The last weekend of orientation: Comfort Food and Clothesline

Well, orientation has officially ended here at Lulea University of Technology and the semester has begun. Not a whole lot of new things to report on over here for us so I thought I'd just give a quick run-down of our weekend and post a few pictures. So here's our weekend in a nutshell...

Friday:

Slept in late, like usual. Ryan had his verbal exam for his Intro to Swedish course. (I had mine on Thursday, so I didn't have to do anything productive. Yay!)

We headed downtown after his class to run a few errands and to meet up with our Nebraska friends for dinner. We ate at a sports bar downtown and watched the Twins game. It was nice.

The restaurant was like a mix between Applebees and Champs. The food was mostly very American, but the prices were a little steep. I guess it's the price you pay to get a little Comfort Food from home overseas.

Shannon and I each tried a daiquiri and we shared a HUGE appetizer platter full of chips, cheese, guacamole, salsa, sourcream, quesadillas, wings, and ribs. It was a lot of food.

After dinner we took a stroll down to the Baltic Sea and attempted to watch the sunset, but it was a little cloudy. We did find this really awesome deck with some comfortable chairs to watch the cloudy sunset though.

The waterfront reminded Ryan and I both of  Duluth's Canal Park. It made us feel right at home.

This is Tyler. He's one of the grad students we met from Nebraska. He's pretty okay I guess. :)

And this is Shannon and Brett. They are the other two graduate students from Nebraska. They're both pretty okay too. :)

Even with the clouds, I think the sunset still turned out really nice.

 Although, after it went down, the temperature dropped a good fifteen degrees. Since none of us were prepared for that, we had to stop enjoying the beautiful scenery and head back to our warm apartments.





Saturday:

We didn't do much of anything Saturday during the day. Outdoor "Beer Games" were the scheduled orientation activity for Saturday at 5pm. We decided not to head out until around 6:30pm in order to have enough time to eat dinner and to cut down the amount of time we spent outside so we didn't freeze. Ryan and I and our Nebraska Friends were really excited to play some outdoor beer pong or witness some drunken three-legged-races, but there wasn't a whole lot of "Beer Games" going on by the time we showed up. And we missed the three-legged-races! All the fun appeared to have fizzled out, and all that was left was a bunch of college kids drinking in a field.

To pass the time, we checked out this cool old car that our Phosare, Niklas, owned and waited for the next round of games to begin.

But, unfortunately, the only thing that transpired during the two hours we sat outside in this field was a game of "Clothesline".

For those of you back home who have never heard of this game, it's really rather simple... You split up into groups and see whose group can make the longest line with the clothes they were previously wearing. Needless to say, this was yet another European drinking game that we didn't partake in. But I did get some pretty good pictures of the dedicated Frenchmen.

Now you may be asking yourself... "How can you tell from across the field who's French and who isn't?" And my reply to that is... "They're the only ones brave/drunk/stupid enough to get completely naked when it's only 40 degrees outside." And that's a proven fact. The only ones who took off every single piece of clothing they were wearing were French men.



Sunday:
Sunday we literally didn't leave our apartment. It was our day of rest after these last two weeks of orientation to prepare for the semester and our Swedish exam that we had today. After staying out at the nightclub until almost 3am, it was definitely needed.


Well, that about wraps it up. Hope you all enjoyed reading about and seeing the pictures from arguably the craziest school-sponsored orientation ever. Tomorrow marks the beginning of a new adventure for us in Sweden: school.

Paying to pay your rent

Here's an annoying thing about Sweden...

You have to pay your rent or any of your other bills at a bank.

Which may not seem like that big of a deal, except our landlord is located right across campus. We could walk across campus, pay our rent, and walk back in less than twenty minutes flat. Plus, it's right by the grocery store on campus. So it's not even out of our way.

The nearest bank, however, is in downtown Lulea. You can probably see now why this is annoying. We have to pay to take the bus downtown to pay our rent, even though our landlord is five times closer than the nearest bank. And then.. on top of paying to take the bus, you have to pay a fee to the bank for them to assist you in paying your bill! Even though there is no other way for you to pay it! It's frustrating and beyond annoying.

I suppose the only alternative would be to not pay the rent and lose our apartment. But since it's already dropping into the 40's at night... and it's not even September... I guess we'll just suck it up and pay them their damn $5 fee every month.

