Tag Archives: sick

San Diego <3

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This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

I am sorry readers, I will get better at updating this thing again. I promise I will try at least!

This weekend is a long weekend (President’s Day on Monday) and I decided it was long overdue to go down to Carlsbad and visit my former hostfamily. As soon as I got here I realized I needed this getaway very badly. I got so happy when I started to recognize everything, and when I came to the house, saw my old room looking exactly like it did when I lived there, my hostmom, and the day after the kids. I am happy here and I am so glad I came down this weekend!

 

San Diego Zoo Safari Park

Yesterday I woke up at 8am to have breakfast with my hostmom and the kids (my host dad was on a business trip up until today) and then went to San Diego Zoo Safari Park. I never went when I was here in 2013 (which was stupid when I had a membership). But I got 50% off, so it was not big deal. And it was a very nice day with the family. The weather was amazing, probably 85F, it was still a little bit breezy and we saw a lot of animals. Seeing animals make me happy. We saw a baby rhino that was born on November 27th last year, it weighed 159lbs then. It was super cute. We saw a lot of other “safari” animals like cute lemurs, all the savannah animals, one of the last five White Rhino’s in the world, tigers, and bats. And of course a lot of other animals too. It was a great day! Too bad the boy rolled in some kind of nettles and got rashes all over his body. Poor kid, but he was a champ and didn’t complain at all. He got a cream and it made it all go away very fast.

When we came home I took a nap for a couple of hours while they went to a beach party for one of the girl’s friends’ birthday. Then the plan was to study, but I just couldn’t find the motivation.

 

Beach and surf and sun

Today was all about the beach and an old au pair friend from my year here in Carlsbad. We met up at La Jolla Shores Beach, so many people, so it was hard to find parking. My old car (my silver Volvo V70) was here and for me to use this weekend. Very nice of my hostparents to let me use it. SD is bigger than SLO, and without a car here you can’t do anything. I met three of Johanna’s Swedish friends and they were all very nice and we had a nice day together at the beach.  We went in the water pretty early on, it couldn’t have been much more than 60F, but with the 90F (or something) in the air it was not hard at all going all the way in. It was refreshing. I love the ocean! And it is February! I love California! I love the sun! In the afternoon four of us put on wetsuits and went out to surf for a while with one of the guys in charge of the tent renting out wetsuits and surfboards for free and giving free lessons. It was the best surf session I have ever had. I caught almost every wave I try to catch and even if I didn’t stand up every time I still feel very satisfied and proud of myself. A few times I actually managed to stand up all the way in to the shore, which has never happened before! I don’t think I have ever stood up for more than 3 seconds before and today I did so much better than that almost every time I stood up. I am pretty sure I stood up more today in the hour I was out than in my whole life up until this point. So exhilarating! The last wave of the day was the best one and I drove home smiling like never before. In my old car, good music on the radio, singing, smiling, with the sunset in the west. It was a good, normal day (I don’t like Valentine’s Day, and it has nothing to do with relationship status, it is just a stupid commercial holiday when companies want to earn money, I learned today that Bulgarians celebrate wine on this particular day, I will start doing that too, wine is good).

 

Au-pairing again

My hostparents went out on a date tonight while I stayed in with the kids. Just like old times and I really enjoyed it! We started the evening with watching a movie called Step Dogs, the girl braided my hair in a very cool way, she also baked chocolate chip cookies (some kind of dessert on this “special” day felt needed), the boy played with the 7 month old Portugese Waterdog puppy they have. Then the three of us played the game I got them for Christmas, Totally Gross. It was a fun game where kids learn fun and interesting science facts. And when you earned points you stretched your slime clump from your characters nose, haha! The kids loved the booger/slime.

It is after 1am and I still haven’t started studying. I suck so bad! I am embarrassed by myself for being this bad at studying. But it is hard to find motivation when you are not sure what it is you have to do. Tomorrow evening! I will turn off all my social media devices and just study when the kids have gone to bed!!

