Saturday morning started with a trip to the farmer's market in town, where I picked up a few tomatos, apples, potatos, and some bread -- including cinnamon rolls and a sweet lemon bread that was delicious! After the market I made my way back home (about a 3 km / 2 mile walk that I've done several times now!) and putzed around for a little while before walking back to the other side of town to the place where we would rent our canoes and kayaks. Around 11:30 we put in -- 5 canoes and 2 two-person kayaks... and we started paddling... went in and around a few islands back toward the main part of town... then we split up... my group of 3 canoes and a kayak went toward the marina, where we stopped and ate lunch... nearly had a run in with a very large sail boat, but we all survivied. After lunch we paddled back through town, around another couple of islands, and returned to our beach. We walked back to town... tried to stop at the fish market, but it had already closed for the day... then went on home.
Sunday... was mostly a day of organizing... finally did a few things around the apartment, cleared off the stuff that I'd been piling on my desk all week, and began reading "Life of Pi" -- thought it might be good to read something fun before digging into school work for the week. Sunday evening we had a potluck -- I took twice baked potatos, which people actually seemed excited about. They were pretty good :)
Today... was the first day of class... very exciting, I must say. We started off with a brief overview of how the year would go -- very brief, considering the amount of material that we'll cover -- and then heard from one of the professors who has been working to get the program going for nearly 13 years. It was a good history to know, but I found myself wondering... (and now I'm wondering that if I write this in a public place if it will come back to haunt me, but I'm going to write it anyway...) Swedish is a language that sounds sort of sing-songy... native speakers of Swedish vary the tone of the voice to mean different things, and it has a very soothing and happy sound when they speak. Yet the person who spoke today spoke in a very flat, monotonous tone... it would be so great of a little of the vocal variety that is used for Swedish could also be used in English if for nothing other than to keep our attention! Guess that's what lectures are all about, right?
In the afternoon, we used a process known as Open Space Technology... I'm not sure why "technology" is in the title, there really isn't anything terrible techincal about it... basically it provides an opportunity for a group to self-divide into smaller groups to discuss topics that are of interest to those in the smaller groups. It starts by having a few people suggest the topics that they are interested in talking about; then the remainder of the large group selects a smaller group to join... and we're off! Great conversations this way from a variety of people... and if you get into a small group and find that it's not what you wanted to talk about - you just get up and go to a different small group!
Joined 6 others for a great dinner tonight at one of the classmate's apartment... much of dinner conversation related back to discussions from throughout the day... seems like we are very eager to continue sharing of our experiences and relating it to the topic of sustainability and leadership. I wonder how long that will continue -- and if one day we will grow tired of it to the point that we have to ban all school-related topics from our dinner parties?
No comments:
Post a Comment