WELL. I’M EXHAUSTED.

This past Monday was a holiday, so we didn’t have class, and then tuesday and wednesday we had International Week at FH!

As part of getting credit for IW, we had to attend a certain amount of lectures given by visiting professors from all over the world! Lots of the lectures focused on Cultural Diversity and how it affects business. Some of the ones I found most interesting were on Performance Management, Cross-Cultural Management, and Leadership Across Borders.

On Wednesday evening was the International Fair. All the incomings are required as part of our grade to set up a booth about our country and have it for the fair. This means decorations, pictures, food/drinks, and traditional clothing (as it applies to your country).

I had been hard at work this week getting ready for the fair. There are 3 Canadian students this semester, and I was assigned the role of Team Leader (a wise choice). This however caused my teammates to leave me to do essentially everything on my own (boys, am I right?!).

So I planned our booth, including the posters, decorations, display. I also had to collect all our serving dishes like plates, bowls, cups, etc. AND I bought and prepped all the food, with the exception of the alcohol (which I wanted no part of). The only exception was that a fellow Canadian cooked the french fries because I did NOT have time, and he bought the cheese curds. The other boy bought Canadian Whiskey.

So, you may have guessed already, but at our booth we had Poutine, Pancakes with Maple Syrup, Maple Fudge (brought to us from Canada) and shots of Canadian Crown Whiskey.

On wednesday morning I made our gravy, and my Irish friends helped make about 100 pancakes! Since they don’t have an oven in their flat, I left them use ours, so this was our trade haha. Actually, the Irish helped out Team Canada more than members of Tteam Canada haha.

Our booth was assigned to us, and was placed on the ground floor right by the front doors. This is both good and bad.

It was good because we got tons of exposure, and so lots of people came to our booth to talk to us and try our stuff. It also was the coolest floor (temperature). Oour school is great, but its temperature control is awful. There are no windows and horrible air circulation, so the whole building was super hot! But the ground floor was definitely better than the upper floors (Sucks to be you Norway, on the second floor! Haha).

The bad part is that our food started disappearing REALLY FAST!! We had so many people that our food started running out really early. It wasn’t all bad because lots of booths ran out really quickly – there’s no way to anticipate how many people were gonna show up, so we just had to estimate.

Some booths did better than others. From what I could tell, Mexico did pretty well, and the Czech Republic had left overs too. Eeach country was allotted 60euro that would be covered by the International Office. All we had to do was keep our reciepts and bring them to the IO next week, and we would get up to 60euro. From what I heard, the Czech’s spent 120 euro, and almost all of it was on alcohol I think. So they were just giving it away! (Beer is cheaper than water in Czech Republic).The Austrian booth got double the budget as everyone else – they get up to 120 euro from the IO, so they had enough food to last for days! They had schnitzel and cakes and potatoes and other desserts and lots of drinks.

I say we fared pretty well! Everyone seemed to love what we had, and it was cool to have people ask me about where I come from, Canadian facts, stuff like that. It was also fun to wander around and see other student’s booths! I got to meet some of the guest lecturers and faculty, and talk to some pretty cool people from all over the world! Steyr may be a small place, but we’re pretty good about bring the world together 🙂

I wish I took more pictures, but I got caught up in the festivities a little haha.

ALSO my Austrian buddy Andrea stopped by the booth to say hi, which was really nice because I haven’t seen her for a really long time!

I was also able to give away some Canadian souvenirs to some of my friends, which I was really excited to do 🙂

We were able to get rid of all of our food and drink, and had a lot of fun – well, I did anyways!

While I really enjoyed it, I’m glad its over with – the stress of it was killing me. Now I don’t have to worry about it anymore!

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If you follow me on instagram, you will have seen that I only have 50 days before my flight to Canada takes off. And that may seem like a lot to some people, but not to me. It feels like time is slipping away, and it’s driving me crazy!! We still have some big trips planned for the next month and a half, including ITALY! Who’s excited?!

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Also, about a week ago I posted a picture on facebook/snapchat about Eurovision 2016, and I had some people ask me what that was.

Eurovision is a huge singing contest that takes place every year in Europe, which includes all 50 countries and Australia (although no one really understands why). It’s kind of like American Idol, where people at home can vote for your favorite. In addition, each country participating gets to award points to different countries as well. It’s a little complicated to explain without watching it, because there’s some extra rules, and additional rules depending on which country it is, etc.

But it was super cool to watch – I have heard about Eurovision for the last few years, and have seen/heard some songs, but I’ve never really payed that much attention to it, especially since it isn’t broadcasted in Canada on TV. So I enjoyed the nail-biting tension along with the rest of the continent!

AND if you want to listen to some Eurovision songs, I can recommend some to you! Just youtube them!

My personal favorite is France with “J’ai cherché”, with Sweden as a VERY close second with “If I Were Sorry”. I would also recommend listening to the songs from Malta, Lithuania, United Kingdom, Russia, Bulgaria, Belgium, and Denmark.

But definitely give all the other countries’ songs a listen – these are just some suggestions to get you started haha.

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A pretty cool thing that happened to me at the IF was a couple of students and a FH teacher told me that they had read some of my blog and really enjoyed it! That was kind of crazy to me!!

I mean, part of the purpose of this blog is for my home university and host university to show people interested in attending school there and or thinking of doing an exchange. And I guess I always knew that, but I never thought about it that way. I always just figured it was read by my parents and a couple other family members. But the more people I meet and make friends with, the more people who read this blog. And it’s really humbling to hear what people think of what I write. Thus far, all the comments I have gotten have been really kind and encouraging, which has been really nice! People tell me that I’m a good writer, which is really awesome to hear, because I’ve always (secretly) wanted to be a writer. I’ve never pursued it or anything, and don’t have an interest in doing it as a job or anything like that, but I do like to do some writing every now and then.

And so, to all those that read this blog, from wherever in the world you are, thanks so much – I really appreciate the feedback and the support! Thank you for your kind words, and for taking the time to sift through all the junk in my brain that I post on the internet. I really appreciate it!!

Signing off!

emma.k