Stockholm

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Met up with Toni, a friend from the Catholic Center at USC, in Stockholm for 3 days. So nice to have a buddy with me! We stayed with a really nice CS (couchsurfer) who lives a bit farther away from the city in a nice wooded and quiet area. Amina is adopted from Thailand and is a professional dancer so she's traveled to a lot of places for shows - really interesting to hear about and a super sweet girl.

Upon arriving in Stockholm, I walked around a bit and found this nice park wtih a big "pool" that reminded me of Leavey's reflecting pool. I laid down for a bit on this hill where a lot of young people were hanging out. I thoroughly enjoyed looking up at the blue sky after all the clouds and rain in the UK, but the nice weather didn't last much past that day.

Highlights of Stockholm:
Skansen
This is an open-air museum that is a miniature Sweden. It has plants, animals, and houses from all around the country. Toni and I took a tour of the area that was mainly about the different plants. There is one flower that is called St. John's flower because when you squeeze it, red liquid comes out symbolizing the blood of St. John when he was martyred. We went in this kind of teepee thing where the Sami people live. This lady was dressed in wool clothes and had a firing going - poor thing must have been burning up! There were houses from different time period through the last oh maybe 700 years, church, school building. People were dressed up in each building and explained the different lifestyles to us. They also had glassblowing, pottery and what not.

Nobel Museum
The main part of the museum explains the different Nobel Prizes and has movies and info on a lot of the people who have won the awards over the years. Stockholm is where they give out the prizes, except the Nobel Peace Prize is given in Oslo.
However, what I absolutely LOVED in the museum was the temporary exhibit from the Oslo Peace Center titled "Freedom of Expression: How Free is Free?" There were small descriptions of probably about 50 people who have impacted the peace/justice movements including MLK Jr, Oscar Romero, Gandhi. There were stories of those that have used their right to free speech to speak out again companies, such as Enron, or governments. Stories of those who have been tortured or killed for speaking about something. Stories about journalists and the troubles they go through. It was reaaaally interesting and actually made me miss school. It reminded me of several of my IR classes talking about human rights and democracy. Made me feel energized again to work in the field of development and human rights and peace and all that good stuff!!

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Photos

Stockholm
view of city from Skansen Museum

Lost puppy
Poor little guy was in the middle of the street looking around. two guys called his owner :)

Dinner!
Toni and our CSer Amina