Afro Headquarters

Saturday night was a very interesting night, we played a drinking game at uni island and I finished off more than 2 litres apple juice. by the end of the game we had some very crazy for how we were to drink our drinks, all the guys had to stand up, twirl around and say “wahoo” before drinking. All in all a very entertaining night. Sunday morning Niels and myself were up and getting ready to go to play football. We had to wake Thomas up and drag him to the bus stop. It was a great day for football yesterday. It was overcast but no sign of rain and during the game the sun made an occasional appearance. I made some pretty awesome saves in goal and about two thirds of the way into the game I switched out for some striking action, I had some chances in close on the opposing goal keeper but i couldn’t find the back of the net (stop me if i’m starting to sound like John Shorthouse). At the end of the game the score was 18 - 13 for the other team. The three of us headed back to uni island to go shopping for the sunday dinner. We had peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, lettuce and enough feta to sink a ship! We made four large bowls of greek salad, garlic bread, and peppered chicken strips. The 12 of us only managed to eat 1 and a half bowls of salad so we are all meeting again tonight for dinner to finish off the salad. So delicious.

February 14 was a saturday and it was a month ago so don’t get angry that i can’t remember what happened oh way back when. But that sunday was very eventful, Thomas, Niels and myself made our way to Rönnen to play football. We arrived at what we thought to be the football pitch where we were playing but no one was around. A little worried that we had been bamboozled I called my buddy Laurens to find out what is up and it turns out we were at the wrong pitch. A short little walk back towards Värnhem and we arrived to find 10 - 15 people ready to play some football! We broke up into 3 teams and played a round-robin, I don’t think my team did to well in the round-robin, but that was not the highlight of the game, as after the round-robin we formed two teams (some people left, so now we could play two teams with substitutes) and I was the goal keeper for my team. It was such an intense game, about 60% of the people playing that day had played football in leagues back in their home countries and when they kicked the ball on net it was as if someone was firing a bullet at me, and they were making these shots from in close too. The final score in that game: 9 - 6 for my team, and i earned the nick-name “the wall” for my play as the goal keeper. That evening it was Sunday dinner at Uni island and guess who was cooking……..Thomas, Niels and myself!! Thomas made schnitzel and Niels and I prepared garlic bread, potato salad, and veggies. Everyone loved the potato salad and was curious how I made it. The following three weeks consisted of non-stop work for Place Specific Computing as our final presentation for the class was March 6, so I won’t bore you with the details and just stick to the good stuff. On Saturday the 21st, Oliver, Thomas, Verena, Niels and I went on a road trip through the Skåne region of Sweden. We headed south east towards Ystad, looking for a stone formation that is believed to be a burial ground. We saw a parking lot and a bunch of parked cars and thought we had arrived but once out of the car we read the sign telling us that the to our left was a Swedish Army training area. But right in front of us was a sledding hill, we climbed to the top to check it out. There was a few people taking in the snow and kicking up powder, I borrowed a sled from one of the kids and took my chances on the hill, the hill won 1-0. But I didn’t break the sled as Niels proclaims from the top of the hill.


We got back in Oli’s car and headed on towards Ystad, we parked the car in the small fishing town and followed the path towards the rock formation. It was really awesome, these huge rocks in the shape of a ship in the middle of a field. The 5 of us posed for some pictures on the rocks before heading back to the car and getting back on the road towards Simrishamn. Our goal was to visit a National Park at Simrishamn but once there all the shops were closed, the touristbyrå was closed. We ended up in a restaurant for a late afternoon lunch and ended up staying and talking in the restaurant until 17:00. We didn’t make it to the park but the couple people we did talk to in Simrishamn told us to come back in the summer. Hopefully we got another road trip on our horizon! On Friday and saturday it snowed and snowed and snowed only to accumulate to about 12cm sunday morning. But rain sleet or snow nothing was stopping Thomas, Niels and myself from traveling to the Malmö Arena to watch the Malmö Redhawks take on Troja. We were in row 22 in the lower bowl right behind the net at one end of the arena. It was the last row so we didn’t have to worry about anybody behind us not being able to see over my hair. The first period we are cheering for the redhawks and one section beside us is a group of people cheering as well, so the three of us clap when the group claps and so-on only to find out about 5 mins into the game that that group of people are Troja supporters. A little bit awkward but two swedish guys sitting beside us steered us in the right direction. the teams traded goals in the first and the period ended in a 1-1 tie.


