Time flying

Wow this week has flown by. I can´t believe it´s already Thursday! Nothing really all that exciting happened until yesterday, but I´ll fill in the gap real quick here:
Earlier this week I went to the museum here in town called Jamtli, which was mostly outdoors and displayed all the different kinds of scenes one might find as they travel back through Östersund´s brief history. (This cute little city has been around about as long as the States.) It was nice to sort of grasp more about this place I´m living at for the next few months.
I started my Introduction to Advanced Social Sciences class on Monday, which looks like it will be somewhat repetitive of what I´ve already learned, yet from the context of an entirely new culture. Should be interesting. AND, it´s a master´s level course, so now I´ll be able to boast that I´ve taken a class at the grad-school level:) Then on Tuesday I dropped a class upon discovering that my advisor was wrong and I was, as I suspected, taking one too many courses. So now I´m squared away for Swedish language, Advanced Social Sciences, and Social Work. The way they have classes here is much different than the States. We meet once a week, almost always on a different day at a different time if a different room, and usually are supposed to come having read the material and ready to discuss in class. I´m really enjoying this set up actually, especially because it lets me..............

....PLAN A TRIP TO SPAIN!!!! Yep, that´s right, I´m goin to Spain. On September 13th Stacey the Canadian, Daniel the Swedish student, and I are taking a train to Stockholm, flying out of there the next day to Barcelona and then spending the next six days traveling around Spain! We´re buying Eurail passes to take a train to San Sebastian, where we´ll bask in the sun and see a beautiful aquarium, then it´s off to Sevilla for a few days, then back to Barcelona to catch our flight on Saturday! I´ll give a detailed report of our travels when I get back, of course, but until then I´m just counting down the days to beautiful weather and breathtaking architecture! Considering that the weather here has been rainy and windy and unpredictable, I can´t tell you how much I´m going to appreciate the average 80-degree weather Spain is getting right now!!! And I´m also just really excited to start traveling. Don´t get me wrong Östersund is beautiful, and it´s going to be awesome to have this to come back to each time I venture out into Europe, but it just doesn´t have the same historical appeal to me as the rest of Europe does. And, not to mention, I have to start all this travel soon if I want to go everywhere I was hoping to! The next trip we´re going to start planning is Oktoberfest...I have a friend here whose brother lives in Munich, so we´re looking pretty good on accommodations at the moment. I´ll keep you all posted!

But yes, as you can imagine I´m settling in quite nicely here. I´m sorry I don´t have a whole lot to report, but maybe that´s just part of getting used to things? I don´t know. I´ll hopefully have my OWN internet by this weekend so I will be more reliable with your emails, skyping, blogging, etc., so until then just sit tight and bear with me! Don´t forget to write me and tell me about how you all are doing too! I wouldn´t invite you to do so if I didn´t mean it! :)

Love and miss!
Katie