Ring-Around-the-Rosie

Firstly, I am sorry for the lack of blogging on my part. I have been meaning to post several things for a while, but it has been a hectic week or so. I will hopefully write something about my recent trip to Helsingborg and Malmö soon, but right want to write (read, vent) about my two day battle, which I believe to have lost, with the insanity of Swedish bureaucracy.

A Day of Queues
Yesterday morning I took my Swedish language final exam and God-willing passed it. It wasn't too difficult, but some of the grammar nuisances (sic) tripped me up (i.e. Swedish nouns have 4 different endings depending if they are definite/indefinite/plural/singular).

Immediately afterward, about 30 of us UC-students ran over to the public library to print out our transcripts and enrollment forms because today was the day we were to register for classes! Now classes start in 5 days, and although we have already enrolled in the international classes, many of us want to take actual departmental classes for our major. This requires us to personally convince each head of the department to take us on as students for classes. Of course the library had one printer and only 2 librarians, so the day of lines began early. However, we all eventually got them (at 30 cents a page!) and headed to our orientation for exchange students.

The orienation place was packed with international students, masters students, and exchange students. We found our room and proceeded to wait for over 2 hours to receive a packet of info about Lund, our email addresses, and student id numbers which could have easily been emailed to us. I have never waited in such a long time for such a small reward-- it was worse than the line for Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean ride (and an even more disappointing and pathetic experience, if you can imagine that!).

We had to zig-zag along the rows, up to the top and then back down--
the picture shows 1/2 of the line. The guy's face in the 2nd row says it all.

Back when we were still smiling

And then the smiles faded-- especially after they didn't even have
a form for Jess. She waited in line for nothing!

Now, armed with our packets, we headed to the departments full of eager anticipation to register at last for classes. How disillusion. The political science department, my primary interest, was completely unhelpful. After being referred to different people and different floors (it was clear nobody knew quite what to do with us), we finally found the office to register. However, the office hours were from 10am to 12pm, and it was well past 3pm. So it was essentially a fruitless day (except for the small banana I consumed after the exam), especially for Jess because she weren't able to get our key copied, a bike, or her orientation packet!

The Run-around
Today began promising with both Jess and I having clear agendas to accomplish: her, to get her registration forms and a bike and I, to register for a political science, Russian culture, and Russian language class. After waiting outside the political science department office for a while, someone finally shows up at 10am. However, I was quickly informed that I need to see someone else to register, but after finding her, she referred me to someone else, but her office hours did not start till 1pm! Slightly frustrated, I went to the Eastern European studies dept hoping for some better luck. Just after I located the person I needed to talk to, she explained that she had to go to meeting till around noon. I was beginning to think there was a conspiracy to keep me from attending classes, especially after the Slavic languages building moved locations without bothering to tell anyone. After over 30 minutes of searching the area, I finally found out that the department has moved to the same place as the Eastern European studies! And guess who I needed to talk to so I could register for classes?? Ms. Meeting lady!

After two cups of tea and a couple chapters of a good book, I regained some semblance of my sanity and tried the Russian culture/Slavic languages lady once again. She was in and was able to help me...sort of. Apparently all the classes I was hoping to take are in Swedish, but I can possibly get on the waiting list for the lone English one if I talk to the instructor of the course. I go down to his office only to discover that of course he is out and won't be back till 2:45. Perfect.

During this time, I go to my favorite Poli Sci department and wait with my UC friends for someone to show up. When the lady comes, she has no idea why our coordinator didn't inform her that we intended to take departmental classes! However, she said to come back tomorrow and they will try to work something out.

After going to an informational meeting/campus organization fair and getting some free cookies, I felt ready to try to talk to the instructor for the Eastern European classes in English. After waiting for over a half hour, he never shows up. So I went with Jess (who has by now still not gotten her registration forms but has purchased a nice bike) to look at some potential housing options. The first two were not great and would mean she would be living with 40+ year old men. But the last one is with a great family in a beautiful home built in 1905 with a garden and dog. We are praying hard that the family picks Jess from the pool of applicants.

