Awhile ago they sent an e-mail out to all the international students at the university here asking if anyone was willing to go to a gymnasium (high school) and talk about their home country. They were especially looking for people from English-speaking countries. So, I offered to go.

I edited the Power Point presentation that I had made for my classmates here and took the bus to the neighboring city of Borlänge to talk to Swedish 16-year-olds. The school was interesting. It’s a privately run (but publicly-funded) school with only 50 students in two classes. It’s brand-new this year and they’re focussed on computer science. Because of that, almost all the students are male.

They all speak English fluently and some really sophisticatedly, but when we broke into smaller groups after my presentation to talk (they were supposed to be practicing their English) there was a lot of awkward adolescent silence. I was racking my brains trying to think of conversation topics — I didn’t know I’d be leading discussions, exactly.

The atmosphere at the school was really mellow. After giving my presentation, the teacher who had organized it all suggested that she and I have a coffee break before giving the presentation to the next class, and the students had a break too. They have a schedule of sorts, but it’s all completely flexible. They all have their own laptops with wireless internet, so they can basically sit there all day and screw around on the internet and listen to music and stuff. So completely different from my high school experience — 1000 students move from class to class every 40 minutes, supervised all the time… it must be really nice for these guys. I hope they get some education out of it too.