The second period Malmö was trying to score on the net right in front of the three of us and as such the Redhawks scored 4 goals in the second frame. Such an awesome experience watching the Redhawks, the fans are very different from Canada and are very awesome in there own way. The second period ended 5-1 for the Redhawks. The third period saw only a lone goal from the hometown team and the game ended 6-1 for Malmö. There was so much singing and cheering from the crowd and one of the coolest cheers I’ve ever heard. A large of people on one side of the arena yells “ni på andra sidan ar ni klara?!!!!” and then the side of the arena where I was sitting replies “jajjamänsam fattas bara!!!” which means “you on the other side are you ready to bring some noise? Yes yes yes *swedish jibberish*” And I should mention this it was only 150SEK for one of these tickets in the lower bowl so only 25CAD, if only it was that cheap to see the Canucks! For the next hockey game we are going to see Sweden take on Switzerland and we have more people coming this time so April 2 is going to be a great day!! That week I called the Hotel in the UK where Greg and Jon were staying, they weren’t in at the time and the receptionist asked if I wanted to leave a message. The conversation went something like this: receptionist “would you like to leave a message?” me “yes, i would, could you tell them that I called” receptionist “yes, what is your name?” me “Gordon” receptionist “last name?” me (being hesitant) “…brown” receptionist “Gordon Brown? is this a prank call?” me “no it isn’t.” On the weekend (Sunday March 1st) Thomas, Niels and myself ventured to Rönnen to play football again, we were waiting at the pitch and a few more people show up and we are wondering where the guy with the football is. We know he lives in the accommodations at Rönnen so we go check it out and turns out the person who owns the football is in the UK, we didn’t get to play football that day and we headed back to uni island. Back at uni island we were getting ready for Sunday dinner and what were we having? Schnitzel for the third week in a row! It was Natalia’s turn to cook and we all thought she was making a soup and salad but when we went over to help her prepare the food she was preparing schnitzel. I’m now a schnitzel making machine and will teach the recipe to anyone willing to learn! The ensuing week was crunch time at K3, we had our presentation friday and all 4 groups were working overtime hammering out the kinks. Friday was presentation time and all 4 groups blew the teachers away. They were very impressed and the guests from RGRA also enjoyed the presentations. That Friday it was time to relax after working non-stop for so long, I headed to København with Verena, Oliver and Verena’s boyfriend Nils. It was raining in the capital city of Denmark, and we were there an hour early to meet up with the Oli’s and Verena’s friends. We walked around the city and made our way to the hotel where the people were staying that we were to meet up with. When we left the hotel there was 8 of us in total and we went for a walk looking for a place to eat, we ended up at a Indian Restaurant and enjoyed a meal of currie and pita bread. After the restaurant we ended up in a small bar sharing drinks and talking about football mostly, which led to a best of 3 tournament in foosball. It was two on two foosball, and after loosing the first game, my team came back to win 2 straight over Oli’s team. We headed back to Malmö and were home and in bed by 2am. Saturday I slept and took things easy. Sunday it was football again at Rönnen and this time we had a ball and enough people to play two teams with substitutes. It was raining slightly and the wind was cold, “the wall” was in goal and I had a few good saves but they opposing team was too strong for us as they would go on to win 9-4. Hopefully it won’t be three weeks between football games, and I look forward to playing again tomorrow. That night was Sunday dinner and the Germans prepared Hamburgers and French fries for the uni island gang. It was the perfect weekend to relax after finishing my first course. It hasn’t been a very eventful week, thursday we had class for Critical Design, each person presented three examples of critical design and then in the afternoon we formed our groups for the next week and received our assignment that is due this coming friday. Thursday night at uni island was poker night! at first I wasn’t doing very well, but I managed to take out the first person, then Niels took out Thomas and Natalia. After a wicked hand I had the chip lead and Sarah was in the middle and Niels was down on chips, next hand I took out Niels, to play heads up poker with Sarah, she went all-in and won, but only doubled up from 340 to 680 with the small blind being 100 and big blind 200 she was forced quickly to go all in again and that time I cleaned house. Yesterday, a group of us headed to St. Gertrud’s for the dinner buffet. It’s almost a friday tradition, similar to the sunday dinner, but the menu at St. Gertrud’s doesn’t change much week to week, but it still delicious! After the dinner I went back to K3 and grabbed the projector from the Masters Studio and took it back to uni island, we set it up in the kitchen to mine and Niels’ flat, and hooked up my computer to speakers as well and we watched “In Bruges” and “The Transporter.” Today I’m catching up with a couple of Canucks games, I just finished the Anahiem game about 30 mins ago and now I’m listening to LA kings game. Tonight there is a small party at uni island and then tomorrow is Football and Sunday dinner, and for it is Thomas’, Niels’, and mine turn to cook again, we’ve done a bit of planning and we looked up a recipe we are going to attempt “greek steak salad” with pita bread. I’m on the second period of the LA game now, GO CANUCKS GO!P.S. All high res photos are in the same folder, the link to that folder is in the previous post, enjoy!

