Assimilation - Separation - Integration - Marginalization

Assimilation
-When you abandon your own cultural habits and values in order to accept the new country totally.
-The ambition is to become accepted as a part of the majority culture

Separation
-When you focus on keeping your own values and avoid contact with the majority culture as much as you can
-The “britts”in new Zeeland are more British than the “britts”in Great Britain
-The Swedes in Minesotawho celebrates swedishtraditions that “real swedes forgotten”

Integration
-When you hold on to some aspects of your own culture (cultural integrity) such as central norms and values, and at the same time, try to melt in to the new cultural environment

Marginalization
-A strategy where you don’t keep hold on to your original culture, nor integrate in the new culture
-Isolation from both cultural groups!
-Living in a non-identity

OK, it is perfect time to mix up real-life and studies! These categories are from previous HR lecture identifying the way what can happen with people in abroad. I am having the luck to experience some of them... and I can tell, sometimes it can be astonishing..
Take my landlord, he has been living here for 18 years, family back at home, only working here...and -now i am trying to reflect one of the above-mentioned categories -
-talking only with other Hungarians
-behaving in any means as a Hungarian
-driving like a Hungarian... seriously, I really hate to take a seat in the car next to him, `cause he does not give the priority for pedestrians when approaching to a crossing... he makes me feel ashamed....
Reading this you can figure out that I am writing about separation... experiencing this is so sad for me, that behavior is that what I find so pathetic in here.... no wonder that they will have such a bad opinion about us... and it is -especially in this cases- is not misleading... it is true :(

Well, according to Max, our HR lecturer (Italian father-Finnish mother, living here and driving an Alfa Romeo Spider...in a polite way :) ) he rather goes for Integration what is preferred -i think- by me also...

So after this little emotional beginning, let me say something about Swedish higher education. :)
We have 2 semester per year, each contains two quarters..what a surprise :). Each quarter contains two subjects. Currently we have Human Resource Management and Project Management.
I really love the first as it is taught by Max, who is a psychologist and HR consultant. We really like his lectures, he was also responsibly for the team building activities during the kick-off on the second day. When he opens his mouth to talk all the time there is that silence in the classroom when you can hear the flies flying :) And what is even better than just listening to a lecturer is that we are enforced to be active during any time. We must solve problems in groups, we have tasks to complete together and finally we always get the consequences. Moreover, after spending years of being a six-digit code for the teachers, it feels so good when a teacher calls you on your real name :D

Just a little hint from our first emails inbetween:

Herby I confirm that I recieved the e-mail!
I will celebrate with a glas of Vilmos Körte Palinka!

Max

:)
Secondly, there is Project Management. We are a bit more since it is a joint course with Construction Eng Proj. Managers so around 100 people. During lectures, the teacher, Sven does not worry about spending time with forming groups for a 5 minutes activity. I mean, it took 10 mins while we managed to mix up with the others, and the whole task took aprrox. 5 mins.... Unbeliavable.. as everything for me here :D
Furthermore, we had last week that two days so-called Live Project activity. We formed groups again, and the task was to create a Management proposal for next years Goteborg`s Culture Exchange Festival. Well it was not was easy at all, since we were bothered all the time with instant, but useful presentations :) Also they devoted time and efforts to invite some fake people representing the Client and the media, and finally made plenty of conclusions and consequences...
One more thing related here: deadline was yesterday 16:00, we sent the our proposal on 15:59. :) On guy who was not in charge of the last activities suddenly showed us the following LINK what apparently made us laughing big time :D

Besides, we also went to a boat trip around the city :)

How to survive a flu in 6 easy steps?

