Oh wow, would you look at that? It’s been another week since I’ve been in Sweden. Actually, have pretty much gotten used to the life here, waking up every morning, taking the train to work, quick marching up that long slope to work because I’m late.. It’s become so routine it’s almost boring

My week here usually goes like this:

Monday to Friday :
(or in Swedish: Måndag till fredag)

Work, work

Saturday (lördag)

Exploring! This is usually the day we roam around, sight seeing, shopping and stuff

Sunday (söndag)

This is usually the stay-at-home-do-work-and-laundry day. =) As it turns out, it’s also blog-writing day =)

Anyway, this weekend, we decided to explore the lake around Kungshamra and the beach at Lappis. It’s nice to have such “nature spots” around where you live. It’s really a great place to hang out… weather permitting of course.

Here’s a shot of the lake

I really wish I’d taken a panorama shot of the lake though. This shot just doesn’t do its beauty justice. There were people kayaking on the lake, families hanging out and having fun.. heard people come here to suntan too..

It wasn’t easy getting down to the lake though

We first had to climb down a trail in the woods, then slide down a rock face. As Sriram demonstrates, it wasn’t too easy (This pic was posed though).

We met some inhabitants of the lake..

There was a family of 4 of these ducks happily swimming where we were seated on the rocks by the bank. There was a Swedish family there as well, a mom and her two daughters, feeding the ducks as well. (Well, actually we crashed their quiet little spot with our noisiness)

Here’s a we-were-here shot

 

We sat on the rocks by the lake for about 45 mins or so.. disturbing nature and nature-lovers with our racket.. From there, we headed over to the Lappis beach. The idea was for us to take a dip in the water.. but I was lazy to bring towels and stuff, so I opted not to.. which turned out to be a good idea in the end coz the water turned out to be freezing.

Here’s (from left) Tharoun (did I spell it right?), Dilip, Sriram, Loc and Akshay preparing to take a dip in the waters of Lappis…

…then discovering that the waters are less than inviting.

Leon and I are happy we decided to stay dry.

Next was the pizza party in Tian Yao’s kitchen!

Honestly, it was kinda messy at first, since I think we were all pretty new at making pizza.. Jiafang had a recipe that we tried to follow, but…

.. we end up with waaay too much oil in the dough. You can just see the oil dripping into the bowl here.. but we straightened ourselves out in the end.. later pizzas turned out pretty ok.. save for some pizza bases that were a little undercooked..

We had 2 vegetarians in our group, so the vege pizzas went in first.. and of course they were the “pioneers” from which we could learn And above are the 3 happy creators of our first non-vegetarian pizza. (From left, Jeff, Guang Huang and Sipei)

.. and here’s an example of how things turned out after learning from our earlier mistakes..

And of course, when you put have dough and students with too much time on their hands.. you get..

.. Jeff with a baked dough knife.

It was a pretty fabulous gathering.. with everyone talking, laughing (a lot!), or just sitting around… Might have been chaotic and messy, but it sure beat sitting around at home..

Well.. work again tomorrow..

… lather, rinse, repeat ..