So I figured I would post some of the photos of the area where I am living for the year. I am living in a corridor which has twelve rooms, one of them is always unoccupied but a German man keeps paying the rent. There are a bunch of little weird things like that in Flogsta. But I digress. So far we have about eight people living here, with four of them being international students. None of the international students come from the same country. We have a Polish student who grew up in France, a German student and a student from Mozambique who has never seen snow, and of course me from 'Merica. It sounds like a wacky sitcom that Fox would put out for two episodes before promptly being cancelled.
My barren room that makes me feel like I am living in a meth den
View from my desk. The windows swing open so I can't really open the main window.
My bed and awkwardly placed chair that serves as a night stand
My book shelf with no books to fill it.
The kitchen. Flogsta kitchens tend to get dirty because of the sheer number of people who live and eat in them. Mine has been clean so far.
It is nice to sit in the morning and drink tea in the dining area. The rain makes the air oh so fresh.
The common room where I can watch six channels which are all in Swedish.
My corridor is decorated in Swedish versions of American movie posters. It is really funny to see taglines and sometimes titles translated into Swedish.
I had my first real interaction with Swedish students the
last few days. Obviously it has been the political science department that is
apparently bringing the party. Yesterday we spotted them when we were
barbequing near the ekonomikum. All of the students were wearing costumes
ranging from the 1960s Soviet uniforms to Robin Hood. Oh and they were
practicing some sort of choreographed dance routine. The German and Californian
delegation obviously wanted to go and check out the festivities and integrate
into the native Swedish culture so that is what we did. We hopped up on to the
outskirts of tribal dance circle in attempt to integrate. We were slightly
weary that the dancers were all part of
some sort of Swedish cult and that we would soon be drinking Kool Aid to take
us to our alien fathers. We all agreed it would be best not to drink anything
the costume wearing swedes brought us. They were teaching everyone the dance moves to
a Swedish dance song. I didn’t understand a word of the instructions about how
to dance but as I learned in Korea dancing is something that you don’t need
language to explain. This was the second
time in as many months that I was in a foreign country trying to learn their
synchronized dance moves I should probably keep this trend up and hit the
Serbian Turbofolk clubs in November.
It turns out that the students were dressed that way and
dancing because it was part of their university orientation called nollning.
When we left the dance circle we figured it would be the last we would see of
the costume wearing dancing Swedes… but we were wrong. The next night when we
were coming back from an International Orientation Barbeque we heard music and
saw lights coming from Flogsta building nine. Spinning LED lights and loud
music universally attracts students like cats to canned tuna. When we got to
the roof we were greeted again by the costume wearing Swedes dancing on the
roof. As we are standing around observing the odd visual spectacle in front of
us a couple of costumed Swedes a group of the participants came up and promptly
said in perfect English “Oh you are exchange students right?” I first surprised
that they could recognize us as foreigners so quickly. Then I realized it was
because we were not dressed up as refuges from World War II or whatever the ecliptic
theme of the night was.
It was very interesting to converse with the Swedes. My experiences with the
Swedish people had at that point been mostly in passing. Whenever I would ask a question I would get a
very detailed answer. The interactions were very polite but very businesslike. For some reason on the rooftop of the student
dormitory the Swedish students were much friendlier. Some may point to the
cartons of wine that they were all drinking like water. But I prefer to believe
their friendliness came from excitement of international education.
Pretty much everyone asked me why I chose Sweden. I think
they were kind of shocked when I said I wanted to go to a place where nobody
made small talk and it snowed during winter.
They were very modest about their country, almost to the point where it
seemed they did not like or that they were not proud of Sweden. The few that I
talked to also would apologize for talking too much or anytime they would
stumble over a word or two. I think this
was a display of The Law of Jante, which is the social idea that discourages
being boastful, self-absorbed or cocky. This has a result of people being
scared to have any modest pride about achievements. It is the complete opposite
of the American cultural philosophy which encourages uniqueness and to stand
out of the crowd. But then this has the extreme effect of the cocky arrogant
American.
One of the students on the roof actually studied at Santa
Barbra City College. Obviously she had a great time. She did say that she found
the classes to be easy and most of the students not interested in learning but
much more interested in how drunk or high they were the night before. That she
found that there is much less of an interest in things outside of intoxication
and socializing. I tried to explain how Santa Barbra City College is not a very
representative sample of all American university students but she does have a
point. When I am here socializing with the International Students I can have a
forty minute long discussion on the Eurozone crisis and discuss the American
political system in great detail. If I tried that at a party in Sonoma I would
get blank stares and then everyone would go back to chugging Jack Daniels. But
then again my experiences here have been mostly with International Students who
have an interest in going abroad and learning about the world so it would be a
silly generalization to say that all European university students are much more
interested in the world compared to American students.
Ignoring any comparisons about cultural differences my last week
and a half here has been a blur of meeting new people and doing new things. I
have met people from all over the world and it is incredibly fun just asking
questions about their culture and where they are from. Most of the international students who study
at Uppsala actually chose Sweden so they could practice their English. This
means that all of the international students speak English and makes
communication a breeze. I sometimes forget I am not with native speakers and
get blank stares when I say things like “I am hella down”. I also have started
to speak slightly differently when I talk to non-natives. I don’t dumb down
what I am saying but rather try to talk in a more formal way, clearer and less “jumpy”.
It is good for me because I tend to speak quickly, slur my words jump around to
multiple tangents of a conversation. Being
the native speaker also has its perks, it is fun to try and figure out a word
when someone has forgotten a word. It is almost like a game of charades.
I will post more pictures of Uppsala and the different
places I have been going soon. It has been a blur of fun and it is hard to find
the time to write updates.
After a night in my cell it was time to move to Flogsta, my
new home for the year. But first I had
to eat breakfast. The breakfast from Centralstation Vandrarhem Uppsala cost 60
SEK but I really needed the convenience. It was very similar style to the
complimentary breakfast at hotels in America. The only thing different was that
everything was in Swedish. That really didn’t matter for things like orange
juice or cereal I could pretty much guess by the pictures. The real problem is
the dairy products. There were like six different milk containers and I had no
idea which was which. So in my jet lagged haze I grabbed the nearest one and
poured it on my cereal. What came out was a thick yogurt like paste which I
think is just plain yogurt but I couldn’t be completely sure. I ate it anyways and spent the next twenty
minutes watching people prepare their food in attempt to try and figure out the
proper way to eat breakfast in Sweden. After breakfast I took some time to walk around the downtown area of Uppsala. I was still in a haze from the plane ride and didn't quite soak up what I was seeing but I did manage to take a number of photos.
Uppsala Cathedral it is a major landmark in the city skyline. Which makes it hard to lose your orientation. There were a bunch of Russian tourists checking out the cathedral when I walked by.
This is Uppsala University's library. A bit different from SSUs
The Fyris River cuts Uppsala into an east and west side. The university and cathedral are on the east. The newer downtown area is on the west side. Flogsta is east side.
Uppsala Castle is another land mark that dominates the skyline.
The clouds here are insane. They match the bipolar weather.
Getting to my student housing in Flogsta from downtown isn’t that hard at all.
There is a direct bus that goes from downtown to Flogsta. The hard part is
buying the bus ticket. You cannot buy the ticket on the bus with cash; you have
to use a debit card. To buy a ticket with cash you have to go to a convenience
store buy it from them. Once I figured that out the bus ride was smooth
sailing. I did my best to try not to break any of the unwritten rules of public
transit while taking up seat space while carrying my massive bags of luggage.
The housing office didn’t open until one but I arrived at
around eleven thirty. So I plopped myself on a mossy rock next to a discarded
bike and took in my surroundings. Luckily it was only a few minutes before an
exchange student from Germany arrived and we got to chatting. Soon there were a
few more exchange students milling about the rocks near the housing office. We
chatted and after we got our keys agreed to meet up to explore the town. I’ll go more into more detail about the city
of Uppsala and my interactions with other exchange students in a future post.
Right now I want to talk about my home for the year.
Flogsta was built in the 1970s and looks the part. There are
sixteen buildings in Flogsta with twelve of them being primarily used by
students. Each building is seven stories high with two student corridors on
each level. Each corridor houses about twelve students. This comes out to be
around two thousand residents of Flogsta. That morning however it did not look as though
this was densely populated living area. There were few people walking around
but it was mostly empty… except for bikes, there are hundreds if not thousands
of bikes around Flogsta. They are strewn
across the ground in various states of decay or locked up to trees or filling
up the lines of bike parking outside of each building.
My corridor is on the first floor of building one. My floor
is odd in that there is only one corridor. In the space where there is normally
a second corridor there is a kindergarten. Yeah there is a children’s school in
the base of a student housing complex. In America I feel like a college dorm
would be the last place you would want to send your small impressionable child.
