And so it begins!

On Sunday I met with my mentor group and went to the Lund University Botanical Garden. It is a really beautiful place where lots of plant ecologists and researchers from the university work, but it is also a popular site for picnicking. They have huge greenhouses that make you feel like you're in Jurassic park and even have small island birds running around in them. However, on a very wintry day in can looks like this:

http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/p/m/117bb1/

After my tour I prepared for a potluck with some friends (from Turkey, Russia, and the Netherlands). I attempted to make a gratin dauphinois, however it didn't really turn out as planned...We still had fun though.  :)

After two weeks of really doing nothing I finally had my first day of class. The professor was this sort of hippie guy who is originally from Canada. He wore a peace sign necklace, a button-up shirt, jeans, and running shoes. Not exactly the Lund University professor I imagined. He gave us a general introduction to the course and discussed some basic things and then told us that by next week we would need to get into an interdisciplinary group of four and pick an island nation with a population of less than 1 million. He didn't tell us why but there will definitely be some kind of project focusing on small, isolated populations. So we'll see what that's about next week.

I formed a group with my friend from Turkey (specializes in Sociology), Hanyu from China (specializes in Foreign Language), and Klara from Sweden (I forget her specialty). So I think we have a pretty good group with mixed strengths.


Also, here is a picture from my last day of Swedish class with Idil and our very Swedish Swedish teacher, Frederik: