After spending a week in Sweden with my host family and giving myself time to think and reflect on it, i can safely say that it was one of the most amazing weeks I have ever had, if not the most amazing one. I met a lot of new people and saw a lot of different things but most importantly- I managed to get to know the day to day life of my host and his family and see and experience the cultural differences when comparing Sweden to Bulgaria. But more on that later.
First of all i want to adress how happy I am with the fact that i got to spend a week in such a great family that my hosts were. Unlike my expectations of being awkward and all when meeting my host family, it went as smooth as it could. I had already phoned and video chatted my partner, so meeting him was not a problem at all. The only obstacle that was left for me was to meet his family. And as i thought they all turned out to be just as sensible and easy- going at the same time as my partner (Truls) was. I appreciate the fact that they made me feel as I was home and feel as comfortable as i could. I really liked that fact
that my host family and I both approached ourselves first by saying that we think that communication is the most important thing to make my stay at their home as best as possible. And that is what happened we always tried to discuss things and talked to each other. And now after i spent a week there I can say that communication was one BIG game changer that made everything more easy.
One thing that stood out to me while i was in Sweden was their educational system and the way their schools work as a whole. And the reason this stood out was because they are a lot different than bulgarian schools and better in some ways. I am not going to get into details, but just point out the most noticable differences. The first and the biggest one has to be that the Swedish students have so called practical lessons like woodworking, sewing and home economics.
And yes we kind of have home economics in primary school but it is far away from being a practical lesson at all. Swedish students also have a lot of practical lessons in Chemistry and Physics and they actually get to see chemical reactions and all. Which means that they also have a properly equipped classrooms with some really interesting safety measures. Another interesting thing is that every student has an Ipad or a laptop and everyone receives their homework and classes on them (now i have to give a credit to our school for trying to do the same thing, however I don't think it has been introduced to both us and the teachers the proper way) and all of this technology is provided by the
school. One interesting thing is the way that kids address their teachers. Here in Bulgaria we all call our teachers using "Mr"or "Mrs" followed by their last name, whereas in Sweden teachers call teachers by their first name. And I found it really strange how everytime I had to address one of the swedish teachers I had a hard time because i am so used to using the "Mr\Mrs" form.
When it comes to Sweden as a whole, a lot of people think how gloomy, rainy and dark it is and how swedes are reserved and do not like contacting with people, which I found to be a complete stereotype. What i found out
about the swedish people is that as long as you approach them the proper way, there won't be
any problem of getting to know or interact with them. As it goes for the weather- it really is rainy and gloomy for the most part but unlike most of the people, that is one of the things i liked the most- the such unpleasant weather to the others actually turned out to be to my likings. All in all Sweden turned out to be a lot different than Bulgaria, in a good way, and a lot like I expected it to be.
One of the places that we visited as a part of the programme for the day that we visited Malmö was the LGBTQ place, where we met LGBTQ representatives and get to know more about the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transsexual and Queer community and what it actually stands for. The LGBTQ case still fells like a taboo theme here in Bulgaria and it was really interesting for me to hear people talking so freely about that. What i feel is that
everybody knows something about it but not everyone know what it really means and what is really going on in the LGBTQ community. That is why I found the meeting in Malmö a really useful one, because I think that I was not the only one that had never heard the abriviation LGBTQ before, let alone knowing more about it.
Altogether I had one of the most amazing weeks in my life in Sweden and met a lot of awesome people, some of which I will meet again in a year and I can't wait for it. All i have to say is that i feel extremely grateful for having the chance to participate in this project!
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