But it's still annoying.

When orientation hits the middle of the second week...

There hasn't been much to report on over here this week. Ryan and I got sick of the orientation activities rather quickly and stopped attending most of the events. The thing is, orientation can be really helpful for new students. It really can. It allows them time to make some friends before starting classes, find their way around campus, and get acclimated to their surroundings. Unfortunately, I don't think it takes a full two weeks to accomplish these things. I also don't think that having a party every night for two straight weeks helps get you in the mood to start school. Don't get me wrong, I love a good party more than the average person. I really do. But I get burnt out quickly. I can't do the same exact thing every single night. And besides, my love of sleep usually outweighs my love of parties. Lesson learned this week: orientation should NEVER be more than a full week.

So... instead of participating in an over-priced ($15/person) and underrated (cold ribs) dinner for our group yesterday, Ryan and I took the bus downtown. We had to go down at some point this week to pay our rent at the bank, and since it was the first sunny day in a while we took advantage of the nice weather.

After the rent was paid we decided to explore two of the malls in Lulea. We didn't buy anything, but we did have a good time laughing at some of the crazy fashion and outrageous prices. Here are a few snapshots of our adventure:

This is what the inside of the mall looked like:




They are very similar to American malls, but the weird thing is that you can't tell at all from the outside. They look just like all the other regular buildings downtown. They're not extraordinarily large and they don't have a huge expanse of parking lot surrounding them.

But they do have moving sidewalks that connect the floors!


And stores with really unique names! Haha


And interesting display cases for shoes!


But.. probably the most shocking thing we discovered that the malls in Lulea have is outrageously priced merchandise.


This same video game in the US would cost somewhere between $50-$60. But here it is 599 SEK. Or, equivalently, about $90! Crazy, right?!

Also, I found this really cute rain jacket in a store that was just my color. So of course Ryan had to model it for me...


And I considered buying it. Until I took a closer look at the price tag....


That's almost $620!!! For a rain jacket!!! Needless to say, I didn't end up buying it.

All in all, it was a good day. We got our rent paid, we had a good time walking around the mall, and we ate dinner at Maxx's. (It's like a more expensive, better tasting version of McDonalds. It's Ryan's favorite place to eat so far.)

Now it's off to study for my first exam in Sweden. Tomorrow I have the listening portion of the exam for my Swedish class. Ryan doesn't have his until Friday. Just one more reason I wish that I had his professor instead of mine...

Happy Hump Day Everyone!

Swedes invent gross drinking games...

Today's orientation activity was a Kaps Tournament. For those of you not interested in learning about this fascinating Swedish drinking game, all you really need to know is that it's gross and very unsanitary... For all those interested in broadening their knowledge of drinking games, please read on.

Kaps is sort of like a mix between Quarters, Beer Pong, and King's Cup. First, everyone in your group of up to six people chooses a drink that they want to play with. (Over here it's usually either beer or cider, but you could play with straight liquor or mixed drinks if you so choose I suppose.) Next, you put your name on a cup and fill the cup with your chosen drink. Another cup without a name is then filled with equal parts of everyone's drink. All of the cups are arranged in a circle on the floor with the unnamed cup in the center. Everyone then forms a circle by sitting a leg's length away from their cup. And now the real fun begins!







After the cups are arranged, you take turns "challenging each other" by trying to toss a bottle cap into another person's cup. If you make it into one belonging to someone other than yourself, that person must try to retaliate by throwing a bottle cap into your cup as well. If they are successful in making it, you must toss a cap into their cup again, and so on until one of the two misses. The person to miss must finish what's in their cup, dump out the bottle cap, refill, and take their turn challenging someone. If a person accidentally lands a cap in their own cup, they are required to drink up and try again.

Now... I'm sure you're curious to know about the middle unnamed cup filled with miscellaneous beers and ciders. (Yum!) If someone happens to land a bottle cap into that cup instead of one with a name on it, they are required to drink the full miscellaneous cup and their own cup while everyone else has a "social" and drinks at the same time. All of the cups are then refilled and replaced. The game continues.

