The last few weeks I’ve noticed that I look differently at the trip to school, at doing shopping, at walking in the city. I finally start to see this as normal. Before it was still my study abroad. Now this way to school has become my way to school, this city became my city. I feel at home, I think.

On the right is a part of that life. On my way to school the air was on fire. Oh, btw, another fire that was part of the life here, was Valborg. The Swedish helgdagar (holiday) on the 30th of April.

From one of the first books about intercultural interactions:

Strangeness is no longer a temporary condition to be overcome, but a way of life.
Harman

I was a bit anxious (a thing we needed to learn for the exam) for this. In the Netherlands I normally have 1 to 2 hours, and 3 hours is for something like a graduation exam. Here 5 hours is very normal.

And actually it was really nice. First I spent 1,5 hour on writing the answers in a short form and then I spent the rest of the time rewriting it and making nice sentences. Also good because you go over the questions and your answers once more and you correct things. This is really different from what I’m used to. Usally I always go through the questions and answers one more time, but as it is already writing down, you hardly look at it in another way, and it thus won’t help much. This time it did. And I think it went very well. Also not that much of a problem as it was about how you understood things instead of knowing facts.

The only thing that was not so nice is the pain in my hand from all the writing. Though it is less when there is no direct pressure, like when you have say 5 hours ;)

Below the mindmap that I created when I was learning. This covers only I think about half or 1/3 of the information we got..

For the people with FreeMind (the software ;)), you can download my mindmap.

A short view of my apartment:

This evening we had the welcoming diner. They divided us into groups, we had to sit at certain places, it was an awkward situation. At my table the conversation didn’t really came to life. Most of the time – after some first introduction talks – we looked away, to other things, tables. Was it my dummy on the table? That got some conversations started though. Were we all thinking of talking to that person at the other table? Or the few empty chairs at our table which created some physical gaps? Or the lagom?

There also was a Swedish fashion show, with the royal family, miss IKEA and ABBA. Speaking of which, ABBA music was played all through the dinner :) Oh, and I got to wear a kind of ‘Jewish badge’; I got a pink paper for the (student) restaurant staff stating ‘Vegetarian’.

He told a story about a Japanese exchange student at Mälardalen who went on the bus. The bus was empty except for the driver and one other person. She went to sit next to the other person and later at school described how the person next to her was rather scared of her. Just as in the Netherlands – and many other countries I guess – the Swedes will pick the chair most far away from the other people. And here it might be more a case of ‘lagom’.

A new word he learned us was ‘lagom’. Swedish don’t take too much of it, but also not to less. Just about enough. Lagom means that you don’t take the space of someone else, don’t take up too much space for yourself, don’t eat to much at a party, just enough.

Yesterday afternoon we also got our first – well, mine at least – fika. Swedish coffee with a bisquit. I gave the coffee a fair try (I never drink it actually), but quickly switched back to tea again. But the fika itself is nice as it is more than only coffee (/ tea). It is a source for new ideas one said. I compare it a bit with the ‘retreat’ I do as an (interaction) designer; when you start doing something else – take the train, walk at the beach – thén, the ideas get born. And the fika is then also about meeting people, which get your mind thinking about things you normally didn’t thought of.

The first day at the university was nice. Although the presentations were not that interesting when you had read some documents of the universities web site before. The air is rather expensive here and they have a very nice interactive story of images on the wall here, which always ends with death though.

The academic system is really like the Montessori and the system of the HKU I know; a lot of responsibility is laid at the student with max. 10 contact hours per week, the rest is self study. By the way, I saw a Montessori (high)school here yesterday!

The Swedes are on time. Actually it is really funny to notice that this is the first time ever that at a school or conference we haven’t got a delay in the schedule. Instead, we’re ahead of the schedule!

The train trip from Eskilstuna (apartment) to Västerås (university) is very nice. I’m very happy with my choise of staying in Eskilstuna while studying in Västerås. Especially as I have much extra time after the train arrives and before the course starts.