Annyeonghaseyo!

I´ve arrived! After being nominated for exchange studies already in October last year, I have been counting the days to go to Korea!!

The flight was rather unspectacular. I tried to sleep ( not as successful) and the food was great. I had Korean bibimbap ( boiled rice with vegetables) and it was the first food I ever had on a plane which had a taste. Good start! If airplane food is good, how bad can the actual food in Korea be?? I basically started documenting  everything  I eat the second I left the airplane.

First day in Seoul

I arrived on the 20th, a few days before the orientation. I wanted to have some time to get used to the time difference, the climate (HUMID, is all I can say) and get to know the city. I stay at a guesthouse off campus, which is super convenient and only 5 minutes away from uni. The university offered on-campus housing, but I was rather terrified of having to share a room with other people for 4 months and the strict rules in the dorms were rather unattractive. Guesthouses are a good option. Clean ( just like everything in this city), quiet ( rules exist here too) and affordable. Basically only exchange students live here, including the whole Malmö delegation. We are a group of three people that study completely different things, but get along great. SVERIGE!!!

Before coming to Korea, I read some books about it and studied my tour guide. Preparation is everything! I knew how to get to my Guesthouse from the airport. Well, in theory. Practice is always different. But after short period of walking around the airport trying to find the subway station, the lady at the Tourist Information could help. From then on it was a walk in the park. A mongolian man helped me (even carried one of my luggages) to master the public transport. I eventually found my place, luckily bumped into the manager and was able to settle into my room straight away. All super fast. I was really surprised, I had imagined it to be way more complicated. People that came by taxi apparently had more problems. I even always had someone to help me with my luggage, real gentlemens here in Korea. BUT, just to be clear, I always carried the big luggage myself 😉

Transportation

    Getting around in Seoul is super easy. Stations have numbers and are written in English. Public transport is cheap, convenient and safe. I straight away bought a prepaid card for the public transport to get around the city. The strange thing is that even though Seoul is famous for it´s nightlife, the subway stops at around midnight and starts again in the early morning at around 5:30. I have been told that this is because they made a deal with the taxi drivers ( luckily cheap too). When you use the subway frequently you even learn some korea. Amazing.

Korean Buddy

I immediately felt welcome in Korea. People are so friendly, even if communication sometimes is a big problem. Around Anam (where I live) there are lots of shops and cheap restaurants. It really is a student residence area. All exchange students were assigned a buddy. A buddy is a Korea University student that helps the exchange students around. They organize events and try to guide the students, like ESN basically. My buddy is super nice and she helps me with everything. When I have a question or struggle with something she know what to do. Really helpful!

I´ve visited many places already, but that´s for another entry. Follow me on Instagram, as I´m constantly uploading pictures there! Instagram: Swedenlover94

Some pictures. Trust me I do a lot, but somehow I can’t upload that many here.

Myeong-dong, shopping street.

– Chenggyechon stream, artificial city in the middle of the city

Stay tuned! Coming up next: a summary of the Orientation (including a short presentation of my uni) and the places I´ve visited so far.

Hopefully, you enjoyed reading this. I first have to get used to this whole blogging thing, including figuring out how to use the blogging website. 

Sunny Greeting from the Seoul- The Soul of Asia!

Lena

After Peace Memorial Ceremony in Hiroshima centre and spending two days discovering the city and its history it was time for us to start workshops and preparation of roleplay. Before we arrived to Japan we were suppose to read articles connected with women’s rights, human rights and gender and then discuss about these issues in the workshops.

International groups made the discussion very interesting and made us realize how differently gender and women’s rights are understood in different countries and cultures. Daily life examples the participants shared with each other also showed the great variety of problems, concerns and developments in different countries.

UN roleplay, which we will have in our last day in Hiroshima, took also great start when people started to create alliances to make sure their interests would be secured in the roleplay. Country groups, separated to different classrooms, were walking around the building to meet other countries’ representatives, negotiating the terms of draft resolution and pointing out why some changes should be made to the draft. In the end of day people had made deals between countries, broke some previous cooperation and made compromises to make sure their priorities in international field would be secured by support of other states.

Although it feels that we just started the seminar, there will be only two days left in Hiroshima. During those days roleplay preparation, together with last workshop and guest lecture, will take all our time.

Sanni

Today we ended our program at Hiroshima university by presenting our disaster management plans for earthquake, explosion and pandemic for Motomachi housing complex in Hiroshima. We have had an amazing learning experience and a fantastic way to learn about cultural competence.

We have met great people here in Hiroshima and we have become a little family that help each other and have a lot of fun together. It feels really sad to leave all these amazing and wonderful people.

