Hej hej!
It is my first week here in Halmstad, and I believe that I made the right choice to come to Sweden. I have some issues with being homesick, however, every time I go to Sweden it feels like coming home. The travel from the Netherlands to Sweden was quick, I flew from Amsterdam to Copenhagen, and from there I took the train to Halmstad. The train ride was about 2 and a half hours, and it gets dark quite early here so there was not much to see. I live in a student dorm, where I already met a lot of people. I have a room alone, and it is quite big. I have my own bathroom, and the kitchen is shared with a few people.
The campus here is huge, I have to take a map to search for the building I have class in. There are buildings from A to Z, literally. On Monday, we had the introduction day (In building J, which is called Visionen, which means lecture hall here). We received a lot of information about the courses, and how it works in Sweden. The Swedish people are extremely nice and welcoming, but most of all funny, and the level of English is high. I decided to take the courses Marketing, Strategic Marketing and Swedish in the first period. This week I also had the introduction of these courses. What I noticed is that the teaching style is similar to the Netherlands, as we can call the teachers by their first names and the power distance is low. For exams, I will have to take one Marketing exam and a Swedish exam. For Marketing and Strategic Marketing, I will also have to do a group assignment and a presentation. The workload here is, mildly said, not much. Also, the courses that I am taking are repetitive of what I already have learned in the Netherlands, and will, therefore, be quite easy. However, Business to Business and Marketing are the fields that I would like to work in later, and repetition will help me to manage it even better.
Next week we will have an introduction weekend, and during the week my classes will start. I am really curious how the group work will go, as I am only in class with exchange students. All those students are from different studies, so I am not only in class with business students, but also with for example, statistics students.
The school has a student union, which plans a lot of trips for students. For example, a moose safari, going to a waterfall, and a trip to Lapland. It is clear that I will not be bored here, as the city is quite small itself. There is a beach close by where they often organize a barbeque and the students here plan trips themselves as well. Unfortunately, I did not meet any locals yet, as I only have class with exchange students. Hopefully, I will get to know more about the Swedish culture in the upcoming weeks. What I did learn about the culture, is that Swedish people tend to have ”Fika” a lot. This means that people get together, eat cinnamon buns and drink coffee to socialize.
Oh, when it comes to the weather, it is quite similar to the Netherlands. At the moment it is 5 degrees, and we had some sun last week. However, the forecast says it will rain next week, the whole week… Wish me luck.
For now, thank you for reading, and I will update you in two weeks or so with more, hopefully amazing, stories.
LiviSverige 