Ah. Now the fun starts.

This is what they must have been talking about when they said the life of a museum worker is the essence of busy. Annika can attest: I haven't been home much. As project leader, my schedule has now been whisked away from fika and the occasional yeast transformation to packed weeks of meetings, lessons, planning, and work. And, you know, an meal or two.

As far as the work goes, my team hasn't done much yet. Education and programming is really for later in the game, and when the rest of my peers have been racing to pick up the slack, I've given my team the chance to appreciate their time off. Though I wish I could recap everything here, I honestly need to post the headliners of the last couple days out of pure necessity---even though my team isn't doing much, Steering Group (or Cheering Group, as we call it) certainly gives me enough to do.

After much toil (to which my friend, Csilla, deserves much applause), we finally decided the focus of our exhibition to be gender. Not sure what I mean? Here's our exhibition's main statement, hot off the press:

We have applied gendered labels to objects and to ourselves for centuries. Should we blindly accept these labels? This exhibition, across three museums in Gothenburg, examines how and where gender matters in society. Through the exhibition at the City Museum we explore 19^th century gender roles in relation to those of today. At the Maritime Museum we look at how gender roles on land are contested at sea. In the Natural History Museum we discuss how the animal world challenges human ideas of gender roles. 

We've been toying with numerous names, but I have a looming feeling Gender Matters will emerge from the cutting room floor (we'll see how many people like that). In addition, we have also decided:

• The exhibition will be at three museums: the Natural History Museum, Gothenburg City Museum, and the Maritime Museum and Aquarium
• It will have four-five items highlighted in each museum exhibition and at least one headlining installation
• It will highlight visitors from the coinciding Gothenburg Gay-Pride Festival, students, and tourists.
• The exhibition will have an unconventional catalogue made up of individual postcards which act as a playful extension of the exhibition as additional interpretation of museum objects
• The exhibition will be in both English and Swedish (gulp)

As you can imagine, the last decision has been my biggest worry, as of late.

However, I can't say that I haven't been having my share of fun. Eurovision 2011 was last weekend and an experience I certainly have never had before. Monique and Lisa invited a whole bunch of international students over to their apartment to watch this American Idol-esque European competition of cheap song-singing, and rate the crazy results. I'm happy to report, it was everything I hoped for. I...was a fan of Moldova. :)

Yeah. You should have seen the other contestants. One chick broke into sign language mid-song.