All about the gasque

Ack, I really need to get back into the habit of writing properly everyday. I always mean to but then I get caught up with other things…you know how it gets.

But yes, all about the gasque! I took the bus over to town around 3pm because I didn’t want to risk sweating or messing up my hair and makeup…oh well if it was 30kr. The price you gotta pay to look nice. I wore a black dress, black flower headband, floral leggings, and black flats (I was planning on wearing heels but considering I’d be out for potentially 12 hours, I avoided them).

I got to my nation and saw Emil, one of the guys I met at my nation’s last dinner. We hung out until they gathered us all up and we had to march (along with all other nations) to the main university building in town. It was fun following behind flags and mascots and all the cars and people were stopping to watch or take photos haha. Inside the auditorium, an orchestra performed for us and the president welcomed us to Uppsala University, blah blah.

After we walked back, we had to hang outside for a bit until they got the dinner ready. I met some more people - Danes, Germans, and Americans. They were all really quite nice! I was hoping to sit by them at dinner, but we had assigned seating…oh well. I sat by all Swedes and it was tough at first, but I managed to up my courage and talk to them in Swedish and it was a lot of fun. They all said how duktigt (good/able) I was at Swedish so that’s good! But it gets boring to tell the same story again time after time when I meet a Swede:

“Wait…where are you from?”

“The US.”

“But…why do you speak Swedish?”

“I study it at school back home!”

and then follow a billion questions about why, how long, if I had a Swede as a teacher, blah blah.

Anyway, back to the gasque. The dinner was a 3 hour ordeal filled with 3 courses (some meat wrap with potato crisps for an appetizer, roast and mashed potatoes for dinner, and an almond tarte with ice cream for dessert), speeches, and tons of singing. Seriously. Not including when my choir sang (which people kept coming up to me and saying how lovely it was), we probably sang 20 songs that we had to do the official cheers afterward everytime. This means pick your glass up, girls look to the left (guys to the right) nod/acknowledge the person sitting there, turn the opposite way and nod at that person, face forward and acknowledge that person, DRINK, then nod to the front person, girls to the right this time (guys to the left) and nod, then the opposite side. Crazy, huh? It was fun singing a lot though.

Around 11-ish, we had our last song which required everyone to stand on their chairs and when the song was done you could not sit down or you’d have bad luck. Then we walked to another nation for the dance. I found a few people from my group before dinner and we talked and danced to our heart’s content. The music was decent…not exactly the best, but oh well. We left at 1:30 when the club closed and I had one of them walk me back to apartment, which was nice cause I didn’t want to wait/pay for the night bus.

I look forward to the next gasque!