Swedish Stories

Exams and All Saint's Day (SPOOOKY) 11/15

2009-11-15T12:41:00.000-08:00

Hello All, Sven Here!

Events of the Week:

So it has been some time since the last Swedish Stories Edition- but don’t fret, this week we’re covered! The biggest reasons for other time allocation has been group presentations and a 5 hour final exam for the whole first semester.. ahh! Let me quickly point out that we received our grades this week and we’re in the clear with a solid 4.0!

Also, our program was proud in it's involvement in Mustache October! Many of the guys (and some of the women) made a pact to grow mustaches and keep them until after the final exam. Here is a picture to commemorate the glorious occasion.. (ladies, eat your hearts out!!!)

On another note, we have just started working with the BBC in London for a few months! We are planning a trip to London on Dec 4 for a few days to work “on-site” to get a better feel for the situation, and see the city as well. We are super excited!

Swedish Culture:

In other news, on November 1^st, Sweden celebrates “All Saint’s Day.” This is a day of reflection and remembrance. The custom is to light candles on family graves and it is very beautiful when the entire graveyard is lit with candles. A bunch of us took a walk through the graveyard at night to be apart of the tradition. Although it was a bit eerie walking through the graveyard, we managed to keep quiet and fit in until “somebody” threw a stick into the woods, which scared the girls, who screamed and made a commotion…. Woops!

Swedish Word:

Tack så mycket means thank you very much. Pretty much everyone in the program has adapted their “common” talk to include a few Swedish words- this is one of the most prevalent and fun to say! (Toc-sue-meeket)

Video of the Week:

The last few weeks have also been full with making a video to summarize our program’s involvement in “350 Day!” Spud and I spent a lot of time on the footage, editing, and creating music for it. So here is a link to it to check it out!

-Sven

Visitors, Copenhagen, 350 Day!

2009-10-25T06:35:00.000-07:00

Hello All, Sven Here!

Events of the Week:

Though booked with work and projects the past week, we were still able to make time for some fun. Last weekend, Spud and I had visitors from PA, our lovely ladies- Ali and Leah! We only had about four days together, so we tried to make the most of our time by neglecting all work and skipping class! We spent the first few days in Sweden exploring the town, checking out the shops, and eating the local food such as kebabs and egg pizza!

On Sunday, the four of us went to Copenhagen, Denmark. We climbed the Christians Church in Christianshavn, saw a 100 places exhibit in the town’s center showing pictures of places being threatened by climate change, enjoyed the botanical gardens, and even stopped by a local blues club for some “everyday” musical pleasure! Eventually the girls had to head off from Copenhagen and fly back to Philadelphia, as sad at it was.

The City of Copenhagen

Christianshavn

Yesterday, our class organized an event for 350 Day- a day devoted to raising awareness on climate change and attempt to create hope for the Climate Conferences in Copenhagen in a few weeks. 350 is the scientifically based safe number of parts per million of Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This is the upper limit to keep the earth safe from “runaway” climate change. Currently, we are at 389ppm. http://www.350.org/

Swedish Culture:

When Ali was here to visit, we thought it would be nice to go see a movie in the theater. I explained to her that even though we are in Sweden, the movie was from America and so it would be in English, and have Swedish subtitles- as all the other movies I have seen here were. Although not convinced, she agreed it would be fun. We went to see the Disney animation “Up.” We walked into the theater, had to ask if Up was playing, had to ask for popcorn and a drink, had to talk to the guy checking the tickets- all in English. They gave us funny looks- but I explained to Ali that they all spoke English and were probably just stunned by our beauty! The previews were all in Swedish, and Ali would not drop it that the movie might be in Swedish- so again I explained to her the whole story of how there are Swedish movies that they advertise in the previews, but the main movie is in English. Well a few minutes later, the main movie came on- finally! And do you know what the first words that were said were?

Me neither- it was in Swedish! So we ended up staying the rest of the movie, watching it in Swedish, not understanding any dialog, but following the plot pretty loosely. So Ali and I have our next date already planned- to go see the movie “Up” in English!

Ali, Matt, Leah, and Spud in Copenhagen

-Sven (Matt)

Kalmar Castle and Glass Blowing

2009-10-12T07:54:00.000-07:00

Hello All, Sven Here!

Events of the Week:

So this past week was not too busy with only 3 hours of class each day. Beyond that, we just had to write an essay by the end of the week. We had guest lectures from Dr. Mark Everard from the UK and Sophie Dunkerley, a former graduate of the program who is currently working for the European Union addressing environmental policy.

But the highlight of the week was the anticipation of some guests from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the Marshalls! Spud’s parents arrived Thursday evening after visiting London for a few days and embraced us with their presence until Monday morning. On Saturday we went out to an area called Kalmar, which has a very old castles. Although not very elaborate, the castle was a strategic war position post. There were many chambers for prisoners and dungeons that still had prisoners’ punishment devices, beds, and sketches on the walls from the 1500s. After exploring the castle, complete with a taxidermy horse, Anita, a work horse at the castle, and interrupting a Christening, we proceeded a “city of glass.”

We were fortunate enough to arrive at Kosta Boda at a time when many workers were performing their art of glass blowing. It is a very interesting activity to watch because each step along the way adds another dimension to the creation of some very artistic and creative glass creations. We were not able to try it ourselves, though I’ve heard if you go before October, you may be able to.

Finally Sunday night we celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving! It is very similar to American Thanksgiving as far as food goes. We had turkey, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, bread, stuffing, beets, vegetables, and apple pie for dessert! It was fantastic, and a great excuse to celebrate two thanksgivings while we’re here!

Swedish Fun Fact:

Many women in Swedish times were punished just as harshly as men. “Strong” women were forced to carry very heavy stones around their neck. If you got into a fight with another girl, you were locked together with that person with a plank of wood. Other punishments included whipping, the “float or drown” test for witchcraft, buried alive for adultery, and tying the woman’s hair to the ceiling by a spinning wheel to force her to work.

Swedish Dish:

This week we had the opportunity to try Swedish Fondue. You pick your sauces (we tried red wine, garlic, a seafood sauce, and a vegetable sauce) and they bring out a large pot of the sauce and keep it over a flame. They also bring out unlimited supplied of raw fish, beef, chicken, vegetables, etc. You just create your meal on a stick and put it in the pot to cook. You’re in charge of your own, so keep track of where all your skewers are at all times and how long they’ve been in, or you’ll end up with leather.

Stockholm Pictures

2009-10-07T15:44:00.000-07:00

Stockholm pictures are finally edited and posted! Check them out... I'll write back soon with more updates and specifics from the trip. Parents are on their way over tomorrow though to visit so it will take a little bit to write something up.
-Spud

A Weekend in Stockholm

2009-10-05T11:01:00.000-07:00

Hello All, Sven Here!

