Pictures from Anatomy "field trip"

A rabbit!

The giraffes neck and Zara

A ape, I don't remember which one

A skeleton of a tiger!

Another ape...

Sandra and me looking at skeletons

A real woman skeleton, a horse and the head from a cow

Some skulls where painted to more easily see the parts, why didn't we practice with those?!

Twilight!!!!

Yesterday we went to watch the 4th Twilight movie!!! I loved it! It was long, and not that much happened, but I loved it anyway. But with all the music and all the blood when Bella got the baby I thought it was a little bit to much... And of course it ended before my favorite scene, when she wakes up and sees everything through her new eyes. I need to read the books again.

After the movie, the others wanted to go out, but I was very tired and wanted to go home. This week has been really stressful, with three colloquiums and one presentation.

Our coordinator told us that we are only supposed to have two colloquiums per week, but how do they think that can work out? We have 8 subjects, and nearly all the subjects wants to have colloquium every second week, so how can that be only 2 a week? But after watching the movie, all the stress disappeared for a while, and I went home instead of going out. But the taxi driver nearly hit another car, and then he was really upset and angry the drive home, and then he didn't have change to give back on a 50 Lt bill, so I needed to pay 20 Lt instead of 10 for going home. So of course, my good mood was gone by the time I got home.

The others came home around 6.30, so I could sleep in a little since nobody made noise this morning. The I went to Mega to by food, and now I'm home. Even that the food is cheap here, my money disappears very fast... I don't understand this... But next week I will go to Exchange days, so maybe a little bit of the money went to pay for that.

The school has changed our schedule a little, so we have more anatomy, which is good. So last week we went to look at all the bones they have. The anatomy building is under reparation so the have only two small rooms for all the bones. But they have a skeleton of a giraffe, and that was cool! The vertebras of the neck were nearly 30 cm long!! They also have skeletons of two different monkeys, a human, a swan, a wolf and a lot of domesticated animals. They also have a whole collection of skulls from red foxes, for some reason I don't know.

We are done with the skeleton now, and we will start with joints next week. We also have Zoology and Cell biology colloquiums, and a Chemistry control work. More things to study...

I look forward to the Christmas holidays!!!

Now back to studying, and hopefully I have time to go for a walk today to. =)

Pictures from Anatomy, Mega and pumpkin carving

Only half the pie left!

Linneas side, the traditional pumpkin

Zaras side, a evil face...

My side, a cat

Roasted pumpkin seeds

Yummy..

Me before starting carving... I was not as happy after, it took a LONG time!

JYSK, with the same things as IKEA at home

Candy King with Swedish candy

Story time for kids

The aquarium with sharks

Outside MEGA!

Our big pig skull

Our horse that you can open the skull on

Pictures from All Saints day...

The university in Vilnius that fixes all the candles

Soul river

Laisvés Alea

Why always on the weekends?

How come I always write on the weekends?

I thought I would write this Friday, and suddenly it's Sunday evening, when did this happen?

This weeks has been long, a lot of studies.

We only had Lithuanian test and chemistry control work, but we have a lot to do next week and the week after, so I need to start now to be able to get everything into the head in time.

This week we have Lithuanian test again, Latin test, Anatomy test and Zoology presentation. Zoology doesn't feel good at all, I'm nearly impressed how bad a subject can be organized. Sometimes it feels like some classes is based on Wikipedia and google translate. Is that how it's supposed to be?

Except for these kind of negative thoughts, life goes on.

We bought a pumpkin for Halloween, but forgot to carve it, so we did it this Tuesday. =)

We roasted the seeds, and make pumpkin pie. I thought is was ok, but Zara and Linnea really liked it, so they have a lot to eat (valgyti)... They are still not done, but they are working hard on it. =P

Since we were three people, and only one pumpkin, we made three faces on it. Then we gave it as a present to the woman working in the house. It was the sweet one that was there when we came, so we said "pateikti" present, and put it outside with a candle in it. It was there the whole (visa) evening, so I think it was ok.

This weekend we went to another shopping center, Mega. It wasn't bigger than Akropolis, but somehow nicer. It had a big aquarium in it, with sharks. It also had Lindex there, a clothing store that we have at home, that was nice, but it costed little bit more compared to home, which made it expensive (brangus) to be here.

But they had Rimi as the food store, and they had the Candy king! They had some of the same brands we have at home to, so that was a nice surprise.

Today I have nearly only studied, I called mum to make her tell dad to call me on Skype, and he seemed to be very proud to have mastered Skype. "This wasn't that hard, not hard at all actually, only to klick there and then there." Good job dad! Happy fathers day!

This weekend we had a lot of bones with us home, both a front and a hind leg. We are having puzzling time with the small bones in carpus (front knee) to learn which bones are which. It's hard, and it feels that they are the same... And they don't come from the same animal either, so it doesn't really work to put them together to see either. But we don't have the test until Friday, so there are plenty of time left to practice on.

Come on, write comments when you are here! I don't have so many friends in each country, so I can tell who has been here, so come on!

I'm looking forward to hear from you!!

All Saints Day

One more weekend has passed!

This time the week disappeared quicker since I had school on Saturday, because we were off last Monday.

All Saints day here was cool. Linneas dad and sister left, so she took them down to town to go to the airport, and then we meet there for going shopping. When I came down around 17.30, students from Vilnius social something school had put out candles all the way along Laisves Aleja, probably starting somewhere in the Old Town and then all the way to Sv. arkangelo Mykolo, the big church in Kaunas City. Along the way is was written Sielus Upë, which means Soul river. I think I was very nice. We went into the church to look, and they had a ceremony with a lot of candles and incense, and it was very nice. The weather was nice, it was dark and a little bit chilly, but you could still see the stars, and all the leaves were orange and this together with all the candles it felt special.

More than than that, we have done 3 more tests, in Latin, Botany and Anatomy. All of them turned out good, but the anatomy was hard. At least we have moved on from the skull to the legs, so we don't need to walk home with the big skulls anymore. I have never thought about how big skull a ox has before.... And how heavy it is. =P

So next week we only have a chemistry control work, and then a Lithuanian test tomorrow.

The test is on all the numbers, and how to make plural, and on the body parts.

"Man yra dvidesimt viena metai. It means that I'm 21 years old. They conjugate the numbers different if the thing is male or female, and sometimes they don't use plural, but put iu or u (u with a tail) instead of the plural ending. Very complicated, but I hope I will understand it before the test tomorrow.

We had problem with one of the teachers, but that seems to be solved and we will attend the same lessons in that subject as the medical students go to. The two bad things with that is firstly that it's in another part of Kaunas, so one day a week we need to be at two different places, and the rest on three different places every day. It takes a lot of time to travel back and forth, so we have lessons to 18.30 nearly every day... The other problem is that the medical students study in blocks, so they only have one main subjects at a time. So we need to study in the same speed as them, even that we have all our other subjects at the same time. But the good thing with that is after these 4 weeks of hell, we are done with that class. Hopefully it will solve itself somehow... If I don't write anything here during that time, you know why!

In three weeks Linnea and I are going to Exchange days with other international students, to another city in Lithuania, and I look forward to that! Also, mum and dad are coming here in the beginning of December, and after that it's soon Christmas!

Again, write comments so I can hear what you are up to!

Buvo labai malonu,

Linnéa

Long weekend- Halloween!

This week we have a long weekend, so we are off from school both today and tomorrow. Since 1st of November is a holiday, today became a free day as well. =)

The weather has been warmer now, just in time when they put on the heaters in the house. I have been sick, so I haven't done a lot this week. We were supposed to have lessons until 18.30 on Monday and Tuesday, but the Lithuanian teacher had gone home on Monday, so she needed to come back, and then she let us go earlier. On Tuesday we went to a seminary about how dogs react in stressful situations. The one who held the seminary was from UK, and it was wonderful to hear real English again, with the right grammar and without hearing "how to say this in English.." My English grammar is getting a lot worse, since I hear a lot of (read only) mistakes in the grammar from the people living here. After the dog seminary we went to the medicine academy to listen to a seminary about culture shock. It was nice, and the woman who held it is quite young and really wanted to do it good. Afterwords we got hot chocolate. It WAS hot chocolate, real chocolate that was melted and you ate it with a spoon. It was VERY good. =)

We had Lithuanian test on Wednesday, so I was supposed to study but I was so tired from being sick that I fell asleep instead. I got a 10 on the test anyway, so it was good. I don't know how the teachers grade the test, because I had a couple of mistakes and still got a 10, but I will not complain about that.

We also had a meeting with our coordinator about one of the subjects that doesn't work really good, and we will hopefully have a solution for that this or next week.

More than that I don't have so much more to say. Linneas sister and dad are here visiting, and I have Saras room because she went home over the weekend. We also have 3 skulls at home for practicing for the test next week. We have test in Botany, Latin and Anatomy this week, and then probably cell biology, chemistry and Lithuanian next week. No time to be bored...

