Busy week....

**Oops!** forgot to post this when i first wrote it....this was from Friday night...

This past week has been QUITE busy for me study-wise...Two exams (one oral). I don't think I've studied this much in a long time...but paid off with the oral exam!!

Today, (Friday) I had my ridiculously important Marketing exam. Basically, I need to pass this exam (60%) to pass the class no matter what. The re-exam period for this is in the 5th week of the next year...WAY past the time I'll be back in WI. Therefore, if I fail this, I fail the class, don't get credit back home, and get in some trouble with the student loan peeps, because I won't be qualified as a full-time student!
I don't want to get my hopes up, so I'll just patiently wait for the results sometime next week. I felt like I did ok...I started to get a headache during the exam from all the intense thinking. This was probably the first exam I took that I didn't have to fill in a little circle in a LONG time! Just a 'X' on a table for each question. And a 60 word MAX for short answer questions. I found it funny at the end of this ridiculously important exam to be counting how many freakin' words I had...more than 60 and no credit!! Interesting ways people have with tests.....

Afterwards, I talked to my parents and let them know how it went. I also mentioned that Dream Theater was playing in Copenhagen this weekend. And after some words of wisdom, told me to go! So now (Friday night) I'm waiting to get on a bus to Copenhagen at 3:30 in the morning... As there aren't many Dream Theater fans here, I'm going by myself and hopefully finding a relatively cheap youth hostel to stay in and take a bus back Monday morning in time for class in the afternoon.

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...

1st week...

The first week in Sweden can only be described as fun and busy. The school set-up an introduction week for the international and first year Swedish students. They split us up into groups led by English-speaking Swedish men and women that had already been at Jönköping a couple of years. They were called the "fadders" (fathers). Our group was the Firefighters and throughout the whole week, we had this as our song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBPqiMfDQ2g ...haha.
As you can tell, our group was pretty wild, but everyone was nice and everyone got along just fine. It was a great way to meet new people and make some friendships right away.

The school also had (what seemed) every minute planned for us throughout the week. Information lectures during the day and activities at night as well.

A couple days ago, I was walking around town when I noticed some of the guys from the Firefighter group eating outside. I said hello and after a few mintues, they invited me to a traditional Swedish dinner the next night!
The name of the dinner is Kräftskiva, which basically entails eating crayfish, singing songs and drinking. They have this type of dinner in the summer, more specifically, August because that's the prime of the season for crayfish. The tables were decorated with crayfish-filled plates, paper party hats and bids...I can't remember the last time I wore a hat and bib while at a dinner table....4 maybe? haha it was a very fun dinner though. I even sang the National Anthem (US) for everyone to hear the lyrics! Of the 30-something people invited, I was the only exchange student from the Firefighters group, and there was another guy from Russia there who didn't know Swedish...so I felt pretty honored to be included in the festivities :)

During the singing, I could tell I was able to read most of the words with the rest of the group. I have been working on the Rosetta Stone still, and I have been impressing the Swedes with my counting and small talk. They offer Swedish as a course here, but I didn't sign up back in May. I would maybe try to get in it now, but the course is full and I would only be on a waiting list.

Speaking of courses...they started on Monday. The semester is split up into quarters, so I have two this quarter and two next quarter. Leadership and Marketing Management. Both intro lectures were just once this week for 3 hours...not bad now that I have a nice long weekend! One thing I miss about Whitewater is the renting of books, which would have come in handy, but at least now I know how most of the other college students feel when they mutter about the purchasing of books...oh well!

I finally got some laundry done today. It will be interesting to see how two washers and dryers for 50 people will work. Luckily, I was able to get mine done during the day while some people had classes going on.

Alright, I wrote a lot more than I thought I would, so I will leave you with this info. for now!!

the journey begins...

So right off the bat, I get a upgrade on my plane to London! I was bumped up 14 rows in the business class for the same price as economy! All because someone was probably sick..I managed little sleep on the plane and had a stomach ache that might have been caused by the food and nerves...

There was a little bit of a wait in London, due to the security check of all the passengers from different planes that showed up at the same time.

Not much longer though, I found myself on another plane going off some kind of energy that I don't know where it came from. 1 PM London time, 7 AM WI time. I sat next to a girl that not two questions in, do I find out that she's also studying at Jönköping! I thought she was from the US or London as well because she didn't have an accent that I could detect. She is from about an our away. She answered a lot of my questions about Sweden and the area and helped me find the train to Stockholm so I could get to my hotel.

After a 20 minute train ride to Stockholm Central Station, I didn't feel like taking the next train that was kind of close to the hotel, so I took the taxi and saw a little bit of Stockholm. After getting checked into my room at around 6:30 PM, now 11 AM RC time. I took a quick shower (which took about 7 frustrating minutes to figure out the damn nozzle for the shower..stupid jetlag!) and found myself dozing off in front of the TV.

Next thing I know, it's dark out and I'm hoping that it's like 12 or 1 in the morning. Nope. 10...whatever. Ok might as well sleep a little bit more. Wake up. 3 maybe? Nope. Midnight...dumb. Ended up being fully awake around 3...

watched some BBC news, somehow got some more sleep and woke up to my wake up call of 9 O'Clock.

I hadn't had anything to eat since about 4 in the afternoon, so I knew that I would enjoy the continental breakfast no matter what they served me. They had a pretty basic set-up. Some yogurt they had was pretty good. There were these tiny plates that had a littler circle in the middle that I saw later used as egg holders..not rocket science, but I couldn't remember seeing anyone actually using them before. Luckily, unlike the French, the hotel kept their milk chilled so that pleased was a plus. After that, I got checked out before the 11 AM deadline and made my way to the train station.

3 train changes , one person I found from Wisconsin riding the same train as me, and 5 hours later, I'm in Jönköping. I sign the contract for my room thinking I'm sharing a room with someone else, possibly this other guy(I never did ask his name) from WI and having to take the bus into town. Nope. I find my apartment building to be pretty close to campus,

I have about a 5-10 minute walk to the business school, great view:

and I'm pretty much downtown! The room isn't as big as I thought, but then again I thought I would be sharing a room, no TV, no bed sheets, no internet...but that should come in tomorrow.

We have about 10 people to a floor sharing a little kitchen that's right across from me, and a bathroom. I guess there's a laundry downstairs somewhere. Everyone in this building is foreign, as I thought it would be. I've met everyone I think, but I'm only remembering which countries everyone is from. We got a Germany, Mexico, Spain, Finland, Columbia so far on this floor. Earlier I heard some obvious Americans talking as I walked by. So far, everyone seems nice. I feel kind of lucky having English be the language of choice in the building and at the Int'l Business School.

Hopefully tomorrow I can get some food, bed sheets, and internet. I haven't had a full meal since breakfast at the hotel.

Some other things I've noticed. They write $500 as 500:-. The light switches are different. I just found out this IKEA coupon I have that would be really awesome to use is expired by one day...LAME.

The Beginning.....

Hey everyone! So, taking from my friend Luke's idea, (http://luke-annear.blogspot.com/) I thought it would be a good idea to leave a blog of events/pictures and other things that happen along the way while I'm in Sweden...

I'll leave around 10 P.M. on Friday, stay in a hotel in Stockhom Saturday night, and take a train to Jönköping.