This weekend we travelled to Stockholm with a few people from the program! We stayed in a hostel and got a chance to explore the capital of Sweden a bit, despite some inclement weather. We did quite a bit of sightseeing because the city was much bigger than Karlskrona and yet very clean for a larger city. The buildings had a very European look to them as well. We did see a few people sitting on the streets asking for money for the first time since arriving.

Stockholm is also a huge shopping town. There are malls everywhere including under the streets, with H&M stores as frequent as Starbucks is in the states. Stockholm also is on the water and is surrounded by many islands that have various attractions including large parks, museums, and fishing.

One of the places we visited was the Museum of Modern Art which happened to have the travelling Salvador Dali exhibit this month. It was very impressive seeing how diverse this man was- from writing, to fashion design, artist, worked with Walt Disney, etc. I happened to be walking in the museum past a huge ball, that I thought was some sort of artsy chair (you know those artsy people), it looked kind of fuzzy so as I walked by, I stuck out my hand to touch it. Suddenly, a museum security representative wearing earphones and full gear confronted me. Turns out this “ball” was one of the art pieces on display, had “Do not Touch” signs all around it, a black box on the floor of “Do not Enter,” and was painted with poison paint! After a Swedish lecture on manners and how to act in a museum, I was escorted to the restroom to wash off any poison.

Finally, on Sunday, we visited a large park on a nearby island which was home to the Vasa Museum. The Vasa was a Viking ship that sank on its maiden voyage in 1628. It was salvaged in 1961 and reconstructed in the museum as 95% the original materials. It was splendidly adorned with hundreds of carved sculptures. It was very impressive to see the craftsmanship that went into these vessels. The ship was huge and they had exhibits all around telling of how the made the ship, about the Vikings, life on board, etc. One scary piece of information was that punishment on the ship was performed by tying a person to a rope and throwing them into the water, then they would drag the person under the ship to the other side, if the person survived, they surely did not misbehave again. http://www.vasamuseet.se/InEnglish/about.aspx

Swedish Fun Fact:

The hostel we stayed at in Stockholm was split into two parts. The one part was a normal hostel building, the other half of the hostel was on a ship in the sea anchored right outside the building. It is a bit more expensive to stay on the ship, and we did not book it in time, however, it is quite a neat idea for a hostel.

Swedish Dish: Tunnebrod Rulleor

Tunnebrod Rulleor is a Swedish fast food cuisine that can be found in pizzerias or street stands. It is a sausage wrapped in a flatbread along with mashed potatoes, lettuce, fried onions, ketchup, and mustard. I think it is fantastic! However I typically get two, because it is not the most filling of entrées.

Swedish Culture:

So I found out that if you want to go out to a nice restaurant, bar, or club for an evening, Sweden has a dress code. This dress code is primarily based on footwear. You cannot wear sneakers out because they will not let you in. They want you to wear nice leather shoes/boots. So I took the opportunity to get the cheapest, stylish boots I could find. The “style” here is a looong tipped boot, so after your foot stops, there is still a few inches of boot until it forms a point. This is fine and looks natural unless you have a size 13 US shoe, 47 European. Adding a few inches makes my feet look like, as Spud stated, “Ronald McDonald.”

Picture of the Week:

- Matt (Sven)

Club Zebra Safari

2009-09-27T13:37:00.001-07:00

The first party of the year at Club Zebra took place this past weekend. The theme was safari and everyone was required to dress as some sort of animal - well we sure got quite the variety of animals, everything from zebras (somewhat expected), ducks, polar bears, spiders, and even a dung beetle (and yes, accompanied by a dung ball).

Matt and I were finally able to play with speakers and lighting again, so that was welcomed. Check out a bunch of the pictures from the party on our picasa site.

All of at Club Zebra dressed up as zebras by using painters tape, face paint, and spiking our hair into zebra-like mohawks.

New Member of the Matt Guitar Family!

2009-09-27T09:50:00.000-07:00

This morning marks the birth of the newest member of the Matt Guitar Family, this one with Swedish Heritage! Since I was not able to fit a guitar into my suitcase to bring to Sweden, I decided to order a kit from Carvin that had all the parts needed to construct your own guitar. Everything is custom picked from shape to neck size to inlays, colors, pickups etc. So the guitar finally arrived Thursday after much back and forth with the postman and the nights since have been occupied by applying coats of finish. Finally Sunday the last bit of wiring, piecing together, and tickering was completed! I am still trying to think of a good name for it, so any ideas you may have are welcome to be submitted! From here, I'd just let some pictures take you through the journey in a piece I'm calling "Me and My Guitar!"

-Sven

Matt Receives "Runner Up" Award

2009-09-22T06:07:00.000-07:00

This Just In: Matt Receives "Runner Up" award for Super Glue Incident!

The students in the MSLS program have organized a weekly prize trophy to be presented to a "Person of the Week." This person is someone in the program who has carried out a great charitable act, has obtained an extraordinary achievement, or performed a complete bonehead move. This past week's winner, Nana, received the award for her contribution to helping organize and take responcibility for numerous tasks among the program. Although there was strong debate on this week's decision, Matt (Sven) Lobach received runner up for his performance of Super-gluing his head (represented a few posts below through a stick-figure recreation). Thank you to all who nominated, voted, and supported Matt throughout this performance!-Sven

Hoedown Video

2009-09-22T04:47:00.001-07:00

Hey folks,

For those of you still waiting for the video from our 1st individual presentations of the program, here it is. We'll try and get ahold of the higher quality video (taken from the camera you see in the video below) and post it later, but for now this will get the idea across.

Sven's Field Trip Observations

2009-09-21T14:55:00.000-07:00

Hello All, Sven Here!

Events of the Week:

It certainly has been a busy few weeks- 2 presentations last week and our first exam-WOO followed by a fieldtrip to Vaxjo, Sweden “The Greenest City in Europe” over the weekend. The first presentation was to explain many different concepts that we had learned during the first few weeks including the sustainability challenge, using backcasting as a decision making tool, and explaining the 4 principles of sustainability and the scientific foundations they are based on. The 2^nd presentation was a group analysis of a company in the context of sustainable development. Our group chose to evaluate Whistler Blackcomb, a ski resort in British Columbia, Canada, and the location of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.

About 60 of the 75 Masters students here left for Vaxjo at 830am Friday morning and returned at 6pm Sunday evening. We had a few stops along the way including Vaxjo city hall, a tour of “the wooden city,” hotel stay at Blidingshold, a visit to a car cemetery, and a tour at Wanas Foundation. Probably the neatest was the Car cemetery- which is just an abandoned car lot, but its been there for so long that the cars are being taken back over by nature. Plants, moss and trees are growing up around them, the steal frames are rusted and breaking down. However, the plastics in the steering wheels are fully intact and don’t look like their older than a year. Also, all the leakage into the soil of the cars breaking down has seeped into the stream water running near by.

