A summer of travels!

Hello friends!

I've decided to blog about my summer in Sweden, as this seems much easier than trying to send individualized updates to everyone!

I began my summer by reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert while still at home, and for those of you who haven't read it/seen the movie, here's a quick plot summary:

1.  Middle-aged woman gets divorced and moves in with a crazy man (who she was probably cheating on her husband with).
2.  Middle-aged woman breaks up with unstable new boyfriend.  Decides the only way to recover is by traveling around the world for a year.
3.  Middle-aged woman moves to Italy for 4 months.  Gets really fat from eating too much pasta.
4.  Middle-aged woman moves to India for 4 months.  Gets skinny again because she "worked so hard" meditating and doing yoga.
5.  Middle-aged woman moves to Bali for 4 months.  Meets a Brazilian man who is equally as self-indulgent and obnoxious as her, and they fall in love.

This book is filled with a lot of self-reflection, -adoration, and -praise.  The author at one point brags about how she is able to make friends wherever she goes, as she is just so goddamn outgoing and likable.  However, I can assure you that she would not be my friend.  Though she claims to be quite independent, the recurring theme I caught throughout the who book was a needy character who sought self-actualization through approval from others.

 Needless, to say, this blog will in no way resemble the writings of Elizabeth Gilbert.  I simply plan on sharing some of the fun sights I see, the interesting facts I learn, and the fun festivities I get to attend while in Sweden!  Fear not: there won't be any self-indulgent soliloquies about how I've grown and changed as a person over the summer.  Nor will there be any paragraphs about how I deserved to eat that ice cream, because I've been though so much and worked so hard.  Let's be real, I eat more bagels in a day than a person ever should and don't exactly work very hard at the gym; I probably don't deserve any ice cream, but am going to eat it anyways.

Nevertheless, I will be back soon with some fun photos and facts about Stockholm! I hope everyone else's summer is going well!