It’s a bit hard to believe that I’m over halfway done with my time here in Sweden! I’m sure the remaining few weeks will go by very quickly.

In the last week I’ve been busy finishing up most of my second class (Education, Culture, and Lifestyle in Sweden) which officially ends on the 31st (spooooooky!). The main (and pretty much only) project for this class involved a group project. My group of six people had two from the United States and one each from Finland, France, Singapore, and Spain. We had several group discussions about the content of the class which I really enjoyed. I definitely don’t regularly get the opportunity to speak directly with people from all over the world while back at home. The project involved each of us finding a Swedish person to interview about their lifelong education and learning experience, then coming together to find commonalities among the interviews and producing a paper and presentation on our findings. I interviewed one of my roommates last Tuesday and we all came together on Wednesday to start looking for themes among the different interviews. It was helpful that we had a good mix of ages (as young as 18 to over 70) to see differences across time. We wrapped up the paper on Friday and we present on it for a few minutes to the class on this Friday. Then next week my final two classes begin! Those are a computer science class (finally) and a class called “Economic History: Growth, Stagnation, and Inequality in Africa”. Yeah as you may guess I didn’t pick that subject, I was just put into the class by my advisor.

Also last week I planned a trip to Norway for early December! I’m going to Oslo for two nights, then taking the really scenic seven hour train ride to Bergen, spending one night, then coming back to Lund. I decided to fly from Copenhagen which is pretty weird when you think about it: taking the train over a bridge to another country to fly to yet another country. Anyway, should be fun as long as I don’t freeze solid!

This morning I received an email from the International Desk, which is the office that handles all international students here at the university, saying I had won the lottery for taking a survey about the arrival procedures from August! I almost forgot I even took the survey, but the prize is 500SEK (~$70) of credit at the Lund University shop which I had been planning to visit so I’m glad I didn’t already spend money there.

Also, the time changed this weekend so the sun now goes down before 5pm…this will take some getting used to. I seem to look up and feel like it’s bed time but it’s only like 8pm.