Pensamientos de una tarde post quirófano.

A veces, no sabemos si queremos algo realmente, escuchamos a gente a nuestro alrededor que está deseando tenerlo o conseguirlo, pero no nos sentimos preparados, quizás no sea el momento para nosotros. Es esa frustración de no saber que queremos… Probablemente dentro de unos años nos arrepentiremos y queramos conseguirlo pero en ese momento ya no dispondremos de ello, aunque a lo mejor podemos conseguirlo de otra forma o algo parecido. Hay veces, en las que ni siquiera lo has probado y de que te dejan hacerlo te sientes genial. Pero lo que no podemos es querer algo o alguien por que todo el mundo lo quiera o lo desee, a cada uno nos llegará el momento, mientras hay que disfrutar de la vida y de lo que no se tiene. Tampoco esos “otros” deben juzgarnos por no querer algo que ellos ansían.

coming back

I even didn’t remember about my blog but here it is, I went through another blogs and then I felt like writing something.

Now I am in Badajoz back in Spain, the coming back was harder than what I thougt it was going to be, specially beacuse the last days in Bergen were full of fun and sadness (several farewall party I guess).

I arrived Spain in December so I had a great Christmas time with my family specially after 5 months without them. After a few weeks at home I got tired of the same routine … but I had to be back in university in January and that was another issue to deal with. I had to find a place to stay in the city, I  called to a lot of flat rental advertisement but I just got answer of some of them. I finally end up leaving in one near the hospital…

It is very know that Erasmus require lots of documents signed and too much burocracy in my opinion, so after getting all this documents perfectly singed and given to the appropiate office I start my class and practise in the hospital. I had to do all the practise I should have done if I didn´t go to Bergen and catch up my mates in studies. Anyways, February exam didn’t go so bad and june exams either. With all this problems I didnt have time to think in Bergen and miss it; however, in some moment I felt sad and I wanted to be back. Besides, it was facebook to reminds me all the people I have met and all the moments I was missing while they were there.

Should I mention that I couldn’t avoid some complaints of International Relationship departament since I arrived Spain before it was expected, they said I was irresponsible for duing this!! I got so hungry with them… but in that moment I couldnt express it. I just was sitting looking at them while they were saying me all this things and simply because they didnt want to work a bit more and sign some extra documents.

All the hard moments I lived the second semester, made me consider if the Erasmus experience worht it, when so I just think in all the greats moments I had there, all the nice people I met and the cultural different I learnt.

To sump up, this second semester was hard, but the results I got were not so bad mainly because I made a great effort. I have to say that dont know wether the Erasmus experience worth it but I would like to think that it did.

Food

This is another topic in which the differences are obvious, in my country we have three meals and the most important is the second.

First of all, the typical breakfast it is composed by hot chocolate or coffee and toast. There are very many kind of toast, you can put on it what you want; butter, ham, tomato, cheese, ‘pate’, and so on. My favorite one is ‘tostada catalana’, it is toast bread with tomato and Serrano ham; but also there is one pretty delicious which is ‘mixta’ and apart from the tomato and ham it has cheese as well. Nevertheless, sometimes it is also common to eat cereals, fruit, juice or sweet stuff. Finally, we have ‘churros’ I am not sure about the origin of them because they are very known in south America, but they are more common to eat on hangover Sundays or after going out on Saturday.

Then, some people eat kind of lunch at 11 or 12, but is very light; a coffee or some snacks. There are people that don’t breakfast in the early morning but then they have breakfast at 10; that’s also an excuse to have a break in the job or a social thing; going to have breakfast with colleagues.

After that, we have the main meal, the most important one; it is a warm meal that we eat at home with family or friends. It can be pasta, meat with vegetables or soup, potatoes and so on and the dessert.

In the middle of the afternoon if we are hungry we eat some snacks or more coffee with some biscuits or yogurt, it is also a kind of light.

Finally, we have dinner at 10 or even later, it depends on the people and it is usually not very heavy; it can be fish, salads, pizza … it depends on the person or what you feel eating.

As far as I am concerned in Norway they only have one warm meal what is ‘middag’, and it is around 4 pm. However, they also have a heavy breakfast and lunch in the middle of the morning.

