School daze

JenniferAt US universities (well, in the Midwest anyway), a 'student fair' usually means a chance to get candy, leaflets, pens, and maybe cheap or free condoms from your school's safe-sex organization. In Sweden, at the 'student fair' you get candy, leaflets, pens, and free condoms distributed by several state-sponsored safe-sex groups. Here's a picture of the swag I was handed at last week's Humanities Day fair in my classroom building. I think it is a pretty accurate representation of student life here.

Clockwise from upper left: bookmark from the Studies in Arts, Languages, and Theology; Linnaeus bookmark; student government sink scraper (it says "You don't have to take the shit alone" on it) holding a condom from the Condomera, or 'More Condoms' (they do nothing else except distribute condoms at the university); 'hon-han-hen', advertising for the debate about gender pronouns in Swedish; the red thing, a postcard for the government-sponsored sex-ed organization (they distribute condoms both at the university and to high schools); postcard of a moose, with a chocolate from the local cultural museum sitting on it (the chocolate is an ad for their current exhibit about coffee breaks); a postcard for Culture Night with a teddy-bear face reflector and yet another condom sitting on it; a bicycle trail map for the city; yet another condom; yet more chocolates (the square black things saying 'Uppsala' on them).