torsdag 19 mars 2009

Spinning bar and $7 mill. dollar Villa.

Ok, so time for that weekend report I promised you.

Friday night was awesome, we started off at the office, having a Dutch treat or "knytkalas" as we Swedes called it. Everyone from our office, and from the two other companies that we share the building with all joined up the the office kitchen for "after work". There was everything from Swedish meatballs, different pies and BBQ to Mattias (colleague) famous chocolate cake. To drink there was everything from wine and beer to Swedish punch "brännvin" och to put it plain: all kinds of "nubbar" ;). After filling our stomachs with fine food and good drink, and ofcource singing "Helan går" we decided to head of to a club.

The club, which was shaped as a UFO and were spinning around, was at the top floor of a hotel (about 15 storeys up) overlooking the Pentagon. It had an amazing view, unfortunatly I didnt bring my camera, so I dont have any photos to share with you :(
The night ended at about 1:30 am, because we all knew that we had to save up for the next day...

Saturday me and Andreas, whom I share a house with (se pic. below), first decided to go
shopping. The place that we went to was a 3 floor outlet filled with brands like Ralph Laurens, Original Penguin, Polo, Guess, Armani etc... I found myself a pair of nice shoes, and Anders bought a couple of sweaters and a bow-tie. Adding the two hours it took us to find the place and the two hours we spent at the outlet, it was then time to get ready for the nights adventures.

The night started of in the apartment of a colleague, who also shared it with a couple of americans and another Swede. We were around 10 persons all together, talking, playing drinking games and listening to music; a perfect start to the evening.

At around 10-ish we all left the apartment and went to this going-away party that a guy from the Swedish embassy was having. There we all had a great time, enojoying the open bar and great company (se pic. below). After that me, Andreas and some other friends went back to our place for a relaxed after party.




On sunday we just relaxed, me, Andreas and Mattias went to the cinema and saw the new movie Watchmen with Malin Åkerman. Great movie in my oppinion, but even better was watching Mattias trying to finnish a large american Coca Cola and popcorn... Man, it was enough to satisfy 5 grown men!

And that was my weekend, now its soon time for another one, take care all!

tisdag 17 mars 2009

First weekend in Washington

A couple of weeks has gone by and so far I'm just loving everything.

As I mentioned in my previous post I spent my last week at a hostel. I had a wonderful time there and got to meet exciting youngsters from all over the world. But I early on realized that it wasn't a good choice for a long-term stay, since you don't sleep as good, and get your own private space. So I decided to go for my original plan and try to rent a room in an apartment or house.

During my first week in Washington the sun was shining every day and we had up to 25 C on a daily bases. So when my two new friends and colleagues from work asked me if I wanted to tag along and play some soccer with this "meet-up" group of 20-30 guys, it didn't take me long to decide.

My first weekend here was as great as any other day has been so far. Friday night I were having a couple of cold beers (ok, a six pack) and some really good laughs with the rest of the guests at the hostel.

Saturday morning I woke up early and went in to the town to purchase a pair of soccer shoes and a new phone, since the one I brought with me from Swe doesnt work over here. During my trip to town I also decided to get me something quick to eat, and soon realized that most people here dont know what lactose in-tolerance means (actually got a cheese burger suggested by a guy that told me that he absolutly knew what lactose intolerance is.

... Anyway, a few hours later I were back at the hostel and were making me ready to go and play soccer. I met up with my friends soon after that and realized that it was to hot outside to play in pants(!). We played for 2-3 hours, and it was fun, altough most guys didnt really know what team-play means, and the field wasnt in the best condition.


Saturday night it was party time. We are totaly eight persons at my office that are in my age, and we all met up at one of my colleauges apartment together with some other friends of theres. There we had a couple of drinks and good talks before we went clubbing. Unfortunatly I dont have any pictures from the night but I can tell you that we had a great time and the party continued all night long!

Anyway, now i have to go, hopefully I will find some time to make an entry from the weekend that just passed before the next weekend is upon us.

Later!

torsdag 5 mars 2009

Arrived in Washington

A lot has happened since my last entry here. I have been to the American embassy for the Interview, received my VISA, visited my dad and a spent a whole weekend with some of my best friends. And just yesterday I finally arrived in Washington D.C.

It turns out I were all nervous for nothing about the Interview, the interview itself only took like five minutes, after having spent over an hour standing in a line and waiting in a waiting room. The interviewer only asked a few question about what I would be doing in the US and stuff like that, questions that I had already answered in the twenty or so documents that I had to fill in before going to the interview... And the next day I had my VISA. So I called my supervisor and a couple of hours later my tickets were booked. :-) The plane wasn't for another 5 days, which gave me the weekend to spend some quality time with my dad and some good friends from my hometown that is now living in Stockholm.

Me, my dad and his partner spent the Saturday taking a real nice walk on a ice-covered lake. It was a real nice day, my dad and his partner both had there cameras with them. If you want to see some of the photos my dad took you can see them here http://www.neostar.se/albums/SolnaStad09/

Afterwards I met up with my friends in one of theres apartment. We cooked a nice dinner and afterwards we hit the clubs. It was a really fun evening, it made me realize how much I miss the old gang from Ludvika :)

A few days later I was on the plane to the US, and 13 hours later I arrived in Washington D.C But more on that on my next entry, because now I'm gonna socialize with the other 15 or so guys and girls that Im living with here :D

Later all!

måndag 9 februari 2009

Introduction

Hi dear readers (if there are any),

first of all, in spite of what the title might tell you, I'm not going to give you a detailed description of who I am. But a few pointers perhaps..:
At the day of writing I am 24 years old, closing on 25. I'm still living in Sweden, where I was born and raised, although I'm on my way out in the wide world, but more on that later. I'm currently studying at a vocational college, but only have a couple of months left before I can declare myself as a "International salesman" according to my teacher anyway, I myself don't really like labels.

I have moved around a lot in my life, but mainly in Sweden so far. The cities I have lived in (counting the ones where I spent at least 6 months) are Stockholm, Ludvika, Karlstad and Karlskrona in Sweden and Gdynia in Poland. While some people migth find moving around like that distrurbing, I have to say that I like it. Because when starting up a new life on a new location I have found that I learn alot about myself and who I am, and the bigger the contrast it is between the old place and the new; the more so. That together with all the new friends I have made, makes any downside dissapear in a sidenote.
And this kinda brings me to why I started this blogg. As mentioned above i lived in Poland for six month, this was during an internship period as a part of my education. And now the time has come for me to go out on an internship again. Sense I really felt that living in a new culture gave me so much back in self-development, I felt like I had to try out a new country and culture again. So this year I am going to Washington D.C. And when I told my family that I were planning on going abroad again my sisters respons was: "You have to keep a blogg so that we know what your up to, sense you are so bad at keeping in touch". And sense the rest of my family and my friends all agreed with her on both accounts I caved - So here we are...

And thats all for now, hope I didnt bore you all, hopefully my blogg will get more interesting as I get more used to blogging and my days get filled with more eventfull events.


Ohh, and in case your wondering why Im writing in English when the ones that demanded this Blogg prolly all are from Sweden - I cant really say why, it just felt natural sense I am planning on being abroad while blogging.