Our last week in Sweden has come to a conclusion, and it feels like the time flew by. We were not able to stay through the completion of the Dare to Build project, but it was an amazing opportunity to have been a part of. This past week was when we really started getting into the building and making more visible progress, which is super exciting to see.
Team Wilderness
Storytelling circle on the final day
Team Wilderness, the team I am a part of, finally got our precious planks delivered so we could start making to the top of our storytelling circle and actually walk on it and everything! We were all a little anxious at the beginning of the week because the planks were a major part of design, and although we had some other details to work on, we couldn’t really make much progress without those rough sawn planks. The guy we were ordering them from said they would come Thursday, but those times estimates are often unreliable so we weren’t too optimistic about getting them by Thursday. But wait, a miracle happened, and the planks came! I don’t think I’ve been more excited about something so random before, but given the context it was an amazing day. There was a lot of back and forth with ideas for laying the planks as they had to make a curved shape, but on our final day, after our last fika ever, we blasted through a curved section and figured out our game plan. I never worked on such a large collaboration project before and having so many different opinions was definitely a little hard to work with at first, but it was a cool learning experience.
Over the week I also felt as though we were going closer to the Chalmers students and learning much more about them. At lunch everyday we have a “lunch talk” where someone is chosen to speak about them themselves, a project they worked on, or really anything at all. That helped us learn about people outside of the context of this project.
street food
Unfortunately, everything in Gothenburg closes pretty early, so by the time we get back from working at the site, there isn’t too much to do. We are pretty tired most of the time so we end up just resting up a lot. This week we went back to Haga to do some souvenir shopping and enjoy the city some more. There was also an Italian food market set up near Haga and there was so much good food so we ate there twice this week.
On Thursday, we gave our final presentations for engi 200 in front of the entire team. Then, we went to the lake after work and enjoyed some time to relax with each other. We got a lot of pizza, some people went swimming, and we played Kubb: a Swedish game in which you try to knock down the other teams wooden blocks by throwing a stick. The lake was super pretty and it was a nice way to end it.
Rice students at the lake
Lake at Bergsjön
The last day of work was very packed as we tried to get as much done as possible before we left and it was only the Chalmers students left. That night we went back to Slottskogen park and ended the way we started: playing four square.
Slottskogen Park