Hi, all the readers.

LBG Lund is now a few days into the organizing part of this CE. So far the participants have climbed the wall of Kårhuset, had presentations of each country, experienced a wonderful barbeque at Sankt Hans backar and seen the most typical swedish traditions at the All Year Round party.

Yesterday BEST Lund used the CE as PR for the LTH students. The people that had applied for courses during the spring was invited for International Evening. A handful interested students decided to stay the whole evening, while a few others looked by for some time. Now, we hope that they all are motivated to go to their courses or continue in BEST depending on their purpose of attendance. We also want to say that you are all welcome again, it was great having you there yesterday. :)

At this moment the Polish and Hungarians are on a city rally in Lund. This means that they are divided in teams with several tasks to perform. In the meantime they get to see Lund and learn to locate themselves here. After the city rally there will be a visit to the museum kulturen. The day will later end with a ¨sittning¨ with Hippie theme.

This text will hopefully later be updated with pictures. For now you have to settle with a picture from the picnic in the botanical garden. One of our guests found the ducks very interesting and decided to see how close he could get..

This upcoming week BEST-Lund will host 20 international besties from Poland and Hungary as part of the Cultural Exchange between Lund-Gliwice-Veszprém. The schedule is filled with activities such as city rally, swedish cooking lessons, climbing, Malmö trip, nature trip and of course we will bring let them experience Stadsparken on Valborg! :) With these and much much more activities we hope that we will give them a great time here in Lund.

The participants stays at Lophtet the infamous building behind chemistry center. Lophtet was previous a pig stable, but has been a renovated and for the last decades it has been a party place for the Student Union at LTH.

During Tuesday night we welcome BEST-interested people to join us for the planned International Evening at Lophtet. If you are curious about us, what we do and want to get to know us, you are very welcomed to show up. However we would be glad if you could send us an e-mail on the address [email protected] to tell us that you will show up.

The voting session has just started during this the last day of the General Assembly. Mia is voting for LBG Lund. At the picture you can see her register.

At the moment the biggest decision making event in BEST is taking place in Budapest in Hungary. This event is called GA, or General Assembly. This means that two delegates from each LBG and delegates from committees, the board, partner organisations and other invited people are gathering and making up the future for BEST, as well as voting on important decisions. Each full member LBG has one vote and the voting sessions take place on the last day of GA.

GA is also where the international board of BEST is being elected and this year we have one guy from the Nordic countries running for a place in the board - Paal from Trondheim. :)
If you are interested in checking out what they actually do in Budapest this week, you can follow the plenary at a live stream using your VLC-player. Just type in the adress mms://best.sch.bme.hu/plenary and see what "hot" topic they are discussing at the moment.. :P Otherwise you can always try to spot our delegates from Lund - Patrik and Mia. On the picture below you can see Patrik in the left corner..
 

The list of students accepted to summer courses has been released and out of 37 students who applied from Lund - almost 1/3 - 11 students have been accepted and 7 students have been put on waiting lists.

This is really good results and I hope that if you are accepted to a summer course - you will go and have as much fun as possible, because you will not regret going! :)

If you didn't get accepted, but still wants to experience a BEST summer course, you are more than welcomed to contact us and help us organising this years summer course in August. Organising is just as fun as participating - the biggest difference is that you can often sleep a little bit longer during the mornings.. :P

Last week a few members from LBG Lund met up at Kårhuset to select participants for the summer course in Biotechnology that will be organised in Lund in August.

To find the energy for the work that should be done during the afternoon, we started out with having lunch together. When the plates were empty we sat down to select participants. Because the course is on intermediate level many applications were rejected due to the applicants lack of knowledge in the field. When this was done all applications were sorted by country and the group started to read motivation letters. From the beginning our course had 190 applications so it took a while to read through the letters even after the first round of rejections.

After a while every letter had been read and ranked between 1 and 5 by at least three people, we picked the top ones from as many countries as possible. However it was not so easy, so in the end we managed to prolong the discussions to the evening. The final list of participants will be shown through the BEST homepage later, after that our list have been compared with the other courses in Europe, due to that it is only possible to attend one BEST course during the summer course period.

