kareina

Our ferry set sail at 02:30 yesterday. We had the economy tickets, so after we got on board we claimed a table, V., who had done most of the driving, sat down to look at his phone, which he set charging, O. vanished to go find the cinema, and I set my phone to charge while I did my yoga. After yoga I took a nap on the floor till 4-something, when they did the announcement that we would soon be landing.

V. was tireder than I, so I drove to site, where we were met by my minion and M., who showed us where we would be setting up. It turns out that the sidewalk curb over which we would have had to drive to get the car into csmp was at least twice as tall as is typical in the states, so I didn't even try (M. said that he hadn't tried to drive over that curve either, but just parked across the street and carried everything down the hill.

Even though V. Isn't staying in our camp he was nice enough to help with unloading, and it didn't take long to raise the tent and pile everything in it, and by 8:30 I lay down for an hour nap on the floor before unpacking.

By the time I woke up the gate was open, so I went and checked in. There records said that I hadn't yet paid, though I thought I had. But since I didn't have my computer with me I couldn't check, so I just swished them the money, and if it turns out that I paid twice I can sort it out later.

While I was at gate my friend F. from the West arrived, and he joined me, my minion, O. and I at my pavilion, where pleasant conversation kept me amused as I laced up the rope bed, with F's help.

Then the guys went out of the tent to talk stick as I started unpacking and moving in. By the time I was done they had left on a quest for ice cream (it was a hot and sunny day, though nice in the pavilion, which had the two doors oriented to catch the wind running along the moat (camp is in the moat area just outside the old city walls).

I got everything arranged to my satisfaction and ate some lunch, and wandered over to the school gym at which we can shower by 13:30.

Since my phone needed charging (and there is no power in camp) I plugged it in and did my workout and my yoga for the day before showering, which took enough time to bring it close to full again. With luck I will manage to do this daily. I also noticed that there is a freezer in the gym so that we can re-freeze ice clamps, so as soon as I finish typing this I will take one of the water/ice bottles over and leave it in the freezer before doing today's workout/yoga/phone charging. Then tomorrow I can replace it with one of the other ice bottles, and thus be certain that my food stays cool all event and I keep working out. Luckily, I can wash myself very quickly, so I won't feel guilty about showering during the drought the island is having.

After I got back to camp I ate an early dinner and then F. returned from his tour of Visby, so we chatted for a while and then H. arrived, bringing a sewing project with him, which inspired me to get out mine.

I have been working on my orange and blue jester costume, doing the seam embroidery with maroon wool yarn. However, when last I worked on it I had tried doing the first lacing hole in that yarn, and didn't really like it. H. agreed that it wasn't the best choice, and offered me some of his lilac silk embroidery floss instead. It is just enough different from the other colours on the project to look both wonderful and horrid, so I accepted, and we sat stitching and talking (others joined us) till it began to be too dark to sew (around 21:00), and it cooled off enough to be willing to put on a wool tunic over my nice light linen under tunic.

The evening was spent hanging out with people, and I even walked into town to Kapitelhusgården with people for a short while. But I was tired, so went to bed at midnight.

Ok, so we never remembered to take out the camera for most of the trip. But we did take photos in Visby and a couple at Coronation. One of the two of us , and one of his new tunic (he did most of the sewing, by hand--I helped finish if after I arrived, I did the embroidery as a birthday gift). The thing around his neck is a small musical instrument, and a site-token also hangs from that string.

I've been really busy today, but needed the camera to "scan" a document that needed e-mailing, which is why I took a break to upload photos. Tomorrow is my final exam for my first Swedish course, Thursday we drive to Tromsø (Google thinks it will be 10 hour drive, but it is winter, so we expect more like 12 to 14) where I will meet with a colleague (and do an informal talk about the research I've been doing). Today's biggest annoyance is the fact that the version of PowerPoint on my new computer doesn't deal well with images from CorelDraw. My old computer would show CorelDraw created images with beautiful crispness when copy-pasted into PowerPoint. This one they come up dreadful looking--all pixelated and the text is difficult to read. I think I'll just print to pdf from Corel and skip powerpoint entirely--not worth the effort to figure out how to avoid that issue at the moment.