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It is easy to tell what kind of day I had based on how much I remember at the end of the day. I do not remember much about today so it was just ok. We had another slow morning with about half the students dozing off at some point or another. It is really difficult to be in class from 8:30 am to 4:00 pm and then usually have stuff going on at night. We are all tired, but then have work to do and don’t usually get to bed until late. Therefore, we are all pretty wiped out the next day. We started the day with a good discussion of the hospital visit from yesterday and then went into possibly the most boring lecture every on training and education at the university. Two women, with incredibly broken and difficult to listen to English, talked about every class that was offered for the bachelor of social work degree here at Jonkoping University. In order to prevent myself from flat out laying my head down and sleeping, I drew some pictures (including bouquets of roses and a pretty cool apple blossom tree). The trash was full of coffee cups, I’m assuming because everyone had to get coffee throughout the morning to keep conscious. After their lecture, we had Tove Persson (a graduate student) talk to us about the complaints and staff attitudes in elder care. She was actually very pleasant, easy to understand, and had some really good information. We got out at noon and ate lunch (Panini sandwiches) at the library café on campus. We were going to go to the university bookstore to buy university shirts but it was closed during lunch, so instead we took silly pictures with the revolving door for awhile. After lunch, we walked to the Solstickan Care Home, which is basically what we would consider an assisted living center. They have all types of residents (those who need no assistance to those who need a great deal of assistance) and the residence is set up like little studio apartments with kitchen and dining areas in the middle of the halls.

We talked with a nurse there who was pretty fun. We toured the center after a brief intro. and then we went back to a bigger room to eat what they consider cheesecake (mostly a moist pound cake with cottage cheese). We got done early and headed back to the university bookstore to get shirts. The selection was very small so we all pretty much got the same shirts! We had about 30 minutes before our next activity which was around 4:30 and we went back to the hotel to drop our stuff off. At 4:15, we went back to the university to meet with some of the undergraduate students in the gerontology/nursing/etc. department. We didn’t think it would be that fun but we ended up having a good time. After asking where the bars/clubs were around town, we shared information on what schools are like in Sweden and the U.S. (how we pay for school, what age we go, etc.) and other issues like family pressures (such as getting married and having kids at a certain age). We all came back to the hotel around 6:00 and I tried to find places to go next weekend so I don’t have to stay in Stockholm again. Everything is either booked or too expensive and I have been quite upset about that. In fact, I’m still too angry about it to even go into any details on it. At 7:00, Brandy and I went to an Italian and Greek restaurant with Shannon to discuss a lot of things that we didn’t end up actually talking about. We mostly talked about research interests, politics (beliefs about care in the states), and other random stuff. We were done around 9:00 and I’ve been back at the hotel since then slacking off and avoiding writing my journal entry and reading some articles. Tomorrow we head to Goteburg, which should be a nice weekend trip. I go later than the others at 12:45 and will get in at 2:50. I think we have been planning some shopping, a trip to the amusement park and possibly going to a club or two. Between the 8 of us, we have 3 two-bed apartments so it should be interesting to see how this works! I’m not sure if we will have internet while there so the next post you get may not be until Sunday night.

On a side note, here is one of the pictures from our park excursion that someone took that is awesome. Enjoy!