Thanksgiving is a great holiday. I'm not sure we have anything similar in Sweden. Well, I guess we have midsummer, which also revolves around food and wine and having a good, stress free, time. But (sorry to say it) in the homeland of commercialism and consumer obsessions and Christmas decorations in April it is nice to see that thanksgiving hasn’t got a gimmick. There are no thanksgiving colours that need to be symbolised with shiny ribbons, no thanksgiving elf that needs to be bought, and no gifts to be compulsorily given, or received. Altogether, a great holiday of just eating and having fun. I guess you Americans knew that; but I was at least pleasantly surprised. I’ve been on Shelter Island for the weekend and it is beautiful. So good to get out of the city, went surfing yesterday, going sailing today, been haingnig out with family members I haven't seen in seven years, shooting clay pigeons, drinking tequila with the locals, its been, well, my best thanksgiving ever. Its setting the standard high, I like it.

Today I am going to New York, or actually Long Island, for my first Thanksgiving ever. I am very excited, both about the break and about the food! I will let you know how it held up. It is the busiest weekend travelling this weekend, my friend said 200 million people will be travelling. Im taking the Chinatown Bus, oh the joy!

I think I’m in Love. With a big L. In love with New York. I once had a violent and volatile affair with London. It made me to who I am today; it left me pretty bruised and shattered, but more pleased, grown-up and cynical. Now New York has stolen my money, my health, my heart, my wallet and my toothpaste, and I feel happy about it.
I lost 4 credit cards so now I am living of 79 cents; its going pretty well so far, but by the end of the week I will have no friends left because they all have to buy me coffees constantly.
There is a Norwegian singer/song writer called Thomas Dybdahl. He sings this song called: ‘One Day you’ll Dance For Me New York City’. I think I like that to be true one day.

I am so excited about going to NYC tomorrow. I have never been. I cant wait. I am bubbling with excitement. Im nuts with enjoyment. Im mad with anticipation.

I am also excited about that the mid-term elections proved to be such a success for women. America is most likely getting its first female, and feminist, Speaker of the House. It also got more female senators, possibly its first female presidential candid, and more women in the House of Representatives. Its great. Its about time. However, not too unexpectedly the media is slow to catch on. Most of the Mainstream Media was covering the election looked like, as NYPost put it; A men's Club from 1962.
As much as Tucker Carlson makes me laugh sometime, with his screwed unsubtle but cute (in an anti-way) right-winged-ness, where were the female faces on TV? The networks are pretty good at putting them there when it comes to "chat" politics (in a friendly and deweaponazing way); but obviously they can not provide the American people with cutting-edge election analysis? Oh no.

Ok, well anyway; Im off to New York, the Democrats has won the House AND the Senate, SD voted against the Abortion Ban, Rumsfeld have resigned, I got an A on a paper, my work is done for the weekend, I have new shoes to wear in NYC, my mum loves me again, the sun is shining, its 20°C in November; Life IS Great!
(Oh, and look below how good my predictions were; 5 out of 6) woho!

Good Morning Election Day! WoHoo! My predictions in the races I think are most interesting;
Senate:
VA: Webb (D) (I love this race, it has been so close, and so interesting in such a red state, Allen came across as a much more accessble man than Webb, but he really cocked up).
MD: Cardin (D).
RI: Whitehouse (D).
TN: Corker (R).
OH: Brown (D).
Yes, it is four Democrats but I dont think they will take over the Senate. But I am pretty certain they will do with the House, possibly by ca. 23-26 seats.
Gubernatorial:
MD: Erlich (R).
Other:
SD: Please, please, please don't let the ban-all-abortion law pass. If you pass it I will loose a big chunk of my belif in humanity right then. I can not be clearer; please do not pass the abortion law, it is not helping anyone; it is based on lies and an outdated views on women and their bodies. Please. Please. Please show your independent thinking. I am so scared this law is going to pass.
VA: I do not think the same-sex marrige amendment is going to get through, but I wish it would, this country needs to loosen up abit. I just hope it doesnt rally Virginia voters to vote for Allan.

Okey, thats it; Im off to the gym then library all day! Hope you are having a good Election Day (particular if you are a Democrat)!

Healthy Obsessions: I was procrastinating; trying to avoid the huge amount of papers I have to do write before I jet off to NYC this weekend. I was scrolling through the long list of obligatory graphic design, interior design and typographic design blogs I read, and I realized I had yet to even mention my obsession with these on the blog.
I have talked about feminism, Ive talked about Sweden, Ive talked about Tequila (see post below), and Ive talked about Co-ed Intramural Soccer; so Ive mentioned most of my obsessions; but I have yet to talk about the greatness of a well designed font, or the beauty of a groundbreaking wallpaper. But as I was scrolling through one of my favorite graphic design blogs (in Swedish) I came across the new logotype for the EU. What a crazy coincident; because I am also obsessed with the EU (the cooperation, the multilateralism, the normative diplomatic values, the multilayered governance, what is not to love?). So here you go! Its the one above, and I think its great! Not because it combines my two, uptil now unmentioned, obsessions, but because it is just really cool and fresh. It was designed by a 23 year old Polish guy who won a competition about it. I think he really managed to create something that embodies the EU, a multicultural collection that doesn't always seem to fit, but all put together it kind of does. Or something like that. It also just, well, look damn good!

