First week of SFI

Wow, I've been very busy the last week. SFI is 5 days a week. It is 12.15-16.05 4 days a week, and on Tuesdays SFI is 12.15-14.30. It takes a lot of time out of my day. I've also got the usual university classes and studying to do as well.

SFI is very interesting. My class is the 'educated' class I believe. Most seem to have had at least some university and most are from Europe. Although there are a fair number from the Middle East as well. The way the class is run is the most interesting part, as the knowledge we're gaining is almost nonexistent. The class is aimed as a way to integrate immigrants into Swedish society. We had 1.5 hours of the unemployment office lecturing us. They were so annoying and spoke to us as though we were small children. So we gave them all wrong answers to their questions. The entire presentation was to teach us to go find our own jobs and leave them alone. Our classwork starts preparing us for jobs as well. We learn how to write sentences such as 'Even though I have an engineering degree, it is more realistic for me to get a cleaning job.' It is almost insulting.

The class is a zoo. No one listens to the teacher, does their homework, or is even quiet when others talk. There are about 30 students, but most don't show up everyday. They have jobs or school, or something else that takes up time. Swedish is what they do in their free time. For some of the class I think Swedish is their only friend network. It's quite interesting. Coming from a pretty difficult university environment, SFI is a joke. I keep going though because if nothing else, trying to use Swedish 4 hours a day with my classmates is good practice. I also do learn some new grammar rules. I come home and teach them to David and Peter. They look at me like I'm a lunatic. It's great.

University is a lot of work right now too. I find myself bringing textbooks to Swedish class and reading them when I don't feel like listening to the teacher explain something for the 15th time. Reading a book a week and writing a paper a week takes a lot of effort. Soon I'll have my final paper for this course to do and my master's thesis. I have no idea how I will fit everything in to each day.

Yesterday I had a somewhat relaxing day. Got up early and took a shower then started laundry. Laundry took forever. Every machine was started 10-15 minutes apart from each other. I ended up just sitting in the laundry room with some stuff to study for about 2 hours. After we got everything into the dryer David took over Laundry duty. He went back and forth checking on how dry our clothes were constantly. While laundry was drying we ate lunch, did dishes, and studied. I studied most of the afternoon. In the evening I met up with Peter at the store and we did some grocery shopping. Then we came home and spent the next 3 hours in the kitchen making freezer boxes for the coming week (and dinner too). Peter took home 4 lunch boxes, and David and I have something equivalent. After doing dishes and cleaning the kitchen, we ate dinner. Then there were more dishes and more cleaning. While the last of the food was in the oven, I folded and put all the laundry away. Then we made smoothies for dessert. Finally, around 11pm or so, we sent Peter home and went to bed. And that was what I considered a relaxing day!