Wow, a week since my last post, and I’m not even taking an intentional break. I did try to post earlier in the week but Blogger was having problems. Or as we say in the Case-Andreev household, “Praaaaablems”.

I wanted to show you what Swedes eat on Fat Tuesday:

And a little background info: http://www.sweden.se/templates/cs/Article____14133.aspx

We are exceedingly frugal, trying to live in Sweden for a year mostly unemployed, so we generally avoid overpriced cafe temptations, but I managed to persuade Kostia that we should try semla as part of our Swedish cultural education. It was certainly tasty, but nothing to go crazy over. It’s got almond paste inside. The bun isn’t pastry so much as a bread roll with cardamom. The cream is, of course, delicious.

I spent most of the past week agonizing over the final paper for a course on EU enlargement. Kostia can testify to the fact that I spent several days whining about how horrible the process of writing this paper was and how horrible it was going to turn out to be. I just came from the final seminar, and well, it was pretty painless. I really get overly worked up about some things. But I just hate turning in papers that I don’t think are good. It’s embarassing.

Having finished that paper, now I have to do a bunch of reading for a completely unnecessary elective course I’m taking about the Swedish education system. I have a paper due tomorrow that I’ve decided to write as a blog entry — the assignment is just to write a just a two-page “reflection on the literature”. So you can look forward to reading something about the Swedish education system today or tomorrow.