While summer was quite rainy this year, autum started out at its best and most beautiful.

Von september 2008

Von september 2008

Von september 2008

At the beginning of the month I started a sort of "getting to know the place"-internship at the local hospitals adult neurology unit. There's an acute as well as a rehabilition ward; a neuro and a memory polyclinic. Besides doctors, nurses and psychologists, there's physiotherapists, occupational therapists, a speech therapist, social workers,...
Although it's (as I expected) quite hard to re-adjust from 2 months of being at home to 8 hour workdays, I'm quite excited. So far I have been spending a lot of time getting to know the place and the workers; getting an idea of what kind of patients there is, getting familiar with the "paperwork" that goes along with the job,...
The workers there have received me "with open arms". Basically everyone has been offering to tell about the kind of work they do. They also let me know not to be shy and ask questions as they come up.
Especially my direct colleagues have been taking a lot of time for me; discussing cases with me; answering questions, letting me watch in on their work if possible,...

Besides that, I have bravely signed up for 3 classes at the community college. The first one started on Tuesday; a combination of aerobics, muscle build-up and stretching for "the elderly, overweight and those who sit in front of the desk a lot". As I expected, I'm the youngest of the group. Besides me there's maybe 2 women under 60 years, but let me tell you, those "grannies" are in good shape! So far I like the class, since the teacher shows alternative exercises for those who have for example knee or back problems that keep them from doing certain exercises.
The massage techniques- class started on Thursday. It also seems to be quite good. The only problem is, that we're 11 people in the class and we practice usually in pairs. That means, there's always a group of 3 who has less time for practicing... and enjoying...
The sign language class doesn't start until the beginning of October. That's a good thing, since it's right after the massage class. Hopefully my hands can handle that...

During my 2 months at home my neighbor and I started a routine of going for walks with Seita together in the afternoons. So far, we've been managing to keep that up. I find it, a bit to my own surprise, very refreshing to go walking right after coming home, even though at that moment I feel more like sitting down and not taking another step outside.
And when I have the classes after work, my neighbor takes out Seita for me. I'm lucky.

After my trip to Germany last December, I hadn't seen any of my friends or family. It was one of those strange years - things just kept happening and changing plans.
But in the end of August, one of my best friends came to see me for a long weekend. She arrived on Thursday evening (almost didn't make the train in time; I had told her the wrong train station in Helsinki... Oops!) and stayed till Tuesday morning.
And even though the man was moving to a new apartment on the same weekend, we managed to have ourselves a good and relaxed time.
We spent hours walking through town or in the forest with Seita; had a barbeque on an island in the river (with the REAL thuringian sausages! ;p) and of course went to Bingo on Saturday. Where our "Bingo-granny" surprised everyone by announcing the numbers in German as well as in Finnish.

Von august 2008

Of course, we had lots of good food. Salmon with vegetable rice, a raclette evening,...
Sunday was the moving day. My friend spent the day with Tapsa and Seita. We walked to town together, where we met Tapsa, then I went to help moving. I was at the man's old place at about 12.30 and back home around 18.30. Everything went quite well, but I had a huge allergy attack in the evening. ;p Must have been rather funny looking.

Tuesday morning, very early, my friend left (and we found out that it costs an extra 6€ to order a cab for a certain time... On top of the nightfare the 6km ride to the train station cost 23€...!) and I went back to sleep for another 2 hours before starting my career at midday. ;D