At least it's Halloween today, and KIMSU (the student union) is organizing a Halloween party that I will go to. I went and bought a costume today, so if the dress up looks nice, I may upload a picture later.

I will try to get some studying done now! Try to write comments, so I can see if it works for people without a google account!

First month here

Now it's exactly 4 weeks since i came here, and I can really feel it! The first days I thought it was scary to be here alone, to walk around in the neighborhood and things seemed to be so different from home. Now I know what a lot of the things in the store actually are, I understand some words I hear people use, I know the way to the park and the city and Kaunas has turned to be my new hometown.

The first week was slow, the second fast, and this week as flown away. We got a new schedule for next week, and I will have Lithuanian four days a week, instead of two really long lessons. That is good, but the bad side is that the lessons end at 18.30 on two days, so that will be hard. But hopefully, I will learn the language quicker. This week it was also better with the Lithuanian teacher, she nearly came in time, and didn't stress AS MUCH to get home again. She also told us a week before that we will have a test again. It's crazy, we have two lessons (and two chapters!), then one lesson (maybe) of repetition and then we have a test. If it continues in this speed, we will be done with our textbook before Christmas.

If we don't understand, we can always use the other Linnea's favorite sentence; Atsiprašau, aš nesuprantu. It means; Excuse me, I don't understand. Very, very useful sometimes. Unfortunately, she has stopped listening to that, she only says NEXT! and we are supposed to continue. But she actually smiled yesterday, so we are making progress.

Botany is good, the teacher has put in some Swedish words for strange plants, if we don't know all the names of the plats in English. IT is ok, and chemistry and Latin is good. Cell biology and Zoology could be worse. Anatomy is fun, we are done with the spine now, and had our first colloquium this Monday. I got an ox atlas, a pigs thoracic, a horses lumbar and the pigs sacrum, and I got most things right, only some small things that wasn't correct. So that turned out good. This week, and the next one, we are working with the skull. I didn't know it had so many parts, I thought it would be easy.. Stupid of me. But at least we got to take two skulls home, one from a pig, and one from a horse. I will try to upload pictures of them.

Otherwise than that, it takes a lot of energy to live with 3 other people, and to only be 5 people in a class. The four of us that live together are together for 24/7, and it's a little bit to interesting. I will try to look for an apartment after Christmas, when my schedule settles down a little.

Today we had homemade falafel for dinner, and then we will have brownies soon. I have started running again, so it's ok. =) The weekend will be spent studying, mostly anatomy and lithuanian.

PLEASE! Write a comment to me, so I know what you are up to as well!

Viso gero,

Linnéa

Inauguration w.m

So, the second week in school is over, and I'm still alive. Our contact person from Study international in Sweden was here on a visit, and hopefully she fixed so that we can switch Lithuanian teacher. Some of the subjects are really good, like Anatomy. We are done with the spin now, and we will have the test on it before we study the cranium next 2 weeks. I think it must be easier to study Anatomy on humans, because they are only one kind... We don't have all animals yet, only pig, horse, ruminants and carnivores, but that is enough.

We need to know witch kind of bone it is and to witch animal it belongs, and why (and size doesn't count as an answer to why...) Then we need to know all the parts of it, and how many of that bone every animal have. But it feels good that the teachers know what we need to do, and when, to have time for everything.

We had out first test this week, in Lithuanian. Except for using the wrong word for the conjugation, I only got two spelling mistakes, so I got a 10. =) That feels good.

Yesterday there was an inauguration ceremony for the first year students, and after that a party that KIMSU was in charge of. KIMSU is a student union, very similar to those in Sweden. It was fun. =)

Today it has been very nice weather, so after sleeping in very long, I went to Maxima and did some shopping, and then cleaned the apartment. =) After that I went for a walk in the park, by the water. I love the park, it's so nice, and the river is remarkably clean. I will attach a photo one day of our park, the picture that is already up here was from another park.

Soon we will have a 3 course dinner, chevré chaud for starter, salmon and potatoes for main course, and then meringue with chocolate and strawberries for desert. =) Hopefully it will turn out very nice!

Pictures

Here comes the pictures from yesterdays text.

The park close to Kaunas Castle

The strange statue

Our dog, any good names for it?

The things we spend half our lives with...

Market and Erasmus

So, the weekend is over!

On Saturday, is was very nice weather, so after cleaning the apartment, Linnea, Arianna and I took a walk to the city, and investigated the Kaunas castle and the park there on the way. It was nice, and it's so many people fishing in the rivers here! We found a tree sculpture that nearly looks like a spine, so we needed to take a picture of that as well.