Tomorrow we are going back to Sweden and we are looking forward to share our experience and what we have learned in Hiroshima.

Puss & Kram
Victoria &b Johanna

Hej everyone. My name is Rodrigo, and I’m a student of Peace and Conflict Studies at Malmö University.

This year, I had the immense opportunity to participate at the INU Student Seminar for Global Citizenship and Peace in Hiroshima, Japan.

INU is the International Network of Universities.

By belonging to this network, Malmö University has the chance to send some of its students, every year, to participate in different seminars in the city of Hiroshima in Japan.

If you would like to know more about INU and learn how can you have this amazing opportunity as well, please check this link: http://www.mah.se/english/About-Malmo-University/International/INU—International-Network-of-Universities/

So, saving on words but not in images, I will show you some pictures from the seminar…..

Preparing for the trip….

Spotting Mount Fuji from the plane…

Arrived in Hiroshima!

Malmö University crew for the INU Student Seminar for Global Citizenship and Peace 2015, together at the Memorial Monument in Hiroshima

An original pre-atomic bomb building of Hiroshima and one of the symbols of the city

Shinzō Abe, Prime Minister of Japan, during the commemorations of the 70 years since the  dropping of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima

Visiting Miyajima Island with the “Brazilian” group

Traditional Japanese lunch with our local friends

Deer at Miyajima Island

Lantern Ceremony. Peace and Malmö University together

Going back to the hotel after a long day…

Learning a bit of Japanese!

Testimony of an atomic bomb victim

Interviewed for the official video of the INU seminar 2015

Workshop with Malmö University professor Dr Gunnhildur Magnusdottir

The crew again!!

Malmö Högskola!!

Model UN on the last day of the INU Seminar. Malmö’s crew again!

Final day and diploma ceremony for the INU Seminar 2015, Hiroshima, Japan.

Overall, the Seminar was a great experience. We had the opportunity to met students from 5 different continents and work together with them to achieve common goals.

Moreover, we attended amazing workshops that gave us new and challenging perspectives on gender, peace, security and the idea of Global Citizenship.

Finally, being in Hiroshima during the commemorations for the 70 years of the atomic bomb, was another priceless event and a reminder of how much we have progressed in the last few decades and how much more we have to work on.

I recommend to all my fellow student colleges to apply for the INU Seminar 2016 and have the same amazing experience as I did.

Do you have any questions about the INU Seminar? Please use the comments area below and we will be happy to answer your queries.

Best to you all,

Rodrigo

After welcoming ceremony on Wednesday and delicious Japanese food there were not too many hours of sleep when we had to wake up around 5am to catch a bus to Hiroshima city at 5.50 on 6^th of August. I never realized how big city Hiroshima is and how beautiful the surroundings are. Hills, green nature, the sun and morning fog were with us when buses full of INU students drove from Saijo, area where our hotel and University are, to Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

In the park we had the chance to see the Peace Memorial Ceremony of Hiroshima. Although the ceremony was beautiful the whole park was so crowded and full of people that I felt that realizing in deeper sense what happened in Hiroshima 6^th of August in 1945 at 8.15 o’clock is going to happen somewhere else than in there. Later in the evening there was lantern ceremony on the riverside where hundreds of lanterns on river lighted the place, reminding us about the ones who have passed away.

During the day I got to know my country group members better. All participants of the student seminar are divided for country groups for our UN roleplay in the last day of the seminar. Our group was amazing and with the help of the local students it was very easy to navigate around the city. We visited Hiroshima castle and we also got to taste Okonomiyaki, Hiroshiman style pancake with noodles, ham, egg and many other ingredients.

Next day, being almost as busy as previous one, was the second and last one we spent in the Hiroshima centre before starting the seminar workshops. We had a chance to visit Peace Memorial museum in Hiroshima and get information about the A- bomb and the victims of that day in 1945. In the afternoon we had amazing opportunity to listen two survivors who shared their memories and experiences with us. Both of them were young in the time of A-bomb and realizing how much that day affected to their whole life, for all the days in last 70 days, was good reminder how important next days’ workshops about peace are. For us and for everyone.

Sanni

We have been speeding most of today attending lectures about disaster management and working in our workshop groups. It is getting closer to our final presentations so we are starting with our last assignment tomorrow

Later the Japanese students took us out for dinner in Hiroshima city and then we went for Karaoke, that was amazing and we hand a great time!!

Johanna and I have arrived at the INU Summer program in Hiroshima, Japan. We started the Nursing workshop on the 3th of August. At workshop we are students from Sweden, Usa, Australia, Spain, South Africa, Indonesia and Japan. We are divided into groups working with disaster management. Each group is assigned to either work with the disaster of an earthquake, explosion or pandemic. In the beginning we started discussing, communicating and planning a disaster management plan for preparedness and we now started to work on the management plan during the first 24h after the disaster strikes.

