Tonight I was invited to dinner at Stockholm's city hall, or Stadshuset, along with several hundred other international graduate students at KTH and other universities in Stockholm. It was really cool to get to eat dinner in the same place that the Nobel prize winners have their banquet in after the prizes are handed out in December. I posted some photos of the occasion on Flickr. Here are a few:
Several people I was introduced to tonight by friends asked me if I was Swedish. I love that I seem to be mistaken for a Swede rather frequently. A few weeks ago in class a guy came up to me and started asking me a question in Swedish. Even though it's a course taught in English, he apparently assumed I spoke Swedish for some reason. Then, last weekend at an Oktoberfest party held at my school, a Swedish guy even told me that my accent sounded like that of a Swede when I was speaking English to him. It was pretty funny how he didn't believe I was really an American after I had told him I loved cycling, and what I thought of President Bush. I had to show him my California driver's license and answer a question about America's freeway system to convince him. I do have a decent amount of scandinavian blood in me so I guess this shouldn't be too surprising, but I feel that I am much too short to actually look like a Swede, despite my light brown hair and blue eyes. It feels nice for people to think I look like I belong, in any case.
On a similar note, it is interesting to me how surprised just about every person I meet here is when I say I'm an American. I have still only met a grand total of four Americans in Stockholm, three of whom are fellow students, so we are pretty rare. Other international students sometimes try to guess where I'm from, and they never guess the US. I've had people ask me if I was German, British, and Russian (?!) after talking to me, in addition to Swedish. I thought my accent would be a dead giveaway, but I guess not. Determining the source of an accent for a language you are not a native speaker of is probably rather difficult. Many students, especially those from east Asia, are puzzled as to why I'd want to go to Sweden when there are so many great schools in the US. I usually answer that not all the schools are great, the great ones are hard to get into, many schools are really expensive, and KTH also seems to me to be quite good, especially for scientific computing.
Many of these students also comment on how they didn't think any Americans ever wanted to leave their country, because we think it is the greatest place ever or we're afraid of everywhere else. Do we really travel so little compared to the rest of the world? I love to travel, I love to see new places and meet new people! I hope I am helping to break down some stereotypes a little and show other folks that Americans aren't all self-centered, war-mongering xenophobes.
Anyway, I'm really glad I moved here. My school is great, the people I'm meeting are great, Stockholm is great... living abroad seems to be the awesome experience I was hoping for. I do miss friends of mine back in the US though, so come visit some time, and hopefully I'll get back there some time before I graduate.
