Portuguese News

Hello again,
First of all, Happy New Year!!!
We haven’t written for a while because during the rest of the month of November and December there were many things happening. We started our self-study project that we have to deliver and present in the end of Erasmus, we continued our practices, we participated in Baltic Seminar "ERASMUS student placements in Baltic countries: enhancing cooperation between universities and enterprises" Vol.2.” at Tallinn’s University, made some trips, spent Christmas and New Year’s Eve in Tallinn and moved to Tartu.
Our self-study project was started after lots of research in Tallinn’s library, books of East Tallinn Central Hospital (ETCH) and conversation with our teachers in Portugal, having already some good advances.
We had an invitation to participate in Baltic Seminar organized by Tallinn’s University to make a presentation about our experiences in Erasmus. We were very nervous, but it went pretty well!
As you probably noticed by our previous posts we like to travel, so in November and December we made more trips.
The first one was a weekend in Riga, where we walked through the city, stayed in an amazing hostel (City Lounge Hostel) with a crazy and funny owner and knew a great disco (Essencial), where we had 2 awesome nights with many Erasmus students.
The second trip we did was called “Sea Battle” and was a reunion in a cruise with Erasmus students from Estonia, Latvia, Sweden and Finland, where we did the trip from Tallinn to Stockholm. All the trip was a huge party because we met many people from different countries and visited Stockholm, a wonderful and beautiful city that we would love to return.
The final but not the least trip was to Lapland where we stayed at Rovaniemi and had the chance to make a safari at Ranua Wildlife Park, meet Santa Claus, correctly, Father Christmas and watched a great exhibition about the changes in the artic circle.
Christmas this year was entirely different for us because we are used to spend it in our hometown with our families , but this time we spent in Estonia between friends and Dri’s sister (Ines), who came to visit her. Ines came a few days before Christmas with a great surprise…portuguese typical food for Christmas, then we showed her Tallinn, including of course the Christmas Market, where we tasted the Hot Wine and the ginger biscuits. Our Christmas dinner was spent with 2 portuguese friends and Ines. We cooked codfish and octopus, 2 Christmas dishes in Portugal, exchanged gifts at midnight, as we always do back at home, and then went to an Italian party to celebrate Christmas Eve. We can’t forget to say that it was the only Christmas with SNOW that we had… UAAAU :D
New Year’s Eve was the best event ever because we went to Vabaduse Valjak ( a square in Tallinn) to see the firework and it was snowing a lot at midnight. As we always do in Portugal we ate the 12 raisins at midnight, asked our wishes together celebrating with a 3L bottle of champagne and singing. Then Dri asked some people a sleigh ride through Vabaduse Valjak, it was really funny because after that they spoke with us in portuguese. After we walk to some friends house and saw people laying down on the snow, so we decided to share their experience and throwed ourselves to the snow without even thinking in the – 8 degrees! Lol
At ETCH the practical training continued with changes of Radiology Service, from CT and MRI to Radiography in the beginning of December. After 4 weeks in Radiography we finished our practices in Tallinn and had to move to Tartu, so we can have mammography practical training in Tartu University Clinic.
Now we are in Tartu since sunday and we will be here until the end of January to complete the practical training and present our self-study project. We hope to have a lovely time here, but we are already missing Tallinn and all the Erasmus students there.

Tervisecks!

Dri and Mimi