Day 2

"Inspirationsdag för lärare". My alarm woke me up at 6.25, I got up, made breakfast had a shower, and an hour later I was ready to leave for the bus. Fortunately I spent time yesterday evening to figure out the route to Lund (one change). The bus was on time, I changed at the other end of town to a bus that took me to Lund over the freeway. An hour later I arrived and met my supervisors at the bus stop. One thing I've noticed so far: everything goes _smoothly_ in Sweden. The meeting was friendly and fun, we walked to the university building where we were welcomed with a name tag, coffee and a sandwich. So far so good.
Half an hour later the Inspirationsdag started, completely in Swedish, this was going to be a challenge: four lectures on different topics all in the theme of evolution, followed by 4 group discussion moments to come up with lesson ideas for the different topics. Lecturers were researchers from different Swedish universities. Due to their powerpoints (visual support, \o/) and Cecilia who offered to translate words for me and answer questions if I just wrote them down on my notebook, I was able to understand about 50-80% of their talks. However, understanding the group discussions, let alone participating in them, proved to be impossible. I did not introduce myself as being non-Swedish to the groups (they were too large anyways) besides the little Swedish that I do understand when reading, the pronounciation is so very different from what I'm used to hearing. One of the groups was smaller and when they noticed I was unable to follow their discussion they very kindly chose to switch to English.

Other things I noticed/learned:

1. Swedes are strict with time, they will stop what they're doing if the schedule says it is time (even if the following program part is a 30 minute coffee break). 
2. It is frowned upon to pick up your phone during a lecture, and after 30 seconds you will be kindly requested to leave the room (WHUT!?! THROW THE GUY OUT *AHUM*). 
3. Lunch = dinner. 
4. The jojo card is WAY better than the OV-chip card, I don't know how it works, but it's easiness rocks.
5. Private schools are free (and booming) in Sweden (how.. I don't get it.. I'll try to figure out more.)
6. Next to the coffee belongs a pack of regular Mjolk. Just the way I like it. It's standard here :D. 

Tomorrow at 8.30 I'm expected at Malmö Borgarskola, a schedule for the rest of the month will be made then, exciting times!