Well i'm back from my brief holiday vacation to Scandanavia. First off its beautiful there. Stina and i somehow managed to make our 6:15am flight to Oslo Norway. There, unlike London, the sun was shinning and it was beautiful out when we arrived at 9am. On the way from the airport, which like all ryan air airports was far outside the city, what do i see..but a moose crossing sign! How cool. Oslo was a nice city, sadly many things were closed. We wandered around the town seeing some old cathedrals and popping in and out of shops. We spent awhile in the harbour and went through the old fortress. I will never complain about prices again in my life. Stina and i went to burger king and spent 171 NKR = about £14 = about $21! We wandered around and at 10:45 caught a bus to Stockholm Sweden. What beautiful sunsets on the road as we traveled. Absolutly amazing.
In stockholm we stayed with Stina's uncle in Kungsholm in the western part of the city just 10 min walk from the bus station. The first day we wandered around and i got see the Statehouse and all of the old town, Gamla Stan. Sweden has awesome ice cream. Afterwards we just relaxed at her uncles. Day 2 the sun was out in full force so we decided to go swimming in the Fjords. So we headed to the beach and it was great. We tanned for awhile and then went for a swim. WHich is was cold, but not nearly as much as i would have expected. Afterwards we went to Skansen which is a huge open air museum in the city that has animals (i saw a moose!) and representations of life in the olden days. We tried to meet stinas uncle for a boat tour which he has so nicely organized for us but got our wires crossed and missed him.
The last day things were a bit crazy as Stina managed to get Tonsilitis (strep) while we were there so she spent the morn at the doc. We had lunch again back in Gamla Stan and then we went to the Vasamuseet which is this HUGE ship built in the 1660's that they managed to build too tall (crazy tall) and sank. Afterwards we did some more shopping and finally took our trip home to the airport where we managed to make friends with our bus driver  and i managed to get yet another pint glass. I now also have 22 stamps in my passport. yay!

All in all a great trip despite stina getting sick. Its wierd that i have 1 week left. Literally thats it. Trying to pack in as much as i can this week doing the things i meant to do but didn't.  Funny how time flies.

Well things are moving along nicely and the expiration of my time here is rapidly approaching. Quite scary realizing i'm comming up on 8 months abroad. Been working loads and have finally put my travel plans in to action and next week Stina and i will fly to Oslo, Norway and then from there go to her uncles house in Stockholm. Just 3 very packed days away but i'm quite excited and looking forward to something new. Things have been kinda frusterating here as they've been redoing the gas on my street and i've had no stove, oven or hot water for the past 2.5 days. Thankfully i think its back on.  I hope at least. Not much else of note to say. It doing nothing but raining here. Seriously. Rain rain rain. Which i guess is what comes with england. My love to all, i miss you guys!
 
--Lindsay

I'm here still in London. Life has really settled down in to routine here and scarily, i feel like an adult. I'm paying rent, budgeting for groceries (although i just found out i will get some money for it) and working almost 5 days a week. I feel so grown up and proud of myself. Its wierd. My summer is so different in many respects than had i stayed at home in NJ. I'd be at the beach more and probably going out more, although admitedly it might be a good things that i 'm not going out more as going out more = spending more. So thats it. Beyond that, Londons London-- rainy and cool. Working in about an hour. Was kinda bummed to miss the grand prix race cars that drove around the city yesterday (they actually shut down all of like shaftesbury ave and piccadilly and regent st and had then drive around-- how video-game cool). I was sad not to be able to see it, but work is work.

Mark Helmsing, a friend from IU, spent the weekend chez moi and i even had a 4th of July cookout. Unfortuantly i was sick with a nasty cold (and still am), but thats the way these things seem to go. It was fun tho and people actually showed up this time...sort of. Beyond that not much is new. Chelsea and Emily and i did dinner last night and finally got to see their East End Apartment. I have to say it feels wierd not living in New Cross any more. I actually miss it an the excitment of the res halls and living on a busy motor way. Tho a backyard now rocks.

Part of me feels wierd. Like i'm in some new click of foriegn twenty-somethings who are living, working and traveling abroad. And part of me doesn't quite want to leave that behind. I toiled with the idea of putting off my last year of university, but i'm not sure thats the best way to go.

Stina and i are planning our trip to Sweden and are going to acactually stop over in Copenhagen as well it seems. I want to go somewhere warm as well, although its not clear yet as to whether or not i have A) the time or b) the money to do that, but a weekend in the french riveria sounds nice. I had my heart set on going to Croatia but thats looking unlikely due to costs, so you take what you can get.