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.