The end…

After some time it has arrived the end, everybody knew that it will arrive, but definitively I was not prepared for it as I was not prepared for the beginning. The arrival to Spain was sad, people who knew me was waiting expectant for me, but I arrived sad; I left many friends behind and several experience that hopefully I will not forget. I left a life behind, I left a part of me in Bergen and I also bring a part of Bergen with me. Coming back means to take my life in the same point I left; it seems that nothing has changed. I felt different in Bergen but now all the doubts and confusions have returned; at least I hope to keep a part of Bergen in my heart, because sometimes small changes can make bigger difference. I hope to meet all that people I met there soon to all of them who make me feel special TUSEN TAKK

After a big party

Well, that was a big party so maybe it sounds a bit melodramatic 😦 we have just said goodbye to one of our friends and it was very sad. I can’t even imagine now that I will not see her tomorrow or next week, but this is the eramus life and as sooner we accept it, the better; it will save a lot of tears and suffer (we knew when we arrived that it will have an end)… It is also true that we can’t see the end, we have been living here together during six months and suddenly everything is going to finish so soon… like in two weeks we can have more than three farewall parties and at least in my case, I don’t see when I am leaving. It was the same as when I arrived I didn’t believe I was coming till I arrived to Bergen’s airport… so I will not realize that it is finished till I arrive to Spain and I will not see this lovely people again… it’s very sad but it is true, now I can understand when  my irish friend left me last year.  It’s so sad just left people who with you were so comfortable and some of them you didn’t see so often; I still meet new people and that makes me more sad because I don’t want to say more good byes. Specially now all the feelings are magnified (as in the big brother house :P) cause we know everybody is leaving… 😦

I don’t want to have this bad memories and bad feelings so let’s say that is a good bye or a see you soon, let’s enjoy our time while we are here and do not cry!!! We have to think that life continues after all and the time we were here was simply awesome.

Love you guys! ♥

More than a simple diabetes

«An insulin reaction in a diabetic postal worker might be seen in a very reductionist mode as an excessive dose of insulin that causes an outpouring of adrenaline, a failure of the pancreas to respond with appropriate glucagon secretion etc (since here everything is normal). However, a critical perspective would tend to lead a researcher to investigate whether the postal work skipped breakfast because of being late for work, the psychobiological effects of the derisive demands of a supervisor, or the inability to break for a snack because of the pressure from above to increase productivity, or, more broadly, the health consequences of the structure of class forces in U.S. society that ensures capitalist domination of production and the moment to moment working lives of working people like employees.» (Merill Singer 2004)

After reading an article of that author due to I had to do a take-home exam, I am now more interesting in this stuff what is Critical Medical Anthropologist (CMA). I have realized that she is very true, I agree with her because sometimes doctors only pay attention to the organic cause and not to the patient feeling, beliefs and so on. This is also very related to the subject I had in my first year of the bachelor which was Bioethics; and by that time I thought it was not very useful but now I can understanding it better. It’s happen very often that the patient jsut need to talk or express their feeling, is not the pain what disconfot them is an entire experience or something that had happened which is also very importanto for them. Then, they will start with senteces like ‘yes because the other day I was… but after … and then… …. and now I have this pain here…’. It’s very true that doctos don’t have enough time for whole story, taking into account that the consult is always ful of people who want to be attended. Nevertheless, I think there are some doctors that simply are not very nice, but also patient have to be more comprensive.

Norwegian system

Rencently, I read in a Spanish newspaper an article about Norway very interesting. It describes the norwegian way of life and it explains a lot about norway; so I could understand how they are doing it. As most of the people know, Norway has one of the best standard of living and it is growing up, their debt and unemployment is minimum. This society has became one of the best mainly by the petroleum industry, they got a loy of advantages of it and they knew how to use it properly to develop. The petroleum industry belongs to the state.

The article’s writter compare the norwegian life with the benches of the church  of Stravanger in where there  aren’t benches but there are indiviual and comfortable chairs and all the chais of one line are together and it is impossible to separate them. They like to live their own separate lifes at the same time they need each other. Together but not mixed.

They have to pay 25% of taxes nevertheless they can get good salary, it is well balanced; they are generous because the state is generous with them.

What call my attention more it is that young peole independize very early; they move out from their parents house whe they go to university, although it were in the same city, they just live by themselves whe they are 18. They look for jobs and barely visit their parents in christmas, because probably they will have work on that dates. I also see in the streets pretty young women with babies, so I guess they also move to live with their boyfriends sooner as in other countries and have babies. That’s because Norway is a very equalitarian country and it has a lot of facilities for pregnant, women they keep their salaries while the pregnancy and the goverment pay them some money till the child has 18.

In my opinion, Norway is a great country to live despite the weather 😛 but it is easy to get in used to it; besides as norwegian people say there sinot bad weather only bad clothes!

