Written by Francesca
27 Apr 2015
Lately I feel as though I haven’t had the chance to stop. Deadlines, lab reports and impending exams are all quickly approaching meaning I now spend hours at the dining table working attempting to cram as much information as possible into my little brain. It doesn’t help, of course, that the weather is now luxurious yet I can’t justify time away from my computer in order to catch some rays. Heck, I even voluntarily took out all of the rubbish today so that I could go outside to at least get some sun on my face. A beautiful blue sky in the corner of my eye only makes my mind wander when having to study intricate details about cellular processes and the pathogenesis of parasites. I’m now at breaking point in which I’d do anything to lie on a beach. Spring is absolutely beautiful, but I welcome summer with open arms.
My boyfriend flew over to Sweden for a visit this week, now we’re both masters’ students so as sad as it sounds, we did spend a lot of time studying whilst he was here. He’s already been to Uppsala and there wasn’t that much more to show him that he hadn’t seen before. We did, however, take the bikes a little further up north one late afternoon to Gamla Uppsala. This is an old village dating back to as early as the 3 century and was once considered home to Yngling dynasty Kings. Three large mounds of earth are the most distinguishable feature there and are believed to be the ancient graves of royalty.
After a good old ‘potter about’ in the area, we took our bikes and headed home through the forest. Swedish nature is exceptionally beautiful and bicycle routes are so well thought out and planned here so it’s easy to travel almost anywhere by bike. On our journey home, we noticed that there were a lot of people out jogging and exercising. If they weren’t running past us on the pedestrian paths, they were accumulating in what seemed like ‘grown up’ playgrounds using outdoor exercise equipment. I also notice a lot of people with personal trainers in parks around Uppsala, it seems that almost everyone is an avid fitness fan here, even my flatmate likes to get up early in the morning to go running…and then there’s me eating a jar of Nutella with a spoon because I’m too lazy to toast any bread.
I guess that’s all from me for now, I haven’t done much else but study and I’m sure you don’t want to hear anything about that. Unless of course you want to know about parasites, in which that case I could tell you about bugs in your skin or the ones in your gut that like to hang out of your bottom to catch oxygen and then they pop back in so they can lay their eggs.
Want to hear more? No? Well, until my workload dies down a little, I’ll only be able to talk about my studies. Soon I hope to be back in in showing you what else Sweden has to offer and I won’t mention bottom worms again.
