Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Differences...

Since I have been in Sweden I have noticed so many differences between Swedish living and American living. Here are some of the things that I have taken notice of so far.

School- School is a big one, there are so many differences here. In Sweden, we are all in groups and we take classes mostly with the people in our group, in the US everyone mixes up for our classes. Here I take a lot less classes, my schedule is so relaxed. I have an hour break to do whatever on most days, some days more than that. In the US you have a certain amount of classes everyday and 5 minutes in between every class, it is a lot more stressful. Swedish students are a lot more motivated to do work than students in the US, people here study SO much! In swedish schools you have a warm cooked meal everyday, usually it s good but if you don't like it you can go to the cafe and buy a sandwich. In the US you have to buy food or bring it from home, if you buy it, it is usually a very unhealthy meal. In the US I would be driving my car to school and no one does that here! Everyone either bikes or walks to school, which doesn't work out well for me because me and my bike have had a few fights =). If theres anything else about school in either country just ask.

Food- I actually havent noticed a big difference in the food here except for when it is eaten. Here are typical meals in both countries.
Breakfast (Sweden)- A sandwich, (like a slice of bread with butter, meat and cheese) tea or coffee, milk or some type of juice, sometimes an egg or fruit.
Breakfast (US)- Milk or juice, and something warm like eggs and bacon, pancakes, (with butter and syrup) waffles, (with butter and syrup) sausages and toast.

Lunch (Sweden)- Warm meal with milk or water. Soup with bread, meatballs, fish, pasta. Anything warm and filling, could be compared to a dinner in the US.
Lunch (US)- School lunch with soda or various drinks, hamburger, nachos, chicken nuggets, sandwich, (peanut butter and jelly or meat) or something not too heavy at home, can be a left over meal.

Afterschool (Sweden)- Pancakes, (with jelly and cream) waffles, (with jelly and cream also) very similiar to lunch. Fruit and milk also.
Afterschool (US)- Not much just random snacks you can find in the food pantry. Usually not healthy! =)

Dinner (Sweden)- Heavy, also similiar to lunch, but heavier than the afterschool meal. Meats, fish, pasta. basicaly carbs and protein. Healthy, usually not fried.
Dinner (US)- Very similiar to the dinners in Sweden except we have fried stuff sometimes.

Teenagers- Teenagers here are a lot more free than in the US. Probably because it is fairly safe to be biking around my city late at night. You can get everywhere on your bike so you can just go to the store and grab something really fast. On the weekends it is kind of weird if you go out and are back before 12. Everyone is used to staying out away from home, where I'm not really used to that. In the US if your out of your house at 12 you are most likely staying the night at a friends house. Here, you just stay out with friends really late, and go back home.

Again if you have any other questions for me, ask! =)

5 comments:

  1. That was a great Blog. Very informative.

    Still having troubles with the bike or is the bike having troubles with you?

    LOL :-)

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  2. Haha no my bike and I are getting along fine for now. I think the bike had problems with me =) It was thinking "oh no american, you better get of me you should stick with a car!" Haha!

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  3. Thank you so much for this post! This is what I was talking about earlier! Sweden seems like such a great place! Man, I wish over here it was safe to go biking at midnight. Do people drink or do a lot of drugs over there like they do here? Or is it sort of taboo?

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  4. I don't really know haha, because all my friends abide by the law and don't drink since we're underage. And Drugs is not as big of a problem here at all. I have seen no drugs in school at all, just smoking

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  5. Since Sweden have a long time drinking-tradition its very common for people from 16+ to be drinking. When a little older like 18+ its VERY common that the youths drink every weekend, friday and saturday.

    Drugs is a pretty rare problem, you can live whole life in Sweden and never see any drugs or typical drug-users.

    Hope you enjoy Sweden, looked through your blog and its interesting to see what foreigners thinks of Sweden.

    Greetings from a 20 year old male living in Nyköping.

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