party, school, life...

hello to you all again...

yeah, I'm in stockholm now at Elisabet's place... last night there was a "party" at the deaf club in stockholm... they usually have these parties on the last friday of each month. I had a good time meeting lots of new people, also lots of people that I met from my last visit last year. Many people there couldn't believe how much better I have gotten with teckenspråk (Swedish sign language), that's a big esteem booster for me since I don't really use it often seeing that my interpreters and school are based on ASL and english for me.

It will kinda suck going back to Jönköping where there's not much deaf people there but at the same time, it's good for me to focus on the school instead of partying too much :) I'll visit stockholm every other weekend or so. I think in few weeks, Elisabet and I will be going to Göteborg, there's some kind of "Deaf day" there... I don't go to those events when I'm in Canada but everybody around here said it will be fun... and it's only like an hour or so west of Jönköping, so why not. By the way, the stockholm ppl here call Jönköping the "Jesus City" heh... for some reason the town is known for their devotion to religion or something... I haven't really seen much of those around in Jönköping yet...

I just finished watching a dvd.. "Be Cool", I'm sure all of you have seen it long time ago.... well I haven't... and I can't tell you how gratifying it is for me to finally see some english on the captions (or subtitles) on the TV... I'm getting sick of seeing all of the svenska everywhere but I guess I will be getting used to it.

Anyway... I just found out my schedule for the first 10 weeks for my school... I mostly have classes on just two or three days per week. No friday classes until mid-october! :D In Sweden..(I don't know if they do this in all of europe or not) they don't have the same day and time or place every week for a specific class.... my schedule differs every week. So, that means I will have to keep my classes schedule with me all the time. I will be taking Macroeconomics and Financial Management/Business Administration. They both are 'A' courses... in Sweden they cagetorize the courses from A to D with A being the easiest course... usually an introductory class or something like that... and the D level being the hardest which usually is the Masters degree level. In the last part of the first semester (last 10 weeks)... so my first 2 classes of the 8 classes I will be taking at Jönköping university will be the easiest ones. My next 6 classes, only one will be C-Level, some I.T. course... then the other 5 courses will be D level... yeessh, yeah.. masters level.. I don't know if I am prepared for that but I'm up for the challenge!... :)

Another interesting thing is the grading system for the courses... in my Macroeconomics, the final grade criteria is based on 20% of the individual assignments and 80% on final written exam. I thought, 80% !"#¤%#!... but then I found out in my Finance class, the whole course grade is based solely on the final written exam!... it's gonna be interesting :) oh yeah, here, you can take up to 2 re-tests if you final an exam or something... gotta like that :) but don't worry... I won't have any of those re-tests heh.

yup, been here for just 10 days, I think I'm already starting to settle in just a lil bit... Everything here is soooo expensive,... I have to start drawing up a budget in kronors (Sweden Currency) so I can know how much I can or can't spend each day/month or whatever. A bottle of pepsi (500ml) costs like $2.30 CDN... biggest bottle, 1.5 liter.. costs almost $4.00 CDN... and the gasoline costs more than $2.00 per liter... enuf said? :) I guess I have to start being more like Andrew and quit drinking sugar based beverages.

Okay, I better stop talking now, don't want to bore you all guys with meticulous details. Tomorrow, I will be heading back to Jesus City for an exciting first week of school! :p...

catch y'all later,
bg0ur3