Doesn't that sound horrible and against some sort of health code? There are all these different dirty hands and mouths that touch these bottle caps that have been on the unswept floor?! And then you're just supposed to let it land in your drink, finish off the drink, and dig the thing out to keep playing with it? I don't think so! The 5% of alcohol that's in beer does NOT kill all the bacteria you're ingesting, I don't care what anyone says. I guess it's just the Swede's way of getting the most out of their free healthcare. Needless to say, Ryan and I did not participate.

The tournament was pretty interesting to watch, though. After two hours of practicing everyone was pretty happy and buzzed up by the time the competition started. Although they were awful loud. It took place in the basement of one of the buildings on campus in a room with a bar. Go figure?








In the end, a girl from our home classroom ended up winning the first round of the tournament when we combined. Which I think is double cool because she's a girl and she's from our group. I guess she went on to another room for the final round to decide who was the ultimate winner amongst the orientation students. We didn't stick around to watch that or find out, but I hope she won.

And if not, I hope at the very least that she doesn't get too sick from all that dirt and toe-jam she drank along with her beer.

STUK

As promised, here are some pictures from STUK (the on-campus nightclub). These pictures are from 80's night. Enjoy!




















Just in case you're curious... no we don't actually know the guy who was half naked and swinging his shirt around. I just felt like taking a picture of him because he was crazy. Haha

Orientation, Swedish Style

Tuesday was the kick-off to International Student Orientation here. We had the little presentation in the afternoon and a BBQ that night.

Wednesday our Swedish classes began. So far, I've gathered that not only is my Swedish professor completely incompetent, she also hates Americans. The first day of class when we were learning basic phrases, she very rudely corrected me when I said "Jag talar engelska." (I speak English.) She told me that I do not, in fact, speak English. I speak American. American? Really? Even the Swedes laughed at me when I told them that. On top of her strong dislike for Americans, she's also a very poor teacher. Ryan has learned infinitely more in the short time we've been taking lessons. I'm just glad that I can compare notes with him because next week we all take the same final exam. And we're all expected to know the same material. Even those of us with less than intelligent, anti-American professors.

Wednesday night we were introduced to our first "Class Party". Meeting with our orientation groups in various classrooms throughout the campus, we were expecting the generic get-to-know-you name games and things like that. Instead, we found a make-shift bar set up at the instructor's desk, loud music (which always seems to be American over here), and plenty of drinking games. The variety of games shocked us, but each for different reasons.

The first game we played was telephone. This game was, in fact, identical to the one you are thinking of. It is the game that most of us play as a child, except this time it was played by dozens of foreign college students who were all having the time of their life. One of our Phosare, Niklas, was beside himself with excitement while playing this. He was literally giddy with anticipation waiting to hear what the last person would say when the word or phrase had finally made it all the way around the circle. I don't think I can accurately describe how happy he was. Since we can only use words, we'll leave it at the fact that Swedes LOVE telephone.

The second shocking game we played was called "Horse Race". Everyone was gathered into a giant circle, seated on a chair. Two decks of regular playing cards were used for this game. Everyone seated in the circle was given one card. One of the group leaders used the second deck of cards. The leader would draw a card from the deck and yell out the suit. If your card was of the suit called, you were to move directly one chair to your right. If the chair to your right was occupied, it didn't matter. You sat in their lap. The game got more interesting as it continued because there was a twist to it: You were not allowed to move at all if you had someone on your lap, even if your suit was called. This made for giant piles of up to 9 people sitting on one chair. The game continued until a person had made it all the way around the circle. Thus, that person was the winner because their "horse" had made it all the way around the "track". If you weren't able to guess why this was shocking, it was rather uncomfortable to sit on a strangers lap and visa versa.

The third and final game we played that first class party was probably the most shocking of all. It's name was "Mega Twister". When they first started talking about it, we assumed it must've been the one with the colored circles and the spinner... but we were wrong. This game started by dividing the large group into three smaller groups and assigning one leader to each. And, instead of a giant mat with different circles that we expected, there were simply three piles of little sheets of paper. These papers contained both the English and Swedish words for different body parts. (I think they were trying to incorporate something educational?!?) The leader would draw two pieces of paper. It would be up to the group members to hold the papers between the two body parts listed on the pieces of paper. This was shocking because combinations ranged from "Shin and Knee" to "Mouth and Cheek". The object of the game was to see which group could get the most pieces of paper held between various body parts without dropping them.

