd prefer to be Swedish. That's a pretty strong statement. I like it here and might stay awhile, but I know that first and last I am American, and that's not going to change, regardless of where I live or what I do. I see that as a part of being American — that unique melting-pot multiculturalism we always talk about. I must admit, the Puritanical basis for American society becomes ever clearer to me the longer I am away. Anyway, that's another story. Back to Rose. I think some of this has to do with the fact that she was adopted. She says that she feels like she fits in so much better here than in the 'states. I think that's a kind of scary thing to say about a culture so stereotypically homogenous as the one here. I think she's sort of adopted Sweden to fill in a missing piece of her identity. ``Attachment issues,'' to people and places, I guess. She got together with Will a month before she came here to Sweden and then expected to make it through the year away from him. And when that didn't work out she got together with her neighbor in the korridor immediately — and is now planning on living with him for the indefinite future. I don't really know... but I fear she'll be disappointed yet again.