Gränna & Visingö

It's been a while since my last entry....I should have posted something last week about my trip to Gränna & Visingö while it was still fresh in my mind, but I will use this lovely Sunday afternoon to try and remember as much as possible.

Gränna is a small town about 30 minutes by bus from Jönköping. Around 60 people (all International students) went on the trip.

First, we visited a museum and learned about a man by the name of S.A Andrée, a balloonist from the late 19th century. He tried to explore more of the Arctic Sea and Bering Strait with a hydrogen balloon and two other people with him. Basically, they flew for 5 days, crashed, and tried to walk back to land. Unfortunately, they didn't make it, but one of the members of the expedition had a camera and a diary. 33 years later, another group found their stuff, including the camera and diary and able to tell the story of the failed expedition! FUN huh? I thought so!


Next, we visited a candy shop across from the museum. They are famous for making candy canes. The store and the kitchen they make the candy are right next to each other, so you can see the chef making the candy.

After that, we took a 15 minute ferry to the island of Visingö. We had a little "BBQ" aka two hambergers, and rode bikes around the island. At Visingö, there's an old castle that they used back in the 18th century to keep Russian POWs. The island isn't very big, at one point you can see the water from both sides.
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Other than that, not much has been going on. School is going alright. The Swedish education system is a little bit different that I'm used to. There isn't a set day when there's class, or where it's located. You can have 3 meetings a week, or just one, and it can be on the 4th floor or 2nd floor. There are also clashes with classes. So, if both of your classes are at the same time, you have to just pick one to go to and hope there isn't a pop quiz in the other one! I've only had one clash, and that was in the beginning.
There are discussions called "Seminars" where you and your group (that you get paired up with in the beginning of the semester) meet with other groups, and the facilitator gives you a topic for you to discuss. Kind of an interesting way to teaching, because you can debate about the topic and learn that way instead of just reading it out of a book.
There's basically no homework/written assignments, but the exams and project work play a big role in the course.
Most of the classes are at least 2 hours, and up to 4 hours long. Usually, there's a break every hour or so. Which helps you get some coffee and stay awake.

School HAS gotten in the way of a trip to Norway that I hear is very good. I have an exam this Friday in Marketing Management. The exams are usually not that early, but for some reason, they decided to have this one early. The trip itself is 6 days, so you would miss some class anyway. I'm a little frustrated I'm so close to going to Norway, but can't (at least not yet). There is a trip to a place called Kiruna in Northern Sweden that looks great as well. Dog sledding is involved...hopefully I can get on that trip!

Ok this looks like a nice-sized blog. So I will leave you with this much for now! I'll try to keep up with this more than every couple weeks or so...