My new room, empty and plain.

Malmö sunset.

Rosengård.

The turning torso.

My new neighbours.

From the bus.

University Island at night.

All these lovely photos can be seen in full resolution here.

PS for Auntie karen:

First I’d like to show a couple short films so everybody can get a general idea of what it is like to study at the masters level in Interaction Design:

And that is what it is like to be an Interaction Design Student.Tonight I had dinner at Rönnen with the South Africans (Laurens, Chad, Jeune and Jeanne). I don’t want to say it was a traditional South African meal but it was delicious nonetheless. It was a salad with mushrooms, avocado, tomato, spinach, two types of cheese, bacon, and croutons, and we had baked potatoes. Jeanne was curious to know what I did for food back home at Uni Island, I told her I was cook and that she, Jeune, Laurens and Chad have to come to Uni Island some time for some of my cooking. I left there just after 22:00 to catch the bus that would take me back to Uni Isle. I’m sitting on the bus and looking out the window I can see this yellow figure approaching in the oncoming lane, it’s too big to be a bike and too small to be a car. As it gets closer i realize it is an ATV, as it passes I can see that the person driving works for the city of Malmö and being towed by the atv is a canister full of salt. I wonder how many kilometers the atv/salt truck gets to the litre?

Friday after writing my last post, I walked to centralen to catch a bus out to Rosengård. I was meeting Sebi and Soo there and we were going to a youth centre there to do some research for our project. I get off the bus at the stop we are meeting at and of course i’m the first one there. I’m in a part of Malmö i’ve never been in before and I’m standing at the bus stop just rocking out with my ipod. I look up at the overpass to my right and I can see this silhouetted figure standing there looking at me. I raise my hand slowly and wave, and then the silhouetted figure waves back, so i yell “Sebi?” and he responds back “how’s it going?” Soo showed up and we walked over to the youth center. The kids there were blown away by my hair, it was insane, I’ve never experienced anything that even comes close to those kids. They were jumping up and down, running around, touching the fro and taking pictures, it was chaos in it’s purest form. But we did get some good information from the people who worked there and the email addresses of some of the kids (aged 10-14). This will help us when we are place storming and prototype testing. After the youth centre I said goodbye to Sebi and Soo and took the bus back to centralen. I had been invited to go hang out with some other internationals at one of the student accommodations called somerstaden. At centralen I switched over to a different bus and was on my way. Having never been to somerstaden I only knew which stop to get off at. At the bus stop I call Krysta to get further directions, I’m walking down the road listening to her trying to figure out how to give me proper directions, when I see someone across the street waving at me. Turns out it is Louise who used to live in Uni Island but moved to somerstaden, that was pretty lucky, had I kept listening to Krysta’s directions I would’ve ended up in Göterberg. At Krysta’s place we meet up with a few other people and head out to a pub called “Golden.” If this was one of those beer commercials where the tag line is “enjoyed in fine establishments and questionable joints since 1964,” well this pub was definitely a questionable joint. Just as in Canada, there is no smoking in restaurants/bar/clubs…etc but Swedish pubs still cater to the smokers with designated “smoke-rooms.” A