HTMTS: THE REASON (a.k.a. How I fell in love with Sweden)

Ever since I first visited another country, I knew I eventually wanted to live abroad. My first trip was to the United States. When I arrived there, I realized how different things outside of my little island were. Don’t get me wrong, the Dominican Republic is a beautiful country! We have the beaches, the mountains and the nicest people ever. However,

in the US I realized how heterogeneous people could be. So many different cultures, different styles, so many choices! I got to see that people who would be left out in the DR, would at least have a niche in the US, no matter what their difference was based on.

Then, when I was a bit older, I visited Spain and Portugal. And then I realized Europe was just wonderful. The architecture, music, paintings, even the graffitis, it was like culture was flowing out of every wall, every street and everyone’s skin! At that point I was pretty sure I would study in Spain when I finished college, but I didn’t really feel like I related to Spain’s culture (even though it’s beautiful).

Eventually, thanks to the boyfriend and one of my favorite metal bands (Mercenary) I got interested in Scandinavia and set myself to learn Danish…. Except for the fact that I found very few sources to learn the language and eventually gave up. That’s when I moved along to Swedish, and discovered that the language is AWESOME. I really like the sound of their pronunciation, the structure is something completely different from what I’m used to (English, Spanish and French) and if you already speak English, it’s not that hard to learn the language, as opposed to what some people might think (I’ll do a post about learning Swedish later on).

Up to that point, I saw moving to Sweden as a far away dream, but nothing more. Around this time I graduated college, and found myself in a crossroad. The areas that interest me within Civil Engineering are Environmental Engineering, Road Engineering and Geology. For a long looong list of reasons, I couldn’t really decide what I wanted to do my Masters in, and felt terrible about having to chose between the three things I love (What if I choose this?!?! I’ll be missing that!!).

I ended up pretty confused and almost depressed… when in a surge, I decided to visit the Study In Sweden website and guess what I found.. lo and behold, a master programme that combined all my three interests! It’s called Environmental Engineering and Infrastructure, and it’s taught at Chalmers Institute of Technology, in Gothenburg. I couldn’t believe it, the master programme of my dreams in the country with the language I loved, and where dear boyfriend had always wanted to visit/live!

This is the point where I took living in Sweden seriously and started investigating. As it turns out, I very much fit in their culture and agree with their philosophies and lifestyles (which I pretty much DON’T in the Dominican Republic).

They have almost everything I’ve thought of and wished for in the past (people are reserved and quiet, respectful of other’s personal space, fight for gender equality, are environmentally conscious, are a pretty secular country but still celebrate Christmas, work to live instead of living to work, almost free healthcare and education -I always wondered why we have to pay such high prices for such basic things- among many other things that I will explain in some other post in the future). Not to mention their ridiculously awesome metal bands!

And that’s it. That’s how I fell madly and irrevocably in love with Sweden. You might wonder why The Reason is part of “THE PLAN”. And I’ll tell you it’s one of the most important steps, ‘cause if you don’t have a powerful reason to fight for something, when almost everything is against you, then you’ll just give up. And, nope. I won’t give up.

(Just wanted to add, I don’t want to move to Sweden to take advantage of its system. I want to be a part of their society and contribute, pay high taxes, integrate, soak in it. If I end up having kids, this is the country where I’d like to bring them up, surrounded by a system mostly based in all my personal philosophies and what I consider as correct morals)

How about you? What is/was your reason to move to Sweden? If you already live there, why do you love it? :)