Swedish Fun Fact:

I have noticed that telling jokes to people whose first language is not English is a mistake and just should not be attempted. I am discovering that jokes are very much based on sayings and cultures. I took the opportunity on the 2 hour bus ride home to share some jokes with some of my new friends from Sweden and the United Kingdom. The US actually gets a bit of its comedy from Britain, examples being “the office, whose line is it anyway, monty python, etc. However, Swedish humor must be very different. Check out this one that did not get a laugh, can you believe it???:

A guy, Joe, walks into a bar and sits down. On the counter there is a small bowl of peanuts. As he reaches to grab some, one of the peanuts yells, “Hey Joe, looking good today! Is that a new hair cut?” Joe, surprised, asked the bartender, “what’s up with the peanuts?” The bartender explained, “Oh don’t worry about them, their complimentary.”

Swedish Dish:

At the hotel for breakfast every morning we were offered a traditional Swedish breakfast buffet. I will just list some of the yummy items on the menu. First off there are hard boiled eggs, a spread of ham, bologna, warm sausage, bread with jellies and other funny looking spreads that I didn’t touch. Also, they serve salmon and local eel (at a cool refrigerated temperature). Finally, a staple is “create your own cereal” by just having some cornflakes, and some oatmeal, and other brans that you can put together in a bowl however you like. Then instead of milk, you have your choice of vanilla or blueberry yogurt to bind it all together. It actually all is pretty good- though I think they’re missing some bacon.

Swedish Word:

Utfart means exit. Utfart can be found all around the city and once you get over the funny little resemblance to the English word that is captured in Utfart, you begin to realize how helpful this word is. Keep in mind, when the country’s language is Swedish, all signs on doors by English speakers are determined by guess and check. When approaching the door you realize what you are about to open could be a variety of different things: If your lucky, it’s a bathroom or an exit, but occasionally you’ll hit the “emergency exit only” door. So learning Utfart, as I did last week was a great step in determining what doors are what, and a step away from the guess and check method!

-Sven

Weekend Retreat

2009-09-21T08:09:00.000-07:00

Last night, Matt and I got back from a weekend retreat and field trip with our class to Vaxjo, Blidingsholm, and the Wanas Foundation. This weekend has resulted in the most pictures thus far from our time in Sweden, so be sure to check out the picasa site for plenty of more pictures!

Vaxjo

We started our trip by heading to Vaxjo early Friday morning, a city dubbed as "the greenest city in europe." We met with two individuals who discussed the environmental science behind practices and policies in Vaxjo in addition to their city planning considerations.

The city prides itself on striving towards becoming completely fossil fuel free. They currently use over 90% renewable energy. More impressive than their actual practices (because they still have awhile to go on many areas) was the cooperation between politicians.

Vaxjo politicians have been ahead of the curve when it comes to recognizing issues such as climate change and have worked across party lines to reduce their emissions. As a result, they are often used as a case study when looking at environmental issues and politics in addition to economic growth vs. reduced emissions.

Castle on the lake in Vaxjo

In addition to the talks, we spent the rest of our day walking through the town and hanging out by the central lake. For dinner, we went to a local kebab and pizza shop (I'm starting to think that this may in fact be the national dish of Sweden). As usual, I was unable to read anything on the menu, so I just asked the guy at the counter to order me the best pizza they had. I ended up getting the 'Em' pizza which is none other than a kebab on a pizza - fantastic!

Kebab Pizza - and yes there are fries on there

Blidingsholm

That night, we then drove to the Blidingsholm retreat center. On Saturday, we woke up to our first swedish pancakes (at least so we think) since being here. Not only were they swedish pancakes, but they were in the shape of hearts. We were off to a pretty good start this morning.

One of the three retreat homes

The retreat center itself was beautiful - lots of red and white barns scattered throughout the forest with lakes and streams running all over the property. For the good part of the morning and afternoon, we did a few group activities (along with a healthy amount of soccer and ultimate frisbee mixed in). That night, we then had a huge group cookout. (Hot dogs for nearly 100 people takes quite awhile to cook!)

Cookout

Car Cemetery and Wanas Foundation

The following morning, we woke up and got breakfast and then loaded onto a double-decker bus for our next stop. First, we stopped at a Car Cemetery with an interesting back story. Quite a few years ago there was an older man who was starting a junkyard on his property to resell the parts for scrap and replacements. Over the years he gathered quite a few cars and scattered them throughout the forest on his property. After a bit, the business wasn't making any money and the government told him he needed to scrap the scrapyard. However, he had no money to remove all the vehicles nor the money to pay the fine if he didn't move the cars.

To avoid having to pay, he convinced the government to let him keep the cars on the property as an 'art' piece to show over the years what happens when humans pick up and leave their stuff behind in nature. After a couple decades, nature has slowly grown completely around the cars, creating an eerie mixture of nature and technology. It is now a protected cutural historical site.

Car Cemetery

After the car cemetery, we drove onto the Wanas Foundation, a beautiful art foundation. The property consists of 'a medieval castle, an organic farm, and a sculpture park.' For the rest of the afternoon, we wandered throughout the forest and around the lake checking out the many outdoor sculptures. The site was full of surprises and contained some pretty funky art pieces.

One of the main art pieces entitled 'Atlantis' with the castle in the background. This piece is an attempt to show our culture's blindness to climate change. Coming from the sinking classical swedish home are noises of a mother making dinner, kids playing, and adults talking. It is showing that we continue to go about our everyday lives completely unaware of climate change and the impact it has on our society (as demonstrated by the sinking home)

A few of the pieces you could even climb on. One piece was a series of 11 rope swings tied at various heights in a pretty big tree. Now, I'm curious if anyone has ever managed to swing on all of them, but after seeing the one swing about 30 feet up in the air, I was determined to climb to it. A few minutes later I found myself sitting in a swing higher than I've ever swung before (with no immediate desire to try and figure out how to get back down).

Rope Swing art piece (I'm the one way at the top)

After lunch and some more exploring, we boarded the bus and drove back to Karlskrona. Today is a free day for us (well, technically a 'study' day) with class starting back up tomorrow.

- Spud

Viking Boats and Beds

2009-09-12T12:17:00.000-07:00

Well it's Wednesday and we just finished both our individual and group presentations this past week. The past few days have been extremely busy and action-filled, so I'll try to go back and recap some of the highlights.

On Saturday, a group of us from the program went sailing on the Baltic. Together, we had a small motorboat, two smaller sail boats (dinghy's), and one large 'viking' sailboat capable of holding 12 people (I'm not kidding, the boat is actually an old Viking-style boat that looks pretty sweet).