During this week we have been visiting beautiful places around Hiroshima and the hosting university Hiroshima University have done an amazing job showing us around.
On the 6th of August we attended the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony, it was really a pleasure and a honor that together remember that it was 70 years ago the A-bomb was detonated over Hiroshima and to acknowledge the importance of a continued struggle towards peace and a world without nuclear weapons.

Together with the Environmental group we went to a sake factory. To learn the process of Sake making and to have a taste.

Today we visited the Peace memorial museum together with all students in the INU Summer program. The museum exhibition was very emotional and a very humbling experience. We also had lectures with survivors that have been telling us their life stories and struggles.
There has been a packed schedule all week but we have made some time to enjoy a ourselves by our own. We have fabulous help from our friend Hero that have been showing us around, been our translator and helped us be a part of the lantern festival.

We are looking forward to the rest of the week because we have a lot of things left to explore. Hopefully will we also learn a little bit more Japanese!!

Puss och Kram

Johanna & Victoria

Well, so much has happened since the last time I wrote.

First of all I have been away, I went to Riga in Latvia and Russia! Riga is a beautiful city, feels much bigger than Vilnius, more international and much more easy to speak english! A nice experience and it is really easy and cheap to travel to the nereast contries by bus from Lithuania and Vilnius. Especially if you are student you can get really good price of different trips!

My “biggest” trip was to Russia, and it was an amazing experience!!!! First we went to St Petersburg, later on to Vieliky Novgorod and last to Moscow! St Petersburg and Moscow was hughe but absolutely wonderful, big beautiful building, friendly people and a lot of museums, churches etc. And once again, to be a student abroad gives to possibility to have great prices and experience a lot!

Vieliky Novgorod is a really old City between St Petersburg and Moscow (it is about 500km to Moscow from there). It is really a typical sovjet city but has a lot of older history and we had a nice guide to told us about everything from battles to vikings and traditions.
After my trip can say that Russia if the contry of contrasts!

We went by bus between the cities which gave us the opportunity to see more. To go bo buss was a good idea but I couldn’t imagine how the “big” road should be…. I expected a good high way, but I was soo wrong…

One very interesting thing in Moscow was that I had the opportunity to watch the 1 of may parade which is the Labours Day in Russia and is a very big celebration on the Red Square.
Finally I also had the opportunity to by a really nice Mathryoskha, post cards and travel books.

Right now it is like summar here in Vilnius, beautfil weahter, hot actually and almost everyday the sun is shining. That good for me because I’m doing all my exams now, I have done three and I have two more. And of course the biggest and most difficult is saved for last… But at the same time it is a fun period with some press but also a sign that my time here in Lithuania is coming to an end. It is a little bit sad because I really like to be abroad and to be a exchange student is a fantastic opportunity, but at the same time I will appriciate to have a room on my own, cook nice food and have some peaceful and quite time on my own.

Luckely for the next exchange student who will live in the dorms, they are going to renovate this summer!!

Hello again.

I can’t believe it’s two weeks since I arrived in Melbourne.. Still I feel like I’ve been here forever. It’s strange, isn’t it? There’s so much going on in this city ALL THE TIME, and I love it.

I’ve seen my first cricket game ever together with 90.000 people at Melbourne Cricket Ground (England – Australia, world cup). Such a cool stadium! Did I enjoy it? Yes. Will I ever see one again? No. The game was boring. It took a while to understand the rules, and I still don’t get all of them. Atmosphere was OK but I expected a lot more considering the number of people watching. We managed to stay for 2,5 hours, the entire game lasted 7 (!!) How crazy is that.

I am now done with the registration and enrolment part. The University area is nice, and very different from back home. I don’t know how exchange students at Malmö University are enrolled but I hope things are smoother for them. I’ve attended so many unnecessary, still compulsory, information sessions. And I’m not just saying this because I’m lazy. They’ve really been unnecessary. Definitely handing in some tips for improvement. All the wonderful exchange students I’ve met so far though!! Wow, they are great. This Monday the Exchange club had their welcoming dinner and it was so much fun. We had Japanese tapas together and chatted a lot.

As for accommodation my friends and I have not left our hostel yet, and truth is we might stay here the entire time. It’s the greatest place ever, located right in city centre. Wonderful people staying here too!! Have to say I’m very happy about not living at campus, especially as I will spend all my time at the clinical school at Austin Hospital. Lectures are held there too.

Now I have to enjoy the sunny weather. Talk to you later.

Jennie