And then we walked passed the town hall, and saw two wedding couples! It was nice. We also walked through the Old town, and went to look at the store where they sell traditional handcraft. When we came to the main street, we discovered there was a market there! It was full of market stalls with a lot of nice things!

After walking passed all the stalls, we bought a vacuum cleaner! So now we don't need to swipe the floor all the time. =) Very nice.

We got Russian tortillini for dinner, it was good, but not something I will eat all the time. After dinner, the others prepared for going out, and I didn't. They didn't go out until 11, and then I went to bed. I read my book and fixed my old pyjamas pants I got from Sharon, so now I don't need to freeze at night. =)

Sunday we went to the market again, and then to Maxima to shop. This week I will make risotto with mushrooms and then pasta with bell pepper and broccoli sauce.

At Sunday evening, after some studying, we decided to make cinnamon buns. When we had done dalf, the Spanish Erasmus students came and wondered what we did. They stayed for a while, and got to try out the first buns. They looked very skeptical, but lied nicely and said they were good. The buns we took out after they had left were a lot better, I don't understand this..?

Today we had Anatomy again, and IT. IT is good, but not very exiting. Anatomy is still fun. We are finished with the lumbar vertebrae and next Monday we will have a test on the whole spine. We may miss the Anatomy on Friday, because we have inauguration at that time, but we don't really know yet. Only to wait and see. We also went to the library today, and got books for cell biology!

I will try to upload some photos as well!

The first week

Now, the first weeks is over!

Wow! When I went to the states for my au pair year, they told us at introduction that life could, and would be a roller coaster, and it wasn't that bad, but here! It feels like it was a long, long time ago I was in Sweden, and I came here only two weeks ago. The days are long, and the teachers don't speak perfect (read: hardly any...) English... But somehow it will work out somehow. The second lessons of all subjects were better than the first ones, so maybe at the end, it will be good. We have some really good teachers, and some that don't speak English but that try so it works most of the times. It's really fun to study anatomy, even that I think I may don't like it the whole time. But at least the teachers connect all the things we learn to why and when we will need it, so that feels good.

But if anyone is interested, the subjects I read right now is Lithuanian, Latin, Analytical chemistry, cell biology, anatomy, IT, applied biology and laboratory animals.

They have a thing here with how to grade the students. They have both tests in the end and from one to four in the middle, so that is different from at home, in a good way!

I don't know what plans we have for the weekend, I only want to sleep, it's hard to try to understand what the teachers mean.

If you like, please write comments to me so I know what you are up to at home!

Now we have been looking at bones the whole afternoon and then we had soup for dinner, very good. =)

Here are some pictures!

Some of my new books...

A cute house in Vilnius

Me in short hair...

The view over Kaunas from "our" bridge

The Vilnius Cathedral

The view over Vilnius

Weekend and the first lessons

So, now the school has started for real!

On Friday we had our own introduction, and they answered all our stupid questions. One of them was how the post system works here, because it took us 4 days of searching before we found a mailbox... It's right outside the main school building...

We also got a mentor, a girl named Dovile. She is very nice, and explained a lot of stuff for us.

We got a guided tour of the school and then we went to eat in a school restaurant. Pancakes with bacon sauce! Yummy! =)

Then we went for a walk and discovered a nice park by the river.

We went to Vilnius, the capital, on Saturday. We took the bus there, and then we walked through the Old town. We saw a lot of churches, a food marked and went up to a castle on a hill where we had a view over the whole town.

Then we to a minibus home.

In the evening we went out looking for a nightclub, and we found one at last. It was nice!

We woke up late un Sunday, and then we cleaned the apartment because the last girl was coming. Then we went shopping for the week and it took a long time! Things here are not the same as in Sweden, and not the same as in the states. I was looking for 30 min for bread crumbs, and then I gave up. Not a lot of people here speak good english, and I don't speak Lithuanian yet. But the new girl speaks Russian, and a lot of the old people here do as well, so that is REALLY good. It's wonderful to be able to communicate with the people living here.

We also went for a run in the evening, so now I'm of course soar...

We started school today, the first lesson of Anatomy and Information technology. We have one more lesson today, with Anatomy, and we got all our books, a big, heavy pile.

I will try to upload some pictures tonight!

The first information and where are the rest???

Hi there!

Three more days have passed and we had our first information meeting this Wednesday. We are only 5 international veterinary students!!! Only the 5 from Sweden, nobody else... And there are about 120 students doing medicine and odontology... But they are very keen to take good care of us, but it feels weird that we are only so few... We will have our information tomorrow, and we have a long list of questions for our coordinator to answer..

Soo...

Tuesday nothing really happened, I went with Linnea and her mum to Akropolis and bought some stuff, and when I came back, Zara had already arrived, so I didn't do much more than talk to her and made food, and played the Sims.

And Linnea came back during the evening, so we sat up and talked a lot. =)

Wednesday we had the big information, and then the veterinary students went out for lunch. After that, I went home with Sandra to look at her apartment. She and her boyfriend lives here, and they have two rats! So cute!

In the afternoon and evening I didn't really do much, and Zara's dad was leaving early in the morning, so they went to bed early so I did the same.

Thursday was interesting. I woke up at 4, when they went to the airport, and then I dreamed about puppies and it was really nice until Linnea came back and woke me up. Zara came short after and they made some noise before everyone went back so sleep. When we finally woke up, we tried out the bus system some more, went looking for lamps and went to the bank to ask for papers for the Visa, but it didn't work yet. We cooked food and didn't do anything the whole afternoon.

We all really look forward to start school, to have something to do.

The tourist weekend

The weekend seemed to fly away.
Saturday was spent shopping and touristing in Kaunas. Kaunas is a quite big city, the second biggest city in Lithuania, and the fourth biggest in the Baltic countries. We started the the by going to Hyper Maxima, and then we continued down to Kaunas city, to see what the town had to show. It was nice, we had lunch at a café and walked around in both the "new city" and the Old town, but we didn't go all the way down to the water, witch, we understood later, was the thing to do. We decided to take the trolley thing up to what was supposed to be a place with a nice view over Kaunas, but we didn't find it, only a HUGE church that we didn't look further into.

We walked past another big church on our way through town to Akropolis, the big mall. We bought some more things, like a lamp, a pot, a prying pan and a water boiler. We also had time to buy ice-cream before the mall closed.

We didn't do so much more this day, ate an early dinner and then watched "Gäster med gester", it was fun!

We started Sunday to drive my stuff to the room, and the off to Trakai! Trakai is a town outside Vilnius (the capital of Lithuania) and it has a very famous castle that is open to public. It was very interesting, and nice to see. There were also a lot of small tourist shops and we bought a few postcards and a present to dad. =)

We drove the longer way home, and saw a lot of small, grey houses in the valleys, and also a horse in front of an old wagon all loaded with cabbage! So sad that we didn't stop to take a picture!

Monday was mums last day here, so we went down to the old town again and saw the tower there, and an old church and a new one. There are a lot of big, beautiful churches here.
We also met Nida and her mum in the city, and talked to them for a while, nice!
Back at the room we fixed a little and then the other Linnea came with her mum. We talked for a little bit and then the time had come for mum to leave. After that I went to the school to fix internet and then tidied up among my stuff a little, and now it's soon time to sleep!

The ferry ride and the first impressions

Hi and welcome!
I decided to start a blog to remember some of the things that happens here, and I will try to write in English so more than my Swedish friends can understand!

The journey started yesterday with finishing the last of the packing and then heading for Halmstad to pick up papers for the car. Then we drove down to Karlshamn, and ate lunch on the way. In Karlshamn came the first problem, how to find the ferry terminal when we ha no address o put in the GPS? Finally we found our way and came to he ferry with plenty of time left. And that was good, because it took a long time to get on to the ferry. All the big trucks needed to back onto the ferry, but luckily we didn't need to do that. The ferry ride was ok, 14 hours is not always exiting, but we slept most of the way.

When we woke up, we could spot Klaípeda, the harbor city in Lithuania. It took a while before it was out turn to get off, but finally we got out.

It took some time to drive to Kaunas, but it was highway the whole time, and both interesting and boring. We saw a lot of small farms with these grey little houses and barns that I didn't know existed, and animals and fields. It's a lot of land that is not used, but the nature seems to be great. Other than this, we didn't see anything during the whole drive.

To arrive in Kaunas gave mixed feelings. Of course the GPS didn't work and we didn't have a good map either. So we stopped at a supermarket and I went inside to ask, and we were only two blocks away! Not pure luck, only skill. ;-)
The house was huge, and didn't smell very good, but the room was very nice. Small, but clean and with big windows.

After dumping all the stuff in the rooms, we went for the next adventure to find the hotel. After some trouble with one way streets, we found our way to the hotel, checked in, and then went out for a late lunch. A quick trip to the mall and supermarket and back to the hotel.

I will try to upload some photos later, but now it's time to sleep! To many new things to see makes me tired.