Nu är det slut.

Big day today. I am officially a graduate of the Svenska För Invandrare kurs, otherwise known as the Swedish For Immigrants course. Mixed feelings, to be honest. As an achievement, it's up there with getting a Swedish driving permit. I've been living in Sweden for 18 months now, and I've spent 15 of those months attending SFI. Leaving the course is leaving a major security blanket for me. I guess that I've been ready for a while. I've been going through the motions in school since Christmas. Waiting for the final exams. It's become more of a social outing, and a bit less of a learning exercise. But I guess that signifies that the school did it's job. To recap the saga, I started out attending day courses, here in Boden. Boy, was that a terrifying first day. I didn't know a word of the language. Well, not enough to be of any use. After 2 months in the class, myself and one of my cellmates were moved to an "advanced" class. While it was a bit trickier than the previous class, it was hampered by an almost complete lack of motivation by the other resident widlife. Still, I was only there for about a month before I started working fulltime in Luleå. My employer required, and rightly so, that I continue my language studies. Commuting back to Boden wasn't really an option, so I switched to evening classes in Luleå. That was a bit of a hassle as the Boden kommun had to pay the Luleå kommun to teach me. That's not a reflection on me, I should point out. At least, I think it wasn't. So I've been attending evening classes two nights a week in Luleå. For almost exactly 12 months. In some ways it was a giant leap backwards. For whatever reason, the Luleå school used a completely different assessment process to that used by the school in Boden. Which meant that my previous work records counted for noting, and I had to start as a nybörjare again. I guess it was only a waste as far as the formalities of the course went. It wasn't as though they were teaching a different language than in Boden. But it meant that, instead of being about 6 months into the official coursework, I now had 12 months of coursework to complete. It was tough some weeks, and I must confess that I was a "no show" several times. But I made the effort to attend at least on evening each week. And I formed some really good friendships, with a class full of very motivated students. Anyway, last week they held the Nationella Provning examinations. There are official exams for people at the C level (which is the second highest in the programme) and at the D level for people finishing. Both sets of exams are virtually identical. For some reason I managed to miss the "C" exams. No one has ever mentioned it. So I sat the D papers. There were two written papers, each lasting about an hour. The first was full of multi choice answers to questions taken from various texts and articles. The highlight of that paper was seeing the word "oförändrad". Didn't have a clue what it meant, but thanks to my wonderful teachers I was able to break it down and end up with "unchanged". Was mighty pleased with myself over that, I was. The second paper involved writing a letter to a newspaper voicing one's opinion. The third part of the exam involved listening to some spoken text, and answering the short questions written on the exam paper. They weren't terribly complicated. Things like "What time will their train leave the station?". The spoken text sections were each no more than about a minute long, and you got to hear each section twice. The final part of the provning was an oral assessment. I was paired up with a West African girl of dubious repute. So I knew we were going to have a fun time. We were given a topic to discuss (read "argue") together in front of three examining teachers. Then we had to front up individually and converse with the teachers on a set topic for about 5 minutes. And then we were done. Overall I have to say that the school prepared me well. The final exams were nowhere near as difficult as the tasks I had to complete as part of my required coursework. Which was very comforting. Although it was also a bit scarey as I was sure I must have been missing something. So that's me done with SFI. 12 assignments and exams in Boden, 14 assignments and exams in Luleå later. It's a huge relief, but I'm REALLY going to miss those guys. I'm only jut starting to realise how much now. I'm going to have to make the effort to keep in touch with them. I'm terrible about doing that, but this is different. I've shared a lot with them, and they with me. I want to continue with my language studies, but that's going to take some figuring out. Luleå doesn't offer the next stage as a part time evening class. So I might see if it can't be done by distance learning. There must be a way, I can't be the first who is both working and studying. A bit more of a debriefing to follow. Once it's all sunken in.