The Class Party first began at 6 pm Wednesday. These and other various games accompanied by heavy drinking continued for approximately three hours before it was time to go to the on-campus nightclub, STUK. (Pronounced stook) Yes, I said on-campus nightclub. Ryan and I decided against going the first night because the line to get in was over 500 people long. I found out the next day that it was the right decision. One girl that I spoke to said she waited in line nearly two hours before paying the 60 SEK ($9) to get in.

The last few days have pretty much been the same:
Daytime... various orientation activities and Swedish lessons.
6 pm... Class party begins
9 pm... Leave classroom party to go to on-campus nightclub.
3 am... STUK closes, and there is an after-party at someone's apartment complete with more alcoholic beverages and drunk snacks.

So far, Ryan and I have yet to experience the 3 am after-after party. I really don't know how people do it when they have Swedish class every morning. Actually, I take that back... I do know how they do it. But I don't think my anti-American professor would look too kindly on me if I stumbled into class at 10 am. Although she doesn't seem to mind when all the French do... oh well.

On Thursday we went to STUK for the first time. It was 80's night and people got pretty into it by dressing up. The bar was really cool! There was also a live band in one of the rooms that was actually really good. The bar's outside area designated for smokers had a little tent set up and they were grilling brats. And these weren't like the hotdogs we had at the BBQ... they were actually good! I'm talking like amazing. Probably, hands down, the most delicious brat I've ever had.

Unfortunately, blogger is being weird right now and it won't let me upload the pictures I have from the nightclub. I guess it will have to wait until tomorrow. Please, don't hold your breath and try not to let the suspicion kill you in the next 24 hours. We don't need the excitement of our blog to be killing anyone... we can't afford to fly back for a funeral. ;)

Our New Home

Sorry it's been a couple days since we've done a post... Things got pretty busy once we started our Swedish classes and orientation kicked into high gear. It took a lot of ambition to even think about posting about all the things that have happened here since Wednesday. And after thinking about it for a long time, I decided to wait until tomorrow. Today, instead, I will do a post with pictures of our new apartment. I've been meaning to do it for a while now. I figure then it's a win-win situation. Everyone can see where we are living now, and I don't have to put too much effort in today. Haha. Well, here ya go... (Keep in mind, these pictures are from the first day we moved in so everything is pretty bare.)

This is the outside of our apartment building. We live to the very left on the 6th floor:



Our floor's hallway:



When you walk into our apartment and turn left, there is the bathroom:



The toilet seat is on the floor because Ryan got mad at it. It doesn't fit quite right, and so when you sit on the toilet the seat rests on your back. Just living the dream.... haha. This is also before we had a shower curtain too.



Going straight ahead from the entryway, is our bedroom:



It's much larger than any other bedroom we've ever had.



And there's tons of closet space.



There is only one thing slightly wrong with our bedroom: we have two twin beds pushed together as "our bed". We've come to appreciate it, though, because we can have our own bed and still feel like we're sleeping in the same one. It's also really nice because we have two sets of sheets for them as well. No more hogging blankets! Yay! I have a feeling we might have a hard time adjusting to our little full sized bed when we return to America... Oh well, that's not for another 10 months!



If you turn right from the entryway, there is our kitchen/dining room/living room:





My favorite thing about our whole living room is that they painted one of the walls blue. It makes it feel a lot warmer and brighter. Plus, it takes away the prison-like feeling you get with all white walls.



I love our kitchen. There's a ton of counter space, and the little blue sun tiles really brighten it up. Although, I wouldn't mind if it had a microwave and a dishwasher...





And here are some of the lovely views that can be seen from our new home:









Here are a few pictures that I've taken from around campus as well:









The campus is pretty small. There are only 6 buildings that are all right on the main street that runs through it. A really interesting fact about the university is that all of the buildings look different and are different colors. They call the road that runs through campus "Rainbow Alley" because of it. I guess they figure if they aren't going to have the whole campus be connected, they may as well make it easy to find where you're going. I will definitely appreciate that when I'm walking to class in November when it's dark outside and snowing.

Well, that's all for today. Tomorrow I will find some more ambition and write about orientation and all the exciting things we've been doing this week.