So I got myself a new stethoscope, so pretty!

I didn’t quite know what to expect so me and my study buddies got together to practice some skills.

In the end, this is what I managed:

Veneflon success! It only took about 500 tries but in the end I got my act together and hit the vein. Hurrah!

So I have spent the last three days in Kolding, about 40 minutes away by train. I am at the gynecology/obstetrics department, it is so much fun. It’s all babies, happy pregnant women, unhappy pregnant women and all kinds of women. Very cool!

So, I’ve been taking this obligatory course these past four weeks and it is the most difficult one so far. Communications. What will probably be the death of me. Seriously.

It goes like this: once a week 6-7 of us get together with a young doctor and then we roleplay. Every week we have actors come in and pretend to be patients and we have to talk to them as if we were doctors already. And then the actors pretend to be really difficult, worried, flirty or sometimes even slightly insane, just to spice things up. And while you are trying to drag useful information out of the actor/patient while they are trying to get you on a date, the whole thing is being filmed, and the other people in the room are writing down points to criticize.

After each doctor-patient confrontation everybody names a few good things and a few things that could have been better, and in the end the actor comes in to talk about body language, tone of voice and if you looked them in the eye enough.

I had this one middle-aged man the other day who came in for a relatively simple hernia. So I was asking all the routine questions when he asked if I could take a quick look at his foot fungus. All right, I thought… I guess the hernia was a little more important so I kind of shrugged it off. A minute later he starts talking about his bad breath. I tell him to floss and move on to more hernia-related stuff. Then he says he hears this buzzing sound. Oh my lord!

One problem at a time people! Lets get the hernia fixed before we think about foot fungus!

It’s kind of fun though. And we always get cake and coffee.

I had a nice break from school, just finished writing my Bachelors, and even took a little trip.

My parents came to see me on the 27^th om March and two days later we took off to beautiful Barcelona. Mom had already been there once, but a long time ago, under Franco, and I was there two years ago.

We got in at around 6pm but soon found out that there was a general strike in all of Barcelona, including public and private transport. So we hung around in the closed airport for a few hours before being resqued by our hotel transfer people.

I got us a hotel in a beach town a little outside Barcelona. To my surprise, it was full of elderly Spaniards, come to enjoy a little sun, sand and each other (literally). Driving there we went through the suburbs of Barcelona, to which my dad later said: ‘This is one UGLY city!’ Proved him wrong, though.

The first night I had trouble sleeping due to noice, which I wrongly assumed was because of some teenagers staying a few rooms down the hallway. Nope, it was the nightly senior-disco.

The next morning, grumpy and tired, we all went down to the basement for breakfast. The dining room was cock-a-block full of old people and they were all STEALING! I noticed after a while that mini-tubs of butter, single-serve packs of suger and coffee and other things from the buffet kept mysteriously ending up in pockets and hand bags. And they were all in on it. They kept showing off their loot to each other, patting each other on the back for having gotten handfuls of random breakfast condiments, keeping lookout for each other.

So, I was shocked and appalled, of course, the beacon of moral light I am. I was looking around making the stink eye at the criminal elderly but they were relentless. So the tactic was getting to breakfast early to be able to get butter and jam.

I know I haven’t been here for a while, but instead of apologizing, which, lets just face it, I suck at anyways, I’ll tell you what is going on in my life.

So, there was christmas, and that means Iceland. I was there for a couple of weeks; baking with dad, watching movies with mum and studying for my exams.
The last day of my stay was very dramatic. I was feeling kind of sick and had a headache so I went to the hospital where I got admitted and then driven to the capital with an ambulance because my doctor thought I had meningitis. I got to the University hospital in the capital and was isolated because I’ve had an operation in Denmark, which is apparently where all the big, scary bacteria hang out and they were afraid I’d contaminate the whole hospital.
Then I got a couple of painkillers which made me a whole lot better so I got to go home.
This story was really cool until last week when I got a bill for the ambulance, haha.

Then my exam. Passed it, but will get grades next week, yay.

And I got a job. The coolest job in the world. I’m teaching younger medical students how to find stuff in a microscope, haha. It’s called histology and it’s fun. I was so nervous the first day, but now I think I got it down.

I have also gotten a few intro days at the microbiology department, I think I’ll start that next week, should be fun.

I started a French course right after the exams. Because my life is just not busy enough. I like it. There are like 10 ladies in the group, the oldest is 94 I think. And I am the youngest. The teacher writes on a typewriter and yesterday she wore a lacoste sweater from the 70′s.

All in all: I like the look of 2012

Hello lovers,

I have been to Norway and back again since last time.

Like the professional groupie I am, I took the trip to support my team competing in the Nordic Championship in Larvik. They came in 4th, disappointingly, but we’ll do better at the European Championship next year.

