Hammarkullen & Angered

This is another quick post that I might add to later. I just feel like I need to catch up before I head for Stockholm today. I went with a group from my Scandinavian Studies class to Hammarkullen & Angered, which are two suburb areas in Gothenburg. These places have a bad reputation for being violent areas with lots of immigrants, but I thought it was quite a beautiful place. Here are some pictures:

Telia & SCA

As a place holder, I would just like to say briefly that I went to visit two companies with a group of people the other day. It was pretty amazing. One was Telia, one of the largest communication companies in Scandinavia, and the other was SCA, a major hygiene product producer. Maybe you've heard of Tork? Anyways, here are some pictures:

Acapella Dreams...

I went to see one of the greatest acapella groups I know of last weekend live in Flisby. They are called The Real Group and I have been a fan for about two years now. They are so good that music from their Christmas cd has found a place in many of my music playlists.

Anyhow, Flisby is a small, small, small little place near a small town called Aneby, which is close to Jönköping, a city in the province of Småland... Sweden. I'm really not sure what else is in this town other than the church that we were at, plus the lake and a couple of barns and houses, but it was spectacular. I was able to just walk through a big empty field, crawl under a fence, and waddle through some brush area to get the lake. Quite liberating.Here's some pictures:













































And here's a couple pictures from Jönköping:




























And here's some from before, during, and after the concert:






















































































This entire trip was amazing and now, I think it might be worth me saying that I've started up a new acapella group here in Sweden. We've had one rehearsal so far and I've already launched the website!

http://www.skakapella.weebly.com

I know this particular group will only get to be together for a couple of months, so that means that some of you Seattlites will get to join! I hope you're ready for the heat!

blogging.

So, before I continue to write more entries, I have to clear something up.

Sometimes people ask me things like... "why do you blog? It's nice to blog, but isn't it very limiting because it's on the internet and thus public information? Don't you write completely different from if you were to write in a personal journal?"

My answer to this is:

I blog because I'm in Sweden, which is a place completely different from home, and I feel like a have a unique perspective. Honestly, I don't know how many other people in this world can say that they are a Korean American that studied abroad in Sweden. Maybe 5... maybe 10?

Given the population of the world and the length of the world's history plus the other factors like the fact that I study linguistics, the fact that I love the IPA, and the fact that I love music... yes, this makes my perspective distinct. A ratio of 1:world population.

I don't mean to put myself on a pedestal or anything... I just think that it would be selfish of me not to blog. I think I may have said here before that I'm a huge fan of [[open source]-like] things and sharing knowledge -- sharing everything that I have and know... which leads to the question of: "isn't it limiting to write a blog and don't you write in a completely different way?"

You would be surprised.

I would say that it is limiting in a sense, but in a good way. Meaning, I try to cut out all of the personal reminders and blah-blah-blah things I might write in a personal journal like:

"ahhhhhh..... well.... ok. It's 2:32am right now and I'm so tired" |
"oh self, why can't you stay awake and do your homework?" |
"Take out the compost tomorrow morning before school so your room doesn't stink." or
"don't forget to take your laptop with you to school on Wednesday."

Another difference would be that I would address a personal journal in second person singular, but you, the web audience, in second person plural... for the most part. This inevitably changes the voice, not just the pronoun. Humor also becomes an integral part of lots of things I write here because I am McDonald's... I love to see you smile. Well, that is if I could see your face while you are reading this.

:: wow, that wasn't funny. Please excuse that last pun ::

So, another big reason I keep a blog is so that I'll have something compiled that I can look back on to remember all of the things that I did and thought -- all of the things I learned. Plus, you can add pictures so easily to a blog! It's much harder with a journal and we all know that text is much more entertaining with pictures. Oh, so here's one to fill the quota:














Yes... so furthermore, keeping a blog like this will probably show me how my English writing and language skills have changed over the past few months. I've noticed (in speaking) that I'm using a strange Swedish style intonation when I ask questions in English now. And, I'm becoming something of a dialect box, whatever that may mean to you.

