First Days in Sundsvall

For those of you that are following (i.e. probably just mom and dad?), as you can see, I have very sporadic internet connectivity. What that means is that I’m not able to post something every day. I was a little annoyed at first, until I realized that when I was in Aberdeen, I only blogged once a week – and that was jolly good for any of my readers, ja? (don’t know what happened there – some kind of British-Swedish typing fusion…more on that later)

ANYWAY. Long story short, I’m going to post when and how long I can, but I can’t make you any promises. So let's get to it; there's a lot to share!

Some fun facts about Sundsvall:

-It’s on the east coast of Sweden, facing Finland. Unfortunately we don’t have enough time or money to make a trip to Finland this time around, but it’s definitely on my ever-growing “To Visit” list.

-Apparently here is where you get the best tap water in the world. I’m not sure if that’s a fact or if it’s just a figure of speech that Chelsea used when describing it to us, but either way, it was fantastic! So fresh, and SO clean.

-They have the [un?]official mascot of a dragon. See the somewhat-inappropriate photo below for an unfortunate manufacturing flaw (or hilarious design) of one of the dragons in the city centre. There’s also dragons on the flags with the town name, and apparently local sports teams bear the same animal. They bear the dragon. They dragon the bear. Are you confused yet? Anyway, when Amanda and I asked about it, we learned that a long time ago, the city was burned to the ground. One story goes that they then had the mascot of a dragon to protect them, and another said it was the dragon who burned it down in the first place. Either way, all the buildings had to be re-built in stone, and it turned out to be quite a cute little town!

The city mascot...?

-People here have such amazing accents – and depending on where they’re from in the country, they have a mix of Swedish and British English, Canadian English or American English.

School is great so far; the kids and the staff are wonderful! Here’s the low-down from my first week:

MONDAY – My biggest fear coming to Sweden was that everyone was going to be cooler than me.  Aaaaand, it’s pretty much true. The fashion is similar to here, but more sheek. Hair colours are often bright fuchsias, emeralds or steel blue, and the cuts/styles are edgy.  Typical “hipster” glasses are common, and “gorgeous” doesn’t even begin to describe how good-looking everyone is.

-Classes are sweet – first thing this morning we went with Chelsea to load up our bus pass. Once we got to school, we had the weekly staff meeting, where we were introduced to the staff, and met many of them individually afterwards as well.  Most of the staff are super young – it’s only the 3^rd year of the school being open, so most of the staff are new teachers. It’s really great to have such a young, welcoming environment! About 1/3 of the staff are Canadian and about ½ have English as a first language.

-We basically followed Jocelyn around all day, which was so nice of her.  We got to observe classes in Math and English, and there are some major differences between the 2 education systems! The biggest 2 are:

         1) Student-teacher interaction – in Sweden, students call their teachers by their first name. There aren’t the ultra-strict ‘no hugging’ policies that there are in Canada, and there is a lot more positive interaction between student and teacher.

         2) Curriculum and marking work – the curriculum is very different than what we have in Canada. The expectations are laid out in 3-year chunks instead of just by grade. So, by grade 3, students must be able to do this, this, and this. Then, by grade 6, they must be able to do this, this and this. It’s very vague and as a result the education a student is receiving is so largely dependent on the teacher. Also, a student can’t be kept back a grade. They have national testing every 3 years, which is often actually marked internally. A student must be successful in those tests to pass the course. After high school, students choose a ‘gynmasia’, which is essentially like high school but is structured more like university in that each gymnasia is already very focused (ie you may choose to go to a music gymnasia, a social sciences gymnasia, or a history gymnasia). Grades given out are either G, V, or MVG – basically standing for Good, Very Good, and …Magnificently Very Good ?

It’s a totally different mindset over here!

