Hej

Hej all. Time for the long overdue, eagerly anticipated, much debated, and hopefully highly celebrated, I know I'm elated, first post from Uppsala...

So we made it to Uppsala this past Tuesday morning (still Monday night out on the West Coast). Ragen's boss picked us up at the airport where we crammed six bags (four full suitcases, a kayaking bag, and one overstuffed duffel) into her car and drove to Ragen's department at SLU. We met some of her colleagues and then one of them took us to our flat. We got unpacked and tried to stay up for the rest of the day so we could fall asleep at the appropriate time and get adjusted to the time difference. Ragen had to go in the next day for a meeting and start getting paperwork filled out. Once she got home, Yezica (pronounced Jessica) took us to one of Dr. Wife's favorite places and my future employer (fingers crossed!), IKEA. We got some new sheets and towels; which brings me my Moving Abroad tip number 23 -there is no particular order so don't get hung up on the number- When moving to another country make sure to bring towels and sheets so that you can get that "homey" feeling right away. Nothing is wierder than sleeping in someone elses sheets and using their towels.

We found a grocery store up the street a bit called Willy's. Awesome I know. We found spaghetti and meat sauce in a bag. Which is tastier than it sounds and actually pretty convenient when you are not sure what time it is. We also found the below:

This is apparently the Original Taste of America: Chocolate Banana soda. And I know that when I think of America, Chocolate, and Bananas the color green does, in fact, come to mind (I know it does look kind of yellow in the picture which would be somewhat appropriate, but trust me, it is greener than Mt. Dew). To be fair though, it is a limited edition, should the people of Sweden get a lasting impression that Americans love their chocolate and bananas in green soda form. Tastes better than it looks.... barely.


Anyway, the next day, yesterday, Yezica and Sanna, another person in Ragen's department, took us downtown to get some of the other essentials taken care of. We had to get personal identification cards from the Tax office, so that we can pay taxes and other things. Since the visas in our passports say that we are in the country from the time we were approved (late January) through the end of December the man at the Tax office told us that we may not be approved because we would not be there a whole year, but to go ahead and fill out the application anyway. I'm glad that we had our translators with us, because the form to fill out if you are moving to Sweden is, of course, in Swedish. Also, the guy did not seem to interested in speaking English, a common sentiment we were to find out, even if he was pretty good. We forgot to bring our original marriage certificate so he could see the original stamp and make a copy, so he said it may take two weeks for us to get our cards. Beuracracy! I love it!

Our next stop was to find cell phones. I have heard about all these cool phones they have in Europe and had planned to find one. We went into a few shops, found the one I wanted, but she didn't have any more. We looked at a few other places and no one else had it either, so today we'll go with Plan B, and hope our Swedish friends do not despise us for having them run us around yesterday. The issue we hope to avoid however is that we do not have our personal ID numbers (similar to a social security number) and that they will be necessary to purchase a cell phone plan. Two weeks without a phone will be tough, only for communication between Ragen and her department, for the folks back home we will try to stick with Skype.

We were able to open a bank account though, even without the ID numbers. The bank assigned us one for their purposes and gave us this cool little device for logging into their online banking site. Online banking is big here for paying bills, more so than in the states, and they don't use checks out here either. Interesting tid bit I know.

Here is a water tower that's down the road from us as you head to IKEA. Kind of cool.

For Kristen: its like your car, only blue.
Oh and here's a picture of Ragen taking a picture. I'm not sure if this was intentional or not.

Anyway, that's where things stand at the moment. Ragen took the bus to work for the first time today, and I'll take the bus to meet her downtown and hopefully get the cell phone conundrum solved once and for all. After that we may meet her friends to see the Barber of Seville, which I think just opened here if I understand the TV commercials correctly. More on Swedish TV later.