19:30 Mon.
9 Sep, 2013

Swedes don't joke around when it comes to exams.

Day 32 , 115 remain
Lulea , Sweden
16 °C
Fair
5:31 am
7:21 pm

Today I had my first exam, Swedish for beginners. Here exams are written in special classroom that is big enough to accommodate around 300 students. Room is underground with no windows. Tables are for one person only, although they are big enough so you can have enough space for everything you are allowed to have with you. There is a bathroom in the room as well.

When you enter you have to put your jacket, bags, mobile phone, etc… to a special place. When you are left with only pen and ID with you, you can go sit to your table. For every 20-30 tables there is an exam supervisor seating: facing towards students. And there are some supervisor that walk along the isles as well.

When the exam starts, you get a piece of paper, where you fill out your info, exam info (name of class, number of pages). And later when you start to solve exam, you have to mark which exercises you have finished. This is something similar to Slovenian matura exams.

After you fill this page an examiner comes over and gives you exam. You have to sign your name and ID number on every page of exam. The exam is only printed on even pages. Our exam consisted of 7 pages.

While you are writing an exam an examiner comes over and checks you ID and name, which he also does when you turn in your exam. Exams last from 1.5h (our) to 6 hours. And you can’t leave examination room for the first hour. Although you can bring whatever food and drink you want with you (example; pizza with coke).

Back to the exam. Exam consisted of 4 grammar exercise. 2 that tested understanding of words/text, and one where you had to write short paragraph about yourself. Here is that paragraph that I wrote, if anyone is interested how Swedish looks like (note I’ve changed my parent’s profession for something easier to write).


Jag heter Jani. Jag kommer från Slovenien men jag bor i Luleå nu. Mitt gatunamn är Väderleden och mitt gatunummer är 11. Jag talar slovenska, engelska, lite franska och lite svenska. Jag studerar på Luleå tekniska universitet. Jag pluggar till programmerare. Jag fyller 24 i år. Mitt telefonnummer är 070 123 42 42. Mina föräldrar heter Lilijana och Jožef. Min mor är född 1966 och min far är född 1964. De har födelsedag samma dag, 17 maj. Min mamma arbetar som läkare och min pappa som tandläkare. Jag har en farbror, en faster, en moster och fyra kusiner. Min flickvän heter Veronika. Hon studerar till ekonom. Hon talar slovenska, engelska, italienska, franska och lite tyska. Veronika fyller 24 i år.

21:53 Sat.
7 Sep, 2013

Boat trip

Day 30 , 117 remain
Lulea , Sweden
12 °C
Fair
5:25 am
7:30 pm

Today we went to an island, not that far from Lulea. Here is a map link: island location. The boat ride took almost 1 and half hour. Despite very high (20 degrees) temperature it was chilly on the deck. The winds here are really cold.

Island moss in Sweden
Island moss in Sweden
Colorful vegetation on island
Colorful vegetation on island

On the island there were free saunas and a lot of BBQ places. For the first hour we went around exploring the island. The paths were nicely build with wooden floor few inches above grounds. Grounds were covered in different kinds of mosses. Above them there were conifer trees reaching the water. For me this looks weird, because we are used to see conifer trees at high altitudes. After a while we found an observation tower on a small hill and went up. Despite not being too fond of heights the climb was worth it. The view was amazing, you could see whole island (and beyond) from the tower.

When you were climbing up it felt much higher.
When you were climbing up it felt much higher.
360 island panorama
360 island panorama
View from the tower
View from the tower

After that we went to a BBQ place to cook lunch. While we were cocking there were some people running from saunas to the sea water for a quick dip in 13 degree water. I think they are going to try and go swimming when there is going to be ice as well. 🙂

Sandy beach on the island
Sandy beach on the island

After that we were ready to head back.

21:59 Fri.
6 Sep, 2013

Tasting gyros again

Day 29 , 118 remain
Lulea , Sweden
16 °C
Fair
5:21 am
7:34 pm

This week there is an international food market in the centre. There are stalls with food from different countries, mainly European but one stall wit Thailand and one with Australian food as well. Yesterday I bought some fudge candies from Britain’s stall and a gyros from Greek’s. It was really good eating it (gyros) after so many years. Last time I ate it was on Ios, 5 years ago. (Oh and the candy, I ate it yesterday despite planning on eating it throughout whole week). The food at the stalls is good, although some (especially Spanish) students keep saying that food (Spanish) is nothing like the food in Spain. They even said that they’ll cook us some real Spanish food, so I’m looking forward to that.
Today I went to the food market again and had an Australian crocodile burger, some friends had a kangaroo burger and we all agree it tastes really similar as a normal (beef) burger. I would love to try some more food but the prices are sky high.

I haven’t described the classes in too much detail last time so here it goes. The courses (at least the ones I’m going to) have around 15-30 people attending. This is somewhat similar to the ones at my faculty (FMF). Until now we only had one lab class and it looked like this; we went in to a room with computers (there were some people not belonging to our class in as well doing their stuff). We then continued working, from what we did at home, on our assignments. The professor was walking around and if you wanted to ask him something he was there, so basically the lab works is not another class (like in Slovenia) but more like consultation for assignments you have to do.

Majority of the classrooms have a glass wall toward the hallway. Not sure why is this, maybe because of light (there are few windows because of position and style of the rooms). Because of this I had an interesting opportunity yesterday. When I was searching for my classroom I was able to look at what other people were studying in their classrooms. This is campus so there are a lot of different types (faculties?) of studies in the same building. The most interesting was a classroom where students were massaging each other. When I first saw it I thought they had a free period or something but then I saw the teacher at the front of the class giving instructions. Maybe I should volunteer as a test subject for massages. 🙂

I had a lot of assignments to do till today, but somehow I managed to do them all. I’m not used to getting that much work the first week of school. I think I spent 10+ hours doing 2 assignments. Also we had a dictation exam today at Swedish course. Hopefully I did ok, despite knowing I misspelled 3 words. I just hope the rest is correct. On Monday I have a written exam.

Tomorrow is supposed to be record high temperature here, around 20 degrees. A great day for going on a boat trip.

Lastly, if you check at the upper part of the post you can see I’ve been here for exactly 4 weeks. I’ll write more about this in my next post.

22:38 Tue.
3 Sep, 2013

Already flooded with work

Day 26 , 121 remain
Lulea , Sweden
12 °C
Fair
5:12 am
7:45 pm

Today I started my first (real) courses up here in Lulea. Besides Swedish language course I’ll be attending “Software engineering” and “Network programming and distributed applications”. In both courses we’ll have group projects and seminar work. In first groups were assigned by random draw, I’m in a group with three Swedes. In second we’ll be able to choose our own groups, although I don’t know who I should pair up with yet.

At both courses we have an assignment due to this Friday and I have oral exam of Swedish course on Friday afternoon as well … so jupeee.

In other news, our laundry machine is broken, so I wasn’t able to wash my clothes this week. I have exactly 1 shirt left, so I’ll have to figure something out by tomorrow or I’ll have to walk around naked (which I really don’t want in this cold 🙂 ).

Today I also bought tickets for a trip to some islands near Lulea for this Saturday. For the end of September I have also managed to book a longer 4 days trip to Norway. It’s really annoying how we learn about this trips. They usually post it our (exchange students up here) Facebook group at around midnight or later and it’s usually limited places available, so next day you usually hear it from some people and then have to arrange everything very quickly before places are sold out.

22:26 Sun.
1 Sep, 2013

Going on a trip

Day 24 , 123 remain
Lulea , Sweden
16 °C
Fair
5:06 am
7:53 pm

On Friday morning we had a tour of Luleå city (centre). Our tour guide was a person from LURC so he showed as some commodities (cheapest barber’s salon etc.) along the way. After the tour we visited the city hall which is one of the highest building in the city. We were allowed to go on the roof where the view is amazing. After that, we were greeted with by few people of the city council, sadly mayor was missing because he was in Finland. They gave us some free promotional stuff and then we were off to a nice lunch, which was paid for by Luleå (mayor). The lunch was really really good, it was a self-service in regard that you picked up as much food as you wanted and drinks were on the house as well. If I compare it with welcome dinner; it wasn’t as fancy but it must have cost a fortune nonetheless (we are around 250 exchange students after all).

Luleaå's church
Luleaå’s church
Panorama overlooking Luleå's harbor
Panorama overlooking Luleå’s harbor
Luleå downtown panorama
Luleå downtown panorama

In the evening we had a “tetrathlon” on a nearby field. We played some made up Swedish games, which were really weird. I don’t know who comes up with this games but they are either weird or disgusting.

Allen running toward his team.
Allen running toward his team.

On Saturday morning we had a trip planned to rapids in Storforsen. It is an hour and ten drive with a bus. Interesting fact; we had to fasten our seatbelts on the bus, you usually don’t see that in Slovenia.
The river was wide and the rapids very strong and long. We took some pictures of them and then we went to one BBQ place (which were all around the “park”). While we were eating/chatting by the fire, some people went swimming (not in the rapids of course) but on a nearby pool of calm water. I’m not sure why they can’t feel cold.

Squirrel in the city center
Squirrel in the city center

In the evening we had a welcome dinner. We had to dress as a Swedish icons so there were quite a lot Pippi Långstrump and hockey player. I went as a king of Sweden.

The dinner was really fancy (I’m not sure if it was prepared by university kitchen staff), there were 3 courses, appetiser, main dish and dessert. I didn’t bring camera with me so you’ll have to satisfy with my description of the dishes.

    • Appetizer: Canapé with smoked salmon salad, fresh herbs and lemon vinaigrette
    • Main course: Marinated chicken with ratatouille & baked potato gratinated with cheese
    • Dessert: Chocolate & coconut cake with raspberry cream

The food was really good, but the portions were quite small, it looked like those meals in fancy restaurants. You could probably put whole appetizer and dessert in your mouth in one big bite and main course consisted of half potato and one chicken breast.

While we were eating/waiting for next course we had some entertainment program, LURC guys had a sketch were they showed how a typical Swedish person behaves (stereotypically shy) it was really funny, later we had a male choir who sang 2 songs in Swedish and lastly a song I understood: “The final countdown”.

It actually sounded very good. Later there was a girls’ choir as well, among the song they sang I recognized the Harry Potter theme song and a “Help!” from beatles (if I remember correctly).

Later we had a treasure hunt which we (our table) actually won (I still don’t know how), and finale from previous game nights. There were some performances from exchange students as well.

Today we only had a relaxing picnic where we hang out and chat. Tomorrow school starts. Tomorrow I only have Swedish course so I’ll have to wait until Tuesday for “real” school to start.

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