Where to start? I arrived in southern Sweden at the beginning of August and stayed between my grandmother's house and Pontus' apartment (Miako's boyfriend). I had three weeks before school began in Umea to get myself free from jetlag and just relax so I spent most of my time gardening and fixing up my grandmother's house, attempting to brush up my rusty, rusty Swedish, running, and of course doing what I do best, sleeping. Miako sails a few times a week with a retired guy from Denmark between Malmo and Copenhagen and I had the opportunity to join them twice (and once to catch the mast with my forearm as it fell from the crane when we were putting the boat back in the water). We went to the Malmo festival, a private sauna out on a pier in the ocean where you can swim, sun-bathe and look out across to Copenhagen and the recently closed nuclear power plant across the Baltic (this view visible also from INSIDE the sauna). I learned how very soothing weeding could be--something my mother always claimed but I could never relate to until now! I got to go kayaking through the channels in Malmo with Pontus while Miako wrote her thesis and the three of us went to a few seasonal crayfish parties where I was properly introduced to Swedish drinking songs--eat a little, attempt to sing along to a song I've never heard, take a shot of something that tastes like bug spray and SMILE! I had fun, no matter how much I may try to make it sound anything to the contrary. Eventually it was time for me to make my trip to the way up north of Sweden, Umea. (pronounced OO-MAY-OH and no matter how you read that, please do a better job than they did at commencement where I was called O-NAH-KA) Back to the subject though... Tuesday, I took a 18 hour train from the south of Sweden way up north here to the beautiful "City of Birches" known as Umea but, called by the northerners, just Ume. My first day, after sharing a cab to the student housing area where I now live with a kindly new Swedish citizen in dental school from Afghanistan named Abdul, I left my luggage by the door and began my forty minute walk to school to pick up my keys as people began to arrive for their day--yes, I arrived at 7:30am... I then walked back, another forty minutes and found my new home. It is still not 'home' per se, but it isn't a house, or an apartment and room just sounds so sad so I call it home despite its continued cold, empty feeling. One of these days I might have to spring for a rug or something for the walls but I'm on the right track, I bought sheets and a pillow and even curtains. They all have color to help me through the long dark winter days to come. Despite my first day's anxiety about my decision to move here (it's amazing what a migraine, a poor night's sleep on a train, an uninviting new room in a foreign country where you aren't confident in the language and have no friends to speak of with no telephone or other way to communicate with anyone will do to you!) I have been thoroughly enjoying my new home. There was an orientation program for the 'free mover' students of the Design School for the remainder of the week where we learned how to wait and what lovely weather like rain can do for the planned daily "picnics in nature."
I went out on the weekend with the international students (which is what we like to call ourselves even though we are not according to the university) and found myself drinking in a tent! Yes, it sounds strange, but at the beginning of the school year there is a beer tent on campus and there is music and lots of oddly attired students running about. I wish I had thought of taking a photo of the jumpsuits we saw but alas, it did not occur to me that I might be sharing my sightings online with everyone. Every school at the university is affiliated with a color and when you begin school you buy a jumpsuit of the appropriate color. People buy patches pertaining to their field and every other thing that has to do with god knows what and they exchange the patches and cover their jumpsuits them and wear funny looking hats with long tassels and this is COOL. People actually wear these to parties. It is not only socially acceptable but also very common. The first year students are all hazed by the upperclassmen in their chosen field of studies and run around doing various activities. We chatted up a few young would be computer science nollnings (zeroes) and I persuaded them to pose for a photo with me.
After my evenings of speaking broken Swedish with a Dane and Norwegian from my program (both in their respective native tongue) I was beginning to feel pretty good about my language skills...until I arrived at school on the first day and greeted a woman who works here who proceeded to not understand a word a said and I something quite similar. The difference in dialects between northern and southern Sweden is, well, significant.
Rubber Cup!
The first day of class we learned that half of us came expecting something entirely different than the other half and that we were free to tend to the basic tax registration, joining the student union errands we had already attended to in orientation. With all this free time on my hands and not feeling entirely pleased with the program I joined the masters students in their first project. It was an ice breaker exercise of sorts where we designed cars propelled by 25g of rubber which we would race at the end of the week to see which was the fastest and which went the furthest. Due to an unfortunate glitch, our car went further in the speed competition than the distance and while it was fast, it did not win either event. It was a fun experience despite the end 'disappointment' and we learned the importance of fika--the Swede's chronic need to sit around, drink coffee (or tea) and chat.
The first year students had our welcome/initiation last Friday. Under the pretense we were to go on a tour of Umea's industries and to visit some of the design firms in the city, we arrived in the auditorium in the morning to be presented with a sketch film lending from the Lord of the Rings series. They declared we had to defend the school from the other classes who had been lead astray.
Now classes are in full swing and the construction on the school continues but the student kitchen has been finished and we are allowed on the lower level of the school. (An entire new wing was added this year and there are now some twenty or thirty more students enrolled than last year. This includes the twelve in my non degree program which is in it's inaugural year. We are now a huge 122 in all--BA and MA. For some of the old timers this is big but I am loving after our 800 undergrads in the art department at UW.)
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