Third week in Lund (Lund #5)
This report will be again in English, since I really need to practice a lot...
On Monday, first day in school, I went to my first lecture from Analysis of Stochastic Processes. The class is given by very nice madam Maria and it seems that the subject is going to be quite hard. I am not really sure if I am going to attend future lectures, since I will hopefully have enough of credits with other subjects. I also attend Applied robotics, which I've never studied or did so far. It seems interesting, quite hard and I am very probably going to attend this course. Lectures seems quite similar to our style of lecturing.
In the afternoon we had a corridor meeting. Some official came to the place where I stay with other international students and told as something about how does it work here. He was very nice and as always, Swedish people don't forget to take care about everything, from fire safety, bullying others, fault reporting, paying, important contacts and so on. The surprising information was the fact that we live in second floor of the centre for people with special needs. There are e.g. supposed to be women which were raped or have some other troubles. I haven't noticed anything strange so far, hence, I do not see this as a problem in any way.
In the evening there was a secret meeting. Nobody knows what's going to happen and mentors hadn't told us anything. When we arrived there (and again sang few songs, listen some pop from nearby sound system) we were split into new groups, which are called mission groups. These groups are going to be our secondary groups next to the father group (the one I've written about so far). Every guild has it's own set of mission groups and mission groups of the same type (but from different guild) are going to compete with each other in the following two weeks in a discipline defined by their purpose.
We were headed by our new mentors to the basement of our guild house and first ones specified what our goal is going to be. Our group is going to build a catapult. We have two weeks, full access to the guild building resources and 500 SEK for expenses. This catapult must be strong and reliable enough so it can hit a still target up to 25 times in 155 seconds. Who's the enemy? It's clear - first-ones of the other guilds. In this Saturday they are going to stand blindfolded about 10-15 meters from our catapult and we are going to get points for hitting them. This is how the scoring is going to be:
- 2 points for hitting an enemy first-one
- -1 point for hitting our first-one (they are going to be between them)
- 5 points for the durability
- 5 points for the design
- and others...
Another mission groups are e.g. (not all, together there are about 20 of different types): catapult, boat, flying, cheering, bribing...
After the first meeting we went to the place of one of our new mentor and got portion of foccacio and a very good carrot soup. We are three international students in my mission group and the rest are Swedish. We got to know each other and then spoke about our ideas concerning the catapult...
On Thursday there was event called Dragging. This event is made because of another one called Regata, which is going to happen in 10 days or so. Regata is basically ship battle on the small lake we have in campus. Mission groups (those concerned by Regata) are going to build a ship, which could hold several people. Then there is going to be a battle between the guilds - your goal is to destroy ships of other guilds and survive as long as possible. But the lake must be cleaned before this battle, because during a year people throw some rubbish into it, including sofas, bikes, shopping carts and so. Hence, there is Dragging - a competition between guilds who is going to take out more trash out of water. It was about 15 degrees Celsius and terrible rain, but, nevertheless, about hundred of people compete. Crazy. After that, there was a party in guild sauna. I haven't attend this one, but my friends from international mentor group had obviously a lot of fun, since they ended up in the lake again about 5am in morning...
On Friday, there was another sitning (dinner party) in formal clothes. This one was with our mission groups, so we could get to know each other better. We also prepared so called glycka - that is simply a performance for the others. I was the main director of our glycka, mainly because I was the first one on the meeting where we tried that and nobody has any idea what to do. My idea was to make live catapult (catapult from people) and one of us could play a crazy general. I chose Johannes as a general, since his German roots are obvious and who else should play the crazy general, than German (I hate people with stereotypes!)? I am not going into details, but we basically had 2 minutes long performance in which general called for a catapult and we fired a human projectile from it, which hits another person by hugging him. The general said something like: "Yes, right into the heart!" and then said that we can hit them more times and while touching the catapult, it falls apart (to his surprise). He then said something like: "Never mind, we have one more week to built a better and stronger one! See you in Saturday!" The sitning was quite fun overall (not very different from the previous ones - singing, traditions, performances...) and ended about half past eleven. After that, there was, of course, party until like 3am, when a majority of people went to other place for after-party.
On Saturday there was an event called FlyING. There is one mission group which is supposed to build a flying machine which could fly from Sweden to Denmark with person in it. This is placed in the Helsingborg which is the town at the north-west from Lund about 30 minutes by train. The flying machines usually starts from a ramp and after few seconds of uncontrolled fall they end up in a sea... It's similar to Red Bull events in our country. It's also fun because Helsingborg isn't so big and there isn't to many students as in Lund (but there is part of Lund campus). So, when few thousands students from Lund come there, they literally flood the whole town. After this event there is a ferry party. The ferry is going to Denmark and is filled up just by students who sing and drink. Nobody leaves when it comes to Denmark and they headed back to Sweden. After the ferry party there is again another party with DJ and stuff, and of course, after that, students usually go to after party to the place of some locals... Not my cup of tea. I forgot to mention that there was a free breakfast in the morning.
On Sunday, I travelled back to the Czech Republic, spent some time in my home with family and Paja and next day I went back to Prague. In Tuesday I successfully defended my thesis and got B and C from my final exams (all in all I've got B from the state exams). I then solved all formalities connected to Erasmus stay and then spend few hours with my classmates and friends. And finally, today in Wednesday, I travelled back to Copenhagen, from where I am going back to Lund. I would like to thank all of you who helped me so far and who came yesterday to our meeting.
During that time there were plenty of activities like study lunch, study night (all students study together in quite place), competitions, sports game...
And that's all for now!