I may have boasted about my new ability to complete work without too much feedback… but I have noticed myself running into the same problem when working remotely. For the last week or so, my supervisor and I have switched to fully remote work, since we did a form of “goodbye” shift when my coworker finished up the program. We have had a few discussions about what my final tasks should be, but since I have finished up a lot of them, I am mostly just waiting on his feedback to finalize them. I guess it has been hard to be in contact due to his hectic and mostly inconsistent schedule. But this isn’t something that feels specific to Sweden; I would expect this in some cases in the U.S. as well. The only thing that feels culture-specific is the fact that my supervisor is often on a quick vacation, and overall a lot of his employees are working remotely right now. Since it is July, this seems pretty consistent throughout the country. Despite all of that, I have just continued with what I had started before the hybrid era, and it has been pretty easy to get it all done on my own. Just moving forward, I am still waiting on some feedback and someone to bounce my ideas off of. 

When it comes to communication out of the workplace, I really have not run into any issues. I unfortunately haven’t learned as much Swedish as expected, but that is because most people I run into speak very good English. Though most signage is written in Swedish and has a different alternative language from English, it is easy to work through the translation with whoever is working the establishment. I have had, like, one or two cases where I had to do a lot of pointing to avoid miscommunication, but that had less to do with style and more to do with a language barrier. It honestly never felt very difficult; it was easy to become comfortable and navigate situations just as I would at home. It feels like most of the Swedish I’ve learned has to do with food, or phrases/words I see every day on public transport.

At this point, I only have three days left in Sweden! I have lots of mixed feelings about how fast the time has gone by and what it will be like to leave a place I got to know so quickly. I feel like a lot has slowed down; I have more trouble finding activities I want to do that I haven’t done yet. And of course, my workload has reduced dramatically. I am just hoping to get in a lot of time with friends before we go our separate ways, and I want to soak up the places that feel familiar and special to me before I leave them for a long time.