I never promise anything, so there is no delayed post to say sorry for :)
So, let me explain, trying to make it comfortably short:

1. Go for an electro party :) On Friday we had a nice invitation from my friend whom i met in December, Marjan. Their classmate is a pro DJ and had a party in the club called Razzia. Good thing is that they provide a possibility to register in advance, so if you enter before midnight, you can enter for free! So it was pretty enjoyable progressive electro... Feeling that you are heading for a sickness, next time try vodka+orange, it really helps...at least...for a particular 5-6 hours :D Moreover, bus19 provided some effects on me reminded of some carousel, what i definitely hate :) [health status: quite OK, close to normal]

2. Go to a Swedish class! I was just starting to think about it is rather worth to improve my Spanish here as I have 5 Spanish-speaking classmates... so rather than Swedish (cause the uni does not provide any Swedish course for master students), so i was thinking, when a sudden call from Monica came, and she invited my for a Swedish lesson free-of-charge! That was a surprise as there wasa no info source given, just a location and time... Of course I could not miss it. Finally it turned out that a classmate of our Dominican classmate`s friend does the favor to the others and weekly holds a Swedish-for beginners lecture, yuhuhuhu, cannot miss it! [health status: i am feeling it:)]

3. Bring the others to BEST local group`s recruitment... i just told them it will be free food, BBQ
what is more than enough if you speak to any students all around the World:) I just >forgot< to mention that is about some team building activities.... so i worried somehow at the beginning whether will they enjoy that or not, but finally i think they liked it :) [health status: ayayayaya]

4. Maritime museum :) Nah that was fun, there are around 6-7 boats in the harbour locked to each other yah, and a submarine, and you can visit them onboard! Since it was the Student08 week (it is still ongoing, just got back from design museum:), we had the possibilty to visit plenty of museums free of charge :) Out of all them, still think that the maritime is the most spectacular! The best thing was the submarine, for me it was even frustrating to be underwater, knowing that you are unable to do anything in case of emergency. However Sweden is a country did not seriously participated in both of the World Wars, so somehow for me seems a bit strange walking up and down onboard on a cruiser or destroyer...[health status: especially after the pics: lets go to bed...]
Pic attached is the bridge I cross every day at least twice, but that was the first time I saw it wide open! (Note that activities 2-3-4 happened in a rown, during Saturday afternoon:)

5. Prepare and attend a seminar on a book!
The teaxher gave us around 10 days to read through and take notes of the book. You can imagine it instead of a midterm exam... it was like my group (yuhuhu group no2 foreva!!!: Beto, Carina, Hamid, Sandra, Douglas, Honey, Abid, Alex, Dagbjort (strangest Icelandic female name ever..) and Bence) and the teacher sitting around a huge table and talking about the book... however we were allowed to use our own notes, but it is also important that he is interested in our own experiences and opinions.. this is what I like the most that here the communication flows not into one direction, but two , rather it is mesh, since we had our own conversations inbetween students only. OK I am planning to write a spearate post just about the education!

6. Make two hyperactive days with a whole 2daystraining and visit a museum in the end!
As it contributes to our final Project management grade (note here are fail, 3,4, 5 so the magical 2 is missing :d:d:d:d) we had to participate in a special project-case study during the last 2 days, and still, there are several things to do till the deadline on Monday. But it will be also included and special breaking newz educational post:)
So the museum: Natural History museum went with Beto, after 6PM, almost dark. We are at Linneplatsen, (oops: googlemap has not got a detailed satellite map of the city, here it is higly recommended to use eniro.se!) So we did not have a clue where is the museum itself,..ok ..lets ask..ohoho there are too extrasexy blondies standing in strechy training clothes..lets ask..hmmm. now what..we do look like some geeks asking for a museum... Excu, excu, excuse us...ok we decided tos ask some middle aged couple, but finally noticed a huge map with detailed info we needed :))) Ah, just found the real site of the museum! So huge whale is included, several animals both fakes and real ones, perfect place to start to learn the animals name in Swedish..sooo: let me see what i got: swardsfisk, blackfisk (squid) grashoppar, mygg, lejon, elefant, apa, goliatbugg, vogel, sneggla (slug), these are for the first breath :)


huh that is getting too much :)

ps.:[health status: finally getting better:)]

Full moon cakes :)

