Swedish

Over the last few months I have been learning Swedish because I love learning new things, and languages in particular. Also, a good friend of mine speaks Swedish fluently, so I have a great resource to help out my learning. There is a school in San Francisco (the Scandinavian School) that offers beginner to advanced classes in Swedish, so I have been taking classes there for the last month.

Two of my best friends in Tampa are moving to Armenia in a few months, so maybe with my Swedish skills and friends in Armenia, I can go on a multi-country tour of Europe next year.

Swedish-American Hall in San Francisco, a legacy of the formerly large Swedish population here:

Milk and Sean Penn

I was walking through the Civic Center last weekend and happened to catch the filming of a new motion picture called "Milk," which tells the story of a murdered city councilman in the 1970s. Sean Penn is playing the title character, and he was there at the filming as well. For the scene, they were recreating a famous rally that occurred at San Francisco's City Hall.

Here is a 1970s-era bus:


And here is Sean Penn in the middle of filming a scene:


An City Hall all draped out (complete with 1970s cars) during the filming:

New Apartment

I have been living in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood with two roommates, but I decided it was time to get a place of my own closer to work. So this weekend I moved across town into my new apartment in the Hayes Valley neighborhood. The differences between the two neighborhoods are very apparent. Haight was filled with hippies, hippie-wannabes, and vagabonds of every race and socio-economic group. Hayes Valley's streets, on the other hand, are walked by the well-dressed and upper-middle class.

My new neighborhood has a very active street life. Here is a little storefront across the street from me where people where sitting out front watching a basketball game on TV:


Here is the inside of my new apartment, now complete with furniture:






Here is a little cafe on the corner next to my new place: