Oh, right, school.

I'm a dork, I can't help it.

 Classes started last Monday, and I am one of the few exchange students who has class every day.  Lucky me!

The semesters are quite different from those in Canada.  Instead of taking four or five courses at time per semester, students here take one or two courses per "bloc." There are four blocs per semester, so each class finishes up in just a couple of months.  The first class I am taking, a Masters Level course, is "Soils of the World."  On the second day of class, we went to the Kunsangen Farm, which belongs to SLU as a research farm and is a 15 minute bike ride from campus.  Unlike my soils class at UBC, where the TAs are kind enough to dig the soil pits ahead of time for us, my professor divided us up in groups of five, gave us a few shovels, and pointed to where we should start digging.  I'm not complaining, as in the end I got to see some awesome soil horizons and we had to identify the each layer of soil.  Don't laugh, I know I'm a nerd.

My second class is another Masters course, called, "Water Management, Soil Conservation, and Land Evaluation."  I have a question for you: does this title in any way imply engineering??  Because it turns out it's an agricultural engineering course!  This is just fine and dandy for me, the girl who has avoided all physics courses in university and barely understood Physics 11.

The class sizes are pretty small, by UBC standards, at about 20 students in each class.  Most of them are international Masters students, seeing as how the professors speak English in these classes.  There are a few exchange students, including a couple of Quebecois - hooray, Canadians (sort of)!  Since most of classes are at least 3 hours a day, we have plenty of time to get to know one another as well as speak one-on-one with the profs, who themselves teach in an informal, rather relaxed fashion.  We often have fika after every hour.

Oh, yes, fika.  Fika fika fika.  This word means coffee break, and happens all the time in Sweden.  We meet for fika with friends between classes, visit their places for a quick fika and visit, or go to town at night for fika.

You might be wondering which nation I chose in the end.  I went with Varmlands nation.  It's pretty much the same as many of the other nations, in that it has a sports club, choir, fika, brunch, pub, etc.  I also joined the SLU Student Nation for another 250 SEK, because this also gives you access to events and happenings on campus.  So when I'm not struggling to understand physics, I can head to the pub to drown my sorrows.  Just kidding..