Yuhuhuh, after reading several pages from an e-book, I felt like going to a Chinese-organized kitchen-event, when we had been proposed to prepare some so-called traditional Full moon cakes! Well I had expected earlier that we will prepare also the basic pasta out from the ingredients, but not...

nevertheless we asked a Chinese girl about the recipe, cause we found one around, but it was in Chinese :) I am so sorry i forgot to bring it with me :) but we were able to find out about Chinese letters :D For instance, the word water is only one letter , and not that dificult to recognize... and there are plenty of expressive letters, such as the icon for >down<>up< :)

On the whole, we participated (we: two Finnish and me, one of them actually has got a Chinese wife from Sanghaj:) ) , so participated during the final stages of creating Full-moon cakes, (I`d rather call them cookies, but never mind)>

There you go!

So, it was very nice event, they are coming from NCTU , a famous technical university from Taiwan, which has pretty good relations with Chalmers. They have exchange students there, we have them here, now they are celebrating 5th years anniversary. They are astonishingly sociable and open-minded, we liked it. They just came and start to speak, sometimes so fast, it was quite funny :) . Perhaps we should invite them to our upcoming International food and drink event :) Moreover, it is very nice think to get closer to other cultures, even if it is a far-east culture. Well, we have two Chinese classmates, but they are not like these guys, ours are more introverted.. :( Though I would not think that this is the real difference between Taiwan and mainland China...

Last Saturday I hosted my officialy first guest, an old friend from first year at the Hungarian university, we met during some boring German language lesson. Currently he works in the city of Lund for Ericcson, but not as an normal employee, rather some project worker, his contract is only for next 5 months. I asked him, whats next, he said he doesnt know, but not worried about it! I love that approach so much! By the way, we behaved very well, see: :)

Anyway, Saltholmen, where this picture was taken, is one of my favourite places around! It was my fourth time being there, the famous terminus of tram 11! :)

Next time I am planning to mention about education and my classes here!

Walking on

weekend, new post is about to come... bad thing about posting on Sunday afternoons is that you always have either a hangover, or a headache, or just simple you are damn exhausted because of the previous night. Or both together, depends... so I am again a bit dizzy, and finding out a good title is even more challenging:)

never mind, just try to understand the Swedish approach through this article.
To be honest, I am wondering a bit about it, reminds me of the usual approach to sexuality 30 years ago, but definitely not in 2008...

So, whats upcoming: walking, walking on forbidden areas, walking in kitchen etc etc

This week was pretty unusual and so very special, cause I have hosted a special guest! He is from Mexico, and he is my classmate here, and his previous temporary landlord lady wanted to fornicate him:)) So he asked me to stay for a while till he finds another place to stay. Thats him, sleeping on the sofa, haha : ) (Forgive me for these quite bad quality pictures, but usually I don't have my camera with me, so I just use the handy)

He also showed me a lot of things in the kitchen, how to prepare some basic food and so avoid the use of almost ready sauces and powders, for instance smashed potatoes:)

I cant still think of it, what would have happened on Thursday night, when I completely forget that there are no night buses after midnight, only during weekends... So we timed perfectly to get the last bus at 3Am, and suddenly realized that we are facing to walk some distance:) With some shortcuts it was around 7km, we made it in 75 mins... guess alone it could have been a nightmare,... besides next party is also on Thursday :) wont do it again :)) we walked also on a an abandoned speedway, found the way towards the Norwegian capital, and so on :) on the whole, from that time on the distance between down-town and the flat is only a walking distance:) By the way, the party at Valand was awesome:)

last week I mentioned about some amenities of the university`s student union building, here is a pic about the `temple` , as we call it.. the moral of the place is harrypotter-like :) huge sofas and so on.. it is so lovable :)

yesterday night it was a kind of chilling place amongst the other 6 dancehalls at the above mentioned SU building , it was FESTU party
a supposed-to-be-awesome event, but i think it was too much, too many people, not exact music genres in each place... previously we went to our exchange student classmate`s flat, and met several exchange students, more than half of them are coming from the UK and France,

ok, i give it up, will try to write a better post somedays :)

