Easter time!

As most people probably know, there was a solar eclipse about two weeks ago visible from Northern Europe. It was quite cloudy in Uppsala, which meant anyone who had bought special viewing glasses was disappointed. However, the clouds did provide enough protection to look at the sun for a short time without hurting yourself, and I did get a few good looks at the eclipse. I was actually in class while it was happening, but the nice thing about being in physics is that your teachers are likely to also be interested in this sort of thing, so we had a break during the lecture to go check it out.

My brother Callum got this shot through the clouds in Maastricht.
This is pretty much what it looked like in Uppsala too.

In other moon-related news, it's Easter this weekend (the date of Easter is based on the lunar cycle)! Good Friday and Easter Monday are both holidays in Sweden, so that makes for a nice long weekend. A lot of students seem to also have the entire next week free, but I still have class, albeit only for four hours. I was planning on going back to Amsterdam for the break, but I waited too long and flights got super expensive, so I decided I'm going to go next weekend instead.

'Tis the Season!

Lit up trees along Uppsala's river, Fyrisån. 

So it's almost that time again: Christmas break! It's looking Christmas-y here, with beautiful Christmas lights and even the occasional dusting of snow (or at least frost). This coming Friday I'll be heading back to Amsterdam to visit family and friends over the holidays. I had my only exam of the term yesterday, and tomorrow is my last lecture before my break begins.

Scheduling of lectures and exams at Uppsala University is... interesting. As in, totally erratic. I've been led to believe that this is common in Sweden, but I don't know for sure. In any case, the year is basically broken down into 2 semesters (Autumn and Spring), each containing 2 periods. The exact dates are available online at the Academic Calendar page. This page also contains one of the scarier pieces of text that I encountered while I was applying to Uppsala: