2nd post

So now almost two weeks have gone by and it has been a rough, in a good way. There have been very few boring days and I must express my gratitude to everyone for really helping make these first weeks great. I thought I would give a small background to why I am here in Madison. I am here on a Brittingham Viking Organization scholarship. The organization rewards scholarships to students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to study in Fennoscandia and vice versa. So I will be studying this entire year in Madison!





For the most part the days have been filled with getting to know new people and seeing new places. I must say that, over the past two weeks, I have come to love this city already. It is the perfect size, big enough so that there will always be things to do, but small enough so that people are still friendly and everything is easily accessible and it is located right between two lakes.



Pete was trying to take a picture of me and the Capitol Building but some homeless dude wanted to sell me a bus pass


We were supposed to go sailing but it was to windy so we (from left: Brad, Me, Pete and Louise) just had Mimosas by the lake all afternoon in stead



Many days have not gone by without us playing the magical game of beer pong. The Scandinavians have really surprised the local with some good games but we're still not consistent enough... (Me and Dustin playing, ed. note: he is not Scandinavian)

Last Saturday we hosted what was hopefully the first of many Viking dinners at the Viking House. After a slow start the party really got going and everybody seemed to be having a good time. Present were Vikings who have not yet been on there scholarship experience, vikings that are on it now and vikings from previous years, so it was a very good mix of old and new.





School will start this Wednesday and I am really looking forward to that almost as much as to the first American football game on Saturday, GO BADGERS

Until next time,
/Patrik

My first days in Madison

I wasn't sure about starting a blog about my year in the US but it seems like a good way of giving people back home and other Vikings an idea of what I'm doing over here. I'm going to try to post as often as possible, at least every two weeks and I will also try to add pictures (click them to see bigger versions). So here goes nothing.

I arrived in the US on August the 18th after a somewhat interesting journey that started early morning Helsinki time. I flew through London/Heathrow and landed at O'Hare in Chicago about an hour late at around 3 p.m. local time. Upon entering the customs area I understood that I was not going to make the bus that I had planned on taking to Madison because the lines were extremely long. After waiting in line for about 90 minutes and finally reaching a Customs officer it became clear that I had forgotten an important form back at home. So in to a room were a Homeland Security officer interviewed me and after first telling I probably need to fly back to Finland helped me sort things out. I arrived in Madison at about 8.30 p.m. and waiting for me was the Finnish summer viking Tuija along with two local vikings, Pete and Dustin. They had to introduce me to the best spot to grab a beer at in Madison right a way so we went to the Memorial Union terrace for a few beers.


My room

On Wednesday the 19th my fellow viking Eskil arrived from Norway and since it was Tuijas last day in Madison we of course had to through an impromptu party at the beautiful Viking House. Before the party it self we enjoyed a healthy American dinner in the form om the two largest pizzas I've ever seen. All the aforementioned vikings plus another Pete (Helsinki viking, spring 2009) and Weldon took part in a party that left none of the attending vikings' throats dry. We also got the play the national sport of the US, beer pong.


Tuija, Me and Eskil


Me outside Bascom hall chilling with Abe

On Thursday me and Eskil set out to fix some practical thing such as student id:s, car ownership papers, car insurance and bank accounts, which brings me to the warmest welcome I've ever received to a new place of residence. Eskil and I walked in to the UW Credit Union to get Eskils bank account set up thinking we were just going to experience pretty much nothing spectacular. But how wrong we were. While Eskil was sitting at a desk getting helped and yours truly was surfing the internet on one of the banks free internet stations the bank got robbed. The funny thing is that we didn't notice this until a few minutes after it had happened when police officers started flooding the bank, taking all the employees in to a back room and locking the doors. Most customers had already left before this and all of a sudden two Scandinavians were sitting almost alone inside a bank neither of us had visited before (well actually I had once, the day before to set up my bank account). The Eskil asked one of the employees what had happened and she whispered "we just got robbed". Soon after I was being interviewed first by a bank employee and then a police officer who told me that this apparently does not happen everyday in America.
Check out these links to news stories about the robbery:
http://badgerherald.com/news/2009/08/20/uw_credit_union_robb.php
http://www.nbc15.com/news/headlines/53829377.html

After this rather interesting experience we sorted everything regarding our new car out and we are now proud owners of the Viking van.


Cultural experience: Abortion protesters

On Friday Eskil and I decided to take a road trip to Milwaukee but since we had seen some unidentified fluid dripping out of the engine we first had to get it checked out. After finding out that everything was fine with the car we got on the road. It is about an hour long ride to Milwaukee and it went smoothly. Finally there we set our sights on finding cell-phones. After some thorough research we settled on T-Mobile and some sweet 30 dollar Nokias.


The Miller park were the Brewers play there home games and me in downtown Milwaukee

So that is about what has happened so far. I will be trying to update the blog again sometime next week or when I get my laptop (thanks Pete for letting me borrow your computer).

So until next time!

/Patrik