First Post

---

Instead of telling the same stories about my semester abroad over again to different people I figured it would be easiest to keep a blog about it so people could just read and get a more detailed idea of what my time over here has and will be like. I arrived here on January 15th and have been keeping a rough journal I guess you could call it in a word file but I might as well make it public so its useful to more than just myself.

If I have time I'll go back and fill in the previous days that I have kept track of on Word (as my first 10 days here have been pretty interesting) but for now I'll stick to real time.

Today I really didn't do too much, Woke up around 10 and cleaned my room, showered, ate , the usual, took my time of course and left my res around 12:30 to go buy some skates. I walked about 20 minutes to the only skate shop I'm aware of that exists in this town right now only to find they were closed for lunch (which is pretty common over here for smaller shops, open for 4-5 hours in the morning, 4 hours in the afternoon and closed by 5 or 6). Large stores obviously have regular hours but nothing compared to Canada.
Pretty big waste of time, but hey some exercise none the less. I've met a few other Canadians who brought their skates and a stick over and have been playing pick-up against some swedes at a local ODR. I've been jonesing for a good ODR sesh so I figured I might as well spend the money on a cheap pair of skates and a stick since it will be ODR season for another good month and a half over here. I really regret not bringing my stuff with me, especially since that was one of the reasons I thought it would be cool to come to Sweden anyways. Oh well, I guess I'll get up earlier tomorrow and try again.
I had a class at 2 so I pretty much went right there, took a detour to McD's first since I had a bit of time. McD's here is pretty much the same, a few different menu items and the value picks aren't quite the same but for the most part its pretty standard anywhere you go. They have the JrChicken on their value picks for 15 SEK (just over $2 CDN, conversion rate is about 6.5 SEK to 1 CDN) so I've been mostly getting a couple of those when I'm in town and feelin hungry.
As for my class, it was the first seminar I attended, I missed the last one cause I stayed up late to watch the Canucks game the night before and wasn't up until 4 or so the next day. We basically sat there for 2 hours and listened to a group present on "buying and selling in business markets" nothing exciting. The way this class works is we have a 2 hour lecture once a week and then a seminar once a week in which groups have to summarize/analyze assigned readings on a topic and present it and hold a discussion with the class. Seems pretty easy, you can read off the screen if you want so as long as you don't have issues with presenting its not bad. Luckily found a group this week so no problems there.
After class I went to one of the student nations to sign up as the temporary pass int'l students were given expired on Sunday, it didn't stop us from going around to the different nations last night but soon enough they'll catch on that its expired and won't let you in. Without going into too much detail, the student nations here are like clubs I guess that represent 13 different regions of Sweden. The aim is to bring students which come from these parts of the country together when they go to University so they have a common ground I guess when socializing. But any student can join any nation and go to any other nation so it really doesn't matter which one you join, the activities differ from nation to nation but for the most part they each have their respective "good party nights". The I joined is called "Snerikes" for short, Sodermanlands-Nerikes Nation for long. Not sure exactly which part of the country that region is, I pretty much just joined it because that is where most of the other int'l students I have met joined or plan to join so may as well stick with the crowd considering it doesn't really matter which one you join.
Afterwards I came home with the intention to go back out to this nation later on, as Tuesday night is there big night but after having a quick shower ended up having a quick nap and woke up too late for it to be worthwhile going. Apparently around 8 the line starts to form to get in and it was well past then when I woke up so I figured I'd just stay in. Made some dinner, checked out tsn.ca and nhl.com for some reading and decided to set up my blog. As for the rest of the night, will stream the sens game and likely fall asleep during it. Weekend plans include possibly going up north to a town called Kiruna with some other exchange students to do some dog sledding/snow mobiling and maybe get a glimpse of the northern lights if lucky. Still haven't bought the train ticket yet but will decide for sure tomorrow. It goes for about 1100 SEK (about $170 Canadian) round trip and is a 15 hour train ride. This town is roughly 200km into the arctic circle so its pretty far up there. There will be between 1-4 hours of daylight there at this time of the year which is pretty brutal but I think I can handle it for 2-3 days, I've heard from other students that it's a fun trip to go on, especially if the northern lights show as it is one of the best places in the world to see them. Well, that's all for today, time for the Sens game.

---

Comments

[Amanda]

I'm really happy you have a blog :) Ive already added it to my bookmarks!