Half way through

At around the half way point of our time here, spring has well and truly hit Malmö. The sun is out (most days!), and the snow has finally all melted. We had our first rainy day since arriving yesterday, but apart from that, the weather is lovely. Us nursing students have just come to the end of our big 8 week placement at the hospital. I think we all enjoyed it a lot, but 8 weeks is a long time and it will be nice to have a change to the routine this week (no more 5.30am starts thank goodness!). I was on a general medicine ward, with a lot of heart failure patients, and I learnt a lot. Have now mastered the elusive skills of taking blood and cannulating, and I got many many opportunities to practice new skills. The language barrier was quite challenging, with most of my patients been older and speaking little, if any, English, but that makes it all the more rewarding when you do manage to communicate with them! There are lots of differences between the hospitals in Australia and Sweden, and I think that the general consensus is that we are better in some areas, and Sweden is better in other areas. It has been great to see different ways of doing things and has opened my mind to questioning why we do things certain ways. We were allocated to one nurse to spend our entire placement with, and we followed their shifts. My nurse, Carmen, was ultra supportive and always happy to help. Compared to some placements at home, I found this one to be far more supported and directed at helping us to really learn. It was a really great experience. The next few weeks we will spend at uni, which will be a nice change, and give us a chance to catch up with our Swedish classmates. A few of us went on a bit of a trek last night to one of their houses for a bit of a party. It was really nice to be invited into someones house, and once inside, it felt just like an Australian home! Mum and Dad are currently waiting at Melbourne airport for their delayed plane to London, and will be in Malmö this Wednesday, before we head off to Norway together for the weekend. And lucky Ali now has the house to herself for a month!

Summer (?!) is coming…

Today was a lovely sunny day in Malmö. I started off with an African dance class at the gym (yes, I joined a gym, therefore I am a local). The classes here are quite, different, and African dancing was the strangest that I have been to so far! It involved putting together a dance routine that in the end involved us dancing as a bird, a monkey and an elephant. The class was all in Swedish of course, so that is just my interpretation of what we were doing!

I spent most of the rest of the day working on some homework. Though this trip does feel like one big holiday, reality does come knocking now and again and a fair amount of uni work is involved! I try not to let my life revolve around it here though, as I probably would at home. In Malmö, the focus is on the fact that, I am in Malmö!

A few of the aussies went out for Thai tonight. The novelty still has not worn off of riding our bikes everywhere we go, which includes riding to go out for dinner! Malmö is totally flat, and I ride my bike pretty much everywhere, apart from the odd lazy day when I catch the bus to work. For awhile we were catching the bus a lot, as it was so snowy and icey that it was almost impossible to ride. Now that the snow is pretty much all melted though, there is really no excuse, and it is a great way to fit in at least a little bit of exercise every day. I have a really cute little (literally, little!) bike that is perfect for me, and as I ride to go grocery shopping, to go to the gym, to the hospital, it constantly feels novelty and is a reminder of how cool it is to be actually living over here.

It is warming up, though warm is a very subjective word, and my current definition is around zero degrees, possibly a few above! Tonight I didn’t wear any thermals under my jeans, and though it was a bit chilly riding home, it was very bearable! I wore just my tights to the gym this morning, with no trackies over the top, and you can almost get away with no hat now. Up until recently, there is just no way that you would go outside without thermals, hat, gloves, scarf, a couple of pairs of socks. It is still very cold, but the sun is out, and if you are just going to be outside to get somewhere, it is not totally necessary to fully layer up. It will be nice when I arrive home in the middle of winter though and can go outside with just trackies on (ie. not 3 layers underneath!).

Anyway that will do for now, I have homework to do and a downloaded movie to watch tucked up in bed. Good morning Australia and good night Sverige!

I am still alive – and I’m in Sweden!

So I am far, far behind in my travel diary, and I think that the best explanation is that I have been very busy living this fantastic experience, so I have not had time to write about it! I think the best bet is just to continue on from here. I have been in Malmö for almost 2 months now, and am having an amazing time!

I have just today returned from the most AMAZING TRIP OF MY LIFE to Lappland, which is up in far North Sweden, above the Arctic Circle.

My Lappland is…

One step onto hard snow, and the next step been knee deep in snow – Roofs covered in a foot thick layer of snow – WHITE – Walking on water, or a frozen river to be more precise – the elusive NORTHERN LIGHTS, WOW – Testing out snow shoes (which supposedly do not sink into the snow) on the deep snow, and finding myself waist deep – breaking the barriers of the naked sauna, and then running naked into the snow to cool off and make snow angels – beautiful, beautiful scenery, picture blue skies, snow covered mountains and white trees, all towering over a frozen lake – dog sledding, driving my own sled with four dogs through the mountains, where all you could see for miles was undisturbed snow – falling OFF my sled and then chasing after my dogs! – reindeer baguette – the Ice Hotel, kept at a balmy -5 degrees, and people sleep in there! – a moose on the side of the road – many, MANY layers of clothes, -20 degrees is cold – imagining the lives that the locals up there live, it is like ANOTHER WORLD – total disbelief that I got to experience this, it was so SO fantastic.

Back in Malmö, the snow is melting and it is a balmy zero degrees. I have a busy few weeks ahead with uni and am looking forward to a visit from Mum and Dad soon. I am adding words to my Swedish vocabulary every day, have joined a local gym and am generally leading a pretty normal, busy life, apart from the fact that I am in SWEDEN!