New Year, New Decade!

I'm back home after the holidays now, and will try to embrace the new year in the best possible way!! The next six months will be quite tough for me, as I have quite a rough workload ahead of me, but I feel motivated and confident about the future, and after the not-at-all-great year of 2009 I'm ready to give it my all to make 2010 MUCH better!

The holidays was really tough this time, for several reasons, so I won't make the usual number of entries I do when I've been away for a while. I'll try to give you a brief summary in this entry, and there will be a later entry with photos (when I've sorted them out on my computer), but after that I will look forward instead and try to make the best of what is to come.

Christmas was a bit strange this year as my oldest little sister was quite ill. My Dad and his family was on vacation in Florida and after about 5 days she started feeling ill. It got worse and worse, and they visited three different hospitals there, the last one being the huge Miami Childrens Hospital. There was some insecurity as to whether they would be allowed to go home as planned, but they made it. Unfortunately, my sister got a lot worse on the plane, so when they landed at Stockholm-Arlanda, she had to immediately go by ambulance to a hospital some 30 km away where they had to stay for the day, take a night at a hotel before my Dad had to go back to the Airport to pick up the luggage and the car so they could go home!!

My sister was ill during most of the holidays, we had to take her in to the Emergency at her home hospital as well once, but up New Year she started feeling a little better, so hopefully the worse is over.

I felt really bad for my youngest sister, who had to endure a lot during these few weeks when all focus was on her big sister. She was ill to in the beginning, but I think it was mostly due to the psychological stress and pressure she'd been under, because after a few days in a safe home environment with fairly normal routines she went back to being her own happy self again!

While I haven't had so rough a time as my Dad and his family, I still wasn't in top shape when holidays started, and dealing with my sister's illness, and with her parents being completely exhausted and run down, holidays this year (or last year!!) hasn't been the best.
There has been some great moments of course, but they have been rather few this time, and I'm quite happy to be back home!

I did get some great Christmas gifts though - I got quite a lot, but a few do stick out!
I got some USB memory sticks, which is always great to have, a memory card to my camera, and a wireless mouse to my laptop (the touch pad works, but I'd like to be able to use a mouse as well). And then I got one major gift from my Mum and one from my Dad that I'm REALLY thrilled about!!
From my Mum I got a gift certificate for a certain book store in Lund, Arken, where they have all the theology literature ... and it was quite a substantial amount!!!
From my Dad I got a new camera lens, to complement the one I have - and it was AWESOME!!!


The trip home wasn't that much fun, I dragged myself and my luggage and Zorro on the train, and since I wasn't exactly alone (!!), the trip was quite exhausting ... but now I've recovered and I'm ready to get on with my life of 2010!!!
Starting with writing almost an entire 1st level thesis (7.5 ECTS credits - the equivalent of 5 weeks-full-time-studies) in about 4 days ... eh, ooops?!? *nervous*
Guess I'd better get on with it, right?! :-)

I'll be back with a photo entry when I've had the chance to transfer them to the computer!

I hope you're having a great start of 2010!!
!