My name is Pia Sundvall and I'm from
Sweden and I study at the Swedish
University of Agricultural Sciences and
I'm here for this international program
exchange for the U.S. Forest Service.
I'm originally from a place actually really
similar to earth in Minnesota, pretty
much as far north as you can go in
Sweden. Zoltan iron, iron ore range similar
to here and I feel like coming to
Minnesota I I felt very very much at
home.
The LaCroix district is in my mind one
of those sought-after places to be in
that it has the whole spectrum of
programs that the Forest Service is
involved in: from a sizable chunk of the
Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness to
a active timbre program outside the
wilderness we have kind of a large and
complex fire and fuels program which is
fairly rare in the eastern region so we
have kind of the full spectrum of
activities that go on in the forest both
inside the wilderness outside.
Pia's joined us for a couple months here
and she's been working on a wide array
of different activities. She's done some
recreation activities, she's done some
wilderness trips, she's worked with
timber, she's worked with silviculture
wildlife so she's gotten to see and do a
lot of different things.
We are out on a timber sale
that Pia has written a
prescription for this is payment unit
two and the overall objective of that
prescription is so that Pia could get a
good understanding of the whole, the
foundation of kind of what we do here in
the timber program and the silviculture
program here on LaCroix.
So this is airplane payment unit two that I was
given the chance to look at from a few
different perspectives and write a
prescription from my from my background
of my point of view what I think would
be suitable to do, at the same time as
this was an opportunity to take me
through the process of writing
prescriptions over here. So I both got to
learn how the facility cultures to work
with a payment unit but I also had the
opportunity to put in some of my own
thoughts and ideas which starts with
quite a few really good conversations.
The the fun answer of course is the
the Swedish language lessons to
employees and their kids, you know
colorful Swedish phrases things like
that but you know beyond that. I think
just the opportunity to have to augment
our staff with a person from someplace
else from overseas that brings you know
we talk a lot about increasing diversity
and leveraging diversity in the
diversity of thought and and that is
something that you know Pia has brought
a different perspective and northern
European perspective.
When you come over on a j-1 visa it gives you an
opportunity to travel both 30 days
before your internship and also 30 days
after. I got to go to the west and see
Grand Canyon, Yosemite, I went to San
Francisco and also Los Angeles.  Managed
to win $3 in Las Vegas. Minnesota is a
starting point and we also did a road
trip over to the Black Hills and Mount
Rushmore. It was a really good experience
really beautiful.
Initially coming here one of the things
that just went beyond my expectations
the way that people have been open, warm,
welcoming and just amazing people.
Again, expanding a program like this having
folks from other countries come and
spend some time working with us can help
tell the Forest Services story.