Okay, well I think I've said enough. In other words, I've spent too much time on this post. I hope it was worth writing. I think I'll be glad I wrote it when I look back.

busy busy...

It's been a busy busy week. A lot of exciting things have happened, and I promise I'll write again soon.

Music Lessons!

I am now teaching music lessons here in Gothenburg!















http://www.yeonheeyim.com/music-lessons.html

one more piece.

So, this one took me a little longer than the other two, but yeah. Check it out:

























































































Thanks to Mira for taking the picture!

art? really?

So, I had an art lesson from Elin today and I suddenly realized I could do this:
































Not bad for 1-2 hours worth of work... I know, I really surprised myself too. Oh, and thank you Lily for taking these pictures!

:P

Tour of Italy

So, I recently confirmed all of my trip plans for Italy and I am going to post my itinerary here.

This might seem like a bad idea to post such detailed travel itinerary items on the internet for everyone to see, but at the same time I feel like it's quite important to do so. It will serve two purposes:

1) Anyone that would like to join me for any part of this trip should contact me!!

2) I plan to be posting to this blog while I am in Italy (so if you don't hear from me between or soon after May 4th - May 13th... something is terribly wrong and you should take steps to find/contact me because something unforeseen has happened).

TOUR OF ITALY TRAVEL ITINERARY

GÖTEBORG (GOT) > ROME (FCO) [$202.00 on 4/10 @ Expedia.com]

• APRIL 4th @ 18.05-22.50
• GOT > BRU (18.05-19.55) Brussels Airlines Flight 2318
• BRU > FCO (20.40-22.50) Brussels Airlines Flight 3187

FUNNY PALACE HOSTEL (May 4th - May 6th: 3 nights)
(4-bed mixed dorm)
$41.03 per night.
Booked @ www.hostels.com

ALBERGO PAOLA (May 7th - May 8th: 2 nights)
(6-bed mixed dorm)
$27.82 per night.
Booked @ www.hostels.com

Pisa (Day trip)

EUROHOTEL (May 9th - May 11th: 3 nights)
(private suite)
$69.54 per night.
Booked @ www.hostels.com

VENICE (VCE) > GÖTEBORG (GOT) [$262.50 on 4/10 @ Expedia.com]

• APRIL 13th @ 16.50-21.10
• VCE > BRU (16.50-18.40) Brussels Airlines Flight 3206
  
• BRU > GOT (19.25-21.10) Brussels Airlines Flight 2319
  

blech, i'm sick

Yes, so I've finally contracted some sort of cold and it's really not a whole lot of fun. I don't have any kleenex either, so I'm using paper towels and my nose is quite raw now. It's not a great feeling to have to lay a paper towel by my face before going to bed so my nose doesn't soak my pillow, but not being able to breathe through my nose at the same time. You'd think if something is coming out of your nose, air would flow right along with it, but no. It's always like that though -- runny nose with nasal congestion and a sore throat... so, when I'm forced to breathe through my mouth, I start coughing. Otherwise, I try to forcibly blow air through my congested nasal passages causing turbulent whistling noises and sometimes more nose goop. However, I think we've all had this experience before and it just reminds me that I'm still a part of this human condition too.

It all started yesterday and that's when I decided to drink a whole liter of orange juice and eat everything that looked like a fruit in my fridge. Ate a bunch of ice cream and drank a bit of tea but I'm still not better yet and I might have to call in sick for my Swedish class and my band rehearsal tonight. I usually just tough it out and go anyway, but I'm beginning to learn that it's okay to be sick... Like the other day when a professor that was supposed to give a lecture for our Scandinavian Studies class was sick and didn't show up. Nobody told us that class was cancelled either. No e-mail, SMS, phone call... nothing.

Okay, I'm over it now. I just think that this course has had a lot of little disappointments that have been adding up -- some people might even be tallying. I try to look on the bright side though. There is a lot that I have learned, even if not in the content being presented.

