quick update!

Hello everyone. I am doing a quick update on my Sweden adventure. It has gotten much darker and colder here. I am not used to it yet, but soon I will be. We had a final exam on Friday that covered a lot of information. Luckily it was Halloween, so I got to spend the rest of the day preparing my costume and eating Mcdonald's. Saturday night I walked around the local graveyard because it is a Swedish tradition to light candles there on All Saint's Day. Today, Sunday, I rode out to a local farm and bought some peanut raisin butter. The weather was beautiful.
This week we are starting the next period, so I'll keep everyone informed.

At the Farm there were female Peacocks.

My halloween costume. Nick was Uncle Sam and I was Mr. Mellan Mjölk.

The Rotundan

Valeria, from Brazil, in front of the Administration building.

The MSLS Common Room/Workshop.

The Graveyard.

Fall is in the Air

Hello to everyone!

It is beginning to look and feel like fall over here. I was on a bike ride early this morning to a lamp recycling factory and it really settled in. One of the pictures I've posted is of some trees near this factory. Another of the pictures is of a flourescent lamp test room. It was very warm and bright inside this room!

I realized too, that I am missing UT football back in the states. I love getting up on a fall Saturday morning and walking to the stadium with 100,000 people. It feels like football weather - its just not football season over here (at least American football).

I've been keeping very busy with class. They have given us heavy group projects that require an exceptional amount of outside-the-classroom time and planning. Luckily the people here are a pleasure to work with and everyone is very capable. It is neat to mix perspectives with others from Australia, Sweden, China, Brazil, etc. Presentations are next week, and then the the final exam for the first period. Starting Nov. 2 will be the second period of study, which is more in depth in certain areas. This is the second of three periods, with the final being the thesis period.

I am drinking lots of milk and staying active (running and a local gym called Lok-&-Motion). I have also managed somehow to set up a Swedish bank account and a phone account online. It is a challenge because everything is written in Swedish and the people at the bank don't speak good english either. Nonetheless I am taking it upon myself to learn the language, and I've successfully mastered their number system. Now I just need to master everything but numbers! LOL

I've added a lot of pictures this time, per demand.

After Ultimate Frisbee at the Retreat near Copenhagen.

Campfire at the Retreat near Copenhagen.

LongLife lamps at AuraLight.

Forest near Auralight factory.

International Food Night.

Swedish Milk.

At the barbecue back in August. I'm back right.

A pumpkin on top of a tower in Copenhagen.

Field Trip

Top Left: A square in Copenhagen

Top Right: My Copenhagen Traveling Buddies

Bottom Right: Cathedral in Roskilde

Bottom Left: Actual Viking Ship

It's cold and blustery here in Karlskrona today. Hopefully this isn't a precursor to what I can expect as 'normal'

This previous week I spent in Denmark. We traveled to Roskilde on Tuesday and stayed there until Thursday morning. While we were in this place we traveled to an Ecovillage/Commune to talk to the inhabitants about their lives and find out how sustainable their community is. It has been around since the 1970's. An interesting fact is that when the children graduate high school they always leave the commune for at least ten years, and experience the world outside. Sometimes they come back, sometimes they don't. They also have wind turbines on the premises to provide all the power.

We also visited a Viking museum in Roskilde. This town was the center of the Danish universe for several hundred years, having been built before the year 1000. The Vikings considered Roskilde an important town and used it as a hub for activity. One of the pictures attached is of a Viking ship they recovered from the bay in the 1960s.

There is also a large cathedral in the center of town. It was built in the 12th century. Inside are buried many Danish monarchs. It reminded me of the great Basilicas in Italy, with all of the inscriptions on the walls and tombs, written in Latin.

After Roskilde, we traveled to a small town to the east. Actually we traveled to the middle of nowhere. We stayed at a retreat camp, complete with a gymnasium, kitchen, dining room, and dorms. Here we engaged in workshops - collectively organized and run by us. We also played Ultimate Frisbee and soccer whenever given the chance. I also got in on a game of 'lifesize' chess. The pieces were two feet tall, and the board was 10 feet x 10 feet. You had to physically walk around and move the pieces!

This retreat was our last night together as an entire group. We had a big campfire at night. My friend Karen brought her guitar so we sang some songs, passed around the guitar, and a couple of people did 'firedancing' It was a lot of fun, and we played the guitar hard enough to break one of the strings!

On Friday we had more workshops and then took the bus to Copenhagen. Everyone stayed in the same hostel, which has to be one of the largest in Europe. They unfortunetaly had only one night available, so I decided to come home on Saturday instead of trying to find another place to stay on Sunday.

It is a fascinating city. On Friday a group of us went to the Christiania district and hung out with a bunch of locals. It was a unique experience, and one most tourists don't engage in I'm sure. On Friday I walked around and took pictures of the city. I'll definitely be going back again when I'll have more time to explore and experience.

Thanks for reading this edition of MATT'S SWEDEN ADVENTURE!

These are pictures from the Karlskrona area. The top left is from my bedroom window. The top right is from the walking path going to town. The bottom left is me standing in the middle of the big park in town. It's quite beautiful here, if I do say so myself...

First real blog.

I am indeed in Sweden for those of you who have yet to hear from me! I arrived three weeks ago by plane, via Copenhagen. It was quite an adventure making it here to my apartment. The plane ride wasn't too long, but sleep was scarce and I was running on fumes when I got to Copenhagen to start my journey. Unfortunetaly the airline lost one of my bags so I was walking around for an hour looking for it in the airport, thinking that I
simply had not noticed it at the baggage claim. But it turns out that it hadn't gotten on the plane from Nashville. Luckily I did receive one of my suitcases so I wasn't at a total loss. And I had packed extra clothes in my carry on.
I managed to sleep on the train ride to Karlskrona. It is about four hours from Copenhagen.

Once I got here I managed to find my way to the real estate agency here in town and get my account settled. They gave me my key and I took the bus to my apartment, here next to the BTH campus. (BTH stands for Blekinge Tekniska Hogskolan). Basically its a small technical university.Since then I have gotten settled into this new Swedish home. A couple of the things I've noticed since being here:
Housing prices are comparitively cheap to the United States. For instance, my apartment overlooks a beautiful bay, its close to campus, and I pay about the same as I paid in Knoxville for it.

Food (and all goods) is extremely expensive. The cost of living is very high in Sweden, and they pay the second-highest taxes in the industrialized world.

It is custom to take your shoes off when entering a house here. Swedes get very upset when you don't do this...

The Swedish people are a little stand-offish at first, but once you get to know them they are very very kind. They generally take well to foreigners, and everyone speaks English here.

School is heating up as well. We have to give two presentations next week and there is a test. I shall be ranting on here more soon, with more details of this journey.

test

this is my test blog...