Five weeks after my last blog and it seems like 15 eternities have passed since I myself was in the ‘new foreign student’ position and beginning my courses in ’självsabotage på svenska’. The position of Project Leader for the International Committee at Mälardalens Högskola is apparently much wider reaching that I had originally thought. Not only does it involve the necessary social event organising, but it would appear that one must also be a political force and housing agent. Funny how I didn’t think twice about arriving in this strange and decidedly chilly land without a plan or a place to stay (ok, maybe a slight exaggeration, but it was no hindrance) and yet it seems easy to judge those who are currently arriving without any guaranteed accommodation.

The problem is built a little like this; the university have offered places to roughly 30 percent more foreign students than in previous years. The housing agency has unfortunately been forced to close one of it’s international student accommodations - amounting to roughly 50 student rooms. The government has changed the education system and as of 2011 students from outside the EU will no longer have access to free education in Sweden.

The result is that we now have a considerable number of homeless students wondering what the hell they should do.

Yes, it is easy to say “well, I would never do that! It’s stupid to move to another country on the basis of a free education if you have nowhere to live.” HOWEVER, what one can, under no circumstances forget is that for many of these students, entrance to an Swedish university and the resulting educational certificates signify a comfortable and secure life. This is their chance. It is unlikely to occur again. Certainly, it seems a risk worth taking, giving up a home, a job (and a much warmer climate) to study for a year in Scandinavia and guarentee and income for your family in the future.

But the problem is not solved by understanding.

It is also not solved by tired volunteers, or union workers with unclear work descriptions.  There is apparently a ’solution’, but no-one has been kind enough to share it with us yet. In the mean time, a large part of my day is spent trying to appease students who approach me in the corridors, on the street, by mail or telephone, asking for help. My energy decreases and the overall quality of work dwindles away.

Tomorrow I will actively search for this ’solution’. It is of great importance that these students have a face to turn to. And although I can give good advice about the local campsites a tent and sleeping bag is not a long term solution! There is a great big mess of ‘not my responsibility’ and ‘we don’t really care because it won’t be like this next year’ and it is filing it’s way into IC’s inbox.  Which is, genuinely, a tragedy. Because given the time, and the support this is something that could be solved - if not perfectly, at least reasonably. However, after the last two weeks quadruple time my energy levels are dangerously low, and without the Universities support -  or a genuine job description - all I have the strength to do it say “I am sorry, I understand the difficulty of your situation,  but unfortunately I have no access to houses in Västerås right now. Goodluck with your search” 15 times a day.

Project Leader for the International Committee is undoubtedly one of the world’s coolest jobs. It would just be nice if I was able to get on with it!

So, a month into International Committee and things are coming together. This week has been 35 hours in the office. Despite taking 9 days free for Interrailing and visits in the the South of France I have clocked up roughly 70 unpaid hours work. Rather a lot of work when you consider this is not technically a voluntary post! The first of my ten modest monthly cheques will arrive at the end of August. So far there is a running total of 10.5 hours overtime… if you count the likelihood I will work 8 hours during each of the next two days that means 16 hours; plus 4 of the overtime and my week’s quota of 20 are filled before the Mexico excursion  begins. There are still 6.5 extra hours carried over to the next week meaning that my total deficit is just 13.5 hours when I return home. No fear that I will not double the recommended weekly working hours in the following week, and reasonably triple them the week after with the arrival of our new students.  No problems. It is not stressful. Taking this jobs was a conscious choice. Overtime in the summer was to be expected.

However, knowing this there are a couple of aspects of human behaviour that are becoming increasinly hard to ignore:

PRODUCING HEALTH

The weekend has been spent at both work and play. There has even been a 3 hour stint in the office on Saturday and 4 hours here today. Yet spending  time developing the CG-MZ relationship and “producing health” in it’s simplest form i.e. quality time with the partner, leaves us both with something of a guilty conscience. Is it genuinely wrong to spend a rainy weekend watching films, eating and laughing while discovering physical and mental potential? Or has our culture/ambition got the better of us?

UTBILDNING VS. BILDNING

Utbildning = academical development

Buildning = personal development

It has to be said that a few of the emails I receive as head of the IC leave me a little lost of words. Incoming and outgoing students alike write the most extraordinarily un-proficcient emails about the most trivial subjects. Many lack basic etiquette (names, greetings and a signoff) while others contain problems which they could, honestly, easily solve alone with a little research and common sense…

After composing several diplomatically worded “sorry, but that is really not something my job is related to, but there are people who are much better equipped to help you” IC have declined to: work as wardrobe consultants, personally provide housing, find jobs or share details of personal monthly income/outgoings.

Simple proof that academic excellence does not necessarily mean ability in life’s daily challenges!

Pic by TS

It’s been a while since I blogged. One of many reasons being that I now spend a large part of my working day in front of the computer and have little lust to spend my freetime there either. Another being that a large part of my working day is much larger than it used to be and spare half hours have been increasingly hard to find. However, the hormones are kicking in and it’s the monthly insomniac period. Despite that fact I now have my own office and have spent a considerable number of hours playing ‘grown up’ with members of the university staff and this city council, there has also been a myriad of simply pleasing childish moments - including some serious sock-puppet-synchronised-headbanging and a new approach to learning Swedish.