well intentioned idea until someone leaves the door open and a thick smoke billows out and spreads through the rest of the pub. We met up with Laurens, Jeune, Jeanne and Vid at Golden and we sat around the table laughing and having a good time. Things got a little interesting when a cat fight/bar brawl broke out at the table next to us. It was subdued quickly and order was returned. Marine and I had a fun time passing notes back and forth in french. And then we started getting creative with the permanent markers, I had a red heart on one hand and the words “rock ‘n’ roll” written across my knuckles. About that time a guy walked around the bar ringing a bell, last call. It was only 1am and as the blues brother would put it “you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.” Under the impression that I had missed my last bus I began to walk back to somerstaden with Krysta and Marine. We passed a bus station and right there was a bus getting ready to leave for centralen. I got on and then made the 15 minute walk home to Uni Island from centralen. It’s a very peaceful walk at that time of day. Saturday I had to go into school for a team meeting and afterwards there was a party at Rönnen. It was one of the smallest parties I’ve been to at Rönnen and wasn’t too much fun with the speakers cracking. I got home at 3am and knew that the group back home was getting ready for Greg’s going away party. As much as I wanted to stay up and video chat with everyone at the party, I was sitting at my computer barely able to keep my eyes open, ended up going to bed. Sunday was fun, I did my first load of laundry at Uni Island, well if you want to know how that turned out, just check out my three pairs of sky blue socks. But it was sunday and that meant one thing: Uni Island dinner, so I wasn’t to disheartened by my unfortunate sock incident. Dinner was amazing, Oliver had gone fishing saturday and caught 43 herring, yes 43, and Ariane and Verena made quiche. We didn’t eat all the herring if that’s what you’re wondering, we still have 37 left. We had the option of going to Rönnen for an International students dinner, where everybody brings food from his or her home country, I was going to go with Ariane, Verena and Oliver as an honourary German (the three of them are German), but we all agreed staying at Uni Island was the best choice and that way Nils and Eunice could join us. And this coming sunday Nils and myself are cooking at our place, we have to find a Canadian recipe and a Belgian recipe that doesn’t include chocolate, maybe I should make Bannock….. Yesterday, we had two second year students come to class (by that I mean second year masters) and they presented us the concept of computer vision, it’s not a new concept the film industry has been using it for years, but they have multiple cameras and post-production, these to students are working on having one camera and having the video shown in real time, in other words making a tool for interaction designers. The two of them presented for an hour, we took a lunch break, then came back and got to fool around with the program. We used the colour tracking to manipulate sound. Came up with some crazy “songs” by dancing around the room. I’m pretty sure Jeune has an embarassing video of me doing an mc hammer/vanilla ice impression. I’ll check tonight and put it up here if she has it. And then at 8:30 we played poker at Uni Island, I was doing well, I knocked out two people then someone decided to let Ariane play, she had been sitting the game out, just watching but now she was playing, about 5 rounds later she took me out of the game, and as i just found out about 30 minutes ago she won the game. I’ll be victorious next time.

