Writing this from the comfort of a reclining sunbed on the patio by our new house. Yes, I know. There is a pool in the neighbourhood too that no one but us seems to use. It’s the last of September and the sun is shining and I’m slowly starting to realise that California will be my home for the upcoming months.

In the past week school has started and we’ve moved into our new house. It’s still a little bit chaotic here. We are sharing double beds while we are waiting to get single ones, I’m sleeping in a little corner just above the staircase and a friend of ours is sleeping on an inflatable bed in the living room for a couple of days until he gets to move in to his new place. But some time and a trip to IKEA (yes, of course, we have to, we’re Swedish) should sort that out. A proper house tour with pictures is coming!

Yesterday we went to an event organised by the school, ”Meet the Beach” at Scripps Beach which is pretty close to us. That is one thing they sure know how to do in this country, put on events. Yes, there was some serious queuing involved, but there was free tacos, beach towels, ice cream, live DJ’s, giveaways, surflessons, kayak tours and surfing dogs. Yep, you heard me. Surfing dogs. Photographic evidence provided below.

As a Swedish student who doesn’t pay for tuition neither back home or here on exchange one cannot help but wonder where they get the money to do all of this? (This was just one event out of several this week). And if you would have been paying (big) money for school here, would you have been excited and felt entitled to get something back (a ”free” beach towel and tacos – yay!) or would you have been annoyed that the money you paid is spent on surfing dogs as entertainment for the students? I’m not the one to answer that, but I will say that I feel very lucky to be part of the Swedish school system. It ain’t perfect, but it is pretty darn good.

After some surfing and tacos and five minutes on the beach (about as long as I last lying still) it was time to work on the karma for a bit and volunteer picking trash on the beach. I never ceases to amaze me what people leave behind in complete disregard, but this was the first time I got a fancy t-shirt for cleaning.

Now it’s time to do some preparation from school next week. Marine biology is on the schedule. This week’s youtube tip is to search for ”mimic octopus morphing” and be amazed by mother nature. Do it now and thank me later.

Thank you for reading and have a nice week!