A job!

I've gotten a job!  A real one, on my own, without having J hook me up with something through his company.  Happy Face makes another appearance! (he appeared here first on my blog)  It was a very fast process.
 

Friday afternoon J and I were practicing putting up a tent we've borrowed from his parents (more on that in a bit) when I got a phone call.  It was an unfamiliar name, but because I had applied to a few jobs recently I figured I had to get over my scaredycatness when it comes to answering the phone and answer it.  So I did.  It was a woman calling about a personal assistant job I had applied to the day before.  Personal assistants in Sweden aren't personal assistants in American English terms.  They don't run around doing tasks given to them by an executive at a company.  Personal assistants here do a wide range of things due to the field, but basically they help anyone who can't function properly through the day whether from a sickness or an accident that might have lamed them.  In this case, it was an older gentleman who has MS and so can't move really at all.  He needs help with basically everything, from moving around to washing and so on.  She asked for an interview Saturday (yesterday) morning and so I went.  It ended up not so much an interview (there were no questions of "So, tell me about yourself").  It was more "Here is how the day is and what we do.  Could you start ASAP?"  So of course I jumped on it!  They needed someone pretty immediately to be a sommarvikariat, that is, a summer replacement.  However, she also gave me the fall schedule of times that would need to be filled in and so it seems like as long as it goes well in the near future I'll be welcome to stay on!

I just got back home after my first short 3 hour shift. There is so much to remember, but it doesn't seem too scary.  It's not super difficult or anything and there is no major medical care that needs to occur.  What I'm still happily reveling about is the fact that I now have a job and operate completely in another language!  It's crazy to look back and see how far I've come compared to just a little over a year and a half ago.  Back then, I was afraid to even go to the store by myself and had to really push myself to go out and make myself get used to it.  Now I can perform a job purely in another language!  Commence patting myself on the back....now.

The tent?  Well this next coming weekend is Midsommar (midsummer) in Sweden and it's their huge summer holiday.  They celebrate the longest day of the year which here in Gothenburg is 18 hours of daylight, give or take a few minutes.  "Night", though, is never night and it never truly gets dark out.  There is always a mid-dark blue in the sky and it most definitely begins to get light around 2-3 in the morning.  For Midsommar we've been invited to the lovely west coast, as I may have mentioned previously.  Because the summer home isn't so large and it has about 12 places for people to sleep, and 19 of us have been invited, J and I have opted to borrow a tent and camp out in the yard for the evening instead.  That is why we were practicing putting up the tent, and also it was to see if we both would actually fit in it.  J is not at all a short person, I'm even a bit worried that he won't really fit very comfortably in it.  We will see!

So I just wanted to write a quick update, although it's not all that short.  I should get to bed pretty soon as I have to be back tomorrow morning at 8am for more learning!