SFI party

Last Saturday we had our first SFI party !
First, i should tell you what SFI means... In swedish : "svenska för invändrare", in English : " Swedish for immigrants" , so, as you can guess, it was a party with some of my Swedish course classmates (+ boyfriends and girlfriends)!
That was a really fun party ! People came to our building, i had booked that special party room again, the one next to our flat. We were 14 people, and... 10 different nationalities ! Yeah, that's right !

Here are some pictures, let me present you my friends !

Well, i guess you know those guys already ! ;-)
No ? Well, that's the French girl and her Turkish boyfriend...

Here are Miun Sun (alias Mickey) from South Korea, with her Swedish husband (yes he is !!! Well half Korean too since he was adopted in Sweden...) Those guys are very funny , i like them a lot !


Here are Gabriela , from Ecuador and Andrès, Swedish with Chilean roots...
Friendly couple !


Pedro from Portugal , and Karin , Swedish. Nice couple too !


Nick , from USA (Washington DC), and his Swedish girlfriend (oops, i have a doubt on her name, Tess or Eve ?)

Dmitri , (and not Dimitri !!), from Uzbekistan , and Viktoria, from Ukraine, those too are in our class, they are "the secret couple".

And finally, Aurora, who is Chinese, and Erik Swedish.

It was a kind of international dinner party, everyone cooked something from his country, we had a huge amount of food, but at the end, no left over ! :-)













At the end of the dinner, we were kind of missing alcohol ... But luckily, Turkish raki was there !
Strong , very strong....

Here are the results of that drink disaster :

Gratis Mickey ! Congrats !!! hehe :-)

After the dinner party, we almost all went to Flammans, the famous student club close to our building, drinks are cheap, but that night , people were really too young for us... we didn't stay too long...
But since Gabriela was moving the next day to Stockholm, she invited us for an after party to her corridor, in order to finish her Tequila and Rhum...







Great evening with lots of new friends !
Looking forward the next one !

Au Revoir Lina !

Ca y est Lina nous a quitté aujourd'hui, elle est rentrée chez elle à Singapour... Nous sommes allés au restau une dernière fois avec elle hier soir. J'espère qu'on pourra garder contact, elle nous a promis de nous faire visiter Singapour ! Ou qui sait , peut être qu'on se retrouvera bientôt, elle est en train de postuler pour un PHD en Europe.

Here we are... Lina left Linköping today, to go back to her homecountry, to Singapore... We went to a restaurant yesterday evening with her, for a last time. I hope we can keep in touch, she promised to show us Singapore if we can go there ! Or, who knows, may be we'll meet soon, she's currently applying to some PHD in Europe.


Il nous reste plus qu'à trouver de nouvelles personnes pour sortir... En même temps on ne va pas s'éterniser au pays des pinguins , on est en train d'organiser notre "future destination"... Vous en saurez un peu plus dès que ca se précisera ... hehe suspense ! :-)

Now we have to find some new friends to go out with... But, well, we're not planning to stay too long in Pinguin land, we are already trying to organize our "future destination"... We'll let you know about it on time... Surprise surprise ! :-)


La routine à Linköping ressemble à celà : De 8h à 12h, je vais à mon cours de suédois, et je me force de plus en plus à y aller, les réveils sont durs... A part celà , je vais au moins 3 fois par semaine au sport, Body Toning, Body Pump, Pilates restent mes favoris en plus des machines cardio de marche rapide en face des écrans TV ! ;-)
Ah et une petite nouveauté ! J'avais demandé à Murat de mettre une annonce sur le site de la fac, proposant des cours de français histoire de me faire un peu d'argent de poche, et contre toute attente , j'ai trouvé une élève ! Je suis allée chez elle cette après midi pour faire connaissance, elle a 15 ans, celà fait seulement 2 ans qu'elle étudie le français, mais elle parle vraiment bien ! On se revoit vendredi après midi.
Voilà pour moi.
En ce qui concerne Murat, la fac a accepté de l'embauché jusqu'à fin mai en tant qu'assistant, il sera donc payé ! Ce qui est une trèèès bonne nouvelle, s'ils avaient refusé, on aurait été obligés de partir dès fin janvier....
Il rentre en Turquie une semaine pour passer son exam , du coup je vais rentrer moi aussi une semaine, enfin plutôt 12 jours ( du 08 au 19 février), en France !

Daily life in Linköping looks like that : Every monring from 8 to 12 I go to Elsa Brandströms Skollan, to my swedish course. I have to say it's harder and harder for me to wake up and find enough motivation to go there... Other than that, i keep going to sport at least 3 times a week, my favorite activities remain Body Toning, Body Pump, Pilates and sometimes the cardio machines on which i can walk fast in front of some TV screens ... ;-)
The big news of the week for me : I've found a "pocket money" job , I give French course to a young teenager, she's 15, i went to her place today to meet, we're going to meet again on Friday afternoon.
That is pretty it for me...
Concerning Murat, the University accepted to hire him as an assistant until end of May, and he will be paid this time , which is a very good news ! We were already thinking to move back end of January otherwise, since his Erasmus money ends at the end of the month. He's going back to Turkey for a week for his exam , so I've decided to go also back to France for 12 days, from 08th to 19th of February.

Ursäkta mig, jag har inte bred den tid ! ;-)
(sorry, i dont have any picture this time ! )

Masters ceremony & Good bye party

Vendredi , nous sommes allés à la cérémonie de remise des diplômes des Masters internationaux. Lina nous a invité à la cérémonie et au déjeuner organisé pour les étudiants en Master.

