Adventures in Swedenland

Hej! My name is Nicole and I’ve decided to use this blog to document my life as a exchange student, from the tedious pre-departure paperwork down to my actual life in Uppsala, Sweden. This blog will mostly be for my friends, family, and hopefully great memories for myself. I also hope that maybe after all is said and done, that this blog will also be used as a source of information for future study abroad students! This will be my first time writing a “real” blog and hopefully going into further detail about things than I usually would.Here’s a little about me:

I’m currently a sophomore studying at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. However, I’ve lived most of my life in Buckeye Country (Columbus, Ohio). I absolutely love football (both American and “Soccer”) and am a die-hard Buckeye fan and a new Boilermaker fan. I know a big change will be my lack of American Football in Sweden, but I think I can manage! I like video games, even if I’m not exactly great at them. Most of the things are either pink or orange, even my bedroom at home. Maybe I’ll add a “favorites” section sometime. Anyway, moving on!

I’m currently majoring in Communications and Asian Studies. Yes. Asian Studies, it is pretty confusing. “Why are you going to Sweden and not Japan?” Well, truth be told, I’ve burnt myself out on Asian classes, especially Japanese classes. Don’t get my wrong, I love Japanese culture and language, but I want to experience something new. I’ve taken two years of college Japanese and four years of high school German. “But, why aren’t you going to Germany?” you ask. Well, in high school I got burnt out on Germany as well. However, I currently don’t speak a lick of Swedish aside from a few simple words/phrases. I guess you can say I have a mild addiction that involves learning new languages and studying new cultures. Better than drugs and booze, right? That’s what I thought.

I hope you find my little adventures interesting and useful! If you have any comments, questions, complaints feel free to leave a comment or email me at nlafuze [at] purdue [dot] edu

And for kicks and giggles (Hey, Steph Kline!) I’ll leave you all a little thing that sums me up about why you should read this blog: I’m Awesome!