The last week in Uppsala was a busy mess of trying to sort through my things, pack, and clean the apartment on top of last minute paperwork and trying to see a few sites I hadn't had time for during school. To make matters worse, both Stephan and I came down with colds from camping out in the wet and cold. After returning from my vacation I found out that my TA (who was on vacation that week) wanted me to make some changes to my report and resubmit it even though the semester was technically over. The crappy thing was that all of the corrections were superficial formatting issues, not anything related to the content. So along with unexpected school work, Monday was spent helping Stephan's friend Enno get his stuff to the train station and having fika for the last time. Tuesday we went to Ekonomikum (the business school) to buy cool Uppsala merchandise, then we walked through the old cemetery to see the graves of some of the famous scientists who taught at Uppsala (i.e. Ångstrom and Arrhenius). On the way to the Gustavianum, the university museum, we stumbled across another exhibition showcasing the university's coin and medal collection. We got a private tour by the currator and learned all sorts of fun facts about old money in Scandinavia and the world. We snuck into the Gustavianum at the last minute to view artifacts from the university's history (1st telescope, Valborg memoribilia, etc.) plus the Augsburg art cabinet, the museum prize item, and the world's 2nd oldest anatomical theatre built by Svedberg. Wednesday was completely devoted to cleaning but we didn't finish and over slept the alarm on Thursday. Luckily the cleaning inspector was late and didn't look very hard at all at the room so I passed with flying colors. After finishing all of the necessary things we needed to do to leave, we set off on the train to spend the night at Arlanda airport in the hotel. Friday was flying day and we needed to be up early, around 5:30am for Stephan to make his flight. My flight took off a bit later and was the start to one day i wish never to repeat.
Since I changed the date of my flight, I lost the ability to choice my seat ahead of time. Plus the flight was actually really full so I ended up in the window seat next to a large Norwegian man. I tried to sleep but the plane was so hot because it didn't have the little air vents above you. So I tried to play games on the in-seat entertainment, but all of them kept crashing except soduku. Then I wanted to watch movies but by this time all of them were in the middle of the film and I can't watch a new movie from the middle so I had to settle for Chicago because I had seen it before. Remember that I'm not feeling well the entire time. After 9 hours I wanted fresh air so badly but unfortunately a huge storm had settled over Chicago. Instead of landing, we flew circles over Grand Rapids until we absolutely had to land in Milwaukee to get more fuel. By the time we got Chicago, I had missed my connecting flight. Actually it was cancelled I later found out and I was put on stand-by for the next flight to Indianapolis because I had the bright idea to call United rather than stand in a line 2 miles long. Another wave of storms came through and wiped out my stand-by flight. So I got put on stand-by for an even later flight. In the mean time, I found some other stranded Indianapolis bound young adults who had decided to try to rent a car and just drive. But none of the rental car companies would let us leave the car in Indy. I didn't make it on the last flight of the night, which left at midnight, because I was 68 out 81 standby passengers for a plane that seats 72. Thank goodness I know people who live in the city. Anna and her roommate Carl are my new personal hereos. Although Anna was home in Indy, she called her roommate to come get me at the airport and take me back to their place at Loyola (a 2 hour ride on the EL, fyi) so I could sleep in her bed and have my Dad drive up the next morning to get me. By the time I went to bed that night, I had been up for over 24 hours Sweden time. I didn't get back to Indy until 7:30pm on Saturday, a whole day later than scheduled. And my cold got worse. I'm finally feeling somewhat better and I'm re-adjusting my internal clock so I will be able to get all of my stuff done before Stephan arrives on Wednesday to visit for 2 weeks :) :) :) I think this is the only thing that is keeping me from getting totally "home"-sick for Sweden yet.
Since I changed the date of my flight, I lost the ability to choice my seat ahead of time. Plus the flight was actually really full so I ended up in the window seat next to a large Norwegian man. I tried to sleep but the plane was so hot because it didn't have the little air vents above you. So I tried to play games on the in-seat entertainment, but all of them kept crashing except soduku. Then I wanted to watch movies but by this time all of them were in the middle of the film and I can't watch a new movie from the middle so I had to settle for Chicago because I had seen it before. Remember that I'm not feeling well the entire time. After 9 hours I wanted fresh air so badly but unfortunately a huge storm had settled over Chicago. Instead of landing, we flew circles over Grand Rapids until we absolutely had to land in Milwaukee to get more fuel. By the time we got Chicago, I had missed my connecting flight. Actually it was cancelled I later found out and I was put on stand-by for the next flight to Indianapolis because I had the bright idea to call United rather than stand in a line 2 miles long. Another wave of storms came through and wiped out my stand-by flight. So I got put on stand-by for an even later flight. In the mean time, I found some other stranded Indianapolis bound young adults who had decided to try to rent a car and just drive. But none of the rental car companies would let us leave the car in Indy. I didn't make it on the last flight of the night, which left at midnight, because I was 68 out 81 standby passengers for a plane that seats 72. Thank goodness I know people who live in the city. Anna and her roommate Carl are my new personal hereos. Although Anna was home in Indy, she called her roommate to come get me at the airport and take me back to their place at Loyola (a 2 hour ride on the EL, fyi) so I could sleep in her bed and have my Dad drive up the next morning to get me. By the time I went to bed that night, I had been up for over 24 hours Sweden time. I didn't get back to Indy until 7:30pm on Saturday, a whole day later than scheduled. And my cold got worse. I'm finally feeling somewhat better and I'm re-adjusting my internal clock so I will be able to get all of my stuff done before Stephan arrives on Wednesday to visit for 2 weeks :) :) :) I think this is the only thing that is keeping me from getting totally "home"-sick for Sweden yet.
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