We'll be uploading photos from our travels occasionally.

Please check back for more photos! The new photos will be at the top of the page, so you won't have to wait for the entire page to load.

Check out some of our friends' web sites: Inge's Page --- Birgit's Site -- Robert and Gosia have a lot of Jönköping photos

Halloween photos - yep, they're from SD and not Europe New!

Some new photos from spring in Jönköping

Photos from Århus and Copenhagen

Easter Break and Spring photos

Photos from Stockholm

Photos from our trip to Kiruna - the Ice Hotel and Dogsledding and sites around Kiruna

Photos with some of our friends (mostly at "social events")

It's finally spring! (we hope.)

It's just like South Dakota - we had some really nice, sunny weather, then it snowed for a day and a half! Wet, heavy snow. Two days later, all that's left is a few small piles in parking lots.

This photo was taken from the fourth floor of the International Business school. The lake in the background is Munksjön.

We went to Jönköping's Match Museum. Jönköping is home of the safety match. Jon and Inge are making boxes of matches to take home as souvenirs.

Visit the world's only Match Museum's web site.

For our birthday present, our friends Esther and Birgit surprised us with our very own aquarium. Apparently they got the idea that we missed watching our fish (they were right), so they made us an aquarium so it would seem a bit more like home.

Definitely one of the coolest and most original presents we've ever gotten!

In an effort to save some money and get excercise, we traded in our bus passes for bikes.

We had to fix them up a little but the price was right.

We bought one before these two that was stolen. ARRG! They were nice enough to leave the cut lock for us though.

Jon is enjoying semla on fettisdagen (Fat Tuesday.) Semla is a bun filled with whipped cream (no sugar in it though) and marzipan.

It's a Swedish tradition to eat semla during this day. Our teachers say when they were kids, you could only get semla on Tuesdays during Lent. Now, they are sold from Christmas to Easter. (Kind of like how Christmas decorations come out before Halloween is over.)

From another site: "The traditions of Easter begin with Lent. Even if the Lenten fast was abolished in Sweden 500 years ago, one of its customs remains vital: the Lenten or Shrovetide buns, of the kind which Stockholmers call "semla". The pastry was once the customary dessert on Mondays or Tuesdays in Lent, and is now sold in every bakery from the day the marzipan pigs of Christmas disappear."

Here's a good site about semla, including a recipe for it.

Jon with his contact family,
Marina, Ulla, and Christer Lemke (not pictured).

Reduce - Reuse - Recycle

This just goes to show how environment-friendly Sweden is.
There are recycle bins for students to properly dispose of their batteries at the university.

Our European friends are shocked we don't have this at home. We hear "but it's better for the environment" about a lot of things. The other night, we and some other students from the US were talking about how we made the mistake of buying the hard toilet paper with the Squirrels on the package. Birgit looked at us and said, "But it's better for the environment." We asked how, and she explained that it was made of recycled paper. Many people are willing to sacrifice a bit of comfort for the environment.

This panoramic view of Lake Vättern is made from four pictures.
The beach is only a couple of blocks from our house.

Jönköping University

Emily is in front of the communication college with the international business school in the background.

We live right across the street from a park which is home to many Mallard ducks - you can see them in the background.

We walk through the park to go to the university or to go shopping at IKEA or the A6 Center.

Jon on the North Sea. We took a ferry from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England to Gothenburg, Sweden. It took 26 hours!

Emily & Jon at Stonehenge January 3rd.
Jon expected it to be larger.

It was really cold and windy, and we weren't allowed to walk all around due to the heavy rains.