Satisfactory accomodation, a great contact with Swedes and to learn Swedish. That’s what the international students in Lund want according to workshops during International Day.
International students come to Lund to enjoy their student lives in a friendly atmosphere. They want a satisfactory accomodation, a great contact with Swedes and to learn Swedish. The International Day encourages students to talk about how to improve their student life.
The student unions’ members, recruited to organize the day, welcome participants wearing pink T-shirts and guiding them through the workshops in the Studiecentrum. Then, they present the main ideas that become an input for the debate with the university representatives and politicians who have more professional knowledge.
According to the plan, students take part in two workshop rounds and enjoy fika in between. Even if some of the participants come only because of the free food, they can’t be judged as Swedish delights like muffins and kanelbullar are to die for. Nevertheless, their active pariticipation is not being questioned as in the workshops everybody can stick their own idea on the board in order to bring further discussion.
The topics that play the biggest role during this day focus on students’ needs and the problems they encounter during the school year. For instance: how to improve the study-social environment or how to become more active in a student organiazation. However, the most frequently mentioned issues are: housing situation and how to make it easier for the international students to learn more Swedish.
“Students are aware that they have to work together to solve these problems”, says one of the hosts, Mathias Wiemann.
There are a few, fresh ideas that interviewed students reveal, though some of them remain skeptical.
“In the workshop the facilitator tries to find solutions to the problems, I don’t know if they are going to implement them in the future”, says Dolly Chak, exchange student from Hong Kong.
On the one hand we have Laurie Blanc, student of the French origin, who thinks that international students don’t meet enough Swedish people, and Jerrold Stolk, an exchange student from the Netherlands, who finds it beneficial to live in the corridor along with Swedish students. But on the other hand lies a ruthless truth:
“Many people have wrong, unrealistic expectations because going to another country doesn’t mean that suddenly everything is going to be gold and beautiful”, states Sam Kamber who spent most of his life in Sweden.
However, there are a few things that we could change or simply discover. Laurie Blanc got to know that she can watch movies at the nations and Jerrold Stolk is pleased with the Swedish Lounge that takes place on Tuesday evenings. Victor Abrahamsson, a host, comes up with an idea about a food fair that would enable students to mingle and try delights from different countries. Also, university could do much better by providing more bilingual information online. Moreover, the welcome package would be even more beneficial if it contained more detailed maps.
‘The welcome package should include a transportation map that would show tips on how to find the right bus”, explains Dolly Chak.
What’s more, Vita Ayu Puspita, a student of Food Technology and Nutrition from Indonesia, suggests that there should be a ‘recovery period’ between the semesters as the Asian students are used to that kind of system.