One week ago today, the other masters students and myself took the train from Malmö over to København to check out what the students at the design university there had done for their final projects. There was a handful of projects on display, some better than others. There were two cool projects that really stood out, the first was a remote controlled car shaped like a rabbit, and it was controlled by two controllers that you would wear on your arm or even leg, then depending on how you moved your arm or leg the rabbit would move. Sebi (a Romanian in the masters programme at Malmö) and I tried it out, each taking one controller and we probably had the best time for maneuvering the rabbit around the obstacle course. The second project that was really interesting were these firefighter gloves that would allow for fire fighters to communicate to each in any situation, bend sensors in the gloves would send a message to the other pair of gloves and vice versa. The gloves were well constructed and the two guys who created them were showing everyone how the gloves worked, and there was even a sensor, i think they used sonar, that would allow in a dense smoke environment for the fire fighters to map out the room. All the projects made use of the Arduino micro-controller and definitely helped to inspire us for our project on different ways to use Arduino. After the display at the university, Anders (the Danish guy in our programme) took us to this sweet little restaurant for dinner. There was 8 of us from the masters and 3 from the undergrad programme at K3 and we talked and laughed for about an hour and a half at the restaurant, we scared the other 1 or 2 patrons out of the restaurant. We then took the train back to Malmö and arrived there around 10pm. We got back to the station and we all went our seperate ways, I was off to Rönnen (student accommodations) to check out the party that was going on. Katrin (from Germany and one of my team members) had told me horror stories of the kitchen on the 5th floor at Rönnen and that night I was witness to its horror, I left that kitchen in a hurry and headed up the 6th floor. It was pretty fun, ended up meeting three of the people from RGRA (the group we are working with for our project), one of the girls stood and starred in amazement at my hair for at least 30 mins, the other two RGRA members kept laughing at her, because we were trying to talk to her and she would be staring at the hair. I left the party around 1:30 and caught the 2:00 bus home to Åkarp. Then on Saturday, there was another birthday party for one of the cousins of the Karlssons. This was a little farther drive than the previous birthday, we drove to Kristianstad for this party. And this time the birthday boy was turning 18. It was a much better birthday party than the one a week before. A couple spoke to me in english, and one gentleman was a hockey fan, and we had a small conversation about the NHL. And the food at this party, wow, best salmon i have ever had, sooooooo good. All the other international students have no idea what’s going on outside Malmö but I have the inside hook up. Then Sunday was moving day. Anders (yes same name as the danish guy, and they both got hair cuts on the same day, but they live in two different countries) drove me and my stuff down to university island and when Anders saw my room, he commented “it’s just the basics.” It’s nothing special other than the fact that my view outside my window includes the Turning Torso. It took me Sunday night and Monday to get settled in, and now it’s starting to feel like home. Sunday night was the beginning of a Uni Island tradition, about 8-10 of us international students get together and cook supper together and hang out. It just felt like I was at home, it was so sweet. That night we made pizza, and we all agreed that we need better meals in the future, so this sunday were getting people to bring assorted dishes. Wednesday, the masters students and I went to the RGRA clubhouse to meet the rest of the people we will be working with for our project. It’s a cool little place for the youth of Malmö to hang out and stay out of trouble. When I first got there I started speaking some sort of hybrid of english and swedish, when asked where i was from is replied “fråm canadia” (the correct way to say it would be “från kanada”). Needless to say all the people there were digging the hair, and one guy was telling me of a friend of his who works in a pub in Malmö and is from Vancouver (yeah BC pride). After the meeting at RGRA, at 19:00 there was diploma ceremony for all the international students who attended the 3 week intro to swedish course. The emails informing us of the dinner/ceremony said dress smart and fancy, so of course I show up wearing my “Who” t-shirt and adidas pants. Oh yeah I was rocking out that night. They handed out certificates to all the students, and it just says “Gordon Brown has participated in the Swedish Language Course,” not a certificate that actually shows I completed the course just that I participated, I don’t even know my mark on the final exam. I’ll have to find that out. Last night I was reminded of home, as it rained Vancouver style for most of the night, and the soothing sound of raindrops on the roof put me to sleep.

Here are the pictures as promised: http://afro.fruitattack.net/europe_files/first2weeks/

Back in October I went to an information session up at Burnaby and the people there kept saying to all the exchange students beware of culture shock, 5 ways to deal with culture shock, culture shock this and culture shock that…etc. Today I’m sitting in class and we are discussing Place and what defines place. We’re talking about how people define place and I’m thinking to myself how I’ve defined my place here in Sverige. In my defining of my place I’ve been preceptive and curious about the european style of living. My place is here and anywhere, there is no culture shock and having to conform my place, for my place is forever in flux, learning from and adapting to new situations and stimuli. It’s a beautiful place I’m in right now, the only thing that could make it better is if the Canucks start winning hockey games.

Also today in class we went over the brief for the first project, it is due March 6. Ok this is too cool, the project is sponsored by Epsilon and we will be working with a local group RGRA (I forget what it stands for) to use bluetooth technologies in a defined place to spark social interactions. I’m super excited about it because I already have a hundred ideas rushing through my head, and not only are we going to take these prototypes out onto the street and see what they can do, at the end of the day we could have a viable product that Skånetrafiken would want to use in their transit system. I can’t wait for class tomorrow, and with that said I’m going get some shut eye. Good night.

I wonder what the thought process was for the people who founded Malmo University back in 1998. I wonder if thought to themselves “maybe in 11 years after 947 exchange students the chosen one will arrive and study here at our university.” Maybe it didn’t happen exactly that way, but after 11 years and 947 exchange students Malmö Högskola has welcomed one very interesting individual inside the doors of the school of arts and communication.