Last Friday, we went to the graduation ceremony of the Masters exchange students. Our friend Lina invited us to the ceremony held at University plus to the special lunch organized for the students.


Sur cette photo , notre goupe préféré, avec lequel nous avons passé le réveillon du jour de l'an.

On that picture , the famous gang with whom we spent New Year's Eve.



On that one, you can see Jorgen, Murat's teacher who helped him to come and stay in Sweden ...



























Le soir même nous somme allés à la soirée d'adieux de Talha, un étudiant Turc.
C'était notre 1ère soirée étudiante ici... Il y avait une 30ne de personnes de nationalités diverses.

The same evening we went to Talha's Good Bye party , a Turkish master student. It was our first real student party here, there were around 30 people from all over the world.




La règle d'or : quitter ses chaussures en rentrant ! imaginez 30 paires de chaussures dans un espace d'un m2 ! Une jolie montagne de chaussures !

The golden rule : leave shoes in the entrance corridor at the arrival ! Imagine 30 pairs of boots in 1m² space ! Funny moutain of shoes !







2ème règle : chacun vient avec ce qu'il veut boire , comme je n'y connais pas grand chose en bière suédoise, j'en ai acheté une de chaque...
Skal ! sous l'oeil attentif d'Ataturk !

2nd rule : people have to buy what they want to drink , since i dunno much about swedish beers, i baught one of each ! ;-) And we drunk, under the precious eye of Ataturk ! :-)











C'était marrant de voir la distinction des groupes, la soirée avait beau être internationale, bizarrement les gens restaient souvent attirés par les mêmes cultures...

It was funny to realize that even if the party was international, people were not mixing that much...


So we had the Turkish group :
(au milieu : Talha , in the middle)



Asian group...Find the mistake !
(Ok Kent is so swedish blond, but since he's asian in his mind, he can be part of the asian group...)


And here is the "gift" for all those Turkish men dying to see some BLONDE !
Here are the blonde, just for you guys ! Enjoy !!! (Swedish, Finnish, English)


And ... the best for the end : one French !Almost half Viking...


Skål !

Cheers !

Santé !

Şerefe !

Tack för den "present" tomten !

Vad är det ? Du måste tänka...
Jag tycker det är en ny leksak eller en ny bitkonst från kommun !
( jag vet ... min svenska är inte bra... ürsäkta mig svenne ! )

OK, since nobody understand my lovely swedish, i'd better talk to you in english, and french...
But as you can see , I can write a sentence in Swedish !
So, yeah, you must wander what is this weird machine !
I think, it's Santa Claus' gift for the municipality...
When we came back from Christmas vocation, we find that on our way to city center... Since we can understand what is written on it, it was easy for us to know what was this for ! ;-)
"cyklistar idag" means : bikers today.
So that beautiful piece of art stands there and counts the number of bikes going on that road, (we have the confirmation, we waited next to it until a bike came, since we are in Linköping, no need to wait too long...Linköping is the city of bikes !)
Dont ask me about the statistics... because i dont really care how many bikes are riding there ! ;-)

Well, sorry for that very NOT interesting post....But, i really don't know what to talk about anymore... Linköping is a small town , not much to tell about anymore....

I think we really need another trip , to find back my inspiration ! :-)

By the way, we stay in Linköping until mid June, so we would really love to visit around before we leave, we're thinking about North Sweden, or Fjords in Norway... or both ? why not ;-)

Gott Nytt År !

Happy New Year , Bonne année 2008 !!!

After having spent one week in France to celebrate Christmas with my family, we are back to Sweden ready to start a new challenging year !

Pour célébrer cette nouvelle année, nous avons loué un petit cottage à 40km de Linköping, en pleine campagne, avec 3 de nos amis.

In order to celebrate this New Year , we rented a little cottage in the countryside, around 40km from Linköping, with 3 of our friends.

First snow we see in Sweden !

We were in a cute village , less than 10 houses around but with a big church ! The closest town was Åtvidaberg.

As you can see the weather was a little bit cold, but Murat was so happy to wear my sisters ' Christmas gift ( Nice hat , no ?)

Pour nous réchauffer, Marie nous a préparé le traditionnel Glögg, vin chaud épicé.

Thank you Marie to warm us a bit with that great Glögg !



Préparation du dîner du réveillon, tout le monde a participé !
Au menu : Crayfish toasts , Rein Deer and Kantarell meat with Special potatis, vanilla ice cream with redberries. And of course wine !




We spent our evenings playing board games (swedish are so fond of those !!) , It took me some time to understand the rules of that german game that Marie braught, but I won each time !

Soirée tranquille , on a fait des jeux de société jusqu'à 3h du matin... Un jeu allemand que Marie nous a apprit, assez compliqué, mais j'ai gagné les 2 parties !



Black jack improvisé : Lina a eu l'honneur de gagné au moins 10 couronnes !!! (1eur ;-) )














We had some Chianti left from Florence , but also some Côte du Rhône , from France (one of the 4 bottles that my parents offered to Murat for Christmas !)

Petit tour in the snow around our cottage

On the way back , we've decided to construct a Snow Light ! really pretty, by night we put a candle inside the snow ball tower .

Après 2 jours, il était temps de rentrer à Linköping, mais d'abord un petit nettoyage de la voiture de location s'est imposé !

We rented that funny little car, Murat was happy to drive for the first time of his life on the snow !