Day two: Catching up

Since we missed the majority of the orientation yesterday, today we used our free time to catch up on what we had missed. This morning we received an email from the Director of International Programs for the School of Health Sciences, Karl Hedman, saying that we had a meeting with our advisor today. The only problem was there was no time mentioned! Concerned that we had missed it or were late, we hurried to the school. After the 30 minute walk to campus, we looked for Ann, our advisor. She was talking with someone outside her office and instructed us to please return at 4pm, as apparently that was the scheduled meeting time. Upon visiting Karl's office, we discovered that he was in meetings until the afternoon, so we went to get Christine's internet set up. The line for internet set-up was long and lasted almost an hour, so by the time we were done it was time to return to Karl's office. When we returned to Karl's office there was a note on the door saying that the programming he was in was running late and we should come by around 2:30pm. We decided we were hungry and proceeded to the cafeteria in the School of Health Sciences.

Here we dined at the salad bar, which was quite delicious as it was the first time we had eaten veggies since our arrival. (Our meal last night consisted of pasta and tomato sauce, which doesn't really count as fresh veggies. Before that all we had eaten was a bit of McDonald's in the train station in Stockholm City.) Satisfied and no longer hungry, we arrived at Karl's office once again.

Karl invited us to the cafeteria for a meal, where we explained we had just eaten but each grabbed a drink at his insistence. He was quite eager to hear about our travels and our time so far in Jonkoping, and was happy to answer our countless questions about the city and the way things work here in Sweden. We learned that the city has changed a lot and is now much more friendly toward career-women. :) We also set up our email addresses for Jonkoping University.

Next we met with Ann, who reminds us of our professor Carole Dennis in the US. When Jen told Ann this, Ann was thrilled! She said she had always felt Carole was a long lost sister. In our meeting with Ann we learned about the curriculum we would be following, as well as the schedule. We even met our professor for the course, Rickard Efvergren. With much work to do but all our questions answered, we left Ann's office.

We then proceeded to Swedbank, where we each opened a Swedish bank account! Next we took the bus to A6 Center, the local mall, in search of some watches! We successfully found watches and were poking around for an adapter (we realized once there that the store suggested to us for adapters was next to the bank, not at the mall) when we discovered that the mall closes at 8pm! In surprise and a bit of disappointment, we returned home with watches but no adapters. We did learn, however, that Sweden imposes a 25% tax on nearly everything, BUT it is included in the advertised price.