I guess living across from a kindergarten is better than living across the hall
from rowdy neighbors. But apparently the little Swedes come marching in at
about seven in the morning to a chorus of children’s laughter. Maybe I should
take the eight AM basic Swedish course…
In contrast to the buildings the area surrounding Flogsta is
beautiful. Flogsta seems to have been built in the middle of a forest, probably
as an effort to hide the horrendously ugly architecture. There are bike paths
snaking throughout the woods with beautiful fields of green grasses and
communal gardens stretching for hundreds of meters before reaching more forest.
The first few days when I kept waking up to bright sunshine at five in the
morning, I took the time to walk around and explore the area around Flogsta. It
is very peaceful and contrasts nicely with the student-project atmosphere of
Flogsta. I think I am going to like living here.
The Swedish August. This is where I go shopping
Flogsta from the roof.
Dawn at 5:20 AM
Cell tower I think. There were a bunch of warning signs in Swedish leading up to it.
Another living area by the bike path. To the left there is a large communal garden.
The phrase left to the anarchy sign translates to "Sweden must die", a warm welcome when walking back from downtown
There are fields like this all around the surrounding area. It somehow makes the sky look bigger.
It took just under 24 hours of travel time to get to
Uppsala. It really did feel like it. I got bored on the plane somewhere over
Ontario so the rest of the flight was spent taking thirty minute micronaps and
jolting upright. I had the window seat which is nice for the view and having a
wall to sleep on but it is incredibly claustrophobic. Just like on my flight to Seoul my attention
span was non-existent. So I watched every Family Guy episode the entertainment
station had. Seriously that is the only show they should have on airplanes, the
plot doesn’t matter and you only need half of your brain to processes the
jokes.
Heathrow is insanely large and confusing. After getting
off the plane we had to walk for a good quarter mile in a windowless hallway
never knowing when we would be able to sit. The terminals are separated and the
only way to travel between them is with buses, so you’d better be damn sure
which terminal you need to be in before you get on the bus. When I finally did
get to through security and into the right terminal I was greeted with a giant mall
catering to all earthly luxuries. Since I didn’t feel like buying an eight
hundred dollar bottle of whiskey or a twelve hundred dollar suit I just bought
a seven dollar latte from Starbucks and waited for my connecting flight to
Stockholm.
On the flight to Stockholm I continued my micronaps from the
first flight. I am pretty sure I am classically conditioned to sleep on flights
now. I did wake up right as we started to fly over the coast of Sweden. The
view from the plane gave a great perspective of the landscape of the Swedish
coastline. Bodies of water seemed to warp in and out of the mainland with small
islands dotted intermittently. I could
see small villages connecting in a web of roads to much larger towns that surrounded
bays and inlets of water. As I looked out at the countryside the fact that I
would be living in a completely different country really set in.
The plane landed in Arlanda airport ahead of schedule. Customs
was a breeze, I just showed them the print out confirmation that my residency
permit was approved and that I would be receiving it in Sweden. I felt a little
uncomfortable only having a printed out PDF that said I was allowed to enter
the country for a year, but they said it was fine and within two minutes I was
going to get my baggage. I still had to figure out where the train station was
and how to get a ticket. I asked the helpful people at the tourism desk and
they sold me the ticket right there. The station is actually underneath the
airport. To get into the station I had to place the ticket which I bought in
one machine then I was given another ticket which I had to swipe at the gates. Since everything was in Swedish it took me a
few minutes of standing around with my ticket in my hand looking confused before
the attendant told me what to do.
The station was refreshingly cool. I could finally breathe
in cool air from a natural source. It
reminded me of the lava tubes in Jeju, a massively tunnel with cool air. The
station was also completely silent. I had gotten used to the constant sounds of
travel; the chatter of hundreds of people in different languages, the announcements
in the airport and the ever present dull roar of the airplane. In the Arlanda
train station the silence was only punctured every ten minutes to announce the
trains. It was peaceful.
The actual train ride only took about 20 minutes. The trains
are impeccably clean and comfortable. The style of the interior reminds me more
of BART than Amtrak, but with less urine stains. Once we got into Uppsala I
went directly to where I knew the hostel was. I had already scoped out the
block long route on Google Street View so I knew exactly where to go. I guess
that kind of ruined the mystery of what I was looking for but also it made it
so I could go right to bed without any accidental detours. I had a single
hostel room booked and it was basically a large closet with a bathroom. I didn’t
really mind I just grabbed the bare essentials from my suitcase and went
straight to bed. I was relieved I was
finally in Uppsala but I knew the next day would be a long one.
Today I leave the country for a year. I am pretty much packed.
I just packed a lot of long johns, warm socks, thick shirts and coats. It was
hard decide what clothes to buy for Sweden. I have lived in the Bay Area my
entire life my winter wardrobe consist of a hoodie maybe two if I am feeling
crazy. But describing what is in my suitcase isn't the most interesting thing in the world.
After my trip to Korea I pretty much sat around Moraga for
four weeks “preparing” for Sweden. I have been incredibly bored. I went from an
environment of always being busy to an environment of never being busy. But
luckily this gave me time to get excited about Sweden. And time to loiter in
front of various Moraga stores. Going to Jeju gave me confidence about
traveling internationally and was an appetizer of the fun and personal growth
that studying abroad brings.
I am going to be
living in Uppsala (which is about 45 minutes north of Stockholm) and studying
at Uppsala University. There are about
140,000 people in Uppsala and 21,000 students at the university. I do not speak
any Swedish but I will be taking a class on basic Swedish while I am here. English
is widley spoken as a second language so there shouldn’t be too much of a
language barrier. I am mostly taking history classes for my history minor with
a dabble of political science classes.
The question that I always get asked is why I chose Sweden. There
are a number of specific reasons but essentially I want to go somewhere
different. I want to see what a real winter is like, I want to learn the
history of a country I know relatively little about, and I want to be immersed
in a culture which has different views on individualism and the role of
government. Sweden is just different. Also I want to eat reindeer.
I hope to update this blog every week. Whether mundane or
not I am sure I will be able to write something interesting. Since my time in
Sweden will be spread out I hope to write in more depth about cultural
observations that I only just touched upon when I was writing in Korea. The
first few weeks will probably equally as hectic and busy as my trip in Jeju was
but it will level off and I will get a routine going. I would recommend
subscribing by email if you want to stay updated. Thanks for reading.
So I had planned to keep my blog completely up to date while
I was in Jeju. I had the intention of writing in depth blog posts about my
experiences in Jeju on pretty much a day to day basis while I was actually
there. This obviously proved to be completely
futile seeing as right now I am writing the last post about Jeju a full month
after I left Jeju. I am going to give a
significantly less detailed post about the last week in Jeju.
On Monday Professor McCuan informed us that we would be
meeting with the mayor on Wednesday. It was finally time to rock the suit. Tuesday would be our last free day to wander
around Jeju City without concrete plans so we took advantage of that by going
to various air conditioned electronic stores and watching 3D K-Pop music
videos. The humidity was the worst of the trip that Tuesday, every breath I
took felt like it was pure moisture.
Wednesday the weather was about the same. Wearing a suit in
humidity is hellish. Wearing a piece of fabric tightly around my neck didn’t
particularly help the feeling that I was not getting enough oxygen. The meeting with the mayor went very well. Ko
translated for us and Mayor Kim Sang Oh spoke to Professor McCuan directly. He jumped right into politics asking
Professor McCuan if President Obama was going to win the upcoming election.
Professor McCuan said “Oh that is what we are studying in class right now, why
don’t I have my students explain the factors of the upcoming election.” So we
went around the table and we each said a little blurb about a concept that we
had learned in class. I was pretty nervous I felt out of my element and I was
scared someone would choose the concept I had in mind before me. I said my blub
about getting voters to the voting booth and the diplomatic meeting continued
on. There were lots of photos taken and lots of gifts exchanged. The topic of conversation was mostly about the
future relationships between Sonoma State University and Jeju University and
how to increase sister city relations between Jeju City and Santa Rosa. I
followed along but mostly I focused on not constantly fidgeting and tried to
look cool calm and collective.
The mayor invited us to dinner and we gladly accepted. We
went to a western style restaurant called “The White House” it had a beachfront
view and was very fine dining. The cab driver to the White House drove
incredibly aggressively speeding and cutting people off and almost killing a
dog that was walking in the street.
Turns out Ko had told him that we were late for a meeting with the mayor
and that kicked him into crazy taxi mode. The dinner went fine; there were
three booths with four people in each booth. They spread out the visting
Americans so that each boot had a sampling of students. After steak and deep
fried crab the head of tourism for Jeju City Yong Woo Kim invited us to go on a
quick tour of Dragonhead Rock, insisting that we must see it before we left. Of
course we agreed and walked around the beautiful rocky beach.
