Finally we all met during the first two introduction weeks, runned by Jackie and Florin who already finished EMTM. There is 34 of us, from about 17 different countries. It's mostly Europe, but there are some guys from Asia and Africa. Very multicultural group and they all seem very very cool. The introduction stuff had quite an intense schedule, starting early in the morning and finishing late in the evening/night. (Well, the evening activities were mostly fun stuff and team building).
First couple of days we got a tour around the campus (with a delicious danish lunch), tour of the city (on pouring rain but we never backed down), field trip to Fanoe island (right across Esbjerg, 10 minutes away by a ferry) and of course we got to see how the things work out here. Have to say it is very much different than what I was used to during my Croatian studies but it will be just another challenge. Especially the part where they explained the writing is done the "Harvard way". Sure, why not... 3 years out of school and now I'm into Harvard way of writing.. Can I sign up for the beginners class, please? First two classes that we have are Sustainable Tourism Development and The Economics in Tourism and Leisure. Both sound very interesting and everybody is so anxious to start. The STD professor is very enthusiastic about the subject and that is what makes it even more awesome. Economics seems to be just like I wanted it to be, more leisure and tourism and less economics. :) There is a lot of reading included already, and there are so many additional books and titles, and the Library is like a little treasure chest with tons of interesting titles.. You get the wish to just swallow all the information at once. At least now I have enough time to read. Which brings me to the close topic of how difficult it is for foreigners to find a job here. Now listen to this: Everybody says we will be happy if we get a job as a dish washer or a cleaner! Not exactly he dream job I imagined at the age of 26, but in these times of crisis, I'll do it.
Now a little bit more about the university.. It has a couple of more campuses around Denmark, and the biggest one is in Odense (H.C. Andersen hometown). There we had a big welcome event for all the international students that came to Denmark this year. And one of the presenters was the Danish Princess herself! That university was huge, it took us forever to get from the entrance to the hall where the presentation was. At SDU Esbjerg, we met people that study Engineering, Humanities, Social Sciences, Public health etc.. And I still haven't met anyone from Croatia. There are two Serbian girls and two Slovenian girls in the EMTM, and I met a couple of more ex-yu guys from other programs, but no one from Croatia. Well, somebody will show up eventually. One cool thing about the University is that with the student ID, you can enter any time, day or night and use the facilities like computer room, learning rooms etc.. It mean you could come at 3AM on a saturday night! How cool is that?!