A highly entertaining way to learn new and complicated words holds it’s basis in the fact that Swedish is built, essentially on composite words (though rarely spondees). The composite word may be broken into two or more other words which can them be memorised. The joy of not having Swedish as a first language is that we may break a composite word in the wrong place and thereby give it a whole other meaning. However, the easiest way to memorise the word if to translate the broken word into English.

Bergström, which is just a name, translates as Electric Mountain, hence the title.

blixtlås - literally, lightning lock is a zipper

stänkskärm - splash screen, is a mudguard… and the list goes on. Light entertainment for the litterary inclined.

My new word for the day was svetsare, which sounds suspiciously like someone who sweats but is actually a welder.

Things with MZ are, to put it mildly, going rather well. Falling in love, is, when one thinks about it, an extremely alarming process. We take a huge number of risks, expose ourselves to emotional upheaval and participate in routine breaking behaviour that leaves you both clumsy (crashed my bike into a tree today…) and forgetful (left my handbag outside on the same bike a couple of months ago.) I wonder why we take these risks when there is the possibility that things will go so unforeseeably wrong. I have invested a serious time allowance to analysing the failure of previous relationships and conclude that there are few definite answers, just behaviours to avoid in future.

The strength I believe that lies behind the current CG MZ coupling is that we have no boundaries when it comes to conversation. And as such it seems only sensible to take this issue up. Despite that fact we split almost three years ago, David, my only ’serious’ ex has been a Sweden in Clover reader every so often - and even chosen to leave comments in either his own, or other ‘cleverly chosen’ names. This troubles me - not because I can not handle the rather weak insults, but because it genuinely bothers me that he has nothing better to do with his time than comment the blog of a several-years-ex-girlfriend. With this in mind, a significant collection of the comments are also nothing more than hypocritical. In short, the whole thing is rather tragic.

Relationships are like everything else - they need to be worked upon, renovated, cared for. They are also two sided, and will, without question, fail, if both parties have the same magnetic polarity. Underlying dis-attraction and inability to holds ones words will not enable relationship success. The only key is honesty.

Eye contact and communication. The ability to express ones’self is, as a wellknown creditcard commercial would say - priceless.

A large part of the day has been spent in front of db.de - a wealth of trainy goodness. It looks like a couple of mega-trips are on the cards. First it’s off to the overtly exotic South of France via Cologne (food, coffee, wine, wedding,  Swede of fine build, mustard, Frenchy and most probably mosquitoes) with the great iron road.  Then a short recovery period in the Swedish utopia before jetting off on an equally long flying adventure. Not with a whirlwind, red shoes, small dog called Toto and my whole house, but with the trusty Karrimor and a higher dose of mosquito repellent. It’s off to Mexico! Sister Giles, here I come!

In other news - my fellow Aries is heading for home tomorrow, so we had a little of our usual childish activity yesterday to celebrate a tremendous(ly irritating) friend!

There are few moments so simply contented than re-entering consciousness after deep, dreamless sleep and realising that there is the physical warmth of another soul beside you. The half whispered hello and a weighted hand creeping round your waist. The air is full of human, in it’s most honest state, unadulterated by the days rigorous hygiene routine. A beating heart and eyes reluctant to lift their lids in this short lived sensational wonderland.  Here there is safety. Closeness in the division of a bed. Breaking the magic and putting a naked foot on the cool wooden floor in the necessary bathroom mission is in many respects the day’s largest challenge. But there is a sweet prize (or two) in breakfast conversation and the promise of another morning some day soon.

Learning how to trust another person it appears has just as much to do with trusting yourself. Gut feeling is a fantastic form of intuition, and should, by and large, be acknowledged. The body is the best compass to the soul.  How MZ and I have used the directions  in our lives’ orienteering has varied tremendously. Our journeys have perhaps been along parallel paths but without a doubt on different plains. Our approaches to the adventure are interesting, in what they says about personality, experience and hope. Fine details of the travel time table converges in our conversation. There is a vast  jungle of  ‘almost-opposites’  which seems almost impossible to navigate. But somewhere there is a  clearing, shielded by a handwoven wall of respect, and in it’s center is a clean, bubbling well of shared enthusiasm and oppinion.

I do not believe in ‘the one’. We, as human beings, are astoundingly adaptable. We can accommodate a fascinating array of unsuitable friends, lovers and idols. An other person is only as suitable as we choose to believe they are.  For now, I believe I have found a fabulously multi-faceted and extremely functional travel partner.

Good to know there is time to explore!

It’s nearing my second midsummer in Sweden and days are skipping by in their usual fairytale style. Much of what has occurred could easily have been conjured by my fantasy but there are occasional reminders that it is in fact reality. As usual, events are nothing short of extreme, and there had been a soul shaking cocktail of sensations. Yesterday swung from refreshment filled meetings with the topcats at the city council to layering on the third coat of kitchen paint and standing the the shower resembling a badly made-up fourteen year old with smudged mascara. Routine and stability are still something that escapes me somewhat.

