stuff about school, since it's halfway

Our first module (first class of the two real classes we're taking, beyond introductory Swedish language and history/politics/culture) has ended today. heck yes, sucker! Too bad, I had a great time in this class, Environmental Governance. Some of the other classes seemed to have severe problems, like a terrible teacher, but we mostly all had a good time. Here's an email I sent to parents, copied here for public viewing as well.


<<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6907177.stm

I wrote a kind of big paper (about chemical regulation, thus the link) over the course of the last four days or so. I also edited someone's paper this morning before I rea through mine one last time- from 430-6 this morning. Then I had time for mine and emailed it in. I feel I did pretty well though and when we had our evaluations and critiques of them in class later today we got a chance to defend them and answer questions from some of our classmates and from our professors. The environmental governance class I've just finished had a Post 2012 Kyoto Protocol role play also, and we had "representatives" from the EU (Sweden, played by an American student), the G77 developing nations group (China), Alliance of Small Island States (Samoa), the USA, and OPEC (Saudi Arabia). Plus the IPCC and Climate Action Network were represented but they don't have voting power. Anyway, I was the Secretariat and a Swedish girl, Sara Bjork Jensen played the chair. That was fun.
I saw my paper on the way out of class today; I got an A-. The other assignments were definitely informative/educational but I really liked our class because it was taught by two main professors, both Swedish, and actually taught by guest lecturers. One of our professors was from Colorado, but the others were various Swedish profs. We mainly learned about policy and US vs EU politics of the environment. I am so glad I'm here. I'm sort of scared for the future, environmentally, but I'm excited to keep learning more about everything I'm on track to learn about, especially back at UCSB. My next class, starting Monday, is Globalization and Poverty. I bet we'll talk about the IMF World Bank WTO and "security issues". This class will be taught by a UCSC prof, so it may not be so thrilling as the last one.

love, maia >>

Hamlet and Castles

Our optional excursion to Fredricksburg Castle on Friday was pretty fun and eventful- we took a train to a ferry to cross the Oresund to Helsingor, then a train to Hillerod where the castle is. The first city is where the ferry left and the second is where the ferry landed and where Hamlet's castle is: Helsingor and Helsingborg . Pictures of Hamlet adverts and the castle:
Tanya and I took too long at the Hamlet city and we missed the group on the train to Fredricksborg Castle, but we were able to figure out where we needed to go and how to get there without contacting anyone from our program- since Tanya's phone mysteriously did not work in Denmark. damn. Why did we take so long? well, after a leisurely lunch we still had about hour before the train left, so she went into a shop to find shoes, and I went into a shop to find jeans. And we succeeded, but late.
Here's my good reason: it was a Sally's, so I had to contribute! (picture will be inserted here)

The castle was gorgeous but the tour was a bit long- Tanya and I made it for the last half hour, but we were not sad to have missed the first 40 minutes or so. Gorgeous interiors:Sweet symmetrical garden behind:View from the gardens:
A bunch of us stopped at the JFK Pub to relax for a bit after the castle tour. Weird little place with a dozen portraits of the president and a giant stuffed eagle- plus one wall is bookshelf. Classy, but strange. We sat outside, as it was a ridiculously sunny and beautiful day.
As usual, we ended up returning through Copenhagen so we got some time to play around there again. We considered seeing the Harry Potter movie but we would have to wait for a long time before it started, so we went to dinner instead. So we saw it the next day, Saturday, instead. It was so good! I recommend it. The pacing was great and the action sequences, despite being all wand based, were pretty gripping. Plus the kiss that was hyped up and I believed to be a nothing kiss, a simple peck, ended up being a substantial half minute scene. Oh Daniel Radcliffe.

