Tove Anderson is an exchange student at APSU who hasn’t enjoyed the transition to local coffee. | Graphic By Destiny James

I’m new here. Not just to The All State or APSU, but to America, which means I’m new to American ways and customs. And why not share my roller coaster of an experience, right here, for everyone to read?

I thought I’d start with the most important thing, the astonishing American coffee. No, I don’t mean astonishingly good.

If you’ve talked to me for more than five minutes, you probably know how obsessed I am with coffee. The smell, the taste, the bitterness. It’s a beverage I like to call liquid happiness. Being from Sweden, a country where we make every excuse we can think of to have a cup of coffee, I didn’t think I was that picky when it came to the taste.

I’ve had bad coffee before, but I thought that the worst I could get was the watered-down version you get at fast-food restaurants or gas stations in Sweden. I have now been proved wrong.

Coffee flavored tea. That’s what all drip coffee here tastes like, even the one I made myself, and believe me when I say that I tried to make it strong. I drank six cups of that coffee before I started to feel the same kick of caffeine as a single cup of the Swedish kind would give me. How do you, especially as a college student, stay awake here?

My biggest achievement here so far, is surviving a whole month on American coffee. Then I saw a familiar yellow bag in the coffee aisle at Walmart. I am not exaggerating when I say that I jumped with joy when I realized that it was, in fact, Swedish coffee. A friend of mine has the video to prove it.

Since then I have lived very happily, and the bag of my American coffee stands abandoned in the deepest cabinet of my kitchen. I am not sorry to say that I will not give it another chance.