Goodness gracious, what a lot life changes!

Yesterday my status changed twice.

First from unemployed to employed as, after my first ever interview in Swedish (slightly more nerve racking than muntliga tentor) I was invited to join the Kåren team as the chairperson of Mälardalens högskolas International Committee. It’s going to be a unusually varied, demanding and satisfying job. Huge thanks to my teachers and fellow students who have made it a possibility - and extra thanks to Hubert who will be showing me the ropes over the next couple of weeks.

Secondly, after arriving back in Västerås and being congratulated by the Swede of rather fine form, a delicious home cooked meal and several hours of unending interesting… conversation (!!!) we have decided to take that terrifyingly public step of *changing our relationship status on facebook*.  So it’official. Me and MZ are no longer on the open market. Plans have been made, and we are learning how to Lindy Hop next term.

MZ, the student and regular sportsman is, amongst other things,  also a member of the “dog in the bag” team. Swedish homework anyone?

life is full of unexplainably wonderful things!

It would seem that there should be no such thing as regular routine… or rather, there should be small regular routines enveloped by a non-matching mishmash of experience and ideas. Keeps the brain wandering (if not organised) and healthy.

The weekend has been spent in celebration, desperation and intrepidation. We returned this evening from Hubert’s last IC presidential cruise, and I certainly had not consumed enough alcohol to ignore the dire state of the institution. These gilded, gambling ships with extreme processed fish buffet mark. 2 are, in all honesty, down right depressing. Once you stop to clean up the puke and consider the over muscled buzzcut checking his moves in a Police t-shirt  in the not-so-subtly mirrored elevator door, the polish seems to loose it’s unholy shine and the temptation to jump overboard kicks in. How people survive a summer in service is beyond me. 24 hours of obscenely overweight and grey complexioned fruit-machine players have left me running on empty.

The fact that this gargantuain ship sits in calm open water  for several hours while the majority down drinks in the disco is astounding. That even after the Romanesque all you can eat protein buffet these machines are making money is just testament to the rip off of duty-free shopping; a rip off I gladly partake in because… it is naturally cheaper than buying wine at Syestemet! I am beginning to wonder however if the TLC for my wallet is doing irreparable damage to my soul.

The most terrifying part of the whole charade is that the average age on these wonder-cruises is SIGNIFICANTLY OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW BETTER! They walk around dry skinned and hair frazzled after 12 hours of ‘fantastic party atmosphere’ and a lifetime of “preventative” beauty products. Good gracious, who do they think they are kidding? Sadly, they are most likely only kidding themselves - that this is a worthwhile way to spend Sveriges Nationaldag, or any other for that matter!

Retreated into conversation with Hubert. Plans and the value of belly laughter.

Tomorrow is interview day. Make or break time for my role in the MDH IC. It is an opportunity I crave, because I believe there has to be a better way. There are people here to dare to think outside the tax-free-shopping-box. And their experiences can be shared so my dear friends do not end up like those 40-something beyond all hopers, who while away empty hungover hours at the slot machines. Life is here for the taking - but it’s a lot easier with a little encouragement and support!

So off to bed I go. Good sleep and a goal. Tomorrow is an other day to put the best foot forward.

(Incidentally, I have been reading about the Swedish Institute of Eugenics for much of the evening and can’t help wondering what the hell is going on in this world?!?)

Attempting to write again. The History Assignment. Having a hard time with dedicated concentration. Music goes on, music goes off. Sun is streaming through my window and my head is full of the last 48 hours. On kind of education comes to an end and a whole new treasure chest has sprung open…

Don’t push, there’s no rush. Urgency is reserved for this unwritten essay and Constance’s keys. This unusual calm is related to something else. Something quite indescribable. We have devoted much talk to energy, that universal fund which powers us all. We build our bubbles, decided who can join us inside.

The bubble; an abstract concept the vast majority of us understand. Though we can not see it, do not know how to define it, there is a sense. Our bubbles are little or large. They reject and project. Positive and negative magnetism means that some of us bounce off, and then rest become attached. How many times have we just had a feeling about people. Where their boundaries lie. Their personal space. We throw up a force field until we learn how to trust.

Yesterday the strangest thing happened. I found myself inside an other’s bubble. In an act of caring I received an impromptu neck massage. My guard was down and my mind was open. I placed myself in an other’s hands. An other’s trust. In one of those rare moments usually associated with painting, I was on the verge of disappearance. Meditative peace. And there is was, an envelope of energy, like the curved green glass of a car windscreen.  It passed around us in an aurora and disappeared from consciousness the moment we re-entered conversation.

There are of course consiquences. Some threaten to drown us in a fast flowing flood. This overwhelming unknown. It opens doors, lifts lids off boxes and leaves us totally exposed. There is however, no rush. No need to push. There is no expectation, just a will to understand.