Stockholm, Sweden!

May 20th - 23rd

So, this past Friday morning I flew to Stockholm, Sweden with four other girls and had an awesome weekend returning late last night. Stockholm is known as the “Venice of the North.” It was really nothing like Venice, but you could see where it got the name because there was so much water everywhere. It is made up of numerous beautiful islands. The city is one of the cleanest cities in the world so was pretty sweet. This will sound funny, but it smelled great. Ha. There was no trash in the streets and I felt like I was constantly getting wafts of great smelling food throughout the city.

We got to go the museum of modern art, which was definitely one of the highlights of my time in Sweden. Ninety percent of the museum was filled with photography exhibits, and so I loved it. I loved just walking around the city and exploring. We took a short boat ride on Saturday, which was pretty awesome to see the city from the water. It was definitely weird leaving Italy, and made me sad thinking that I only have one more month here. Landing in Rome after the weekend definitely felt like I was home again. Almost everyone in Sweden could speak remarkably good English so that was quite the switch from Italy. When we were waiting in line at the bus station in Stockholm waiting for our bus to take us to the airport I heard someone speaking Italian in line behind me and it was so weird, because it felt so familiar. I turned around and was like, “Di dove sei?” (Where are you from?). “Milano e tu?” (Milan and you?) was the response…”Estudio in Orvieto per Quattro mesi.” (I am studying in Orvieto for 4 months) I said back. It was great just to use my Italian in another country…I’m really looking forward to finding Italians in the States and practicing my Italian. I also sat next to another Italian on the bus back from Naples so that was fun talking to him too.

Today was the first day of my last class, Text and Image taught by Jeremy Botts. It is pretty sweet because Jeremy actually taught at a Christian Arts camp (Masterpiece Ministries) I went to the summer before my senior year in high school. I wasn’t sure if he would remember me or not, but immediately recognized me so that was sweet. I’m really excited about this class. Today he showed us a bunch of fonts and instances of text and image blended together. Pretty cool stuff and then we made calligraphy pens out of bamboo shoots from out back. He just saw them last night and thought it would be a fun way to kick off class. So cool. We even made ink reservoirs out of soda cans. By the end of the class we are going to collectively create our own font and carve the letters out of wood so we can “print” things. I don’t know a whole about it, but it sounds pretty sweet. Well, I would write longer, but the electricity is not working in the monastery right now, so my computer is about to die. Hopefully I’ll get some pictures of Sweden up soon!!