Julia Roberts' Reign over Sweden Continues

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$1 = 5.9067 SEK

We are about to make our triumphant return to the US next week. However, by the time we leave 3 more Julia Robert's movies will have aired. Last Friday was Ocean's 11 (ok not a movie where Julia Roberts is technically the star, but she did play a prominat part in the story), this Friday is Ocean's 12, and on Saturday night will be The Pelican Brief. That brings the total of Julia Robert's movies shown here in the 15 weeks we have been in Sweden to 12. That is like 35 percent of her films according to her IMDB page. Wow, it's going to be a long summer...

The biggest event in all of Europe occurred this past Saturday night. That is of course the Eurovision Song Contest finals. Imagine the American Idol finals only long and drawn out and some terribly cheesy hosts, so... I guess it's exactly like American Idol. Hmm. All of Europe (43 countries, slightly more than Europe) competes in this contest and then votes on the 25 countries that make it to the finals after the two semifinal nights. Everyone performs and then there is 15 minutes for people to call in or text their votes for who wins. 15 minutes. They don't mess around. They don't wait for 10 year old girls to vote 300 times like on American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance. Then we get to see a talking head for each of the 43 countries tell us how their country voted (12 points to the country with the most votes, 10 for the second, 8 for the third, then 7,6,5,4,3,2,1). And you can't vote for your own country, which usually means that most votes of a given country go to their neighbors or related countries like most of Scandinavia will vote for the other Scandinavia countries. This works out to some wierd votes though like former Soviet countries voting for Russia and Bosnia & Herzegovina and Serbia & Montenegro giving each other 12 points each. The country that wins gets to host the contest the next year (Serbia won last year). We have conflicting reports however about the top five finalists. We were first under the impression that the top five finalists get a by into the finals of the next year, but then one of our friends thinks that the countries that spend thie most in sponsering the event get byes along with the host country. That could be plausible as the five finalists that didn't have to compete in the semifinals were France, Spain, Germany, the UK and Serbia. Obviously that's four of the biggest countries in Europe and could afford to poney up the green, or the rainbows of color that are the Euros. France and Spain had some weird entries but I dug 'em.

The Swedish entry has been pretty popular here, even if she looks like a cat, and her song has been on the radio and stuff nonstop for the last couple months. And she was pretty good in the competition but she did not get many votes, even from the other Scandinavian countries. She did get 12 points from MALTA of all places though, weird. I would say that she was at least better than the three other acts that were essentially the same thing, and all made it into the top 5 (Greece, Ukraine, and Armenia). Actually all three women from those countries looked pretty much the same and were referred to at our house by Miss Ukraine, Miss Ukraine #2, and Miss Ukraine #3/wannabe Britney (the Ukraine entry was a former Miss Ukraine). They all sang thumping clubbing Euro dance music, blah blah blah. Oh well. The winner this year, by a big margin, was Russia with a guy who looks a lot like Enrique Iglesias and had a cameo by a famous Russian figureskater dude, Evgeni Plushenko maybe? although I'm pretty sure it was Will Ferrell with all the crazy gyrations and hand movement. It was an ok song. The three Miss Ukraines were not that great, but I suppose the people of Europe like ladies in little dresses gyrating around. Norway was in fifth place with a lady with a 60's/Duffy/Amy Winehouse sound. One of our favorites though was the Croatian entry which had a guy in his 90's singing with a couple other guys who perform on the streets of Zagreb. It was really cool, and they beat Sweden. Latvia had a song about pirates, sung by people dressed like pirates in a very Barbie Girl kind of way.
We had a bunch of people over for the show, actually our place was volunteered for the event. They brought some wine and cheese, tradition apparently, and helped translate what the Swedish announcers were saying over the telecast. All in all it was ok. The music was pretty good, even if our favorites didn't make it (Turkey, Croatia, and Bosnia & Herzegovina - very Tim Burtonesque show they put on). You can see it all online and download the
songs or ringtones here http://www.eurovision.tv/.