When the discussions had ended a few BEST members stayed to discuss some more about the schedule for the upcoming Cultural Exchange. During a few days around walpurgis night (valborg) BEST Lund will host 20 besties from Gliwice in Poland and Veszprem in Hungary.

More is going to be discussed about this and a short meeting will take place on wednesday 15 April at 15.00 in Kårhuset. If you are interested in BEST Lund or have questions about the courses this summer you are welcome to show up, it will be besties there to take care of you :)

Ten members of BEST lund went on a one week long Cultural Exchange (CE) to Gliwice in Poland. The CE was a three-way exchange and also people from Veszprém (Hungary) participated. Here is the story, enjoy!

Arrival

We arrived to Poland on Saturday March 28th to Katowicze airport. After a short busride we met our polish hosts. The actual CE started first on the Sunday so no activities were planned but as Swedes we wanted to be on time ;-) The first night we therefore stayed in different appartements around Gliwice.

Day 0 - Start of the CE

The Sunday was spent shopping in Gliwice shopping mall. During the afternoon the group from Veszprem showed up and the evening were spent with different get to know games. During the Sunday we also moved into the dormitory that would be our home for the week.

Day 1 - Mine visit and Polish evening

Monday was the first day that was really planned. In the morning we got a history lesson about Poland and also a short language lesson with the most common lines. In the afternoon we took the bus to an old coal mine. At that time we had already realized that coal is used more often as energy source than in Sweden.



In the evening we had Polish night. That means that we tried several polish dishes and even had a live-band during the dinner.

Day 2 - Gliwice radio station

Next day (the Tuesday), we went to Gliwice radio station. Gliwice radio station is famous becuase it is the highest wooden tower in the world. It was also an important location during the start of the second world war. At that time Gliwice was a german city, and Hitler sent in german soldiers dressed like polish soldiers to attack the radio station. The outdressed german soldiers were when supposed to send a message over the radio so that it looked like Poland attacked Germany instead from what actually happened. But if you want to know more about that story, you will have to find it out yourself. SORRY.



In the evening we had, the for BEST so typical event International Evening. This means that the participants cook typical food dishes from their countries and present it to the others. This time we decided to not to bring any herring since thats a very typical polish dish as well. Which might be the first time in BEST Lunds history.

Day 3 - Heritage park

On Wednesday morning we went to a polish heritage park. The park contained old buildings and the guide told us stories about how people lived in Poland a long time ago. The group were also divided into two groups for a workshop in the end. One group was doing wood-crafting, what the other group did I don't remember now.

Day 4 - Tyskie Brewery

The last day in Gliwice we spent in Tyskie Brewery. After the Brewery trip we had another work shop. This time we had a polish cooking lesson. Sadly, but maybe not surprisingly the polish organizers were not to impressed of our creations.

Day 5 - Kraków

On Friday morning we went to the old capital Kraków. After Lunch the organizers had prepared a city rally for us. A city rally is a more fun way of sightseing, but if you don't know I will not spoil the fun here (go on a BEST course and find out).

In the evening we had a goodbye party, we all ended at a student nightclub in AGH (A university in Kraków also hosting a BEST group).

Day 6 - Departure

Saturday, was also departure day and no activities were planned. BEST Lund decided to spend part of the day at the shopping mall in Kraków and the rest of the day around the market square in the city center, enjoying the lovely weather before returning home to Sweden.

On the 28th of March, 10 brave BESTies from LBG Lund went to Gliwice in Poland for a Cultural Exchange (CE). This is three-way CE together with LBG Gliwice and LBG Veszprem, meaning that participants from each country will meet together first in Poland, then Lund and finally in Hungary.

Today we have been in Poland for a couple of days, and so far we have taken part in a lot of activities like visiting an old mine, a heritage park and a Polish beer brewery.

More information about our trip with a lot of pictures will of course come later.. :)