Check out our pictures at our picasa site.

We started off in the late morning and after figuring out how to get the sails up (we did have one native sailing Swede with us, thanks Sven, that knew what he was doing), we were towed out to the open water (relatively, we were still among the many islands surrounding Karlskrona) by the motor boat. Once on our own, we managed to sail towards the local Yacht Club to meet up with the two dinghy's. Now there was one instance where we had to spin around in a full circle to avoid a rocky island fairly close to us - not exactly the most efficient way of sailing but it got us to where we wanted to go.

For the next few hours, we sailed out to an island called Aspo that has an old naval fortress built on it. We spent lunch there and explored many of the random rooms and hallways throughout the fortress. Then coming back to Karlskrona, Matt and I both switched over to the smaller dinghy's. And boy was that an experience. For those of you unfamiliar with sailing, the main sail has a very large (and pretty solid) bar that swings out along the bottom to support the sail. This bar is known as the boom. Now the boom is named the boom for one main reason - and new sailors quickly come to understand this. I was no exception.

I was sailing with two other guys, one of which has done some sailing in the past and was able to help guide us back home. Wyeth was in charge of steering, Dylan was on the front sail, and I was tasked with operating the boom. Immediately as we left the dock, we quickly realized how important it was to properly align both the sails. After a bit of commotion trying to figure out how to move the sails, we began to get the hang of what to do.

And that's when I learned how the boom sail got it's name.

So one of the important parts of sailing is a move called tacking. When sailing with the wind, t's fairly easy to get to where you want to go. However when you are sailing into the wind, you need to strategically zig-zag back and forth to eventually get you in the right direction. This is known as tacking.

So the captain, or the guy steering, is the one responsible for announcing when to tack. When he states 'come about,' both the people on the sails release the ropes holding the sail down and then let the sails swing to the other side of the boat. Now this isn't that difficult to do with the front sail, but the boom sail requires some concentration. Once you release your rope and the boat begins to turn around, the boom sail rather quickly comes swinging around to the other side.

Now, to be fair, I really didn't know this was about to happen (at least so quickly). But I quickly found out that when the boom starts to swing, you better be ducking. Sadly, this was not the case for the first time, and my forehead quickly met the boom sail (or more exactly, the boom bar). Fortunately, I had a hat on and the bar caught part of the rim and slightly ricocheted off my head. So it could have been worse, but I most deffinitely did not make that mistake again.

The rest of the sail back was pretty easy going and we ended up getting back first to meet up with the rest of the crew coming in the Viking boat. After sitting in the port for about 45 minutes, we finally saw the motorboat peak around one of the islands with the Viking boat towed behind. Unsure why it had taken them so long to return, we at the dock were slightly confused when we finally saw the boat pull into port with many of the people on the boat wearing dripping wet pants.

What we soon found out was that on the way home, the Viking boat apparently steered themselves straight into a shallow cove and beached themselves on an uninhabited island. 30 minutes later and after half of the group had got into the water to try and push the boat out, they finally found the motorboat who helped them get pulled to port.

So needless to say, it was an eventful day. So we decided to celebrate and grab pizza at one of the local shops. As with any other incident where we have to try and order from a Swedish menu, we had no idea what we were about to eat. So I was pleasantly surprised when I found in the center of my pizza a hardboiled egg. Way to go Swedes!

So that was Saturday, then on Sunday we got some different and sadly disappointing news. So our class held a large garage sale to raise some money for the program. From this sale, one of our roomates Lea got a bed (which she was quite thrilled about). On Sunday however, she came to the realization that not only did she get just a bed, but she got a few friendly bug beds who decided to catch a ride.

As great as that was for the bed bugs, it wasn't so great for all of us. So the last few days have been spent washing and cleaning and washing and cleaning (and throwing out the critter carrying bed). Now, Matt wasn't too thrilled about having to touch the bed to throw it out, fearful that the bed bugs might find him more attractive than the bed them came on. So, in another brilliant idea, we poked two holes in a plastic shopping bag for him to wear as an additional protective layer. Granted a trash bag may have been a more appropriate size, but the shopping bag sufficed for the time being.

So that's been the last week. This Friday we are heading with the program on a weekend field trip to Vaxjo. This community has been classified as the greenest city in all of europe. So I'm sure there will be lots of thoughts and stories to share after this weekend.

Hope everyone back home is doing well!!

-Spud

Hoedowns and Glue

2009-09-09T09:44:00.000-07:00

Well it's mid week and the schooling part of this whole experience is beginning to set in. Unlike in engineering where I was able to avoid nearly all reading and learn simply by doing math, this master's program is going to require a significant more time spent on reading. But it's all really interesting stuff so hopefully it won't be too bad.

Some of the stuff we're going over right now includes the definition of what a human need is and how to classify them, strategies for implementing 'sustainability' into an existing structure, and figuring out what exactly 'sustainability' even means.

On Monday, we all gave short 2 minute presentations describing each of ourselves to the rest of the class. Most people did the standard get up and talk about projects they've worked on and passions they have, but our group of 5 in our apartment felt that would be a bit too normal. So the night before, we decided to spice things up slightly. We took our inspiration from 'Whose Line is it Anyway' (an improv tv show that is quite hilarious for those of you unfamiliar with it). The 5 of us each decided to write a very short poem and sing it to the tune of a hoedown. We then all went up together and did a little dance and song singing (well, let's just call it for singing) about ourselves. It was pretty fantastic and fortunately we didn't scare the professors and heads of the program too bad - I'd have to call that a successful performance! As soon as I get the video of our performance, I'll post it here. (They told us at the beginning of class that they decided to film our performances so that we can refer back to it a year from now and see how we have improved our presentation styles - hm, I guess we have to figure out how to improve either our singing or dancing)

The second funny thing that has happened this week is all thanks to Matt. So the other day, the front end of Matt's desk decided to detach itself from the rest of the desk. Considering we got all of our furniture from a second-hand store, this didn't surprise us all too much. But, Matt being his clever self, decided to grab some crazy glue and reattach the fallen off piece.

Now, it is fairly difficult to describe this without Matt physically acting it out, so I've added some drawings that might assist you in visualizing the next few moments.

Step 1: Matt is sitting on his chair and begins to place a bead of glue the entire way around the region of the desk where the piece had fallen off.
Step 2: About 3/4's of the way through, Matt accidentally squeezes too hard on the tube and puts far too much glue on the desk. As a result, a blob of glue falls onto the ground.
Step 3: Not wanting to make a mess of his room, Matt quickly decides to bend over and clean up the glue from ground.Step 4: However, in his haste, Matt proceeds to smear the top of his head all over the large glue blob on the desk which was originally causing the drip.
Step 5: Matt takes a shower for quite a long time with no luck in getting the glue out.
Step 6: Matt proceeds to tell me this fantastic story. I of course proceed to laugh for a good 10 minutes before trying to offer a solution. Sadly, I have no solution.Step 7: After trying to soak his hair in shampoo and vegetable oil, Matt decides it's time for a haircut.
All in all, it was a pretty fantastic day, and in addition, now Matt looks all clean and dapper.