(All artist photos from the Eurovision website).













In other news, I made my coaching debut with the 86ers on Saturday. I think we were a little better than last week although we still lost. The game did give me an idea of things we could work on this week. Here I am coaching up one of our safetys.
















WHAT TIME IS IT NOW?


Here's the new picture for you all to take a guess at to what time it was taken.

Congratulations to Emily for being the closest on the last picture which was taken at 9:30 pm. Your Souljah Boy cd is in the mail. As always closest guess wins a prize, or something.

PEACE

Now for something completely different...

Ok here we are trying a new thing. I don't think we'll come back to it though. Unless y'all really like it, but I doubt it. But since I've neglegted to say anything for awhile I thought I'd try to say stuff with style so here you go.





By the way, Uppsala was the team in red in the video.

Back Again

How Much Is Your Dollar Worth?
$1 = 6.03pp SEK
Hey it's on an upswing!
Wait, I have to think about this the other way, good for you guys, less good for us now.


I know it's been awhile but at least now we have some things to talk about. First of all the good news, Ragen finally was able to arrange a temporary personnummer from the tax office so now she will be able to be paid with out breaking university policy. Woo Hoo! Still none for me thanks. So what does a temporary number allow us to do, uhh mostly it's get paid. We've been told that we should probably wait to enter into any contracts, i.e., cell phones, until we get the real numbers. Also we can't get the international bank card from our bank which stinks because we could really use that while we are back in the States for Ryan and Kim's wedding. But at least now we have someone helping us out. One of the people in Ragen's department called the tax office and the migration board and tried to figure out what is going on with our tax numbers and visa renewals. It appears the delays for us have been the fact that Ragen's offer of employment was from Jan 1, 2008 to Dec 31, 2008, which apparently is not one year according to Swedish bureaucracies. That delayed are visa's the first time and is delaying us again and why the tax wouldn't give us the numbers. Our helper asked the migration office if they could speed up our renewal application (there is a backlog right now and where we are in the stack puts it at a 2 to 3 month processing time, super) so we got that going for us now.

To make up for our lack of updates loyal readers, here is a video from the boat race that happens in Uppsala every year for Valborgsmässoafton or Valborg. It's not a speed race but an endurance race because teams of four or five make a boat out of styrofoam and float down the river and over a small waterfall. As you can imagine, some make it and some don't. Notice all the debris in the water in the video, and the dedication of the guy paddling along on the piece of his boat. It happens on the last day of April or "sista April" and is leads to bonfires in the evening, Walpurgis Night named for St. Walpurga, which are to keep witches and stuff away from the livestock. Uppsala is one of the cities in the country where this is a big deal and people come from all over to celebrate it here. The bonfire in Gamla Uppsala is the biggest one with all the traditional singing and lasts all night. Here's a link for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walpurgis_Night#Sweden

Anyway, it seems that this really is a big day for drinking which was pretty obvious while we were riding the bus up to Gamla Uppsala, everyone had a drink. I would hate to be a bus driver that night. We got on the bus to downtown and didn't know where we were going to go that night and Ragen and I were talking when these two girls in front of us turned around and asked if we only speak English. They were pretty nice and one was pretty hammered. Ragen thinks they both were but I think one was more bubbly or tipsy. They asked us if we had anything to drink yet and told us that it was a big day for alcoholics. They did give us good directions on how to get to Gamla Uppsala to see the big fire, not bad for being three sheets. They asked what we did and we told them. They seemed to be about college age so we asked if they were students and they said that they were 15 and were in 8th grade. You could imagine our surprise. I realized that this was the age of the kids that would be the students I could be teaching when I saw an ad for an English teacher earlier that day. So to make a long story short, our drunk 15 year old tour guides turned gave us good directions and if any of our single male friends come to visit, make sure you ask a girl her age. You never know around here.