If I will be able to wake up at 8 tomorrow I should probably go to bed now. I am not catching up on sleep at all this weekend, haha! Goodnight! And I promise to start this spiderweb of a blog up again!

IMG_20150211_152548 After my infection/cold or whatever it was, my left wrist got filled with liquid and started hurting like never before in the beginning of this week. When it was at its worse I couldn’t move it the tiniest bit. The doctor told me to rest it and that it could take up to 2 months for it to go away. But luckily it is almost 100% restored today, four-five days later. It still hurts when I flex it to the max, but I could surf today without any problems. I have to go back in two weeks for a check up though. Hope it is all good then!IMG_20150211_193005 On Wednesday I went out to the restaurant on Avila Pier with Jason and after dinner we watched the big fat sea lions under the pier. They are way bigger than they appear to be. This one was withing touching limit and probably as big as a three seat couch. A little bit scary. There were also normal grey seals and an otter swimming in the water. A starry night at the ocean was very nice.IMG_20150213_115220 IMG_20150213_120359 Baby rhino!IMG_20150213_122207 Bats are actually kinda cute.IMG_20150213_131743 Lemurs are adorably cute!IMG_20150213_132950 IMG_20150213_134853 One of the five last White Rhino’s in the world. One was at another zoo somewhere and the last three in a reserve in Africa and have armed guards 24/7. So sad! And all except one are too old to reproduce. This one was 40 years old.IMG_20150213_143212 Baby rhino again! (rhinosaurus)IMG_20150213_145537 We timed the feeding of one of the tigers perfectly. These animals are so beautiful and majesticIMG_20150213_145713 IMG_20150213_145840 IMG_20150213_150149 A cool waterfall on the Tiger Trail. Pretty good camera my phone has, which can capture the drips in a waterfall.IMG_20150214_104500 I did get my share of Valentine Day chocolate. From one of my roommates and my wonderful hostfamily. My not-eating-candy rule this year has a few exception days :). I haven’t had any candy in more than two months and this was divine today!IMG_20150214_120244 I have missed southern California’s beaches so much!! This is La Jolla Shores where I actually only went one time last year, and that was to take a surf class. It was a packed beach on this wonderful summer day in February, but I loved every second of it. This is where I belong, on a sunny beach!PANO_20150214_162304 Snapchat-1987100777812013018 I definitely got color today, yay! Nothing burned, just a pretty tan :).IMG_20150214_214531 This is what the girl did to my hair. I hope it will survive the night so I can showoff on the beach tomorrow!PANO_20150213_003105My room looks exactly the same. I was so happy when I saw this on Thursday late night. I really needed this weekend to get away from everything up in SLO for a bit to get perspective on life again!

Still not 100%

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The last two mornings when I woke up I was feeling great, like nothing was wrong. But as the days progressed I got worse and the day ended with me feeling sick again. It is not too bad, but I do feel dizzy and it is hard to focus in class. Especially yesterday afternoon in Public Transportation. It was an interesting class because we had a guest speaker. But he was in Oakland and presented over the computer. Impressive technology. It was not a very interesting subject, but still pretty cool that that is do-able.

My nose is still very congested at times and I am coughing. I don’t even know why! But it feels like something is stuck in my chest and I can’t get it out of there. Annoying like nothing else.

I wrote a list today of what I have coming up and it is actually a long list. And it made me realize that I have two midterms next week. Oops. I did not know that until today! But I am sure it will be fine.

This afternoon I felt better than yesterday so I actually managed to do a lot of things. I started on the Planning assignment where I will answer questions about my hometown. The German homework is done. Prepositions are hard, but this went better than the Perfect Tense. I also finished my part of the San Diego public transit report that’s due on Thursday. A productive afternoon/evening. Now I am thinking of calling it a night. I don’t have to get up early tomorrow or anything, but the bed is calling more than usual tonight.