But that was not all. I also went to Oslo to visit my good friend who was also an exchange student in Indonesia at the same time as me.

She has a few Indonesian friends in Oslo (I have not found any in Odense, I only find people from Greenland, and that’s not quite the same!) so she arranged for me to meet one of them, a really nice girl who took us to a statue park and then made us a ridiculous amount of Indonesian food a couple of days later.

Here I am at the statue park pretending to kick some children around. Seriously?

My gymnasts

On my second day in Norway I went to see the Nordic Championship. So much beautiful gymnastics. An Icelandic team won the senior ladies competition so they played the national anthem. To my wonder and amazement I knew all the words to the lyrics and almost cried a little.

Stortinget

My friend’s husband works at the Norwegian congress as a PR agent for a big political party. I got a politicians picture taken in front of the congress building. This is not it.
Because of my networking (haha) I got to go in and he showed me around. We saw a body guard in the lobby which means one of the big three were in the building, either the ministers of Defense or Justice, or the beautiful mr. Jens Stoltenberg himself, but unfortunately I didn’t see anyone in the hallways.

'Fire Alarm'

So I hung out at friend’s husbands’ office for a while and helped design the cover for his party’s alternative budget for next year, which was kind of cool. And then I found this fellow, it says fire alarm. Obviously they are very worried about fire up there.

Politicians picture

Maybe I should become a Norwegian politician. I look great! Very serious and pensive. Let me lead my people to greatness!

Sailor

Most of my time I spent wondering around and looking at people and enjoying the cold, crisp air. Every now and then I went into bookstores to read the backs of books I’ll never have the time to read and dream of a holiday somewhere far away warm where I could bum away my day with a paperback in hand. Not that I don’t like medicine, I love medicine. I would never want to do anything else, but I also miss reading for fun.

The road ends here

On my last day I went to the Nobel museum, which is dedicated to all who have gotten the Nobel Peace Prize. It was really inspiring. I think my new goal will be getting a Nobel Peace Prize. Why aim low?

Ill be home for Christmas, and all I want is love. No, just kidding. I am way more materialistic than that. I have decided that my family will give me a Kindle for Christmas.

Kindle

Look at this beauty!  My own portable library, and you know how your fingers have to be in this really uncomfortable, awkward position when holding a paperback open? Hah! Not mine! Not after Christmas. This baby will be read in bed, on the train, held under my table at school and while I go to the bathroom at gymnastics trainings (ok, maybe not during trainings) and it will be read with one hand, left, right, don’t matter! And lying on my back! With one hand! Without pages constantly falling on my face. (First world problem?)

Off to bed.

sara

I had a great time in Iceland, it was pretty, as always.

Sandy beach

Hung out on the beach…

Ice climbing!

Climbed some glaciers…

Gymnastics

Did a little gymnastics in my old gym…

So pretty basic. Then I came back to Denmark for school. The coolest thing ever was that during my surgery last week the doctor let me watch the whole thing on a screen. To make a long story short, my knee looks so much cooler from the inside than from the outside!

Surgery-Sara

According to the girls on the gym team all I got was baby-surgery, haha. I just had some mucosal membranes in my knee trimmed a little, they get proper ligament-reconstruction-menisci-fixing-full-blown-all-out-surgeries. I’m really happy with mine though. I should be up and tumbling again in a few more days. Right now I can do pretty much most things, though.

This weekend there is a Harry Potter festival in town. Yesterday I saw the symphonic orchestra play songs from the movie and today I went and learnt some magic tricks at the main square.

A hopeful waiting for a letter from Hogwarts

Saw this kid wielding his wand outside the Leaky Cauldron.

Death Eater

Saw this young Death Eater hanging around, looking for innocent Hogwartians to torture… A moment later he got on his broom and flew away. True story.

Look!

Love this one! Dobby and a little girl hanging out.

So this is a pretty picture heavy post… Enjoy

xox

I’m sorry I haven’t written for a long time, school has started, and I’m a little busy. We are learning about the brain. Isn’t it amazing that a hundred people in an orchestra can, with the help of only their eyes and ears, connect to form something as magical as classical music? Isn’t it amazing that a certain smell can bring back memories of hot summer days, that colours can remind you of a person, that we can learn, and grow and have feelings and emotions? I think its pretty cool!

If I never did the things people warned me agains, where would I be?

I would not have seen the world, I would not speak Indonesian, I would not have gone to Lebanon, I would not be in medical school, I would not be learning arabic, I would not have friends in every corner in the world, and I would not be the person I am today.

