Busy, busy, busy!!!

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Hi everyone,

I've been neglecting you all! I'm so sorry lol things have just been so crazy busy that ive not had time or been too tired etc etc, but anways i'll catch you up to speed but it might take a while seeing as its been more than a month since my last entry :-p oopsie!!.

Anyways I hope you're all ok and I'm missing everyone a lot but im still having a great time so i cant complain really :-).

So since last time I worte a lot of stuff has happened, the week after my last entry Rowan came to visit me for 5 days which was awesome :-) we had an amazing time a couple of days exploring in Trollhattan where the university is and doing some walking around where the canal and the locks are here and also to Gothenburg which is called Sweden's second city we had a great time there but the best part was seeing the Moose in the park there and walking on a frozen lake :-). And of course I miss him even more now he's not here :-(.

After Rowan left I had a home exam assignment to do which was good because it kept me too busy to be sad about him going so that took me a few days (Ive had my results back since then and I passed with distinction :-) so i was really happy about that)

I've also started Swedish for beginners classes they're ok although i wish the teacher would actually teach us to speak Swedish rather than useless information about how many bridges are in Stockholm and all about who founded IKEA and how to say 1,653,729 in Swedish lol. I might have a hard time passing that class but fingers crossed it will be ok.

Some of you will know how much I hate giving presentations, well im quite proud of myself because I've done two for two different classes and they both went really well, the first was an individual one and I was so nervous but it went really great so i was a happy bunny :-) and the second one was with two other people so i was less nervous and that one went great too :-).

I've also been to a Youth Conference that was hosted at University West, it was about tackling abuse in teenage relationships so not the happiest of topics but it was very interesting. Apparently there's virtually no European reserch into the topic its all American research although I dont know if thats because Europe has been ignoring the issue or because its more common in America? although I doubt that.

After the Youth Conference I went to Copenhagen for the weekend with my two lovely friends Robin and Lena and we had the most amazing weekend. we were very lucky first the weather was amazing it was the warmest and sunniest ive seen for months!!! lol so that made us very happy and second we got upgraded for free in our hostel because they were very busy. Third the food was amazing, first night we went to a burger restaurant and had real burgers and the second night to a steak house which was divine! I think its partly because meat in Sweden is so expensive so we dont really get all that much decent meat but anyways the food was amazing. The city itself is beautiful, its not the biggest place ever either so I think we pretty much saw everything there was to see and i think i took more than 400 pictures on my own and the three of us are sharing all our pictures so i will have heaps!!! The first day we got there in the afternoon so we went to the hostel and then down to the docks for a canal tour and we saw a lot of the city on the canal tour which was great, including the little mermaid statue which is one of Copenhagen's most popular landmarks. After the canal tour we went exploring the city centre which has awesome shopping as well as amazing sights. In the evening we explored the city some more and ended up drinking cocktails in the hostel bar.

The second day we walked around the city to all of the landmarks we could see on the map including a lot of Churches and historical buildings as well as some shopping. and the third day we revisited our favourite places and got the train back to Trollhattan again.

The week starting the 5th of March I got given two assignments from one class and spent three days visiting a Kindergarten to do research for my report for a different class.

The Kindy was great I loved being there, everyone was so welcoming and its weird how a language barrier is not a problem for kids. they really didnt care that my Swedish is elementary at best lol. One of the days there I literally spent the whole day playing outside in the snow with the kids because that was what they wanted to do. So my day was spent sledging and rolling huge snowballs that the kids then climbed all over it was great. Needless to say i slept really well that night lol. There are a lot of differences between English and Swedish preschools, some similarities too but more differences i think. The pedagogy and mind set is completely different. For a start kids in Sweden go to preschool from when they're 1 till they're 6 then they go to school. They also dont have any formal taching at the preschool like they dont teach them to read or write (unless the child wants to) they do do some tasks with the older kids to prepare them for school but its not like being in preschool in the UK at 3 and learning your letters and how to write etc. But they seem to learn more in Sweden. Anyway i could spend all day describing it and how its similar/different but ive just finished writing a 12 page (4,810 words) report comparing participation in English and Swedish preschools so..... lol.

This last week I've spent writing my report and doing other assignments as well as visiting a forestschool type preschool and another school in Gothenburg and also a visit to Fridaskolan or freedom school to see where im going to be doing my placement for my next class which is starting on the 26th of March.

I've finally finished my report and still have a few things to finish for next week, and i think i've about caught you up to speed with where im at. The best parts were undoubtedly Rowan's visit and Copenhagen :-). I hope you're all ok Missing you all heaps

Loves XxX

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