Ok I’ll start with monday January 12, 2009. It was like any other morning, i awoke to the delightful sound of Alex Cotoranu’s cell phone alarm. I had packed the night before, so i calmly woke up and ate some breakfast and watched as alex packed his things. We both said goodbye to Christian who had provided us room and board for the weekend and headed off to Vanløse station to catch the metro to the airport. At Copenhagen airport I said farewell to Mr. Cotoranu and made my way down the ramp to the train station. One back pack on my back another being carried in my arms, I waited for that train that would take me on down to the city Malmo, but that train did not come. Two trains passed through the station, both empty, i boarded the first one and then was politely asked in english to exit the train, oh yeah things were looking up indeed. A train arrived and I waited to see if other people would board it, when people started entering the train I followed suit and away I went. Upon my arrival in Sweden (or Sverige as I prefer to call it) I already knew where the university was, so I b-lined it from the station to K3 (school of arts and communication). Once inside I asked around for the Interaction Design Masters program and instead got directed towards the program office. Well luckily there was this nice lady there who spoke better english than the other people I had talked to and she told me my teacher was Jörn Messeter, she then went looking for him and I followed, we met another student looking for Jörn’s class. Then Jörn walked through the door and all was right with the world. The class started at 9:30 and I walked into that room both back packs in hand and had my first experience as a Masters student. At the end of the lecture we broke up into teams and we were given the brief for our first project that would be due friday january 23. At lunch I went looking for the international students, I went to the student center and they told me to go the green glass building. I went to green glass building (later found out it is called Orkanen) and all the international people are eating lunch so I walk into the room and this lady asks if I’m Gordon Brown, I said “yes.” Before I can say anything else she starts saying “oh Mr. Prime Minister, Hey everybody this is my Prime Minister!” Fast times at Malmo University! After the lunch was over I had my first Swedish lesson, it ended up being more of a history lesson, but it was still pretty cool learning the history and the language at the same time. After class I made my way back to Malmo Central where I met Martin Karlsson (and yes it is spelt with a ‘K’). We got on the Pågatåg train to Åkarp. It was a bit of a walk to his house from the train station but now I know the route like the back of my hand. I met the rest of the Karlssons: Anders (the father), Monica (the mother), and Matilda (Martin’s younger sister). They are a pretty cool family, Martin is planning on going to Canada soon so I said he has to go visit Auntie Karen and Uncle Birk and that he could stay in my old room. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday went by quickly as I had Swedish class in the morning and there would be an International Student activity in the afternoon (just a lecture about different things). I tell you about Interact though, it is a program similar to Orientation at SFU and my Interact person is named Åsa, she is super cool, helped me find accommodations. We were searching for places on some of the local websites and everything was 3500 sek or more per month, there was one for 3000 sek but you had to be female to rent the place. We looked at the student accommodations and found one for 2900 sek per month and Åsa called the number and asked if there was a room left and there was so I’m moving in on february 1st. Then I asked Åsa where I could get a cell phone (the university gives Swedish SIM cards to all the international students) and she asked if I had a SIM card, I said “yes” so she said well you can borrow one of my old phones then. I met up with her the next day and she handed me a Sony Ericsson (Ericsson is a Swedish company). What an awesome person, she has definitely set the tone for my time here in Sverige. One more quick story, on Wednesday I went to Skånetrafiken Centrum, I took a number and waited in the queue, when my number was called I walked up the counter and the man behind it said “hej,” i replied “hej, talar du engelska?” he answered “yes” and I purchased a 30 day transit pass for riding the train from Malmö to Åkarp. Friday I didn’t go to my Swedish lecture, instead I joined the rest of the Masters students for a crash course in Arduino programming (the course for Arduino had be going since wednesday that week but I had already done everything that was being taught friday’s lecture on Arduino was all new to me though so that’s why I was there and not in my Swedish class). It was a full day from 9:00 to 