Quick Summary of the Past Month!

Due to the fact that I have been busier than a bee these past few weeks, I will try and give you a quick recap of what I have been up to! Bullet points this time....Enjoy!

• Beardyman Weekend
• I know it sounds as though I went to a homeless man's concert which I know many of you wouldn't be surprised to hear, but this was one of the coolest concerts I have ever been to. It was literally at the venue 2 steps from my dorm so talk about getting home quickly! Let me just give you a little low down on this fellow they call Beardyman: he is a beatboxer from the UK and has done shows all over the world. I have never heard anyone make then sounds that he does. The cool part is that all his music he creates with his mouth whether it's an instrument or a noise. Here's a link if you want to check him out yourself!
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3kyNGVK-hI
• I was able to go with the usual crowd of people including Tim and Fil, but also with a bunch of random people that I really enjoyed hanging out with. One of the couples recently got engaged so naturally, we had to celebrate after the concert was done. Let me explain something to you- Polish people love two things- drinking in order to celebrate something and celebrate in order to drink something. I must say, we had a blast singing Polish songs and attempting our own beatboxing tricks. I know everyone probably expected me to be the next Beardyman, but unfortunately after a few attempts, my friends thought it would be better if I just saved myself the breath. I was more than happy to comply with this request because I literally couldn't breath after my one minute rendition of a guitar solo.

• Amazing Race Poznan Edition
• I'm sure all of you have heard of the "Amazing Race" whether you watch it religiously or not. Well, guess who participated in the Poznan version?! Literally two hours before the race, my friend Natalia persuaded/forced me to do this race thing with one of our other friends Angelina. I'm not going to lie, I am SOOOO glad I did it. That is the only time that I will admit that Natalia had a good idea haha kidding. But honestly, I had a blast! Just a quick recap of some of the things we had to do:
• Find a purple bunny in the bushes
• Take a shot- you're not surprised I'm sure
• Sing and dance to a song in the middle of the Browar aka a huge mall
• Walk with a "kinder egg" across a crowded outdoor plaza
• Build a lawn chair from a box (we couldn't figure out some of the screws, so we just took them...oops)
• Answer a series of trivia questions (the winner of the 2010 Stanley Cup was one of the questions!)
• Although we did not end up winning, we did get fourth and that's only because the other teams took taxis everywhere AND two of the teams had bikes. Then there was us- running and taking trams everywhere. 
• After the race was over, we met these random Polish people grilling out in front of the dorms and hung out with the for a few hours. Talk about hospitality- all you can eat and drink for free! We weren't going to pass that one up!  

•  Anatomy Test and Celebrations
• We had our Anatomy Test last Monday so things were slightly stressful before that because we all needed to get a certain amount of points in order to be able to take the Final Exam. Here's the thing that absolutely positively flat out sucks- those tests that we took mean nothing for our final grade. That's right our final grade in anatomy is the final exam itself which will be coming to theaters near you June 13th. Needless to say, I have started studying, but have found that it is very difficult to study when it is literally 85 degrees outside during the day and a whopping 75 degrees at night. Details about the studying TBA
• After our Anatomy Test, everyone came to my place where we celebrated with a great game or seven of beer pong. Nathan and I had to teach the "foreigners" how to play and I must say, they quickly caught on! Here are a few pictures from that night:

Class reps!

We had two games going on at the same time!

The view from my room 

• Juwenalia
• On Thursday, all of our afternoon classes were cancelled and by "our classes" I mean all of the college students in all of Poznan. It was the beginning of this traditional four day festival called Juwenalia which means "Festival of Youth". The festival is kicked off with a parade of all the different universities in Poznan representing their school. People were dressed in the most absurd costumes from Avatar characters to soccer stars to cowboys. Our school was dressed in scrubs or white lab coats because we are the medical university in the city. After the chanting and the music, the parade finished at the tents where the festival began. It was filled with stages upon stages of performers, music, dancing, karaoke and food- basically everything a college student needs was within reach. We stayed there until the late hours of the night and I must say, it was a blast! It was literally all the college students in Poznan and if you weren't a college student, you weren't allowed to enter. Pretty VIP I must say haha. Here are a few pictures! 

The Parade!

My friend Antosh on the float...yes he shaved his head like Mr T

A few of us at the parade! So excited!

• Lifting Up and Chowing Down
• Natalia and I are officially workout friends. We have a series of workouts that we do together and we even try to wear the same thing- purely as a motivational factor. Not even kidding you, we both bought the same blue tank tops to go running in except the laundry gnomes or something took my blue shirt and so now we can't be blue tank top friends. Despite this tragedy, we still have managed to get a few good runs in and insanity workouts and other things that Natalia forces me to do haha. 
• So you probably noticed me mentioning Nathan and Natalia quite often lately. That's because they are my parents away from home. Well, Natalia's more like my mom feeding me and making me study. And Nathan- well Nathan's like my brother that says silly things and let's me push into walls. I always go over to their place and they (and by they I mean Natalia) make me fancy meals like stuffed peppers or fried fish or baked asparagus with lemon. We always have a blast together whether it's eating or making fun of each other or just plain old studying on the balcony. So glad I found the two Canadians! 
• Speaking of good weather and Canadians (never thought I'd use those two in a sentence), I am going on a bike and beach trip tomorrow with a bunch of Canadians. I mean this in all seriousness- 3 from Windsor and 3 from Toronto. Talk about having to represent the US of A...if only I knew more about hockey. Darn it! But yes, going back to the biking part- we're renting bikes for the day and biking 10 miles one way to go to the beach because it's supposed to be 90 degrees tomorrow! Yikes! We are all very excited- in fact so excited that I am currently not studying, but writing this post to you guys :) Gotta love it! 

