Small town island

It's been a little over two months now that I've been living here on the island. Getting used to small town life after being a somewhat city girl has not been easy. The cutest cafés close at 5pm, there's only one shopping mall with a limited clothing store selection, there's virtually no public transportation (one bus that goes once every hour) and it takes forever + is really expensive to get back to the mainland. Dream come true, right?

But that's not even the bad news. The bad news is that we're heading towards winter, which means that I won't see anyone for about 10 months. Just kidding. I'll see maybe one or two persons on the street. Living on a small island means that it depends strongly on tourism. And in the Nordic, tourist season is summer season. And in the Nordic, summer lasts for two months. Enjoy it while it lasts!

That's the negative, Finnish side of the story. The more optimistic view is that this island is beautiful: it's an idyllic micro-world. Lots of farming land, yet when you turn around 180 degrees you can see the sea. You're literally surrounded by water. Ha.

This summer I've done more outdoorsy stuff than any other summer before. I've hiked, fished (first time!) and picked berries. Picnics, yard games, kayaking and boat trips.

Not bad, for a city girl.

So far so good

I'm enjoying my only day off this week today. It's been a busy and exhausting week. I started practice on Monday at a geriatric ward at the hospital on the island. Having to learn a new working environment with people who speak a different language than either of my mothertongues has also been a lot to take in. The good news is that the job itself is pretty much the same as in any hospital. In other words, I'm basically here to learn a new language and to revise previously learned skills. My instructor at practice is also Finnish speaking so it helps a lot, even though we stick to Swedish since that's the language the patients use. 

The thing that has really surprised me the most is the number of Swedish accents among the personel at the hospital. There's the Swedish Swedish (which is the hardest to understand), the Ålandish accent that is somewhere between Finnish Swedish and Swedish Swedish and lastly the Momin Swedish as the Finns call it. Momins are a Finnish cartoon figure and the TV version is narrated with Swedish that has a heavy Finnish accent. Thus 'Momin Swedish'. But then there are a couple nurses who have moved to the island from elsewhere. One is from Kenya and the other nurse is maybe from South America (just a guess). They obviously have their own way of pronouncing Swedish. It's interesting because the island is very conservative and it has a small population (~23 000 compared to the 123 000 in Turku). It makes communication multicultural and I don't feel so bad about having a broken Swedish. It's definitely a positive thing to see that this little island has also entered the global era on this planet. 

Like I said, there hasn't been that many opportunities to enjoy freetime yet, but I've managed to acquire a library card and yesterday I had my first hike. I'm steering into next week's four days off, so hopefully I'll have more to say about the beauty of this place then.

Leaving mainland

On Saturday I'm grabbing my pup and suitcase and heading off to the Åland islands on the evening ferry. I haven't had any urge to write on a blog and I deleted the last blog, since I felt it had run out of its purpose. Now I feel like I'm well into a new adventure on a different linguistic and geographical level, and I think a blog serves well as a window into this new era in my life.

The Åland islands is a small configuration of islands out in the archipelago; they're autonomous and the population is Swedish speaking. Really they somehow relate to the Swedes better, but in Sweden they're not quite Swedish either since most Swedes think they're Finns. Can you imagine that I could ever relate to this "a foot in both camps" stuff?

I'm starting a five week practice out on the main island's only hospital. I'm both excited and nervous. My Swedish definitely needs some dusting and I'm hoping these five weeks will do some wonders on it. I'm also hoping to land a summer job on the island so I can spend the summer there. The islands are so pretty with all the nature and sea. And the one and only "city" (to me it looks more like a village, but they insist on city), Mariehamn, is super cute.

I hope I'll manage to add some pictures too, so you can get a better idea of my new surroundings. Meanwhile, stay tuned!