Saturday, January 19, 2013

Last two days in Sweden

Greetings from Stockholm!
Well, hellllloooo there!
I was gone for such a long time, I know. The reason? - my last month in Sweden passed so quickly and I was so busy that I simply couldn`t find some free time to keep blogging.

And here I am now - these are my last two days in Sweden. And I thought that I really need to write a goodbye blog post and to thank all of you guys who were following my adventures and reading my posts from the very beginning. 

I still remember my first day I came here... Ohh, sweet memories! :)

It was August 27th 2012. 

I remember I thought: "Oh my God... I need to be here for the next five months. And it is already so cold."
After a first few days I decided to start writing my Swedish adventures and the title of my first blog post was My first four days in Sweden.
People started reading it and they even published my first blog post on the official Mid Sweden FB page. I was so happy and it motivated me to keep writing.

Hello 2013! This is gonna be my year! :)
I want to say thank you - hvala - tack everyone who helped me during the last five months. Of course it wasn`t easy. Especially those first two or three weeks. I was a complete stranger so far away from my home, families and friends. People around me in a bus station, on the airport, in the supermarket, at the university were talking some strange language. Everything was so different, so expensive, and so Swedish. And it was a big challenge for me!

I had my great moments but also there were times when I was angry, sad, disappointed, cold and cold again. :D But you know what.. that is normal. And I can say now that I don`t regret anything. It was just as it was supposed to be. I met so many nice people here from all around the world (paradox - not so many Swedes). I improved my English. I got more confidence. I passed my Swedish exam and got an A (It turned out that Swedish is not so strange and hard as I used to think. Of course I can`t speak it fluently :D but I think I could learn it so much better if I really was surrounded by people speaking it all the time). I learned how to cook (ahhh I was spamming you with my food pictures all the time during the period when I actually realized that I can prepare something eatable hehehe) and now my mom said that I need to show all my cooking skills once I get home. That is going to be interesting, too. :)

My winter holidays were also so great since my Croatian friends came to visit me. We were in Stockholm and had such a great, great time there. Stockholm is really an amazing city. I think if I ever come back to Sweden again, I will definitely go to Stockholm again (Čiko and Tomas thank you for being the best hosts ever).

Somewhere in Stockholm with Tomas and Igor
With Jelena and Igor!

In Stockholm!

New Year`s Eve!

Jelena and I - the fastest shopping ever!
People from the international office from the university and from the Mitthem were so great to me. I really don`t know if some of them realize how important they are to people who come in a foreign country like me. Their help, a smile and nice words mean so much to us, at least they meant so much to me.

Finally, I will just say that my Swedish exchange program and all my Swedish adventures thought me so much about myself and my boundaries. Now I really know that I am able to come in a completely foreign country and not just survive but also be very good at it. I am proud on my university scores, on my work at WLM, on my English, on my cooking. 

And of course I will miss Sundsvall and MIUN and the whole Sweden (ok, everything except its weather and -24 degree these days brrrr), but I am sooo looking forward going back home. You  can`t even imagine! :) I am already so impatient and just thinking about those moments when I will finally hug my family and see all my friends and my home university. It is really true when they say that you are not aware what you have unless you "lose it".

Sweden goodbye and thank you for being [all in all] very nice to me.
Croatia, here I come! See you soon!

Goodbye pancakes!

Goodbye Sundsvall! :)

My next blog could be French adventures or something like that since I will spend two weeks there in February but one step at a time. 

Greetings to everyone!

Love,
Maja

P.S. There is one really great thing related to my blog posts. They helped Christelle, a really nice Belgian girl to get to know Sundsvall and Miun. We even met last week since she came to spend her spring semester here. I was so happy to help her and to show her the city and the university. 
Welcome Christelle and enjoy your time here!