We are now at the end of our first module and my final paper is due tomorrow morning, followed by a skim-through of everyone else's papers and a critique-and-defend period in the afternoon. So, obviously, whenever I have work to do I am found online. Shazam. Time to finish my historical perspective and predictions of success for the European Union's new legislation about hazardous chemicals and their management and reduction.

mon weekend a Bruxelles

yum. another good weekend:

--Thursday we left for Brussels (we flew) and checked out the EU Commission (picture of me with Tanya) and two cabinet members of the commissioner from Sweden talked with us for a couple hours. That night was a medieval parade (second picture shown) complete with many guys on stilts who fought each other, trying to knock them over. What a long fall! Some of the stilts were really high. We bought some frites and waffles.
--Friday entailed an inspiring and warped talk at NATO (sorry, the pic below is the closest we could get- no cameras allowed inside!!) complete with free swag (pins, pens, keychains, brochures...) followed by a sleepy talk with Rolf Gustavsson, a journalist/correspondent who answered our questions way too thoroughly and somehow, at the same time, didn't answer them. A walking tour of Brussels, including stops outside the palace, musical instrument museum, "best chocolatier in Belgium" (Pierre Marcolini. The free sample: mini raspberry filled eclair topped with a flake of white chocolate and "sunflower-ginger crunch"-- it was delicious) and some religious sites, brought us back to the city center- Grand Place. The Education Abroad Program took us out to dinner at Chez Leon, where we had a 25 euro limit and beyond that we had to foot the bill. Alcohol not included. This is where one of our members had horse (pictured below and let me tell you, it was pretty good), the vegan in our group ate mussels and the girl who got pasta (very cheap) could fit three people's waffles on her bill. I had a trout specialty that came with fresh pea soup and chocolate mousse.

--Saturday we left for a bus trip to The Hague for wandering and a pretty interesting talk at the International Court Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. We got to debate a human rights problem in a fictional country, representing various nations. Surprise: the vote yielded no result. Then we got to go through the Mauritshuis art museum and see some Vermeers and some other really awesome Dutch and Flemish masters- including the girl with the pearl earring, laughing boy (with brown teeth) and some cool still lifes, especially floral arrangements. When we got back to Brussels we decided to include Homo Erectus into our pub plans-a very gay bar. Only five of us ended up going in (me and four boys).--Sunday we got free time to troll around Brussels and make sure we saw the pissing boy statue and had one last waffle. There are tons of street performers in Europe, but especially in Brussels for some reason. The Grand Place had an old man (looked like Father Christmas) with an acoustic-electric guitar who was making quite a bit of money. During our stay we also saw a bunch of accordion players, a string quartet and a bassoon-oboe combo that was playing opera excerpts extremely well. I gave them the change I had at the time- two and half euro. It's tough to be an artist, probably.
--After a long bus ride and flight and getting really hot on the plane and feeling ultra claustrophobic for the first time in my memory, this picture happened at the Copenhagen airport when we were waiting for the students to buy some food (Burger King, of all places)

It was good to come home/back to Lund.

best birthday ever.

thank you, everyone who celebrated with me, ate with me, made dinner, brought good feelings and hugged me.thank you, everyone who thought of me- you're helping my birthday miracle (the ecards and emails and facebook posts and messages were so awesome).thank you, weather, for being so clear and sunny and even- dare i say it?- WARM on my birthday!
thank you, whoever it was, who invented swings, because i love them so much and they helped to make my bday even better at the bomb-ass playground a 5 minute bike ride away.
so much goodness
so much love
so many years that got celebrated last night. (21!)

THANK YOU.

danes

Yesterday four Danish friends came to visit- one of them, Jasper, is a bartender at the airport, and that's where he met one of our students. He came with some really awesome people- a beautiful loving couple and a vibrant youth, Casper. They stopped at the Carlsberg factory in Copenhagen and got two cases (60 beers) for a fun saturday night. We walked to the supermarket to turn in all our recycling and got 35 crowns back! That's almost six dollars, so we bought chips with it for snacking. By the time we were going to head out to a bar some of the students had been frequenting, Herkules, the busses had stopped running, so we walked! I got to ride on the back of Ashley's bike for part of the trip, thank god. What a fun night! I met the Danes, a few new Swedes, two Armenian guys who I had very little language in common with (tiny amounts of Swedish and twice-translated French) and we have invitations to visit some new places, like the town near Copenhagen where Casper is from.

Now it's July! I expect a lot from this month, including some fun at the dinner party we're having on tuesday for my birthday! Veggie lasagne and salad, plus berries and brownies with (soy) ice cream- yum yum. I am in love with my dormmates; we are turning into quite a little family. Last year's birthday in India was pretty fun, minus the illness that kept me from my party- but I ate a lot of ice cream, even though I was sick. I wonder what country I will be in for next year?

yay! feeling more chipper today, even though I am a bit behind on my readings (thus I am blogging. *sigh*) here come more great times!