So those were most of the funny things that have happened thus far. Tomorrow, a group of us are going sailing on a few different boats in the Baltic. Do we have any idea what we're doing? Nope. But that's not going to stop us.

Next week we are thinking of organizing a group to go see the world premiere of a film called "The Age of Stupid." There has been a lot of attention towards the film and I'm interested in seeing how they portray the current 'sustainability' and climate change situation, whether it's depressing at the end of the movie or motivational to make a change. Sadly it seems like too many of these films just explain all the bad things happening, without any explanation of the hope and ways of moving forward in the right direction. Here's a trailer for the film, we'll have to let you know what we think of it. Or you can go and see it yourself.

That's all the updates for now - we'll be sure to check back after sailing this weekend!

-Spud

Weekend Happenings and Food Hurdles

2009-09-06T01:30:00.001-07:00

Well it's Sunday morning and I just back from another train trip to Karlshamn to pick up a bike - hooray!! With that purchase finalized, I now feel like I have everything pretty much under control here in Sweden. Although not too many 'funny' things have happened recently, I thought I would still go through and fill everyone in on the latest happenings.

As 'Sven' mentioned before, this past week was filled with our first set of lectures and classes. Our professor is Karl-Henrik Robert (refer to the video below to get a quick re-cap of his general approach to Sustainability) in addition to a few others. Classes have been really awesome, and the energy from 80 similar-minded people in the room is contagious. The real challenge will be to keep that same energy with us once we leave the program and enter situations were not everyone has the same value system or mindset.

On Friday, we had a BBQ and found a sweet park with really nice beach volleyball courts, a field for ultimate frisbee, and a mini-golf course which seems like you just have to bring your own ball and club to - so I need to aqure both of those fairly soon. Soccer has also been a hit recently and we've got a strong group of people who play with us - hopefully we can continue that to some degree through the winter and dark times.

Yesterday, we had our class garage sale in which we sold items left behind by past students. There, we got a few beds, carpets, and kitchen items.

We also picked up a few more plants from the farmer's market - now the real test will be to not kill them. The rest of the day was spent mostly hanging out in addition to attending a meeting on a Film Festival. A few people from our class have experience in organizing film festivals and hope to do another here in Karlskrona. So if anyone has any good suggestions on what films to show, please let us know. This is a website from a film festival in Istanbul which two of our classmates organized, so we'll probably be using many of the same films.

In other news, it's been over two weeks since we've been here in Sweden and over that time, Matt and I have begun to develop a love of kebabs. We're working our way through the town to find the best (and cheapest) places that make kebabs. The food situation has been pretty good here, with a few minor hurdles to overcome.

First, peanut-butter is difficult to come by and when you do find it, it is often pretty expensive.

Second, Swedes for some reason love sauces, which is cool until it gets to the point that it's running all over you and making a royal mess.

Third, we still can't read a thing in the grocery stores so usually end up guessing on a few things every shopping trip. Last time Matt guessed correctly on Maionaise which happened to be in the form of a toothpaste-like bottle. Another problem with the language barrier is that we can't really make any recipes, because we have no idea what the ingredients are. Even a simple box of brownies is far too difficult to attempt (also considering that we haven't got a baking pan yet and would have to cook it in a pot?!?)

Fourth, and most importantly, ice cream seems to be hit and miss. There is an awesome ice cream shop that serves massive waffle cone ice creams (which we've posted about before). The locals claim it to be the best ice cream in all of Sweden (which although I haven't done very extensive traveling around Sweden, I'm willing to go with their opinion). When we discovered that our apartment is right across the street from this shop, we were thrilled, until a few days ago when we realized that the shop closes down for all of the winter, starting in a few days :( So, we went off in a search for other ice cream possibilities and ended up getting two containers of ice cream from the grocery store. Excited by our new purchase, we came home and each had a bowl-full of ice cream. Sadly however, we soon realized that this ice cream tasted nothing like that from the awesome shop downtown and rather resembles fluffy cool-whip died with food coloring. Fortunately, there are a lot of convenience stores that sell single ice cream bars and sandwiches and popsicles, but we are still out of luck for finding good old regular ice cream.

Nonetheless, we are managing to survive. The fruit issue has not presented any problems yet (which I'm sure disappoints some of you, cough, Vaughn) and additionally, I have found one of the best water fountains in all of my years of searching in the small cafeteria on campus.

That's the latest from this end, we'll hope to post back soon!

-Spud

Panoramic Shots

2009-09-04T12:04:00.001-07:00

To view more photos from Sweden, visit our picasa album. I'm starting to post a few panoramic shots from the town.
-Spud

The Natural Step Framework

2009-09-03T14:53:00.000-07:00

To get a better idea of what the Natural Step Framework is all about, check out this video clip from Karl-Henrik Robert discussing the process and system.

-Spud

First Lectures

2009-09-03T13:34:00.000-07:00

Hello All, Sven Here!

Events of the Week:

So this week was filled will all sorts of new and exciting news. We had our first days of lectures this week by 2 of our guest lecturers, Goran Broman (Founder of the Master's Program and professor at Blekinge Institute of Technology) and Karl-Henrik Robert (Founder of the Natural Step). Both lectures (5 hours each) were very interesting and really set the excitement for this coming year! We also had our first assignment due on Tuesday- a report on what we, as a group, want to create this year. The report was created through an “open-space” format- where topics are posted by students of ideas they would like to discuss then everyone can pick the discussions they would like to take part in. There are 5 principles for open-space:

- Whoever comes are the right people

- Whenever it starts is the right time

- When the discussion is done, its done

- Whatever happens is the only thing that could happen

- 2 feet rule- if you are not participating or interested, get up and be apart of

another discussion, take a walk, or just go home.

This week also marks our first swim in the chilly Baltic waters. After class on Wednesday, a bunch of us headed out to the beach by the path behind the University. There we ate some lunch and a few of us proceeded into the Baltic Sea for a swim of the rocky coastline. Floating in the water, about 100 yards out are what look like little floating houses. Upon swimming out to them, we found that they were actually floating saunas! However, they looked as though they had been abandoned and were full of trash. It even appeared as though someone had slept in it a few times as there was a pillow. Upon further investigation we found out that the saunas used to be owned by the city and were open for public use. However a few years ago, they became privately owned. Currently, no one seems to know who owns them, as they are not taken care of at all- maybe we can clean them up and claim them for ourselves!

