“It was much pleasanter at home," thought poor Alice, "when one wasn't always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered about by mice and rabbits. I almost wish I hadn't gone down the rabbit-hole...and yet...and yet...”
It's pretty hard to get efficient here. Things take so much more time than you expect them to! It would be easy to complain about this, but hey, this is what makes you realise how privileged we are back home.
We were promised an office space with wifi, which we thought would be a great place to write. Well, it wasn't. Wifi does not work, people are running in and out, the street outside is heavily trafficked, and the table is way too high for the chairs. Then our room has only one electric outlet, and if we sit for too long on our bed, our bums starts to hurt because it is so hard. We do have one chair, but no table. This is not meant to whine, just describe our reality and the reasons why writing a thesis in Sweden is much more convenient. So what do we do? Well, we have found some places that have wifi. This is a Mexican restaurant:
And this is Tess, as a great coffee place where we hang out with the other foreigners who like western style places:
Back at our place, I built a table in the courtyard to be able to sit outside to write and read. But I'm afraid it will fall over if I make it any higher, so when I write, I have to bend over until literally have my chest against my thighs. But then I also like having my face pretty close to the notebook when I write.
On the other hand... we have around 25 degrees all the time, which is the perfect temperature even for my picky body. We are surrounded by the most helpful people I could ever imagine (more on that another day). I get to speak my favourite language all the day. We learn new things all the time. Being here is such a great process of self-development getting to know different sides of myself, getting a lot of new ideas and having to deal with myself. We are honestly not that distracted by our surroundings, since we don't have that many friends here, boyfriend is far, not much going on in this city anyway... We are living our essay and I honestly do believe we will finish it on time, even if many other students who get this scholarship do the writing after they get home. And we are so rich here that we can afford paying someone else to transcribe our interviews, which saves incredible amounts of time and work!
In total, doing a field study is inconvenient, but it rocks. Actually, my life in general is generally not that convenient, but it rocks.
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