Meanwhile, I go back to the instructor's office and find him there! He was super energetic thanks to a Swedish energy drink and a coffee, but he told me that I am not allowed to take a Russian language class because I need to know Swedish first. I tried to convince him that I can just communicate in Russian, but apparently the Russian language instructor doesn't allow it. He also said that the only Eastern European class is full and my chances of getting in do not look good. I thank him and leave completely exhausted and drained having once again accomplished nothing. It also means that there is a very, very good chance that I will have the privileged of becoming a super senior next year!

So, morals of the story: Don't ever, ever take online registering for granted (the UCD class reg. site SISWEB will be my firstborn child's name) and don't ever get into a fight with Swedish (university) bureaucracy if you value your life or your sanity.

Hej From Sweden!

I am in Sweden at last, and I am finally coherent enough to write something!

Here is a quick recap of the last 3 or so days:
August 3rd: Said a tearful and sleepy goodbye to my family and headed off to the San Fransisco Airport. After slightly losing my faith in the goodness of people, I managed to navigate through countless different lines and rude people to make my flight to Washington with a few minutes to spare.
The flights were thankfully uneventful, and I slept great on the flight to Copenhagen (thank you, benadryl!). SAS is a wonderful airlines, by the way. They have lots of movies to choose from, comfortable seats, and dinner came with two bread rolls (which was the first meal I had in over 10 hours)!

August 4th: After landing in Denmark, I bought a train ticket to Lund, Sweden. I must have been too proud of myself for only bringing one big bag because I managed to get on a train with a fellow UCer who had 2 massive, overweight bags plus 2 duffel bags and a purse. She needed lots of help carrying the 60+ lbs. bags up and down stairs, so that was a lot of fun. On my way to get to the Housing Center, I got hopelessly lost, but I was able to see a lot of random parts of the city. After 30 minutes of wandering with a now very heavy backpack and bag, I was able to find a map and get to the Center.

Unfortunately, even though there was about 9 other UC students waiting to get our room keys, the offices would not open until 1pm which meant we had to wait for 3 hours. Everyone was dirty, jetlagged, and pretty grumpy, especially me. I was also going through my typical first day blues where I missed everyone and wished I wasn't there. It also didn't help that everyone from the UCs were talking about how excited they were to get wasted tonight either.

However, we finally got our rooms, and it was wonderful to get a shower and unpack a bit. Then I went to the train station to pick up Lena, a girl from Davis who needed to stay with me because the Housing Office closed before she arrived. It was wonderful to talk with her (she is a Christian too!) and walk around the parks near our dorm rooms. We also went to the little market nearby our rooms and picked up some food. It was pretty simple to figure out what the stuff was, but I was suspicious about the cheeses which looked shady to me. I did recognize pepperjack, but I nearly cried when I saw the price: 99 kr. (nearly $15 for a small block).

August 5th: We had two orientations-- one for our language program and one for all the UC students. Both weren't extremely helpful, but we got fed sandwiches so I can't really complain. I found out that I am taking 3 1/2 hours a day of Swedish for 2 weeks which should be fun; I am expected to take 2 or 3 classes for the Semester; I probably should have paid more attention because I don't really remember anything else.
I also bought a bike (will have a post on that to come) and got a SIM card for my cell phone.
A bunch of people were going out to party, but Lena and I stayed in and watched Chocolat instead!

August 6th: Today was our first day of Swedish class. Wow, it was intense. The teacher was great and only spoke to us in Swedish, but seeing that I knew 2 words in Swedish, it was a bit intimidating. After hour 2, my head was hurting as we kept learning the different pronunciations for one syllable and finding out the differences between a and å and ä and o and ö (they all sound virtually the same!). After class, I wandered around with different people and got a public library card (remind me to take a video of the crazy checkout book machine).

I really enjoy the feel of Lund: it is very European and cultured. Tons of people spend all their time in outside cafes drinking and eating for all hours of the day. The streets are almost all cobblestone, and the buildings, bricks.
In the evening, I had dinner with some girls from Berkley (practically the only other ones who weren't out clubbing!) and then Lena joined us for an interesting game of Scattergories in Swedish.

I'll conclude this post with some lovely pictures of the city .

yes, I am in a Swedish Davis. How ironic.

And this is my university! It was built in the '60s.
That is, the 1660s!

Just one of the many charming streets in the center of Lund.

this beautiful building is our library! How amazing is that?