The Routine Begins...

This past week was the beginning of classes at JIBS. I had a grand total of two, very difficult. ;-) The first was "The Constitutional State" with an ancient, soft spoken Swede. The classroom and class structure was similar to classes back in Virginia. Meaning the professor talks at you most of the class and occasionally asks a question. The only people who answered them the first class were foreign students much like the coordinator said. Swedish culture is known for being reserved and very collectivist so expressing your opinion, especially if it's different, is counterintuitive. That class only meets once a week and has a reading list similar to the States. My other class last week was Swedish. I was much more impressed with the prof. she was very expressive, interactive, and had a good sense of humor. It appears that the grammar is going to be really easy because verbs aren't conjugated in the present tense. The pronunciation is another story. I cannot roll 'R's at all and there are apparently two different forms of it in Swedish for regional dialects. The different sounds for o, u, and å game me trouble at first. I have Swedish on Tuesday and Thursday. My third class, "Classic Political Theory," starts this week. I'll update that later.

I've also gotten into a Swedish routine in other ways. I go to the grocery store every few days because I have to carry my bags on the bus and walk a ways from the bus stop to the dorm. I bring my own bags because you have buy bags there otherwise. I found a much cheaper grocery store on the way to downtown called Netto... or something. It looks like what I imagined an upscale Soviet grocery store would have been. Little to no decoration, food stacked in crates, industrial style fluorescent lights, that kind of thing. The grocery store at the A6 mall is much more like what Americans would be used to, it's almost a mini-Wal-Mart.I also find myself going to bed a lot earlier, because the days are so short, and waking early to darkness, which really doesn't bother me. I thought it would after a couple of weeks. Every Friday in a lot of bars and restaurants have really cheap buffets from around 4-8 called "afterwork." The food was mediocre but there was a lot of it.

The dormmates continue to party every night. The walls are pretty sound resistant so that's fine. One night a Russian guy was very drunk and started singing ABBA on the karaoke game. It was very funny. On Friday just about all of went to a party on the otherside of the city at the new dorm. It was late at night so the buses weren't running a lot so we decided to walk form the juneporten. It was a far walk but some of the girls had "pregamed" and were singing American hip-hop songs all the way there. The party itself was kind of lame. The dorm was apartment-style and the rooms open on to a common courtyard; so you had to either stay in one of two cramped rooms or stand on the deck in the midnight cold. We all left pretty quickly. It was another entertaining walk through the city. Most people went to Centrum again but me, a German, and another American didn't feel like paying a cover charge and 45:- for a beer. ":-" is the symbol often used to denote price in crowns.

Saturday night I stayed in and made dinner with a few people. All four stove tops were being used at once along with the oven. Our little kitchen was crowded and hot but it was fun. Some people went out to the Student Union's club Akademien. I stayed in with some others and watched movies and played games. Everyone came back completely inebriated. I heard them coming for what seemed like minutes. They were rowdy, loud, and hungry. They made hotdogs, play fought in the hallways (which ended with a large heavy bench somehow turned over), and being generally crazy. A typical night in Vilhelmsro!

I also went to the pool on Friday with two friends to swim some laps. The are very strict about keeping the pool water clean. You have to take off your shoes before you even enter the locker room. You cn't where shorts or boardshorts that you've walked around in all day in the water. Sorry surfers. Showering before even stepping on the deck is required not simply suggested. The pool was shallow the whole length and only three lanes wide. My friend said it was attached to a school so it closed for a couple hours in the morning and afternoon. One of my friends is Finnish and he ran into some fellow Finns in the pool. They were elderly women who, like many Finnish people, immigrated to Sweden. Everyone in Finland is required to learn Swedish so moving isn't as difficult as it would be for other nationalities. Being Finnish he knew how to regulate the sauna just right and we had a nice one.

Random Observations:

-Spinning doors are really popular in Sweden. They keep warm air in better?

-Floors around entrances are always wet. Everyone tracks in snow.

-Europeans really like McDonald's

-Sweden has a lot more round-abouts and far fewer traffic lights.

-Swedes are really extroverted and musical when intoxicated.