Swedish Fun Fact:

In Sweden it is very common for them have lights in public places light apartment building hallways that only turn on for a period of time when you hit a glowing button on the wall (so the lights aren’t all the time). So on Wednesday night a bunch of us were out at a friend’s house for dinner. When we left, it was super dark outside and in the hallways. Thinking I was going to be a “knowledgeable” Swedish student, I played it cool and found something glowing on the wall opposite of the place we were exiting. I proceeded to push it in to turn the hallway lights on. When it did not work, I began pushing harder, in many different patterns and finally just held it in for a good 5 seconds in hopes the lights would turn on. At this point, a door opened and a sleepy-looking man and his Rottweiler stood in the doorway- neither speaking English. Apparently the button I decided to push was this poor sleeping man’s doorbell. I tried to apologize in my mother-tongue language.

Swedish Dish:

There does not seem to be any sort of powder drink mix here (that I can find). Ice tea, my favorite beverage is taking the biggest hit thus far. However one of the most confusing naming systems exists in the fruit juices. Apple juice here is called äppeljuice and orange juice is called apelsinjuice. If we look at this from a Spanish point of view where sin means not, we have ‘apple juice’ and “not apple juice.” I guess apple juice is the staple and everything else is just NOT apple juice. Talk about comparing apples and oranges.

Swedish Word:

This week’s Swedish word is going to take the form of their time system. Sweden uses a 24 hour system (like military time) instead of two- 12 hour repetitions each day. We have adjusted to this pretty well, in the afternoon, just take the hour number and subtract 12 to get the logical time. However, we were blind-sided when contacting a possible landlord a few days before we found our current residency. We asked if we would be able to see the apartment, the woman obliged and asked what time we wanted to see it. We had class until noon and then again in the evening, so Spud proceeded to explain to the lady that the best time to see the apartment would be “fourteen o’clock.” Maybe she did not hear, but she asked again, to which Spud again replied “fourteen o’clock.” At this moment, we were informed that you just call it normal 2 o’clock when speaking with someone, not 14 o’clock, and not even 14-hundred hours.

-Sven (Matt)

Pictures from the week:One wing of our School

Outside our Home

Our Home from the Street

The Baltic from the Beach path behind University

Bonfire and Cookout

Surprises in the Mansion

2009-08-29T15:02:00.001-07:00

So it's been a few days so far in our new place and we're now at the point where we can sit on couches, rather than the floor, in our living room (quite a step up). During the past few days however, we have discovered a few secrets about our new establishment.

Upon cleaning the other day (or more accurately, just opening and looking inside the very bare cabinets) I came across an old cardboard box (well actually, I have no idea how old it was) and a pile of 'cloth' underneath it. Intrigued, and feeling like I was actually cleaning something, I removed the objects from the shelf and came across the following two items.

Item #1:
-Inside the cardboard box I found quite a few goodies that pleasently surprised me. What I discovered was that at some point before I lived here (which has really only been the past few days) there must have been a DJ who lived at this place. I believe his name was DJ Quality (and he has a pretty sweet website). And when he moved, he must have forgot to check all the cabinets and ended up leaving most of his promotional materials behind. Convenient for us, as we now have thousands of business cards and quite a few flyers and posters for various parties, events, and clubs throughout Sweden. Most of the business cards are for a place called "Club Zebra," which we have now decided to call our mansion.

Item #2:
-Beneath the cardboard box, I found what at first I thought to be a pile of fabric - which I was excited for because I needed to get some anyway to make a wall for my bedroom. However, what I found was even better. It turns out that the fabric I found was in fact a traditional Irish kilt (complete with a furry skunk-tail-like right-hand-warmer pocket on the front, at least that's my guess at what it might be used for).

So now, when we decide to advertise for our parties at Club Zebra (at least our version of it here in the mansion) with our business cards, we can come prepared in our party outfit/kilt. I'm pretty pumped and no longer bummed that I didn't bring all my halloween costumes with me to Sweden. I'm finding replacements already!

In other news, this morning Matt and I traveled to Karlshamn (about an hour train ride from Karlskrona) to try and find some used bikes and had quite the funny morning. Matt had arranged for a lady to meet him at the train station with a bike he wanted to buy and I was planning on wandering the streets and calling some lady to find another bike for sale.

Well Matt's lady was there when we got off the train, however the bike she had with her was slightly smaller than what either of us expected. It's more of a bike for a middle schooler than a masters student. But Matt had already told the lady that he wanted to buy it so we found ourselves in a funny few minutes. The lady repeatedly asked both Matt and I if the bike was actually for us or if we knew of a small child back in Karlskrona who wanted it. She seemed confused when we kept telling her it was for us. To make the moment less awkward, Matt asked if he could take it for a test ride (which consisted of him getting on the bike and riding around in a tiny circle in front of us for about 5 seconds). I guess he was sold after that and proceeded to finalize the sale. However, neither of us had any small bills on us so he ran into the convenience store and bought an ice cream cone (which wasn't the best idea because it was pretty cold outside) to break his bill.

Then we continued on (part of the time with me riding on the back because there's a little rack on top of the back wheel - pretty much imagine two clowns at a circus on a trick bike and that's what we looked like, cruzing down the street) trying to find my lady. After an hour-long search and a few phone calls, I still couldn't understand where she lived and just gave up and got back on the train.

So I arrived back to our apartment empty-handed and Matt returned with a slightly smaller bike than expected (which should work once the seat is raised, but currently it is as low as it can go and we have no tools to raise it - bummer).

So those are the latest discoveries, if anything else pops up or happens we'll be sure to let you know. Tomorrow is the start of class for both of us, which should be when the real fun begins.

-Spud

SVEN's Weekly Recap

2009-08-29T13:51:00.000-07:00

Hey friends! Sven (Matt) here:

Events of the week:

We arrived in Sweden on Friday evening and stayed at a youth hostel for 5 nights. We came over without housing and planned to easily get housing upon arrival-WRONG. Almost no Swedish stores are open on Saturday or Sunday, which leaves the week (a typical work day is from 10am till 3pm). We met a bunch of people in the program at the youth hostel we were staying at- many of which are much older than me, but all seem pretty cool and have awesome experiences. So we decided to go house-hunting with four others in the same measly boat as myself. After getting rejected for housing by almost every landlord in town (because we’re students, or don’t have a Swedish ID number, or have too many people, or because some of use are American) we were at the lowest of lows. Sad and depressed by our new homeless condition in a foreign land we headed to lunch when we got a call that there was a huge apartment in the center of town available at one of the realtors we had stopped by earlier and they wanted to give us the place. It is 170 square meters which is incredibly large, with 12 ft. ceilings!! It has very old and very lovely European craftsmanship, is in the very center of town, and is unfurnished.