16:00 after that my fellow Masters students and I went to a place called St. Gertrud. We walk into a central courtyard and “More than a Feeling” by Boston is playing on the speakers, I immediately took out my air guitar and followed along for a few bars before we entered the restaurant side of the building, there were no seats so we went back into the courtyard and into the pub side of the building, we found a spot by the bar and sat down. Now this was the fun part, I bought a sprite, and the lady bartender didn’t believe my hair was real, well I bet her a free sprite that my hair was real, well needless to say I didn’t pay for a single drink the rest of the night. We hung out there for a while before going our separate ways. Saturday the International students went on a day trip to Lund (the next big city closest to Malmö). It is a really old city and walking around the old buildings I felt as if I was in another century. We got a tour of Kulturen (the Lund Museum). There were houses there from almost every century for the past 700 to 800 years. Really amazing to see these old buildings and learn about Swedish history and culture. After Lund, I went back to Åkarp, and then that night headed into Malmö station to meet up with Thomas (my new Austrian friend). He was with 3 other International students from Germany, we were on our way to a party at Rönnen student accommodations (all the cool international students were going to be there). We missed the number 3 bus but we found out from a helpful stranger that the number 7 would get us to within walking distance of Rönnen. So we finally arrived at the student accommodations at Rönnen……..or did we? We get into the building and go to the 6th floor (we new the party was on the sixth floor), once on the sixth floor we have no idea which way is which, there are 4 doors going in 4 directions and you have to have a key or be let in, we look at the names on the screen by each door and do not recognize any of them. Then we see some one coming down the hallway towards us, we ask them if this is the student accommodations and where the party is, and well it is not, we are in the wrong building. The lady gives us directions to a second building also by the name of Rönnen and we make our way to our new destination. Once we get to the door you need a key or to be let in from someone inside the building, we check the names on the board and nothing, and we do not have anyone’s phone number who lives at Rönnen. So here we are, 1 Austrian, 3 Germans, and a Canadian, just walking around aimlessly, but at the same time enjoying each others company, talking and laughing. So we finally meet some other people on their way to the party and we finally get inside the building and head to the 6th floor. We get up there and the main ‘party’ is happening in the kitchen/common room area, but my traveling partners and I are hanging out in Dominika’s room (a Polish girl who is in my Swedish lecture). There are about 10-15 of us hanging out and it’s ok, there is some music playing off a laptop but it’s not very loud. We head down the kitchen/common room area and it is kind of hard to tell there is party happening, there is loud annoying repetitive sounds coming from speakers in the corner and there are a few groups of people hanging out trying to talk over the noise coming from the speakers. The five of us look at each other and unanimously proclaim that it was more fun looking for the party than it is being at the party. Only hung around there for just over two hours and started on my way back to the train station with two of the Germans. We didn’t know the bus schedule so we decided to walk back, it was a great walk through the city at night and i learned that in europe it is called “zebra stripes” instead of “crosswalk.” The two Germans (I would call them by name but I only know one of their names and I’m not a 100% sure how to spell it, phonetically it is “air-ee-anna”) live in University Island (where I will be living after February 1st) so we parted ways at Malmö Central and I went to catch my train….or did I? When I had arrived home from Lund I checked the Skånetrafiken website and there was supposed to be a train at 0:50, but when I got to the station that night the schedule said 2:00 was the next train. I immediately left the station and ran after “air-ee-anna” and her friend and asked if I could go back to University Island with them for bit before I had to come back and catch the train at 2:00. Just 4 short days after finding out I’d be living at University Island, I was walking towards it and I got to check out the accommodations inside. Each apartment is divided up into 4 rooms with shared kitchen and washroom, pretty cool. I had a cup of tea at “air-ee-anna’s” and the three us chatted some more before I left to catch the train back to Åkarp. Sunday I recovered from an action packed first week and made a couple of important phone calls.