I woke up this morning feeling like a little piece of paper scrambled into a little ball which had then been thrown far far away. DC's nightlife is making me feel this way. But its in a good way. When you come to a new place going out is so much fun, over and over again. We are definately taking full advantage of this honeymoon period. 5pm, Georgetown on friday; My friend Ben: Hey Stine, Im out shopping in Gtown wanna come down for a coffee before seing the play. Me: Yea, why not. After coffee is finished; Us: Oh we have another 45 min, should we just go by Garrets to have a pre-play drink. Us: yea, good idea. Ben (after first round): Oh, but now I have to by a round, just to make it equal. Then we'll go. Me: Ok. Ten Hours later, 5am, Still in Georgetown; Us: *falling out of the Guards*. Me: *forgetting credit card behind bar*. Ben: *Still dancing to Paradise City*. Durita: *Skipping*. It was just one of those great nights, great weekends, Saturday much the same.

Yesterday I got a weird stomach feeling; The first snow arrived in Scandinavia, with brute force. It was chaos in Stockholm and along the coasts. A ship even collapsed on the Swedish coast, and an oil rig was floating about outside Norway (putting it that way might be understating the serverity, sorry). But here in DC we were having 19°C (66F) and shining sun; Ive been walking around in skirts and sunglasses for the past two days. Ok, I think my point is this: Im kind of missing Scandinavia. The weather difference was so stark yesterday it made me miss Scandinavia. Snow rocks. Its when the difference and the distance become so apparent that I think more about home. But knowing me; if I was at home I would certainly be moaning about all the snow. Oh its soooo coooold bla bla bla. So basically Im confused about the weather. And me missing home or not. Wow, this isnt making much sense. But rumor has it the winter is pretty cold here too, when it eventually arrives. Thankfully I packed warm socks.

Yesterday I had a surreal feeling first. Well, I had two surreal feelings yesterday actually, and I had to mention both on the blog; the first one about the snow storm in Scandinavia is discussed above.
But I had one about DC too. When I lived in London it took me six months and a visit from my mother to get me to see the Houses of Parliament. I’ve been in DC for two months now; and only yesterday did I take up my friends offer of a private tour of the Congress (he interns there). Sightseeing is never really a priority; but every time I do it, it makes me feel like I get to know a new city a little bit better, like its becoming more mine and less foreign. Its a really wicked feeling.
To make a city yours, you need to know the touristy parts; as well as the cool, quirky, drunken, shiny hidden parts. Only when you know how to entertain the socks of both your 58-year-old aunt, your 12-year-old niece and your 25-year-old best friend so that they never want to go home; you can know you are home. Seeing the Congress was not like exploring Dupont Circle nightlife, but in all ways both are life-depending necessary for my DC trip.

So this was Halloween weekend. Well, actual Halloween is on Tuesday, but hey; if Macy’s can start selling Christmas things in September we can dress up two days before. Plus apparently Halloween is a big thing over here. Dressing up has really never been one of my favourite things to do, I love love love to wear nice clothes for a good night out, I do not love so much walking around dressed like a John Wayne.
Plus apparently its not just fancy dress for girls, we got informed that basically grown-up girls take Halloween very seriously as the only weekend of the year when dressing up slutty is acceptable.
I'm not big fan of dressing slutty either, and particularly not when it is expected of me to do so. But we did see and hear about Slutty FBI Agents, Slutty Alice in Wonderland, Slutty Photographer, Slutty Ice-hockey Team, and my favourite; Slutty Pandas. I opted out of the slutty dressing; it was a good choice.
Since I am chronically late for everything I only started thinking of my outfit at 9 on Saturday evening, with all the shops closed I had to construct something out of my own wardrobe, I realized none of my clothes are particularly funny. But after much trying on outfits we created a spectacularly obvious outfit of me being a 80s sailors wife from the ghetto. What is that you might wonder? Well it is what happens if you just put on a stripy dress (the nautical part), a velour hoodie (the ghetto part) and make my hair even more 80s that it already is (the 80s part if you didn’t get that). Voila; White Sailor Trash.
Pictorial evidence of the night is on the flickr page.