On Thursday morning we had our final and in the afternoon
all of members of the 2012 Jeju International Summer School went to an early
dinner where we feasted on stir-fried chicken.
It was the first time that the whole group had been together at the same
time and it a fun affair. Friday we all
went to the beach and swam in the ocean and played on the sand underneath grey
skies. In the evening we packed up our
clothes and headed to FamilyMart to start an evening of karaoke and nightlife.
I intended to stay up the whole night in order to be able to sleep on the plane
ride back. I was completely successful on both counts.
Going to Jeju was an amazing experience. I loved the food, I
loved the scenery, I loved the sounds, I loved exploring the culture but most
of all I loved the people. Everyone in Jeju treated us with incredible kindness
and hospitality. The street signs were
not lying when they said “Jeju loves having you here”. It was an amazing trip filled with amazing
people.
The official course name for Professor McCuan’s class is
“Comparative Elections and Mass Political Behavior – U.S.” The course covers a number of different
aspects of the American electoral processes, including the influence of media,
how money has changed elections and how the American political landscape has
changed in the last fifty years. It is an upper division political science class with
advanced look at elections, it is not a basic course trying to teach the system
of elections rather it is an in depth analysis of the various theories behind
elections and examining various models to explain trends in elections. It is a complex class that assumes a firm
understanding of the culture and political structure of the United States of
America. We had two Korean students who decided to stay enrolled in the
course. One is an English Literature major and the other is a Political Science
major but this was her first class at university ever she is an incoming
freshman next year. They both speak
English very well, although there is a fair amount of political science jargon
which they needed to have clarified.
Professor McCuan encouraged the Korean students to go first to the American students for help, as this class is in our major and we all enjoy and have an interest in the
subject. I like trying to explain words
and the structure of our government and culture when I get asked. It tests my
knowledge on a given word or concept and helps me understand it better. I
always thought the American political system was fairly straight forward but when I started to explain how our government works I realized how odd and confusing it really is. Explaining how the number of Representatives the each states gets in the house is proportional to the population but the number of Senators is set at two per a state was a difficult concept to explain. But that was not nearly as hard as trying to explain the electoral college, and this was just the base of knowledge needed to understand the larger concepts that we were learning about. The course expected all students to know these things about the American governmental system. In addition to organizational knowledge needed to understand elections there also must be an understanding of the social aspect of the American electorate. All of the American students know that the white working class votes for conservatives even though fiscally it is not in their benefit. How do we even begin to explain the social cleavages that make up America. It is completely foreign to them. We did our best to try and explain the American political landscape in the short amount of time that we had.
In the class we have a few sections that focus on campaign advertising. We are shown a number of classic campaign ads and we are asked to interpret them, to see what techniques they are using to convince the average person to vote a certain way. It was easy for me as a Political Sciences student to get caught up in how truthful the ad is or trying to place it into the context of the election. The Korean students however were viewing the ads for the first time ever with a limit knowledge about their context. Their perception of the ads provided valuable insight to the ads effect on neutral voters. One memorable moment was after we watched one of the "Swiftboat Veterans for Truth" ads that ran during the 2004 election. After we watched the ad one of the Korean students asked "So they are denigrating a war hero? Why would they do that?" The answer was because they wanted Bush to win. Her shock at the ads into perspective how divisive and cut-throat the American political system has become when attack ads of the likes "Swiftboat Veterans For Truth" are seen as a the norm. It is easy to get caught up in your own way of doing things so much so that you only have the insider view of how you do things.
I asked Kim how the Korean professors taught at Jeju University. She said that most professor lecture as the students take notes and the professor does not engage the students with questions or like to being asked questions. This is the polar opposite of Professor McCuan's teaching style. He is very animated constantly calling on students to answer questions to keep the students engaged and welcomes questions by his students. So along with taking a college course in a second language the Korean students also had to work in a completely different classroom environment. I really enjoyed the class it went from nine in the morning to noon which got us up early and allowed us to have the rest of the day to do as we please. It was engaging and I learned a great deal in a short amount of time. I have not talked to the Korean students about what they learned from the actual class but if it is something as simple as "the American election system is incredibly complex and nuanced" then they have learned a great deal about the American political system.
A badly posed class picture!
Professor McCuan giving us a compacted lecture on his specialty, direct democracy.
We made the newspaper!
Lectern from the future.
This is where I drank coffee drinks during the breaks in class. Probably the most interesting photo on this blog.