Ok now Monday January 19th. This Monday I awoke to the slightly less delightful sound of my cell phones alarm. I had a big day ahead of me, Arduino class from 9:00 to 16:00 (there is a one hour lunch break) and then the new time for my Swedish lecture was 16:30 to 19:00. 10 hours of classes with only 1hour and 30minutes break, oh yeah!! (I’m going to stop writing “oh yeah” and replace it with my new favourite saying “visst ja”) Tuesday is the last class of the Arduino crash course, VISST JA!!! And Tuesday is also Thomas’ birhtday, han är sjugo fem år (no no no. No translation for you! Come back 1 year!). He knew we were having a party, but we did manage to surprise him with a cake that had one candle in the shape of a two and another in the shape of a 5 and birthday present. We all signed the card in our own languages it was super cool, makes me wish my birthday was sometime before June 8th (in Sverige there is something called your “name day,” my name day is April 23, maybe I’ll celebrate that). I would have liked to stayed later at the party but Wednesday my team and I were headed to the library to do our research that we were to present on friday. And of course on Wednesday it is sunny, it was probably the second or third time I’d seen the sun since leaving Vancouver, but Wednesday there wasn’t a cloud in the sky it was an awesome to day to be out and about and I was inside the library taking pictures and observing the daily happenings inside the library. The library has nothing to do with our project for Place Specific Computing, it is just an assignment to get us thinking about place, how you define place and the people in that space define it. Thursday it decided to rain, but that was fine by me cause my team and I were on day two of observing the library, this time we interviewed people about the library, what they liked about it, what they didn’t. I had a fun time interviewing a retired lady, she spoke english, but not very well, of the 10 or so questions I asked her, I was able to get answers for 6 or 7 of them. Then that evening we went back to K3 and worked on our presentation for Friday. We divided up the slides and headed home, I finished around 1:00 went to bed and woke up at 7:00 to go to school for 8:30, class wasn’t until 9:00 but we had to put our slides together and do a quick run through. We nailed the presentation, went so smoothly, Jörn was impressed by all the groups, we all went further than expexted in our research to define the place we had observed for the past two days (the other three places groups looked at were: the train station, a local pub, and one of the central squares). After that we celebrated by going to the Art Gallery. It was a pretty cool exhibit, avante-garde technology based awesomeness. And as it was friday afternoon, after the Art Gallery we went to St. Gertruds again for supper, no free drinks this time though. After supper I had to go to Rönnen to pick up Thursday’s homework from my Swedish lecture (I was working on my presentation and couldn’t make it to class). Dominika has the homework for me and I go up to her room and we’re hanging out and then a few people show up and then a couple more, so there are 7 of us and we are talking about where we are from and laughing at differences in the languages we speak, turns out one of the guys his name is Nils, is going to be my roommate at University Island, visst ja! There is Nils who is Finnish, Cedric who is French, Natalia and Dominika who are polish, Tegan who is Australian, Alex who is from…i don’t know actually, and myself, sitting back laughing and drinking (well i wasn’t drinking). The next thing I know is it is 23:00. Some of them were going to go out clubbing so I took my leave and caught the bus back to the train station, I got home and went to bed and slept for 12 hours, *yawn* visst ja *yawn.* Saturday was another recovery day, played a little guitar hero, had a video call with James and Trevor in Prince George, and of course took it easy (the Eagles would be so proud). Then today was Monica’s nephew’s 11th birthday. We took this sweet drive through the Skåne country side (Skåne: the southern region of Sverige, phonetically: “skone-a”) to get to the birthday party. It reminds me of the Cariboo-Chilcotin, lots of farms, rolling hills, had it not been for the complete absence of shoulders on the sides of the road I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between the to areas. We’re at the house, everyone is speaking Svenska, and I’m standing there nodding and smiling, hahaha. I asked the birthday boy “vad heter du?” and he looked at me weird, then Monica said “vad heter du” and then he told me his name was Richard. I guess I didn’t say it with the proper Skåne accent. The food was delicious, I filled myself up, and quickly realized what a mistake that was when I saw the cheese cake that Richard’s mom had baked for dessert. BEST cheese cake I have ever tasted, wow!! We sang happy birthday to Richard in Svenska, my Swedish teacher hasn’t taught us the Swedish birhtday song yet so I just followed along en français. After the birthday we drove back Åkarp, and I’ve spent the last hour and a half writing this epic blog post. I’ll put some pictures up soon from the last two weeks. Until then good night everybody!

……….Coming Soon!!!!

Friday marked the arrival of the man who needs no introduction.

I may have defeated jet lag, but the lack of sleep leading up to the days prior to departure finally caught up to me yesterday as I managed almost 13 hours of sleep. The daylight outside is similar to what is was on the Dec 21 back home, so waking up at 1pm yesterday I only got 3 hours of light before it was dark outside.

Christian, Alex, and I went to the market again to buy some eats for yesterday and today, as most shops here shut down on sunday!! I find that totally amazing, and wish that would happen in Canada…. i can dream can’t I. Last night the three of us headed over to Malmo for a going away party for one of Christian’s friends who is going away on exchange.

Including the time on the metro it only took us 40 minutes to get to Malmo from Christians house in Copenhagen. We walked down the streets of Malmo to a local pub where the party was happening, we got introduced to a few people but, the pub was so loud you really couldn’t hear what people were saying, the people there started asking Alex and myself what we were doing in Sweden, so I started to tell the story of how I got into the masters program of interaction design, they look at me and tell me that they are in the masters program of interaction design at malmo. So here i am hanging out with my class mates for the semester, and this all happened by chance. It turned out to be a pretty awesome night, and now i’m even more excited about starting classes tomorrow.