Monday, August 29, 2011

First Day of School

This trip seems to have a lot of ups and downs. Today was one of those worse days. Skip this post if you don't want to hear me griping. I need to vent.



By Wednesday I need to pay my rent for August and September. However, I can't pay for it at the housing office or send a check. The online payment site seems to be broken. I was told I had to go to a Western Union in the city and could pay with my card there. Fair enough. I show up with my card only to be told that I need to go get cash and pay with that instead or I'll get charged an exorbitant fee. I am not comfortable carrying around 1,000 in Swedish kronor, but what choice do I have? Skip ahead to me hunting down an ATM and discovering the seemingly arbitrary maximum withdrawal rules. Seriously. They vary from one to the next, even within the same company. Using this, I get about half of what I need and then it stops working entirely. Great. I go home and call up my bank (after re-activating my phone for the third time- apparently I should never turn it off for class? I hate sim cards). This takes a couple of non-toll-free international-rate calls. Apparently there's some kind of a maximum withdrawal per day on their end that I wasn't aware of. I got the limit temporarily removed so I can hopefully withdraw the rest tomorrow and pay before class. Maybe.

I switched to paying for a month of unlimited bus rides. This costs about $75. Given that it is the only way I can get to campus, this is still cheaper than when I was paying about $2.50 per bus ride. I miss free Purdue buses.

I also can't find a dumpster to save my life. Where is my garbage supposed to go?

Also I accidentally signed up for a graduate-level course? It still sounds interesting so I'll give it a go. It's about economic developmental factors in impoverished countries. I might end up dropping viticulture if this ends up being as involved as it sounds like it might be, though. At least my professor is enthusiastic.

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