-My eye’s been killlllllling me. I had a bit of an infection before I arrived, and I got some antibiotics from the doctor. I’ve been using them religiously but it hasn’t seemed to help at all. It feels like there’s a tiny dagger, the size of a small pebble, scraping my eyeball every time I blink.  Nice, eh? I SOMEHOW seem to have overcome jet lag, which is a miracle in itself. Amanda’s pretty sleepy, but I made her stay awake as long as possible and even convinced her to come to town with me after school! Sundsvall is super cute and not very big (although I obviously was still able to get lost somehow)

TUESDAY – forgot to talk about lunchtime yesterday! Lunches at IESS are catered, hot lunches every day. People joked with me that I’d be eating lots of Swedish meatballs, but that’s ACTUALLY what I had my first day! Even though it was mass-produced for the entire school’s consumption, it was quite good!

We also went grocery shopping yesterday and picked up some food. It’s crazy getting used to the money conversion here…groceries came to about 200 kronos each, and we barely got anything at all! Eek!

Tuesday was great because Jocelyn took us with her to her semi-professional city women’s choir.  I tried following the words along with Jocelyn’s music, but sometimes my guess was so far off the correct pronunciation! I’m starting to realize how awesome something like this would be for learning a new language! Perhaps because I couldn’t understand what they were saying, I was forced to listen more closely to the melodies and harmonies of the music.  At one point, during a piece in mixed formation, I got goosebumps all up my spine. Awesome.

Sundsvall

WEDNESDAY: I started to do some basic (and I mean BASIC) online lessons in Swedish before I arrived, but only now am I starting to realize how insanely complex it is.  At least if they were speaking Italian or Spanish or another romantic language, it’d be close enough to French that I could probably get by. But Swedish is so totally new to me.  I think it’s a Germanic language, so needless to say, my neglect of the German language (besides words like leiderhosen, Gesundheit, or strudel) was beginning to become a bigger and bigger regret.  On the bright side, I can’t say that I don’t like feeling alienated like this.  In a weird sort of way, it’s really cool not knowing what they’re saying. And best part is, they pretty much all speak English if I ever need help.  On one hand, it’s great knowing that they can switch to my language to communicate if necessary; but on the other hand, it’s scary knowing that they can understand me but I can’t understand them.  Part of the fun part of travelling with someone else in a foreign-speaking country is being able to speak in English and tell jokes and stuff without the locals understanding (and then remember it later). Unfortunately, that’s not really how it works here. Since Swedes are constantly surrounded by English media (movies, music, tv shows, etc), they are exposed to the language from an early age and most are fluent in English. Great for getting travel help; horrible for teaching, since I never know what they’re saying!

Today after classes we went to choir with Kimi, a recent Queen’s grad as well! She’s super nice and invited us as soon as she heard that we were music teachers-to-be.  It wasn’t as professional as Jocelyn’s choir, but it was just as friendly and really cool, since it was a World Music choir.  The participants learn all the pieces by ear, and I had a wicked time!

THURSDAY – honestly, can’t remember much about Thursday.  Went to school and observed some classes…I think we had a quiet night in?

FRIDAY – observed my first younger-level music class, the year 4’s (Canadian grade 5s’). They were so eager and so cute, I couldn’t get over it. We left school around 2:45 to get to the train station early enough to book our tickets, since we tried booking online but it didn’t take Canadian visa cards and we didn’t know how fast it would fill up. See the next post for our adventures in Stockholm!

Here’s today’s Swedish lesson for you:

Hi/hello – Hej (“hey”)
What’s your name? –Vad heter du? (“vah-d hee-ter do”)
Thanks – tack
Train – tag (to-ag)

What? – Va? (“vah”)

Miss you all, loving Sweden, and talk to you soon!

Until next time,

Beckers

P.S. We went shopping for an adapter for Amanda on Thursday and decided to make a pit stop in a book store on the way.  I found a book there I wanted to get reeeeeally badly, but decided against it because of the high price and lack of interesting content. The title? ‘Full Fart’. I’m even smiling thinking about it now – maybe I’ll go back sometime before we leave.

P.P.S. There are photos coming soon, I promise! I'm just using Chelsea's internet right now and I don't want to take it from her for too long. Amanda and I are going to go to a coffee shop soon and take our time uploading and everything - so just hang in there a bit longer! :).