Getting better

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Yesterday and today I’ve seen a lot of improvement in my health. Yesterday when I woke up I could breathe. I wasn’t feeling like I usually do, but definitely better than the day before that when I was in bed all day. Today was even better, I coughed a lot this morning, but my nose was clear and I only had a little headache. It is so awesome that it is going in the right direction! I just hope it stays this way and I won’t get it back in three days.

Today I did a lot of German homework, watched TV shows and then played some Guild Wars 2. The big announcement yesterday morning was the first expansion pack. It seems really cool, but I don’t know when it will be out. No date was announced. Today I finally learned how to use the crafting system, long overdue, I know. I actually managed to get a character to level 40 (from 27) by doing it for like an hour.  Definitely the easiest way to level a character.

I am going to eat some ice cream now, watch Big Hero 6 and then go to bed. School tomorrow again. I am crossing all my fingers and toes that I will be fully recovered tomorrow.

Guild Wars 2

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Being sick has made me start playing GW2 again. Tonight I finished the latest Living World Season episode and it was crazy! Tomorrow morning there will be a big announcement for what is coming. It is something big, that’s for sure.

The whole day, I was in bed reading. I slept really badly and am still pretty sick, so a day in bed seemed right. I finished the last third of Fire, the second book of Graceling Realm Triology. It wasn’t exactly a sequel to the first one, all of the books takes place in the same world, but at different times. The third and first seems to be connected though. A good series!

I have felt better today than the days before, but my nose is still very congested, but I didn’t feel feverish today so that is good. My eyes have been runny though, which is a little bit weird.

For dinner I had pulled chicken which had been cooking the whole day. I actually smelled it, but couldn’t taste as much. The little I tasted though was really good.

I can’t believe it is already midnight. But the bed didn’t seem that inviting after spending almost the whole day in it. But I think I have to give in now and start reading Bitterblue. Tomorrow will probably be a similar day to today. I really want to get rid of this cold!

Sick again

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Why does this keep happening to me? How can I be sick again?? It was like the cold took vacation with me in the Caribbean and now it’s like: Hey, guess who’s back?!

My sinuses are all messed up, my nose is runny and I’ve been feverish this whole day. And tomorrow will be a busy day and also the day I say goodbye to Toby. He leaves SLO tomorrow and I still can’t really believe it. But I know for sure though that I will see him in the summer and fall again. Sweden and Germany are very close to each other. It will be very empty when he is gone.

Except realizing the truth about my health today I went to two classes. I got my quiz back in German, I was several points above average and only one point away from max score. Go me! Public Transportation is not as interesting as I thought it would be. The teacher is hard to follow (he is Indian and speaks very fast with an accent). Maybe it will get better.

In the evening we were a bunch of people going to Firestone for Toby’s goodbye dinner. I just love their pulled pork sandwich. The best! And today I saved half for tomorrow. Then we had a little bit of froyo and the rest of the evening we all hung out in Toby’s room playing Cards Against Humanity. Even sober, that game is hilarious! I came third, not too bad.

Now it is really late, I don’t feel too well, so I should probably go to bed so I can wake up early and say goodbye to my best friend here. I am gonna miss him so much!!

Saona Island

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This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

What an amazing day this has been. Except for my stupid stomach that is still very much upset. But for some nice reason it stayed calm during most of the day so I could enjoy it all.

At 7 am this morning the tour bus picked me up. We picked up a lot more people and went to the southeast corner of the island where we took a speedboat out to a natural pond out in the ocean. The water was shallow, crystal clear, and had the beautiful turquoise color. AND, the coolest part was that there were huge starfishes. I played a little with my GoPro, but there was not much to see since it was just sand and water as long as you could see.

We had a photographer among us and he took a lot of pictures. Lots of silly pictures with the starfishes. We stayed there for about 40 minutes. I was in the water most of the time because it was so windy above water and I didn’t wanna freeze. It was very cloudy today and actually not that warm. This trip could have been so perfect with a clear blue sky. But it was still great.

