Celebrating Issac's birthday with lots of meat!
Guatemalan ice cream! (Coffee ice cream with chocolate covered expresso beans - Guatemala is famous for coffee after all).
Eating at a Brazilian meat buffé to celebrate him who just turned 23!
Goods from the salad bar (Baugette, fried squash, heart of palm, salad, brocolli, mozarella cheese, tomato and gorgonzola mousse!)
Brazilian soda
In a Brazilian meat buffé, the waiters are carrying around huge chunk of meat on a big stick, and asks each and everyone if they want to try the meat they are bringing. Altogheter they had 16 different kinds of meat, including 2 kinds of fish, but I was full after trying "only" eight or nine kinds.
Ending the day with an evening walk to the river
A city filled with art
Backside of Art museum
Front side
The stairs Rocky Balboa was training at in the movies
Statue of Washington
City hall in evening light
Philadelphia pictures
City hall
'
The most famous modern art work in Philly
Art museum at the far end
"Philly Cheese Steak"
Home
A closer picture on the pictures above the table. We bought them from Lowe's (a hardware store in Philadelphia), and they were really cheap! Perfect for people like us on a low budget.
A white shower curtain was included in the apartment but we changed it anyway to a curtain we got from the host family. It's prettier!
The bedroom in the evening. The host family gave us a bed frame too, but when we where packing things and preparing to move here, we missed to bring some parts of the frame so we can't use it yet. So for now it's just box spring and mattress on the floor. (Americans always have box springs under the mattress, unlike us in Sweden who usually just put the mattress on top of the bed frame.) The mattress and the box springs we bought new for a quite good price, and the small end table we bought at IKEA. The lamp and the quilt + pillows we got from the host family, and the picture on the wall (a poster of Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night") we bought here in Philadelphia.
Finally, internet in the apartment.
Whew, we have had some busy days trying to make the apartment to feel like a home and arrange everything. It took awhile to get internet too, or rather, to recieve the package with the router. The delivering company (UPS) only came here to put up a note on the front door of the apartment building and then left. It took us some days to see the note and to realize we have to sign it to get our package. But signing it is to agree that UPS can just drop of the package on the street outside the apartment building, and if someone picks it up before us it won't be their responsibility. So we tried to put up notes on the front door telling UPS to call us when they come, so we could run down, sign the note, and get the package in our hands. But we got no phone call. A neighboor lady told us that the UPS guy did try call us with the front door phone, but hung up before the call even connected. So we simply decided to go to their customer service instead and pick up our package there. The customer service is just outside the city center but it takes about on hour to get there with bus.
One good thing though was that the customer service is located right next to IKEA, Walmart and other furniture stores so we could get some more stuff to our apartment while we were there. Now we almost have it all done like how we want it in our apartment. We just need to buy one light bulb with more white light for one of the roof lamps so we have enough light when we study.
So for now I will upload pictures of how the apartment looked liek right after we got the keys. Then after we got the light bulb tomorrow and have cleaned up a little bit, I will upload pictures of how it looks like with the furniture and all.
The living room/dining room
Picture taken from the opposite side, showing the hallway. The lamp/fan in the roof was included.
Kitchen
Bedroom. The first night we slept on an air mattress.
Opposite side
The walls have recently been painted and the floor recently waxed to hide whatever scratches/signs the last person who lived here might have done. They didn't do a too great job with it, but it's ok. Better than them not doing it at all I guess. The apartment is 70 square meters by the way.
Utkast: Aug. 03, 2013
at the train station.... I will update the blogg later on when we get internet. Till then, see you!
