First I went with Frida to her parents place on the countryside. We were there for over two weeks and also visited a friend at Gotland, a small island in front of the Swedish coast. Relaxing, reflecting, finally seeing this beautiful Swedish lake with a sunset.. And looking forward; where do we want to be together, and how, and what do we want to do? On Gotland I finally saw some real sea again! The Swedish coasts are nothing compared to the Netherlands, just rocky. Interesting to look at but not that much enjoyable as the Dutch ones. But at Gotland I got to experience it more. Gotland was strange, Sweden in small it is called. Flat in the south, cold in the north. And a lot of rocks :)

Then my brother Tijl came by and we went backpacking into the forests. As we both never did such a thing before we started carefully, but already within 24 hours we came back and repacked our backpacks :) Then it went better, but I now know I’m more a cyclist.. Canoing on the Swedish lakes with Tijl was fantastic. We went for a full day and slept on one of the islands. We also went to Stockholm, which was a bit strange.. and a lot of fun.

When Tijl went back to the Netherlands, the last week for me and Frida physically together started.. That was a lot harder one. With al the plans in our heads, it still wasn’t easy to cope with. I tried with a party on the last day, which helped a lot in making it a happy after-halfyear-party. Nonetheless, saying goodbye was almost horrible.

Then I traveled to Berlin. A nice trip on a train and ferry where I met a Japanese guy with which I later spent a day in Berlin with. Berlin was really nice. A good atmosphere, lots of bio shops and not such a busy center as for example Amsterdam.

After two days of Berlin I went on to France. There was a nice park in Lyon where I ate my lunch. And then the wonderful week in Rancy, France. I was there with a group from Mens en Spirit (Human and spirit) at La Ripe Blance. Also a lot of ‘down to earth’ stuff, which is really necessary for a spiritual heavy week :) I could reflect a lot on the last half year and life in general. I started a new company which I wanted to do already for some time, Frida helped me knowing that, and the France week helped me starting it. When I left there I knew I would just start. More on that later via the website and maybe the blog as well.

And then at last, the travel back to the Netherlands. Seeing the Eiffel tower in the distance as the train came past Paris and via a beautiful station of Antwerp. Having traveled a lot, I could finally write destination Alkmaar in my interrail log..

When I was on the phone with home this week they told me that Pi, the cat, was lying on the table with the phone in his arms.. Today I saw his yellow eyes in front of me. Just being there with me for a moment.

The idea is to make a portrait of a number of international students including photos from their ‘home’ “back home” and the home they created here. Their own portrait – face – as a bridge between these two environments.

Together with Nikki, I was invited to join this project as interaction designer. Yesterday we had the first meeting over a fika in the student restaurant Kåren. Apart from Hubert ans us there were four others, of which one photographer. The rest I hope to get to know better in their roles here (I know some from the hiking); for the next meeting we planned to see what we came up and to devide the (flexible) tasks based on that :)

One of the ideas from this first brainstorm was from beauty product commercials enlarging a wrinkel on a persons skin and displaying facts about that part. The idea is to encircle the wrinkels in the students faces – as experiences in their lives, moments they laughed and cried – and to link these to the photographs around.

I really like the creative mood this whole projects gets me in again. The courses mainly got me in a philosophical mood. I miss the moments with Roy (a classmate from HKU) in which we just tried weird experiments without any direct goal. I got the feeling that these moments came from all the creative projects at HKU.

This has the same reason as the dark video I made of the apartment; I haven’t been home a lot during daytime.

I live in a very multicultural neighborhood as you can see, good for my study :)

Today I went to people from Sri Lanka. A mother and two (två) boys. The older boy translated a lot for us, he could speak English very well, he learned that in India. But he is better in Swedish he said, he’s following classes since they came here 8 months ago.

I got good noodles, chai tea and biscuits from them :) With the mother I spend some time looking at her Swedish lesson books. Very interesting to learn a few more words this way. Some basic things like jag, du, han, hon, det, de, vi, oss (I, you, he, she, it, they, we, us). And I always fall in love with the Tamil script :)

And I’ve been on the phone with friends from the Netherlands for over an hour, haha. It is hard to leave those friends in the Netherlands who I also only know for a few months or even weeks but who are so close. Homesickness? No, I don’t think it is in a sad way, but just thinking about them.