Signs of spring?

Perhaps I got my hopes up too high (or simply jinxed the situation) by posting what I thought were signs of spring to my Facebook page. It has been glorious for the past week or so - sunny days, blue skies and although nights were still crisp for the most part it was well above zero during the day. And then yesterday (Sunday, April 7, 2013) the skies turned gloomy and overcast and fat, fluffy, wet flakes of snow began swirling around and the temperature plummeted. But it didn't last long and today though not as warm it is once again sunny. I even saw some rather undernourished looking snowdrops (compared to those in Victoria) in the newly revealed but still completely winter-brown lawn beside one apartment building. The flowers weren't open but it's a good sign (I hope).

Happy to see the open-air fruit and vegetable seller back in Vaksala Torg

Not too many colourful flowers to be seen but there is manmade (or perhaps more accurately womanmade) colour around

I saw the woman who put this piece of guerilla knitting in place - it was the only time I've actually seen anyone in a phone booth in Uppsala - when I tried to use the one in the main square last summer it did not work as advertised (although it said I could make a toll-free call to a 1-800 number in Canada that did not work nor could I make a collect call to my credit card company)

Brain and pen for hire

In a little over 8 weeks the two remaining courses in the first year of the International Health Master's course will finish and I will be looking at three months of summer stretching ahead of me. I am going to do some touring around Europe - after all who knows when I will be this way again - but I would very much like to also make a little bit of money. Perhaps even more crucially I want to explore the International Health field with two purposes in mind - confirm what I am good at (some clues are in the title of this post) and should dig deeper into for the future (in terms of employment) as well as get some inspiration for my master's thesis which I need to have a firm idea about by the time school begins again in September 2013.

I have pretty much concluded that I need to work virtually this summer but perhaps that is a misconception on my part. On Thursday I'll be heading with several of my classmates to the Global Health Beyond 2015 event in Stockholm. Unfortunately I'm not well prepared - no stock of business cards at hand or resumes to give out. But I am hoping that perhaps I will have a chance encounter (or knowing me a purposeful one since I'm hardly shy) with someone/some organization that will show me a path to pursue. Wish me luck and if you know of someone who'd like to hire me to produce literature reviews, read and summarize research on global health topics all while keeping the coffee coming and providing home-baked treats drop me an email.