Yeah, and being sick... I guess that means there's more time for me to work on all of the little projects I've started and well, sleep too... when I'm able to. I even had enough time and worked up enough guts and pain in my hand to decide to try to fix the action on my guitar. (Action is the space between the strings and the fretboard. My action is too high and has caused a chronic pain in my left palm.) I've always been quite afraid to do this because everyone online suggests that the guitar should be taken in so a professional can fix it. Well, I think I level'd up yesterday in terms of guitar knowledge since I managed to keep my bridge in tact. Here's a few pictures:




























One thing you may have noticed from these pictures is that the body of my guitar looks like an acoustic, but the head is definitely electric guitar-like. That is because I have an acoustic-electric guitar. Oh and those things on the ground are snotty tissues and ice cream wrappers.

Here's one more random picture for you, before I go and try to get more sleep.

förbjudet att...

So, this isn't really a good picture because someone already thought they were funny by adding the umlaut marking on 'mata' to become 'mäta' causing the meaning of this sign to be something like: "Forbidden to compare the animals," or to be parallel with English standards: "Do not compare the animals."














For me though, I had a moment of interference by the Spanish in my brain and I thought this sign said: "Do not kill the animals," and I was like...

:: duh ::

and obviously, it means: do not feed the animals.

Swedish-English Accent

There was one day in class that I got really bored because the lecturer was reading directly from the text I had read the previous night, but instead of falling asleep I decided to take linguistic (phonetic) notes on her pronunciation of the text she was reading. It was actually ended up being very fun to go through that text and start to recognize and predict patterns. She had a very strong and typical Swedish-English accent and I am glad I brought the text with me to class that day.

I have been very interested in different accents of English for a little while now and I even have a book entitled Accents and Dialects for Stage and Screen (:: oj, why can't I underline in this interface ::) by Paul Meier. I found this book online and it is sooo awesome! It comes with CDs and uses the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to help teach accents to actors/actresses. Not that I'll be doing any acting anytime soon... but it's super fun nonetheless. It is helping me to keep up with my IPA reading abilities and it's not just broad transcription either. There are some very narrowly transcribed things that use diacritics and suprasegmentals that man kan säga är a little advanced, like the marking for extra short (in Italian), or lowering maybe (in French).

Anyways, I have started on a project for myself to basically write the chapter for the Swedish dialect. It has been a lot of fun and is helping me to understand phonetic mistakes that Swedes make when speaking English. But, we all know that lexical mistakes are the most fun... you know, like the ones that happen because of direct translations.

Oh and there are words that Swedish and English share that are what I think is called false friends. A couple fun ones are: fart and mambo. I can't help but giggle a little (at least inside) when people say that there's a lot of mambo in Stockholm or reading something like "fick lite för hög fart," which sounds like it means you had a fart that was a little to loud (and that you might be holding in) or "full fart framåt," which I would really rather not try to explain.

So, I hope this post has pleased those of you that were waiting to read a real "linguisticky" post. That is, of course if you do faktiskt exist... in my nearly invisible audience. Yes, käraste församling... Gud vi tackar dig.

recent realization & now, invitation

So, as I was preparing and planning for the one week in June that my mom and sister will visit me in Europe I realized that I have been here for three months and have only done very limited traveling. So far, I've been here in Göteborg, out to the islands in the southern archipelago off the coast, and to Kiruna.

So, I immediately ripped the calender off my wall and started marking which days I have to be in Göteborg and which days I can go and travel.

I have decided to make a trip to Stockholm April 24th - April 28th. Also, I have decided to make a trip to Rome, Florence, Milan, and Oslo between May 4th and May 13th!

I've booked my bus and hostel for Stockholm and invited some people to come along, but it looks like I might be headed there by myself. My Italy/Norway trip is a bit more complicated and I haven't booked anything yet, but I plan to in the near future.

If you the reader would like to join me on these trips (given that I know you, at the very least... and maybe even like you...) , let me know!