Autumn has arrived.

Another week has gone by and summer I think is over here in Sweden. The trees are starting to turn colour, pine needles are scattered on the pathways. The weather has changed from my first week, it is now cold and windy everyday and it has rained pretty much every day this week. Sweaters and jackets are a necessity now.

The first week of school is done. It will be interesting; very thought provoking. Today's lecture focused on the general layout of earth-- biomes, ecological cycles, matter and energy, laws of thermodynamics-- a review of basic biology, geology and physics-- giving a visual perspective on how the world works as a whole, how different cycles contribute to making life sustainable on earth. A glimpse of how human life has interacted with these natural cycles and the effects (negative and positive) of this interaction was seen. Over the next few lectures I'm sure we will delve deeper into this topic.

Lectures are longer than what I am used to, so it is taking abit of concentration to keep focused on the conversation. I will adjust though-- we do get 20 minute coffee breaks at the mid point which helps a lot.

This week, being the first for school has been somewhat of a 'frosh' week. There have been a lot of activities and parties through out. Yesterday was a games day held on the grass--games like tug of war, obstacle races, very simple team participation games whích were alot of fun. Wednesday night was a small department party (20 people or so) where more icebreaker games were played as well as name memorizing type games. We ended up going to the bars afterwards.


They are expensive. At the bar, beer cost around 48kr ($7.25 approximately). Only the wealthy frequent the bar scene here. Beer ranges in alcoholic percentage as well: 2.8%, 5.5% or 7.2%. You have to be really specific when ordering or careful when buying or else you will end up with the 2.8%.........which is near-beer. Liquor stores carry a large variety of alcohol at reasonable prices. They are abit more expensive than in Canada but still fall in what I would call a reasonable range....so my alcohol consumption has not been dampered by any means.