School Schedule

This morning my host parents and I went to meet the school counselor at Österpost Gymnasiet where I will be going to school starting the 28th of August. We talked for about an hour or so, some in Swedish, some in English, depending on what I understood. She started with a short interview for the school paper, and then we started looking at school programs. Classes in Sweden are organized by program, like a major in college.

There are lots of different programs, divided into two basic types. One type is designed for people who will start working when they graduate and includes such programs as car maintainance and food preparation. The other is for people who are planning on going to college. I decided to opt for the college-bound programs.

The biggest program is Social Science (Sämhallsvetenskap), which is divided into many different catagories like Culture, Language, Music, Crime Scene Investigation, Business/Economics and a few others. I liked Language and Economics, but they said I could take a language in any program, so I will probably be doing Economics. I was surprised at all the language choices that Österport offers. There's Italian, French, Spanish, German, Polish, Russian and Latin. I have chosen to study French and Russian. I also have to take a Swedish For Emigrants class, along with all the other exchange students.

In addition to all that, there is a weekly two hour period where all students from different programs can pick a class just for personal interest. I'm going to learn to play guitar.

School is exactly one week away now and I'm a little nervous, but I won't be the only one. There are a lot of exchange students in my new school from all over the world.