Soccer: FC Becken-Bauer is looking to have an honest chance at the indoor-five-aside-mixed-soccer-GW-championship this year. Our first play-off match was won last night by 1-8, next clash is on Wednesday, final on Sunday if we get there.
It really is true, we are just sin, sin, sin: Now I have to study the oppression of women since like Ancient Greece; that is a lot of oppression. Did you know that the saying "rule of thumb" comes from the times when a man was allowed to beat his wife with anything that was thinner than his own thumb.
Early Christian church fathers encouranged men to beat their wives for her own charity, because obviously we women embody the original sin (well, you did know we ate the apple and like, just made life hell for everyone, for the rest of all time). We, with our sexualness, stood in the way from men achieving great things, we embody guilt, sin, deformation, unwholiness and therefore we are just as Simone De Beauvoir said; the Second Sex. We should really be ashamed of ourselves, really. But I guess I have chosen not to have a conscience instead, oh well, who can be bothered feeling guilty all the time anyway, I got better things to do.

Lets talk about Scandinavia: Ok I don't have time to tell you all I know about Scandinavia, its a lot. And I certainly don't have space to tell you all that is good with Scandinavia, its a lot. But I can tell you this; The new Swedish embassy opened in DC over this weekend I went down to have a look at it, plus the Ark (very big Swedish band) was playing so I got some music as a reward for dragging myself out of bed at 4 in the afternoon (hey, its Sunday). It is beautifully located on the waterfront by the Pontomac river, and is an excellent symbolization of Swedish design and values. Its mainly glass to show transparency, I think its a thing Sweden is trying to do with most newly built embassies because I saw some Discovery Channel documentary on it. The only thing Im not sure I liked was how they have painted parts of the glass wooden, Im not sure if I thought that came off as good as it could have done, maybe better to have actually just kept those parts in actual wood since that is again pretty Scandinavian. But hey I guess its postmodern or something, like anti-wood maybe. Anyway, as Ola Salo (singer of the Ark) said; "Finally we have built a house to once and for all learn you guys the difference between Sweden and Switzerland". He also stopped mid-between-song speech to watch a big passenger plane fly by, to then say "Well you know we got to keep an eye on those things over here, you just never know where they are going to hit", . Auouch, There were definitely more laughs for the first joke, I really don't think America is ready for 9/11 jokes just quite yet.
Second thing about Scandinavia: I mean could go on aall day about it but I just want to share one quick thing that has hit me recently too. It goes a little something like this; Scandinavia is pretty big; there isn't a lot of ppl living in Scandinavia; this gives the ppl living there a lot of space to move around in; from this we have become pretty aware of space, personal space; I have become aware of personal space; I hate sharing a room. Yepp, I blame my Scandinavian-ness for my inability to get on with my housemates and that is fine, it is simply unnatural to expect me to be happy about waking up in the morning with two near-strangers asleep in my bedroom. Its got to stop, Im trying to move out, hey what can I do, Im Scandinavian.

Right now Im just sitting and contemplating what the North Korean nuclear test means for the world that we live in. I went to see a talk by Jack Pritchard, the president of the Korea Economic institute (KEI), today and it made me think about war and peace. Is it possible that I will not see a world in peace in my life time? Very likely. Does that make me sad? Very. But its only over recent developments that I have come to think like this, before, I was convinced that as long as we just sort this problem, or just that problem out, then we will move towards a world in relative peace.
I really believe in Robert Cooper's idea that state's can become postmodern; where we are so internconnected through trade and a shared belief in non-hostile solutions to conflicts, that war will no longer seem like an appropriate option. Basically, its believing in diplomacy, just like the states within the European Union does today, or Canada, Australia or New Zealand. Other states, like the US, can be seen as modern, who still resorts to hostile measures. I was not a Realist who believed the world to be in a constant struggle for power. And I am still not, but living in America has certainly dampened my idealism, I find myself settling in to the thought of the world being, at least in a majority of places, in a state of disorganization and instability.
The North Korean bomb was just another sign the world is becoming a more, not less, dangerous place. Its like waking up from the 1990s where everything was kind of going ok, Eastern Europe became democratized, there was economic growth after the 80s and technonlogy spurred everything on. But now it kind of seems a bit gloomy again, with Iraq, Iran, North Korea (or the Axis of Evil as Bush likes to refer them as). Russia is again acting like a Authoritarian state, Africa is seeing little progress and there is sudden real possibliliy of a nuclear arms race with Kim Jong-il, who is honestly frightfully mad.
I just get a feeling it doesn't have to be like this though, American foreign policy has not convinced me, I might see the world more gloomy but that doesn't mean I believe that we are reacting the way we should do. Im hoping for a return to diplomacy, a returned belief in that war isn't the good solution. A return to multilateral talks, not bombings. And, it would be really helpful if this U-turn came now, not after Kim Jong-il have bombed Seoul, been attacked by China and sold all its knowledge and plutonium to terrorist groups, and to Iran. Thats what I hope for, some progressiveness please.