The last few days have been spent acquiring furniture, kitchen supplies, and other necessities to fill all this space. We have been going to 2^nd hand shops and asking former students if they have any donations. 2 of us now have beds and 3 of us have desks, but our point of pride must be the leather wrap-around couch in the ballroom! Tomorrow Steven and I are taking the train to go bike shopping. After that, a bed is a must!

Also, we have taken Sweden by storm and ourselves and 2 of our roommates have been interviewed and put into the Swedish paper!! We randomly were approached while sitting in the hostel. The article talks about how international students often come and stay in the hostels and find places to live here in Karlskrona. Here is the link- if it is in Swedish, go to Google Translator and enter the URL, it will translate it for you! http://www.sydostran.se/index.77749---1.html

Swedish fun fact of the Week:

Well this week I learned that going around saying “hej” (Hello) to people on the street and in the store, we think its friendly, but the Swedish people find it overly friendly and rude because they feel like it is intruding on their personal space and you are being too nosey- so Watch Out! (Don’t know if it was the thought or the awkward non-Swedish speaking deliverer that turned them off)

Swedish Dish of the Week:

Ice Cream from local shops are said to be some of the best ice cream in the world. Of course when you go in to order, you have no idea how to say any of the flavors, or know what the description says, so its basically a look and point system. However, they make their own waffle cones and the ice cream scopes they give you creates a hog-podge of yummy goodness the size of your head!

Swedish Word of the Week:

Korv means hotdog. Hotdogs are served with mashed potatoes and greens on top. Often in food you can find a mayonnaise- like sauce. Very delicious! We have a farmers market in the center of town each Saturday so we can load up on fresh local veggies and fruits. One of the other attractions of the farmers market is the street venders serving kebabs, korvs, and falafels.

The Mansion and Newspaper

2009-08-27T09:15:00.001-07:00

Alrighty folks, time for update number two! So since our last posting, we have been quite busy scouring the streets of Sweden looking for housing. It’s been quite the challenge, far more difficult than either of us expected – but nonetheless, we were successful!

But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s back up a bit and set the stage. So on Sunday, Matt and I woke up a bit later and I pulled my laptop out to start working on some stuff. After about 20 mins, my computer started warning me of it’s critically low battery level and as anyone would naturally do, I plugged the power cord into the wall to recharge it. A few minutes later, I realized I had to charge my phone as well. Being prepared, I had packed a powerstrip from back home and was going to just use an adapter to switch the prongs and then plug everything into the powerstip – brilliant idea so I thought. Well I plugged everything in and then switched the power button. Holding the powerstrip fairly close to Matt’s head as he slept, when the button was flipped, the powerstrip suddenly made a loud crack, released a flash of light, and proceeded to smoke slightly until I pulled the plug abruptly from the wall.

Unsure exactly what had happened, I soon discovered that in fact powerstrips have to match the same voltage as well, and as I tried to send 240 V through a 120 V device, I easily destroyed it. What I didn’t realize though was that with that flip of the button, I had managed to knock the power out of most of the hostel. I found this out 10 min later when a Swedish girl staying in our room walked in distressed and informed me that the lights just randomly went off on her in the shower – whoops.

The rest of Sunday was not nearly as adventurous, and was spent mostly researching landlords and housing possibilities.

On Monday, we then started the housing adventure. After an orientation at the school, we decided to tour through a bunch of apartments in the area. Most of them were the same as all the others and nothing too special, but that all changed when we decided to look at a random place in downtown Karlskrona (Trosso Centrum) with a smaller landlord. We toured the place and immediately fell for it, but had to wait for another family to look through it and see if they wanted it.

For the next day, we continued to look but found nothing, until on Tuesday afternoon we received the phone call. There were five of us in the program interested in splitting the place and we all sat dead quiet as the one girl answered the phone and talked with the landlord. After a series of confusing facial expressions, she screamed ‘We got it!’ and we all proceeded to jump around in the streets screaming and hugging each other.

The older Swedish gentleman who happened to be walking by on the street at the time just walked on by as if he didn’t even see us acting as fools. Oh well, we didn’t care.

So, to explain why we were so excited, let me describe our ‘pad’ to you. First, to enter our new home (which happens to be located in the dead center of downtown Karlskrona at the heart of the city), we have to enter a combination to enter the main bank through an old set of wooden doors. Rather than walking straight into the bank, we head to the right into a spiral staircase stairwell. The stairs are marble and the walls are lined with stained-glass windows. Our apartment is located on the second floor.

To enter our place, which we are tentatively referring to as the mansion, you walk through a set of double doors. You are greeted by a long, wide hallway with 13 foot ceilings. Scattered throughout our 1800 sq ft of space our a series of rooms, including three bedrooms, a massive kitchen, 1.5 bathrooms, and a ballroom (yep, a ballroom). All the floors are hardwood with fancy patterns and the walls and ceilings are covered in fancy crown and decorative molding, Our windows are 8 ft tall and overlook the main street below. The place has nearly 20 doors in it!

It’s pretty fantastic, and we are currently sitting on the floor in the massive place because we have no furniture. But that’s ok, because we have a sweet place!!

So after receiving the keys to the place on Tuesday, we skipped back to the hostel elated at our find. And that’s when our next adventure began. As one of the guys in our group was sitting working on his computer, a reporter approached him and began asking him a series of questions. After the interview, the reporter grabbed her photographer and headed to our hostel room. A few minutes later, the four of us staying in the hostel were digesting what just happened, and realized that we had just been interviewed and photographed for the Swedish newspaper. A bit unsure about what all had just happened, we made a point the next morning to get up and try and find the newspaper company.

Sure enough, when we walked into the grocery story this morning, scattered throughout the newspaper stand was the Sydostran Newspaper. As we opened it up, there we all were with a center-spread story stretching across the paper. Granted we had no idea what they were saying about us because it was all in Swedish, but we didn’t care. We bought 4 copies and were on our way!

Then a half hour later, a Swedish lady walking by us on the street stopped and turned around and pointed at us and asked us how our new apartment was treating us. She welcomed us to Karlskrona and congratulated us on being famous so quickly. So now all of Karlskrona knows that Matt and I are here and even where we live – pretty sweet, that didn’t take long!

So that was the activity for the last few days, both productive and highly entertaining. We are going to start up a Picasa website to post pics - a lot easier to upload for us - which includes pics from our place. In addition, here's a video of when we first got into our apartment. For the newspaper story, you can check out the article in Swedish here and English here. The actual pic of the article is below - to prove that our story is true! Also, if you want to see where we are living, visit Google Earth and type in our address: Ronnebygatan 47, Karlskrona, Sweden.

-Spud

The cover story for the local newspaper involves a spread picture of Matt and I along with two of our other roomates

Difficult Doors

2009-08-23T03:03:00.000-07:00

Well, our first full day here in Sweden has begun - and along with it, the many stories that will soon quickly add up.