When I was considering going to Syria for my last weekend in Lebanon, a friend of mine asked me to please not go. Partly because he was worried, mostly because he just wanted to hang out. That made me very mad. I won’t have some guy dictating what I do or don’t on a whim. So he accused me of being too stubborn, of not listening, of endangering myself… Whatever! I’d rather be stubborn than miss out on an amazing travel. But I spoke to a few other people, read some articles, did some googling and found out, on my own, that it probably wouldn’t be the best idea to go there, so I didn’t. Then he got really pissed that I hadn’t trusted him.

But here is the thing, I want to figure things out for myself, and I want to make my own decisions, and I wont let people who love me boss me around or tell me what to do. I will listen to their advice, of course, but I will do my own research, and I will decide what is worth a risk and what is not.

If I had listened to my grandmother, I would not have been an exchange student in Indonesia. If I had listened to the ministry of Foreign affairs I would not have made so many amazing friends in Pakistan. If I had listened to my friends I would not have chosen to spend a good chunk of my money on traveling around for one year at nineteen and I would have missed out on all kinds of fun. If I’d listened to my Icelandic friend I would never have gone out to bars in Beirut, and never have experienced the fantastic and often incredibly crazy nightlife of Lebanon. Not saying that I didn’t listen, I just decided that some things were worth the risk, and they really, really were.

I guess what I am saying is: please don’t tell your baby girls and boys not to go traveling by themselves, or not to move to another country or not to go pursue the education or career of their dreams. I did, and I turned out well. And chances are that with a little common sense and a friendly smile, everyone else will turn out well too, if they get to do what they want.

The Hyppodrome in Sour

So Sour is a city in Lebanon which is really, really close to Israel. Which might be considered dangerous by some. But I went there anyways and I loved it.

My class

People told me I was crazy to study arabic, and even crazier to do it in Lebanon.

My new family

This really cool family picked me and my friend up off the street in a reserve, drove us around for half a day and bought us lunch. Some people say you should never get in a car with stranger, I say go for it (OK, so just use common sense, people!)

Local food

I eat the local food, I don’t even ask what’s in it. I might get sick sometimes, but its totally worth it!

If you smile at the world, the world will smile at you, people! So smile for fuck’s sake!

love,

sara

I went to Byblos, which is probably my very favourite town in Lebanon. Its so nice and everyone is friendly and fun, there is lots to do for tourists, the beach, skiing in winter, museums, ruins… So nice!

I met my friend at the fish fossil shop and we decided to have lunch. I suggested a really nice cafe just down the street called Phoenicia, but he was waiting for something so he couldnt quite just leave. So he asked me what I liked from Phoenicia, I said the tuna sandwich. He went away for two minutes. Ten minutes later a waiter from Phoenicia comes to the shop with two gigantic trays loaded with food. He put them down on some steps right next to the shop and then he left.

I said: ‘I didn’t know Phoenicia did take-away’

My friend grinned and said: ‘They don’t!’

Phoenicia doesn't deliver

Here is us getting ready to indulge.

Then he drove me up to the mountains to show me the sites and let me ride an ATV. That was fun and so scary at the same time. And I saw some sort of an eagle. Win!

We got back to the city and I lost a game of Backgammon (for the first time since Mette left, almost) and then I went back to Beirut to hang out with some people I know (more on that later, and Palestine).

10 minutes into the night I looked like this:

Moustache

I can literally not explain how this happened. I walked around like this for the rest of the night. As if being pale as a ghost doesn’t get me attention enough, haha.

The next morning I had breakfast with my peeps at the institute where I study. This happened:

Sebastien and Claudia

This French guy (whose name is obviously either Sebastien or Jonathan, all French guys are) found a turtle in one of the flower beds and started doing this zoological presentation. Like, this is Claudia, she is verrrry shy arrround strrrangers, and she loves carrrrrots… (Imagine this with a very heavy French accent).

My class

And the last picture is the part of my class that stuck it out until the final exam. Pretty people!

love and happiness

sara

Looking fierce!

So Im back in Denmark after a long trip. Thankfully I met a really lovely Lebanese girl in the airport, she was going to Denmark too because she is moving to Sweden, so we hung out together between our flights. And now Im supposed to go visit her in Sweden very soon. Lovely!

This picture is a soldier that stopped on a red light on one of my first days. He looks so awesome!

Mette and roommate Paula

One of our first roommates was Paula from Argentina who lives in Qatar. She was so much fun we took her out to see some sights all the time.

Playing at the refugee camp

We went to a refugee camp in Beirut, where the Palestinians live. They were playing a table football game.

The Secret Handshake

Mette decided that they needed to learn the Secret Handshake. It took a while but when the kid got it he followed us around for a while demanding she would shake his hand.

Sushi at Japanese, Please!

They have the cheapest sushi in Beirut! And so good! 20 pieces cost 16-20 thousand LL which is about 50 Danish Kronas, or 1000 Icelandic. Cheap!