Some snapshots from Atlantic City is on the Flickr page now, more to come!

Oh so tired, oh so happy, oh so wonderfully lively again. The road trip was one of the best things I have ever done in my life, we have seen so much, met so many remeberable people and laught so much it would be impossible to describe almost. I wont try now either, its Sunday night and we have been lost on the road for more than we have been on the right way today. We survived at least, motells, casinos, old ladies, diners, married men, the beach, and danish pop music aside. Plenty of pictures to come. Til then; good night, and thank you for stopping by!

8.15 AM Friday morning, I am severely disillusioned today. Disillusioned with the American university system, and disillusioned with my own capability to write, anything, let alone a report on the Latvian transition process to democracy. Okey, maybe I’m overreacting a little bit (and not forgetting the ridiculously early morning), my point is this; GWU workload=huge, gigantic (compared to English University). However, it doesn’t reach the analytical level I am used to, it’s basically simpler. Because there is so much of it (quantity wise) it is harder to do a really excellent job with it once you are doing it, there just isn’t time or space. I have slept three hours today, about four on average this week, the Gelman library walls have become my mine. Thankfully, thankfully; there isn’t a Eastern European democracy in the world, or a grayer library or more square eyes that can revert the fact that the four-Scandinavian-girls-take-on-Philadelphia-and-Atlantic City-watch-out-Road Trip is departing today at 1300h! Getting out of Foggy Bottom, and greater DC, is going to be so liberating. We are going to see fields, maybe cows, maybe Amish people, some sea, and what has apparently been called; America’s Blackpool (Atlantic City). It couldn’t sound better, freedom here we come.

There seems to be no stopping FC Becken-Bauer this season (well, our first season), the now-near-legendary indoor-five-aside keeps on getting better and better. Our fourth victory today was, again, a convincing team effort and we are now safely in the playoffs. I so so should be doing work, writing essays on if the ability to give birth were restricting or empowering for women in Ancient Greek and on the transition process to democracy in Latvia, but its much more fun planning our road trip this weekend. We are either going to Niagara Falls or Atlantic City. Undecided yet but its going to be 4 girls, a big SUV and the road so it will be fun either way!

With just a click or two I can now offer you a unique insight to what is going on in my side of town! With my new wee shiny camera I have taken loads of photo's this week, they are now on My Flickr Page, which I will keep a link to under the Things I Want You To Like thingy, but I will also write a line or two here when I put up new shiny wee photos there. I feel all very internety-and-technical-and-2006 these days with all links and photos and blogs and what not, very interesting indeed.

I love love love being in DC because of the politics. Well, It’s not like I hang around the Congress all the time (although my friend Dave does since he work there, and I probably would if I had more time) but it still so very real here. As the Mark Foley scandal develops I can’t help but follow it religiously like it was my hometown Swedish football team playing the Champions League. Oh, and what a scandal by the way, everything you need from a political cock-up; gay politicians, too young boys, alcoholism, dirty emails, cover-ups, the Republican Party, a speaker of the house in trouble, a bunch of suited overweight men desperately saving themselves, pundits on MainStreamMedia competing for the most dramatically delivered self-absorbed cutting analysis, and the editor pages of our newspapers calling for resignation left, right and center, all this 34 days before a national election. From my point of view, be gay all you want, I think we need more gay men in Congress anyway(or at least less gay men suppressing their sexual orientation until complete collapse, we need more women and gay men everywhere), but this was involving 16 year old boys. That is plain wrong, go gay cruising late at night all you want but don’t prey on adolescents. Secondly, if you are the Republican Party, please be smart, you're educated; don’t let him stand next to the president signing a bill to catch internet pervs. Let him resign for something, move him away, don’t let me continue to walk the floor around 16 year old boys if he has a problem with it, don’t leave it so the Democrats can drop it 34 days before the midterms. In essence, Foley cant blame alcoholism, and the Republicans have cocked it up so much this time (not saying that the Democrats never had) that they should pay dearly for this, just like the Democrats did in 1994.

I Pulled a muscle in my leg on Sunday, I lost my wallet at a gig on Monday, my computer crashed on Wednesday, there was a storm on Thursday, I have slept bad all week, I have no clean clothes, my article isnt written yet and I didnt understand anything in my class today. Thank Goodness its Friday! I woke up with a smile, had lunch at the IMF, going out for a glass of wine tonight, it should be ok, thank goodness for the weekend.
Here's me and my friend Dave a couple of weekends ago, hoping tonight and tomorrow will be as good of a night as we had then. Georgetown v. Adams Morgan, tough choice but Im thinking Georgetown.
I spoiled my self on amazon.com since to recover from my disasterous week and bought a shiny wee new digital camera so lots of photos coming up.
Woho, its Friday!