A Swedish Semester

I spent a large part of my day yesterday, August 21, waiting to register for my classes for this fall. I had picked out some courses before I came to Lund and even had them approved by various departments at N.C. State but didn’t think I would automatically be registered in these classes. My research led me to believe neither of the two computer science courses were even being offered this fall, so I was worried I would have to take all general courses instead. As I started looking into these general courses I realized what a nightmare their way of scheduling is! Classes seem to meet at different times and on different days depending on the week…making it very difficult to align two or more classes to work together.

Luckily, when I met with my advisor/coordinator, she told me I was already registered in two computer science courses and two general education courses. Great! But hold on just a second… I made the assumption that that meant the schedules of these classes would work out somehow. This was an incorrect assumption! Turns out only my two computer science courses would work and the other two are out. Will have to look into finding two others that work!

Apart from the class registration woes, I got to know a guy from Tokyo who was also waiting to register. It was pretty cool to talk about random stuff with someone from an entirely different part of the world. Everything from food to weather to jobs, etc. I also took the bus for the first time to the Swedish equivalent of Bed, Bath and Beyond to buy some curtains for my room! They help a lot. Swedes seem to have giant windows!

I had another SUSA (Introductory Swedish) class today where we learned some more conversational things like asking how someone is doing. Turns out Swedish has several ways to say “so-so” or “not so good”…I suppose when it’s winter nine months of the year that’s understandable.

Oh, and turns out biking everywhere is really exhausting when you normally hop in your car. That must be why I’ve been sleeping so well.

Just got out of the first of six meetings of my SUSA class (Introductory Swedish for Exchange Students). I don’t think I can actually transfer this credit but it’s nice to at least learn some Swedish! I can now say things like Jag heter Dixon (My name is Dixon) or Jag kommer från USA (I come from the USA). Learning another foreign language makes me always want to revert back to Spanish, but Swedish is obviously quite different! There were two UNC students sitting behind me (one of whom is from Greensboro and went to Grimsley) and another in front of me so it felt like home!

I bought a bike yesterday – seems to be the only reasonably quick way to get around. Lund is the most biked city in Sweden and there are bike paths along pretty much every street so it feels safe. My mom says “I’m not as experienced a biker as those Europeans” so I need to buy a helmet!

Someone said today that they were sorry I missed the warm weather – I told them I’ve had about enough of it back home! It’s been in the fifties and sixties while I’ve been here which is comfortable when biking around! Really windy too, I guess that’s why Scandinavia is able to generate so much wind power.

The room I’m staying in is actually quite nice! I get my own bathroom too and the room is nearly as big as a dorm room I shared with another person this past year… Current issue is I have no blinds or curtains so that’s number one on my list of things to buy. There’s about 8 or 10 people in this building with me so we share a kitchen that is plenty large. Explored the nearest grocery store yesterday and I was impressed! They even had Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce so I’ll survive here. No peanut butter though. Or it was in Swedish and I didn’t understand!

I’ll try and post some pictures later!

I made it! The flight was pretty uneventful – I enjoyed the semi fancy food and wine and maybe got one or two hours of sleep. We arrived on time and the descent over Norway and Denmark was really gorgeous! Lots of wind turbines, windy ocean, and open fields. Here’s some pictures:

After some wrangling with the train ticket machine and accidentally buying a first class ticket, I made it onto the train across the Øresund Bridge towards Malmö. The train goes underwater for about a minute and then pops up in the middle of the strait and continues on the bridge. It took about five minutes to cross over to Sweden. I arrived at the Lund Central Station at about 9:30am and walked over to the B&B where I’m staying tonight. It’s sort of weird, almost like a self service hotel. They emailed me the code for the door and told me which room would be mine. Luckily it was available at about 10:30am so I slept til about 2:00pm when I went out to find some food! It’s pretty rainy here in Lund today and cool, between 55 and 60 degrees. If the rain holds off I may go for a walk and check out some of the sights. Until next time!

The day is here! I’m currently writing this during my ~5 hour layover at IAD in Washington, DC. Already had my last Five Guys for lunch, now just doing some plane spotting to kill time. I watched the Air France A380 from Paris land and taxi to the gate – first time I’ve really seen it up close and I can verify that it is in fact huge! Also saw a Korean Air B777-300ER push back and begin to taxi out to take off for Seoul, South Korea. Here are some pictures:

My flight, SAS 926, leaves in about three hours at 17:15. I’ll be on an A340-300. First time in business class for an international flight!

Oh, and so far I’ve only left my iPhone charger behind. Good thing my iPad charger will work!

I finished my 12 week summer internship with Boeing in Charleston, SC today. It turned out to be a really great experience. I met a lot of people, worked on some important projects, and got to really see how Boeing the company works. South Carolina was chosen last week to be the sole site of 787-10 construction, so the workforce down in Charleston will only grow in the years to come.

I wish I could share pictures with you of all of the cutting edge manufacturing work being done, but that would get me in some trouble so you’ll have to trust me instead!

One of my favorite things that I got to do this summer happened just this week on a rainy Monday afternoon, when I got to tour the Delivery and Flight Operations Center. This is where they test then deliver the aircraft to the customer. I think if I were going to work for Boeing again in the future, I would need to be really close to the product. Just getting a short glimpse of what those people do every day was very intriguing to me so I’ll definitely be looking into opportunities there in the future.

That’s all for now, I move back to Greensboro, NC for a week on ~Sunday. Off to Sweden the next Sunday!

Welcome to my blog!

You can find a little more about me at my main website, http://dixoncrews.com. This blog will be dedicated to my study abroad experience at Lund University in Lund, Sweden for the Fall 2014 semester. I hope to keep this updated regularly throughout the semester!

Back to planning and packing…I arrive in Sweden on August 18th!