03_NCTU Eruope Activities in Sweden

This is the second year of NCTU-Europe. In the first three months, we attended a Swedish language course to get into the daily life of Sweden; In addition, we celebrated our 1st anniversary. In late September, we celebrated the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival with the Chinese Culture Association of Sweden.

Language course
In August, we took the Swedish language course in the Folkuniversitet in Goteborg. During the three-week studying, we learned the basic words, pronunciation, and grammar of Swedish. We also learned some useful words in daily life, such as foods, tools, etc. It's a hard job to learn Swedish, though we had learned English for years.

Sometimes after the course, we took a tour in Goteborg or participated in some activities with students from other countries. Every weekend we went even further. We went to many places, like the Vrango Island, Liseberg, Marstrand Island, etc. It's a good way to explore Goteborg and to experience the Swedish life in summer.

1st anniversary
On September 8th, we celebrated the 1st anniversary of NCTU-Europe office. Every year there are new comers in Chalmers, so do we. This was our first formal activity and was the first time we present ourselves to Chalmers students.

For this important moment, we planned several events. We invited Professor Lena Gustafsson, the 1st vice president of Chalmers, Dr. Jorgen, the Sen. Advisor to the President, and Ms. Angelica, . To let visitors know about our culture, we also prepare some famous Taiwanese food. To make the anniversary visible to the public, we posted the “ground-poster” from the main gate of Chalmers to NCTU-Europe office, and set up a red flag in front of the office. Unfortunately, the flag was stolen two days before the anniversary.

Everyone worked hard to complete his own job, thus we could get right on the schedule. On the anniversary day, we were honored to invite Lena and Jorgen having a speech for us. After the introduction of our office members, we had a presentation to both Taiwan culture and National Chiao Tung University, including the life in NCTU of the exchange students from Chalmers last year.

After the presentation was a short film of Taiwan culture, then we introduced "The NCTU song". NCTU song is composed by several students in NCTU last year. Soon it became the most famous song in the campus. Although Swedish people may not understand this Chinese song, we trust that the joy of NCTU song had been straight into everyone's heart.

In the end of anniversary is the Chinese traditional show -the diabolo show. People were amazed by the great performance of Pei-Shan Chien and Chien-Huei Chen. There were also chances for people to play it.

We had made one successful step into Chalmers, but there was still a long way to go, hope we can do our best in the future.

Mid-Autumn festival
September 18th in this year was an important date for Chinese, the Mid-Autumn festival! We celebrate it with people in the Chinese Culture Association of Sweden. Many people there come from Taiwan, too. Most of them live in Sweden and have a family now. Every important Chinese festival, they group together and celebrate with each other.

We were invited to join them and celebrate the Moon festival. We had wonderful experience there. We sang songs together, talked in our home language, and had some traditional moon cake and Taiwanese food! It was just like we're home. After the lunch we had a small talk, sharing the information about life in Goteborg.

It is good to maintain a well contact with other Chinese groups. We can exchange information, and it's just like home when talking with people from the same country.

These are our main activities in the first three months. In the future, we'll hold more public activities to make NCTU Europe known to everyone.

NCTU Europe Bulletin v.3 Dec. 2005

03_NCTU Eruope Activities in Sweden