From Sweden with love...: Home away from home.

Hej Hej!

Well since my last post, I have been extremely busy settling in to my new accommodation, making new friends and starting my first day of class at my new university.

IT’S TIME TO MOVE

I must admit it was sad departing my amazing hotel but I had much more exciting things on the horizon. I arrived at Malmo universities student centrum hassle free, thank goodness and was escorted to where I would be living for the next 5-6 months, Ronnen international housing.

My room, nothing like what I had expected! Modern, fresh, and one amazing view out of massive double windows.

Soon enough I found myself unpacking and introducing myself to the previous tenants in the common room. Next mission WILLYS, the supermarket. Now we all know my luck with supermarkets over here so I was just hoping that this experience would run smoothly. Conveniently Willy’s is only across the road from my accommodation so I wouldn’t have far to travel with all of my groceries, however this was the least of my concerns, actually finding the correct grocery items proved to be my biggest challenge. After 1.5 hours of finding the smallest basket of basics I was ready to head for the checkouts keeping in mind that in Sweden you have to buy your bags and then bag your own goods, massive pain in the bum! My trip was successful and I made it back in the rain might I add to my accommodation drama free.

Jetlag still seemed to be hanging around so I found myself in bed by like 6:30PM local time, winner!

FIRST DAY JITTERS

So today would be the day I start my introduction programme, hopefully meet some new friends and slowly adapt to this time difference.

Woke up at 5am local time, excellent. This was becoming a really really really bad habit, although I have found you can get so much done in that time haha, finish unpacking, write some of my blog post, do some uni work, read magazines, snooze, really the possibilities are endless! Anyway that is beside the point, I was starting class today YAY!

I had met another new girl on my floor last night, Bibbi from Holland and we had arranged that we would go together, save getting lost, as in Sweden you think you are going straight, but all of the roads curve here! We decided to take the bus and use our JoJo cards (pronounced yoyo but no one told me this, no wonder why Swedes were laughing at me), and we successfully made it. En route to uni we managed to bump into a group of Australian girls who were also starting this semester, and starting nursing too, YAY FRIENDS! Class was pretty average today listening to welcoming speeches etc, but we were introduced to a union called ESN Malmo who will be organizing for us if we want to trips to Lapland (so I can dog sled), Russia, Cottage weekend and a 3 day boat trip called ‘Sea Battle’ to Estonia with international students from all over Europe (aaaamazing).

4PM and class finishes and it’s time to venture back home, inclusive of a trip to Willy’s to prepare for our first family dinner of Spag bol and to head for bed, at 8:30PM I’m improving.

DAY 2 : SWEDISH LANGUAGE COURSE

Hej! Jag heter Holly, jag kommer från Australien, och jag talar engelska!

TRANSLATION:

Hello! My name is Holly, I come from Australia and I speak English!

Today was the day I would start to speak svenska (Swedish) and good lord it is so hard! And my Swedish sim started working YAY, contact and internet again! Did I mention today was the first day of snow? That’s right! Walking outside honestly feels like swimming at Boat Harbour beach naked in the wintertime, it is FREEEEEEEZING! Anyways after our Swedish languages classes we got to meet polis officer Mike:

Who enlightened us that it is not illegal to be drunk in the street, but if you are too drunk the polis will do you a favor and place you in (I can’t remember what he called it) but like a hole in the ground for the remainder of the night until you sober up, courtesy of them of course. And Nicole, you can ride your bike whilst under the influence!!! The rest of the lectures and info sessions about housing etc were rather boring and the girls and I found ourselves taking amazing selfies on snapchat.

Now it was time for ESN (the union) games! And my competitive side was destined to come out, however they decided they would play games that didn’t have a winner, let down! After the games (Australia dominated mind you) it was time to find systembolagets (the alcohol store) and stock up for the weekend ahead of us! Everything is a little cheaper which is a bonus, ciders twice the strength only $2 winner winner chicken dinner!

We walked home and decided to have drinks in my room ‘the penthouse’ and would you believe it I managed to stay awake past 7PM!

Anyways I have a day of exploring awaiting, so until next time.

From Sweden with love,