Sweden now feels like home =)

With the week-long national holiday, I went to Sweden between Sept 28th and Oct 5th. I met most of my closest friends and colleagues during my internship time. And visited Aron's parents again and spent some lovely time walking in the woods, chatting next to the fire and playing WII in front of the TV...

It was such a great visit for one BIG reason - I felt Sweden was home, especially Stockholm. I love everything about it: how clean and beautiful it is, cheap but great fashion, nice restaurants and yummy Swedish food, cultures and events, most importantly I have good friends there who I can connect with!

I spent my lunches and dinners meeting people. So great to catch up with all of them. It felt like I wasn't away for a year - so natural to reconnect, to update each other of our current being, to joke and laugh together!

I spent most of the time between lunches and dinners walking around the city. Summer just ended and winter hasn't come yet. Autumn is the season I didn't experience when I was living in Stockholm - very very beautiful with leaves turning into red and yellow, forming various shades of colors everywhere. And I definitely miss being in a city so clean, so pretty and so small that I feel excited to walk everywhere.

In between the walks, there were a lot of shopping activities. My favorite shopping area is still T-centralen then Kungstragarden then walking towards Ostermalm. I can find all the main stream brands there. However, there are 2 shops I really love and it was my first time there: NK (the premium department store under Bain's office in Stockholm) and Monki (a funky casual wear shop on Gotgatan). I still feel that I haven't shopped enough when I was there. LOL

I felt more relaxed being at Aron's parent's place. I love being with them because they are calm, relaxed and great conversationists. They are always very keen to know how everything is with me and my parents. Also they speak naturally and casually about how things are going with their lives, even their work, their friends and relatives. More and more, Aron and me started to share their passion - forests. (Both of them are forest experts who have studied and been working on this throughout their career.) We always had educational forest walks. =)

Such a strange and amazing feeling about Sweden even surprised myself. I guess I am a bit tired of China after being here for a year already. And I have got used to the life style of moving to different places every year. I am also keen to find out if Stockholm can really be the place that I want to settle down. I hope to be able to test that out in a not-too-far future.