The past few days have involved mostly traveling and getting settled at our hostel in the center of the town. Last night we then toured the town and tried to make sure we didn’t get too lost. Fortunately it doesn’t get dark until 8:30 so we had a good amount of time to explore. We ended up searching for a few of the potential housing options and came across some really cool possibilities.

This morning, Matt and I woke up and had breakfast at the hostel. Everything went pretty smoothly until Matt discovered an unusual ‘spread’ made from fish ovaries. We had both read about this stuff before coming to Sweden and decided that it would just be best if we tried it here rather than in front of a larger group. So we each had our helping, slightly smaller than the size of a pea, and afterwards decided that we didn’t want any more helpings. Fish ovaries (at least in the paste form) are extremely salty and not something either of us want to be spreading on our toast every morning. Lesson one learned.

After breakfast, we walked up to the University and attempted to register ourselves, to make sure we were legitimate students and not just some random kids wandering around Sweden for a year. Well it turns out we were there an hour early so we wandered through some more of the town for a bit. We ended up getting stuck in a fairly well off neighborhood and had to walk through someone’s backyard and hop a big stonewall to get to the campus. After making it to the campus, we were confused by someone as two Swedish dudes (awesome) and then tried to get into the building. However, even though it was 10:10, the doors were still locked.

So we waited around until eventually Matt had the clever idea of trying to follow someone else into the building (which has a card-swipe) and then try to wander through the hallways to find the actual building we wanted. The plan was working beautifully until he realized that not only did the card-swipe work to get you into the building, but it also allows you to get out of the building. So Matt was locked inside. After some searching around for a while and trying to communicate to each other through the glass with sign language, we realized that the University isn’t even open on Saturday, so we wouldn’t even be able to check-in. A few more minutes passed when someone who went to school there walked by us. He was kind enough to explain to Matt that in fact you don’t need to swipe a card to get out, you just need to hit the large (and I mean really large) button directly beside the door, and then they automatically open. Problem solved – and lesson two learned.

So after not succeeding at registering at the school, we proceeded back to the center of town where we knew we could find free Internet. Along the way we asked a few people if there were other locations for free Internet, but sadly found only people who don’t speak any English. After making it down to the café with free internet (it’s now our local hang-out spot and primary location for feeding ourselves) we ended up running into another girl from the program. For the rest of the day, the three of us wandered around the city checking out the coast and marine culture. However, throughout this whole day of busyness, I had forgotten to go the bathroom and by this point, was on the lookout for a toilet. I eventually found one that looked like a large, fancy, brick port-a-potty. Sadly, it was so fancy that I couldn’t figure out how to use it.

As I was standing in line, I waited for the gentleman in front of me to leave before entering the single-room structure. The door shut behind him and as I went to pull on it, it wouldn’t budge. I tried a few more times trying to act like I knew what I was doing before having to call for Matt to try and help me. We pushed all the buttons and bricks around it hoping that one would make it unlock but nothing worked. A little light beside the door was red which I assumed meant I couldn’t enter.

After causing a bit of a ruckus, one of the locals saw I was having trouble and came to assist. He proceeded to kick the door, which unfortunately for my bladder, still did nothing. Then the three of us went over to the bathroom on the other side of the port-a-potty and stood guard beside it waiting for his wife to come out (not Matt’s wife, the local man’s wife). She came out, we quickly caught the door, and I went in. The door shut behind me, as it should, I pulled my pants down, and luckily before I started to go, the lights all went off and left me in the pitch black. I pulled my pants back up and tried to open the door but I soon discovered that I was locked in. I proceeded to push every button before finding the one that opened the door (fortunately I didn’t hit the two buttons labeled ‘alarm’ – the only ones labeled in English as well) and then asked Matt to help again. After a failed search to find the light switch, Matt decided to stand in the doorway and hold the door open with his foot while I went. Needless to say, it was definitely one of the more difficult bathroom situations I have had in quite some time. And with that, lesson three was learned.

Other than those instances however, things went pretty smoothly and we got to see some cool stuff, a few of the pictures are posted below. Now we’re back in the hostel taking a bit of a breather. Tonight we are heading out to a BBQ with a few other students from the program and hopefully will get some better ideas figured out for the apartment search. As usual, I’m sure the stories will continue to follow, we’ll try to post them as soon as possible.

-Spud

Den här titel är i Svensk

2009-07-07T14:16:00.001-07:00

(that's Swedish for "This Title is in Swedish")

New adventures - here we come!

Starting August 20th, Matt and Spud will be heading off to Sweden together to start a Master's program at the Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH). We'll both be enrolled in the Master's of Strategic Leadership Towards Sustainability and will be living in Karlskrona, Sweden for the next year.

~ BTH Campus ~
~ Karlskrona is a big boating community and consists of numerous small islands ~

So, to help all you wonderful people keep in touch with us, we set up this blog in which we will be posting weekly happenings and funny stories from our time in Scandinavia. Rest assured, we expect to have our fair share of funny stories and have no problem sharing them all with you.

Our plan is for one of us to update this blog at least once a week (cross your fingers). If you would like to receive emails from us letting you know when we update, let us know and give us your email. Then, every week when we update the blog, we'll send an email to you all letting you know that a new post has been added. Email either Matt at matt.lobach@gmail.com or Spud at iamspud5@gmail.com to let us know if you want added to the list.

We also hope to include random tidbits in each blog post such as "Swedish word of the week" or "Latest culturally-significant-dish-containing-fruit that Spud refused to eat" or "Latest person Matt confused by pretending Americans have strange accents." If you have any other suggestions for this section, please let us know.

In addition to this blog, we will also be keeping in touch with people through Skype. We'll be posting our username's shortly, so keep checking back for those. Remember that Sweden is 6 hours ahead of PA though. You can also check out Spud's personal blog for more thoughts about our time abroad.

That's all of our updates for now, hopefully we'll have another post closer to August 20th. Until then, ajö!

-Spud

Swedish Stories

Exams and All Saint's Day (SPOOOKY) 11/15

Visitors, Copenhagen, 350 Day!

Kalmar Castle and Glass Blowing

Stockholm Pictures

A Weekend in Stockholm

Club Zebra Safari

New Member of the Matt Guitar Family!

Matt Receives "Runner Up" Award

Hoedown Video

Sven's Field Trip Observations

Weekend Retreat

Viking Boats and Beds

Hoedowns and Glue

More posts...

Weekend Happenings and Food Hurdles

Panoramic Shots

The Natural Step Framework

First Lectures

Surprises in the Mansion

SVEN's Weekly Recap

The Mansion and Newspaper

Difficult Doors

Den här titel är i Svensk