I think that is all for now- I will post pictures from our B&B adventure tomorrow! Happy Memorial Day everyone! 

Jet Lag at Its Finest

Just realized that I never pressed the "publish" button on this post so here is a very delayed post :)

Guess what? I am back in Polska! To be quite honest, I was excited to get back to Poznan. Now, don’t look too much into that statement and start telling people that “Ola is never coming back to America!” or something like that. It’s just that after being fortunate enough to have a 3 week break from school, I was rejuvenated enough to want to head back to school and finish the last month and a half of classes and exams and be done with my first year in PT school! Yikes! You know what they say, “Time flies when you’re having fun!” Before I continue about my last few days back, I have to tell you about how ridiculous my flight back was.

My flight was scheduled for ten on Tuesday night. My parents and Rocky (of course) brought me to the airport where we had to wait in a 45 minute line to get my bag checked. I knew that my bag was over the limit slightly, but I thought that since there were three younger guys working the check-in desks that I could somehow distract them with my awkwardness and they would let my bag go, a few kilos too heavy. Unfortunately, when I walked up to the check-in desk, the one nasty, malicious old woman happened to be the one checking me in. When I say nasty and malicious, I mean the woman did not smile one little bit or even look my way. Needless to say, I sweet talked the lady into letting my 4 kilo too heavy bag through. I wasn’t so lucky with the carryon, however. Apparently they weigh the carryons now. Note to self- don’t pack all of your heaviest things in your carryon. The bag is supposed to weigh 12lbs. Mine weighed literally 30lbs. I wish I was kidding. So, my mom and I took out half of my things and got it all the way down to 14lbs. Now, if you know my mom and me, there was no way that I was going to let it go. Naturally, we walked away from the check-in desk where we put all of my things back into my carryon. Surprised? Didn’t think so. After this ordeal, I waited another 45 minutes in the security line and rushed onto the plane. The plane was for some reason not a LOT polish airline plane, but an Air Italy plane (I was as confused as you probably are). It was a nine hour flight filled with screaming babies, barking dogs, hunger and EXTREME heat. I must say that I wasn’t exactly the happiest camper when I was about to step off the plane. Oh and here’s the best part- when I first got onto the plane, the stewardess said that she would put my bag in the back of the plane and bring it back to me right before we would land since there was no room in my row 6 seat. As you can probably guess, I had to wait until all the people stepped off the plane to get my bag because nobody brought my bag to me which is fine, but here’s where it gets interesting. As the last few passengers are walking off the plane, I notice some random man walking with a red bag with a green ribbon towards me. As he got a bit closer to me, I realized that he was about to step off the plane with my carryon- the same carryon that was illegally too heavy! I immediately reacted and just said to the man, “Um, that’s mine. Thanks.” And I walked off the plane. It wasn’t until I stepped off the plane that I realized that due to the not-so-comfortable conditions I was stuck in for nine hours, I wasn’t exactly nice to that man. I noticed later on at the airport that he found his own carryon. Here’s the part that was interesting though- his carryon was blue, not red. Way to grabbing my red one.

After about 15 hours of traveling including three hours of standing in line, I hopped in a cab and headed to my room. I quickly showered and within 45 minutes, I was dolled up and waiting for the tram with my friends. It was our friend, Malin’s, surprise birthday party so naturally, I couldn’t miss it. All throughout the Old Square there are outdoor tables and umbrellas at all the restaurants and that is where Malin and her boyfriend were eating dinner. There was a group of 24 of us that were getting ready to surprise her. Of the 24 of us, only two of us didn’t speak a lick of Norwegian so singing “happy birthday” in Norwegian didn’t prove to be a success for the two of us, but everyone else nailed it (I think). Our group literally marched outside to where Malin was eating dinner and in front of hundreds of people started chanting “happy birthday” in Norwegian. Almost immediately, the people in the restaurant moved a few tables together and within minutes we were all “cheers”ing to Malin’s birthday. She literally had no idea that any of this was going to happen so to say she was surprised was an understatement. There was even a fire show in the middle of the Square that we were able to watch. When I got back from the Square, it was already 11pm, but due to jet lag, I decided to unpack and clean my room. I finally got to bed at 1am, only to wake up at 5am. Jet lag at its’ finest my friends. The rest of the week was filled with lots of meetings, emails, classes and catching up with friends. More to come soon!