Next on the agenda was Saona Island where we stayed for 3 hours. Apparently one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies was filmed there. It is definitely a “deserted paradise island”. Tons of tourists there today though.

First we had free lunch and free drinks, then I started talking to two German guys, Mattias and Arik, who were nice. We hung out for the rest of the tour. We hung out by the beautiful water for a while, and then I got tired and went to lie down for a bit. Then the photographer came along and wanted me to pretend to be a model again. I am so not photogenic so they didn’t turn out that well. If I were those pictures would have been amazing. I mostly blame that I didn’t wear sunglasses…

At 3pm we were done and hopped on a catamaran and sailed the way back to shore. It took 1.5 hours and there were free drinks (rum and coke) and party music all the time. It was so great! I loved it. It was a bit scary at first to sit on the net above the water, but I got used to it and could relax the rest of the way.

On the bus back to the hotel I talked to a guy from Puerto Rico and he told me that I should get a car while I am there, and he also told me about a few places that I should visit. I am really excited to go there on Saturday.

When I came back to the hotel, I first took a shower, then headed over to the neighbor hotel (which is the same pretty much) Barceló Bávaro Palace (I am staying at Barceló Bávaro Beach) to buy something for my stomach (let’s cross all of our fingers that it works, I am getting tired of this). That hotel is huuuuge. There is a shopping center and countless of buildings with hotel rooms. I took the shuttle train there and back, on the way back I had to go to the other parts of the mega big hotel complex. In total it took 25 minutes to go around it all on that train. It is like a city, all of it.

I had a small dinner, where one of the waiters asked for my number. I really learned today that Hispanic people love white people. On the bus to the boat we watched a lot of music videos, in ALL of them, the guy was singing and adoring a white woman. I wonder why.

Last night I finally watched The Maze Runner, and even if it was a good movie, it was so different from the book.  The storyline was pretty much the same, but all the details were changed, I don’t understand why. The book makes more sense.

I am very very tired now, so I will probably just go to sleep, without reading. Tomorrow is my last full day here on Dominican Republic. I hope the weather will be nice.

DSC_0039DSC_0051DSC_0049DSC_0044DCIM100GOPROGOPR0114.DCIM100GOPROGOPR0108.DCIM100GOPROGOPR0107.IMG_1261IMG_1316IMG_20141218_130155PANO_20141218_132915IMG_1472IMG_1501IMG_1480IMG_20141218_130514IMG_20141218_130529DCIM100GOPROGOPR0136.DCIM100GOPROGOPR0138.

Midterms, strep and line dancing

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This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

Finally this horrible day is over. I felt better this morning, and I was prepared and ready to do the two midterms. But no, the first one went to hell and it will turn out as a big fat F. I had solved so many problems before and I felt that I knew everything. But then I see the test. I couldn’t solve a single one of the problems. I tried and I did write on some of them, but I don’t think I even wrote enough to get 50%. Most of it was because I usually sit for a while (since all the tests in Sweden always are four or five hours long) and try to figure it out. And most of the times I do that, but after thinking about the problem for sometimes 40 minutes. There was one problem today I tried doing that with and I figured it out ten minutes before the test ended, and I did not have enough time to write it all down. I am gonna talk to the professor about it. I did study, a lot, for this exam. And I don’t wanna get an F because he formulated the questions weirdly and gave us too many big problems. It is not fair.

I went to the second midterm where I sat down next to George, he asked how it went and I just looked at him and he totally understood what my face meant. Fortunately the architecture history one went better. I think it even went better than the last one. But we will see.

