Sjuksköterskestudenter utomlands

After more than 20 hours of travel I arrived at Milledgeville, Georgia, USA. It was a long journey, but I tried not to sleep so it would be easier for me to come into the rhythm. At the hotel I jumped into the bathtub and right after into the bed. 10 hours later I had my first american breakfast: american pancakes, fruitloops, nice coffee and yoghurt. I didn’t realize that everything would be served on plastic plates and with plastic-silver – easy for the staff to take care of “the dishes”.

After my breakfast I packed my bags again and Sallie Coke, my main contact in Georgia, picked me up and we drove to the university. Here she introduced me to everybody she knew and who I would have to know. I even got scrubs and the mandatory polo-shirt for working in the community. The students here wear scrubs at school in the clinical training center and at their clinical rotations at the hospital. They have a lab coat too, they can wear it when they sit in the classroom, over their scrubs when having lectures after/before training at the center. Because though the temperatures are warm and really humid outside, it can be cold inside because of the air-conditioning.

Sallie kindly showed me around in the clinical training center too, but I will tell you more about that with pictures when I get there, which will be on Monday.

I continued my day by getting picked up by my new roommate Anna. Anna is the person who so kindly answered to my add on the Facebook-group “Bobcats Exchange”, which is a group from students for students in Milly to sell and search for things. When I came to Annas house I met Jennie as well, who is the second out of three persons who live in this 4-room big house on one floor.

After I settled in the house and had talked to my wonderful boyfriend Emil on Skype, Anna had invited me to come with here and here friends and go eat at a place called Longhorn. Before entering the restaurant we went to a petstore where I found a newspaper just for bunnies (I am in loooove!) and this collar for dogs with a bottle-opener) –  I found that acctually really weird…

At the restaurant I had a nice sallad, a really good soup, jalapeno-poppers and a bear. The girls told me that bear with oranges in it tastes really good, so I tried it and yes, indeed, I liked it! I had a really good time with the 5 girls who all where so nice and friendly to me. As they say: the Southern-manners are well known in this part of the country. As far as I have come everyone has been so nice to me and really openminded and happy to invite me into their lives, like I have been here for weeks. And at the restaurant I met my third roommate: Beth.

After the visit at the restaurant I had to buy myself some food. I haven’t told you yet, but I have an own refrigerator in my room! That is awesome! So we went to Walmart. The famous Walmart I have seen on tv for so many times! And I can tell you that I got confused… there was just SO MUCH TO CHOOSE FROM! I had a real hard time to find what I want, because it is not always easy to see what’s in a product, especially not if it is a precooked product, e.g. a pizza. But finding fair-treaded meat from america was a hard nut to crack too. Not the fair-traded part (which I couldn’t find) but on the package they wrote produced in 5 different countries. So it was hard to find how and where the meat was produced, but instead it was much more easy to choose between different percentages of fat/meat, e.g.: 10/90, 15/85, 20/80, 30/70. And trying to find something simple as olive-oil was hard too… because their are 100 different brands and sizes! In the end I went for the organic coconut-oil to try something new. Because coconut-oil can be used for frying but also as a skin product 🙂

Besides the collar vs. bottle-opener the americans seem to have a lot of cool inventions. This morning for instance I found this cooler in the kitchen of my roomies. I found this so cool! You could pull the cooler after you so you could take it to, say, a party!

So, this was my breakfast this morning. I couldn’t find a cheese-grinder so I am probably going to stop by IKEA in Atlanta one day so I can get one real for my roomies. Right now I use a carrot-peeler. Some Swedish inventions are really good I think. And of course it is Starbucks-coffe from a machine we have here, for my breakfast. Besides the Starbuckscoffe I was also able to buy swedish coffee from “Gevalia” for the instant-coffemachine. But, surprise, it is not for me. I bought it as a gift for my roomies.

So this is all from me right know. I hope you could get what I was trying to say, I still feel a little bit restricted in my English.

This weekend I am invited to a bridal-shower by a stranger I met on my journey and on sunday I am going to “fika” (in Sweden that means talking a coffee with something to eat, like a cake or sandwich) with Emily, a former exchange student from Linneaus-university in Växjö. She found me on the internet – what a wonderful place to met people!

Next week is going to start with visiting the clinical training center for the day and get drug-screened and leave blood-samples so I can start my clinical rotation.

Have a good one!