Thursday, September 22, 2011

Employment

Before I left for Europe I finally decided that I'd had enough with my job and quit. I decided to take another job at a clinic one of my friends worked at in Culver City. I am still working with kids but now I see kids all the way through high school. We contract with the Inglewood School District so in the mornings I see kids in the schools and in the afternoon I am in the clinic. It's been almost 3 weeks there and I'm starting to feel at home. I really like the people that I work with and things are going well so far. It has been a nice change of pace from where I was before.

Europe

Now that it's been over a month since I left for Europe I guess it's time for me to catch up. My brother-in-law spent the summer over in Norway and in August I met he and my sister for 10 days. I booked the flight earlier in the summer and my first thought after booking it was anxiety over the flight. I really do not love flying and the thought of flying for 18 hours by myself was a little more than I wanted but it's the only practical way to get the Europe. So once again practicality wins over my irrational fears.

I left LA early Friday morning and flew threw Quebec and Frankfurt before ending up in Stockholm. Luckily I managed to make all my connections, barely, and after watching 4 movies I ended up in Stockholm on Saturday morning. The airline lost my luggage in one of the quick transfers and it was kind of stressful the first day. It ended up being a blessing because instead of lugging my stuff around Stockholm all day I just got it about 9:00 that night. The first day was hard enough to stay away without having luggage to drag around. I didn't know that it was possible to fall asleep standing up until spending 34 hours awake topped off by going through museums. I really don't remember anything about those museums.

In Stockholm we were the typical tourists and hit up all the museums, the royal palace and grounds, a cool cemetery, a 1700s salvaged ship, and many more things. After exhausting ourselves through Stockholm we rode the train to Oslo, spent the night there and then took the train from Oslo to Bergen. It was a gorgeous ride. The scenery was absolutely beautiful and I found riding the train was much more pleasant than flying. Then we spent the rest of the time in Bergen.

We did less touristy stuff in Bergen but still hit up a few things like Bryggen, an old Hanseatic village, and some more museums. We also took a cruise through the fjords which was incredible. We also took a 15 mile hike through the mountains surrounding Bergen which was a little exhausting but totally worth it. It was one of my favorite parts of the trip. It took me about 2 weeks to finally get back on the pacific time zone when I got back. But I had a great time and would totally do it again.

Here is the link to my photos from the trip rather than trying to post all of them or trying to pick out my favorites.

Europe Photos