My next stop for the day was the Health Center and I was in and out in 20 minutes. The doctor told me that all my symptoms and the fact that I’ve been sick on and off for five weeks points towards mono. So I took a strep test and a mono test and later in the afternoon the doctor called me and told me it wasn’t mono (apparently you can have that several times by the way), but I had very high levels of white blood cells which means a bacterial infection, most likely strep. So I got penicillin and in a couple of days I should be fine. If it’s not better by Monday I will have to go back and take more tests for other things I guess. I have been feeling great today, my throat still hurts a bit, but it’s not as much as yesterday when I almost skipped class because I was crying from the pain.

The last four hours of my long day of horror (I had the exact same day three weeks ago)  was writing on the lab report. We handed it in 6 minutes before deadline which is the closest I’ve ever handed something in before.

It felt so great after. I didn’t even mind riding my bike home in the rain after. Yes, it’s been raining the whole day, just a drizzle, but definitely enough to get me wet.

I went home, did laundry and then headed to The Grad where there was a line dancing lesson for a while. It was fun, but way to hard. I don’t know if it is because I am sick and my coordination is the worst or if I am just not meant for dancing. After that I was just sitting down and watched everyone. It looks fun, but to know all those different dances will take time and I don’t have the ambition to put that much time into something. Maybe when I am older.

It was loud there so every time I talked to someone it made my throat worse and at the end I didn’t talk to anyone because my throat was on fire. Eventually me and Kelsey went home and stopped at SloDoCo on the way home to get some donuts. It’s dangerous having a 24/7 donut shop so close. But it was good.

Now I am home, coughing more than I have in three weeks and it sucks. I should probably go to bed and read some. I so look forward to tomorrow when I can sleep for as long as I can! Can’t wait!!

Line Dancing

Strep throat?

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Yes, I think I might have streps, my throat hurts like crazy. (I am going to the Health Center tomorrow)

Tomorrow morning, starting at 7:40am, I have two midterms.

And in the afternoon I have a lab report due (which I basically just have the introduction to).

I so look forward to tomorrow.

NOT….

One month left

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This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

I can’t believe it’s only one month left until I go to the Caribbean! I am stoked out of my mind! TO celebrate the one-month-left I spent the whole day in the library. But it wasn’t too bad. Studying here is a social thing, even if you spend 7 hours of a day off at the library, it’s a lot of socializing as well. I did some problems of the sample midterm questions for transportation engineering, and when George came I focused on the short essay questions for architecture history. It took (I think) four hours to do all of them. But it wasn’t too bad. And it feels great to have them done, last time I only did a few and I got an F on that part of the last midterm. This time I am planning on acing it!

I went home, had soup for dinner since my throat has been hurting today. On the front, not the side. Weird and extremely annoying! I watched The 100 while eating and then I solved one problem in transportation engineering. Then a bunch of people came over and I couldn’t focus so I hung out in the living room/kitchen for a while and then I was too tired to keep studying. So I will go and brush my teeth now and then read through my architecture history summaries before going to bed. I have another long day ahead of me tomorrow. Many hours of studying at the library and then sustainable environments class in the evening.

Punta-Cana-BeachPunta Cana Beach on Dominican Republic!

Midterm week #2

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It’s that time of the quarter again. Midterm week (which is different for everyone depending on when the teacher schedule the tests, and I still don’t know why it is called midterms when they’re not occurring at the middle of the quarter, but randomly throughout it).

I went to the library at 9:30, studied non-stop until 3pm. Had a cookie for snack, went home at 4:30pm, took a nap, made Swedish lasagnette for dinner and then studied some more.

I’ve been feeling really crappy today, like all feverish. I noticed the other day that I actually brought a thermometer here and I do have a bit fever even after taking ibuprofen. It’s only half a degree too high, but it is still more than I usually have.

I hate that I’ve been sick on and off for the past five or four weeks now. It sucks pretty bad but I don’t know what to do about it. I think my immune system’s not used to this tempo and it can’t keep up. I hope Thanksgiving break will help me get better, otherwise the Caribbean trip will definitely do that.

Now I will go to bed and read Heir of Fire. I only have 100 pages left now. I wonder what I should read after that?!