Semi-truths

I'm learning time at SFI

I have shared this story with a few people but it seems like a good story for the blog too.  You see, my attempts to learn Swedish are laughable at best.  I have the hardest time hearing the break in words and getting my mouth to make the correct sounds.  Lately, we have to go around and say a few sentences about ourselves like our names, ages, where we are from, what we do for work, etc.  The basics.  Well, the first time we learned how to talk about our professions there was slight miscommunication.

Everyone in my class cleans for a living.  It's much like any country in that immigrants do the manual labor jobs.  When my teacher asked me what I did I said I was going to school for public health.  There isn't really a translation for public health that everyone would understand.  My teacher asked me to explain it more.  So I said I did research.  She looked like she understood a little more.  Then she leaned over the table and pretended to look into a microscope.  I said it was kind of like that but more like I write reports for health or medicine.  Then she started to pretend to sort pills and pop them in her mouth.  Laughing, I said, "nei, nei, I study things like diabetes."  I was searching for anything that would make sense.  Well, this led to her getting very excited because she now understood: I'm a doctor.  Everyone leaned in and was very impressed.  How did I get to move to Sweden and get such a good job as a doctor without speaking Swedish?  I tried correcting her again but there was a clear lack of understanding between us.  I finally just went with it.  Now, 7 people in Sweden think I'm a doctor.  I hope no one has a medical emergency during SFI.

On the side of truthfulness, I'm in the Social Medicine and Global Health department so I guess it's not so far to say I'm a doctor.  Right?