Footsteps in Göteborg - first hundred steps

What else I can do? I have experienced so many nice things around, but still, one of the best is when the clouds are gone, and sun starts to shine! I am writing this cause it is happening right now! :)
So i d like to to exploit the situation-> even bigger smile on my face:)

Preliminary we expected our group as to be fifty-fifty considering swedish-foreigners proportion...well it turned out to be totally different..we are altogether 30, from 19 nations including 5 swedes! U can imagine my face during the introduction session, the smile was getting bigger and bigger and even much bigger!
let me explain, from west to east: Columbia-Mexico-Brasil-Dominica-Spain-England-France-Germany-Sweden-Finland-Hungary-Macedonia-Greece-Russia-Iran-Afganistan-Pakistan-China-Indonesia

hm, what else could be more international than us? :))
This already draws up the first question: how can we deal with this diversity of the cultures? the answer is not that difficult: as i have noticed so far, the difference between Latino-America and Europe is less more significant compared to Europe vs. Asia... in addition, these poor guys are having ramadan nowadays, so they must wake up every day around 3AM to fill up their stomach... and it also hinders them getting a more friendly relation to us...
But as far as i heard, other groups dont really have this team spirit like we do, as they contain more swedish...and we went together for after work on Friday which is a usual kinda happy-hour here, you pay the drinks and you can eat as much as you can from the provided pasta, chicken and salads ;)

Anyway, first real >study day< at Branno we were sligthly:) enforced to wake up damn early, catch the ferry at 8:02 :) So the island is perfect place if you want to just relax, get rid of all the comealongs of a city, and to feel the flavour of the sea:) anyway, amongst the 19 country, there are only 3 without any seacoast, so there are obviously few people who can understand what I feel standing on a seaside :)

We tried also football, since I bought the ball last Sunday, I did not just want it to be unused :) here u need to get used to that that u cannot depend on weather, whether it is raining or not, the game is not to be postponed ... well, i went to ikea in the morning, and coming back, i saw it was raining dogs and catz.... later on, the football turned out to be as some kind of special waterpolo :) Thing is, that the British guy called off the event for himself saying that he is not afraid of the rain, but the slippery afterwards... hm, the others were quite surprised - he would be rather the last one from whom i expect such texts... anyway, it was awesome, since here u these artificial grass type of fields are free of charge! (including no slippery at all :) this is part of the Swedish government`s avoiding-immigrants-being-a-criminal programme :) and we can also profit from it, either would like to play football, tennis, basketball , cause the neighbourhood is full of them :) i mean, not immigrants, but with sport fields ;) well, actually, here are plenty of immigrants :D wouldnt call them expats :D

back to ikea, check out how they are collecting the left-behind shopping carts:
sorry for the bad quality, but i had with me only my cell. well thats it, what else than collecting carts? :)
other: 4 times per year, here is a so-called pub-crawl, when each faculty arranges its own club, so the whole campus is covered with 13 parties, you can imagine! this is something i can never imagine for instance at home...
anyway, it was communicated to our direction in a pretty wrong way, since everyone thought that its gonna be some kind of pub-like event, so sitting and having a beer along with a conversation, but noooo, it was plenty of parties around, though we arrived a bit too early, so could enter the building without any waiting in a cue. even though it was getting more and more crowded the others wanted to leave and go to an other place. i was the only one out of 8 who wanted to stay.... bence went for the restroom- 20people cue- letsgo to the nature- yes, thats it- wow there are 500 people waiting outside- this fucker just doesnt allow me to back, so i started to call others to hurry up with leaving since it was quite freezy outside :) so it happened that i was the final reason to leave - the only one who wanted to stay.. dont need to emphasize that turned out to be a great event.. :)

lets go back to chalmers: the uni has its own cinema, a separate building only for the student union and for several associations - as best- with swimming pool, sauna, pool whatever...


lastly, a pic from this morning, definitely not unusual here:
yep it is what it seems: a bike, on the street, without any locks, and no wonder it s not being stolen :D