The Log Island

Whoa. That was a lot of travel and I'm certainly glad to be out of the air for a while. I'm at my first stop, Stockholm (which means "the log island" see Swedish history for details) When we arrived at the airport (which kinda looked like an Ikea) we were greeted by the word "valkommen" which means welcome in english... but to us it meant "welcome, to your first language barrier". We can't read any of the signs and nothing is pronounced the way it looks. But that's fine, a good deal of people here know some english and they seem to enjoy using the language with us and we enjoy trying to understand them. Another barrier has been a physical one... the revolving door. Just imagine 50 some odd exhausted students with about 100 pounds of luggage each, trying to get through these things while trying to politely avoid the Swedes darting in and out. It's been quite comical.
Once we had dragged all of our bags into the hotel we were turned loose to explore. You can walk just about anywhere in Stockholm in about 30 minutes. Armed with maps (written in Swedish) we found our way to what its called the "Old Town" It's the most historic part of Stockholm and its absolutely breathtaking. There, we looked at monuments, enjoyed some street performers, and found a street cafe where we had actual Swedish meatballs.
Today was the first full day in Stockholm. We started bright and early with a guided tour of the city and learned a lot more about Swedish history. We also saw the Vasa museum, the Vasa is a warship that sat at the bottom of the Baltic for over three centuries and was raised. It's in near perfect condition thanks to the salt and fresh water mixture. We also found our way to the beach today. The water was really cold but it was totally worth it. We met lots of locals and one of my friends got a salsa dancing lesson from a guy from Chile.
Overall it's been great so far and I'm really looking forward to getting back out into the city tomorrow. The people here are quite friendly and laid back but not in the southern way that I'm used to. Sweden is nothing like the the U.S.A and its been really interesting to see those differences play out.