Dream or reality

Yesterday I had a wonderful dream. I dreamt that I was living in a different country, and there I was meeting a lot of different people from very many countries. I talked to all of them and I had many friends who with I could hang out. Each day was different from the previous and I always enjoyed myself; however, I had the feeling that it was a dream and soon the alarm was going to wake me up so I was going to wake up in my bed at home. I didn’t want to wake up cause I was very happy in the dream. I knew that I would be over sooner or later so I just tried to use the time with my friends to have fun.

Finally, I woke up and I realized that it was a dream of one day in my life.

Difference between the countries…

There are many cultural difference between Spain and Norway; I think they are completely opposite lands. Apart from the topics as weather and cost of life which everybody knows, there are several small details that surprised me when I arrived.

If you lose something, in Norway, you can easily find it at the following day in the same place you lost or forgot it. In Spain, it’s better if you don’t forget or lose your stuff because you will never find it unless it was broken; even during the breaks in the libraries you have to be careful. Besides, if you go to big touristic cities, you can be stolen in the subway or in the streets.

During my study experience, I have realized that the Norwegian way is more relaxed and less stressful as in Spain, where, for instance, I had 4-5 hour class in the morning with only 10 minutes break between each hour. Then, you can barely eat or drink a coffee, we hadn’t enough time to go for a coffee, besides the class are very fast and intensive, the teacher tries to explain as much as he/she can and you are supposed to copy and understand everything he says. Sometimes, we even didn’t have breaks because the teacher was using it to explain something else. Apart from that we hadn’t enough time to eat/drink, we consider that it’s not very polite to eat during the class; in the high school is not allowed to eat during the class. Here, I could see Norwegian people eating during the lectures, I can understand you can eat some biscuits or chocolate but what caught my attention was that she was eating rice from her ‘matpakke’; that’s unthinkable in Spain! Also is not allowed to eat during the exam it doesn’t matter how long they are; you can only have a pen, water, calculator in your table; well maybe you can have some chocolate but the exams are so short that you don’t have time to eat; consequently, you can’t go to the toilet during the exams. The exams I had here were long, we had 3-4 hours to do it and you can go outside to the toilet and have as much breaks as you want, you can eat as well. Regarding the exam place, in Spain we always do them in the seminars room of the faculty; in Bergen they are arranged in random places as a church or for instance I will have my Norwegian exam in a hotel…

I am not sure how it works in Norway but I think also the working hours are different. The most common in Spain, is to work during the morning (from 8 to 3pm) or in the afternoon (from 3pm till 10) but it depends on the work, for example, in some bars and in the banks people have to be there earlier or in the hospital there is the night shift. During the working hours, you also don’t have breaks, unless official breaks, you can stop working for a couple of minutes. Smoker people have the advantage and the excuse that they smoke so sometimes they are outside smoking longer.

There are many habits that were surprising, for me, at the first but now I can understand them. For example, you can see people walking and cycling under a heavy rain; after some days without rain to stop I could understand it. In my country when it is raining most of the people stay at home and they move through the city by car or public transport. I like when you go to the house and you have to take off your shoes and this is because of the rain as well, to not wet the house.

Why did you choose Norway?

This post is dedicated to the second question, very common between exchange students as well.

The asnwer reminds me to one chapter of The Simpons; in which Marge and Homer are telling their children a story and at the end of the chapter Homer says something like that: … and that’s all children, other day I will tell you the story of Maggy’s dummy… to what Marge replies but if we bought it in the badulaque for 2.99$. The true is that Norway was my third option, so I didn’t know anything about the country. My first and second option was Poland and Hungary but when my turn to choose came both of them were already chosen by other students, so I just said Norway, although I don’t remember very well I think it was the only one which was left.

Afterthat, I run to home and I started to surf the net looking everything about Norway and Bergen; the first words I heard about it, were cold and expensive (and of course the third word I saw on the net, that one specify from Bergen, was… rain!! what else?). Then, I started to think if I really would like to go… and here I am with any regret and each day I think I like more Bergen.

It wasn’t that easy to decide to come, I was a very long time weighing the positive and negative things about coming but at the end I decided to come. I think at the first it always starts with; ‘ok, no problem I just choose some place and then I have time to say no’ but the no never came and that is the best could ever happen to me. I couldn’t imagine that Erasmus life is so great (not always :)) even my coordinator warned me about that, he also told me that Bergen was awesome but I didn’t know to what extent he was right.

Suming up, my answer can be reduced to a very short response and that’s why I compare it with The Simpsons. I’d like to say another funny answer that I heard from one of my friends and it is that I didn’t chose Bergen, Bergen chose me :).