• › Why I Don’t Feel Like I Belong in Sweden — My Travel Dreams & Bucket List

    Not about escaping — it’s about finding where my soul feels at home beyond Sweden

    — Porch Talk —

    All my life I’ve felt like there is something more out there for me. Discover hidden gems, see how people live in different parts of the world. Explore, discover and experience.

    Not in a dramatic “I hate everything here” kind of way (almost though) — I may be born in Sweden but the urge to “escape” is huge.

    I want to go all over the world – Spain, Greece, America, Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, Kenya and so many more places.



    I want to see and experience culture, food, streets and everything. Not tourist things but those hidden alleys with stories of each person in each household. See their windows, flowers, garden, back alleys (all this of course without trespassing or being a creep) and see, just their personality.

    Traveling, for me, isn’t just about checking off tourist spots and bucket list to be honest — even though I have some special places I wish to go to. It’s about feeling something.

    Maybe it looks like escaping. Maybe part of it is. But I think it’s more about searching for something I haven’t found yet.

    It’s not about escaping Sweden — it’s about finding the right place for me whether it’s in Norway, Spain or Vietnam or somewhere else.
    It’s more about this constant feeling of wanting to explore what exists beyond what I already know.

    I want freedom. I want to feel like myself without needing to hide. I want to explore the world together with my son.

    Maybe that is what I’m searching for — not just places, but pieces of myself.

    Explore. See. Feel. Hear. Touch. Breathe.

    — Question Jar —

    ● Do you think home is a place, a person, or a feeling?
    ● Have you ever felt like you were born in the wrong place?

    ● If you could disappear to anywhere for a year — where would you go?



  • › Our Son Had His Own Graduation

    Today is not a regular day because today it was my son’s end-of-the-school year celebration.

    Swedish celebration - skolavslutning
    Swedish flag in the wind.



    We went to his school to see the “graduation”. Was waiting for them to come walking and start the singing..until a mother or if it was an assistant or teacher, came up to me “Are you E’s mom?” I answered yes and she told me that my son’s class was having their singing somewhere else.

    I got very irritated to be honest, because this has made us miss 10 minutes of his singing. I told M where they were so we went there.

    None of us had gotten the information about this. We thought they were gonna celebrate at their regular location, no they had changed location!

    So unfortunately we missed 10 minutes but we attended for the rest. Unfortunately we had to hide (mostly me) because E would have left the classes and their performance to run up to me. I saw a little bit of it.

    He was so good! He attended the whole performance with the class. Sure, when they were was switching songs (the teachers use signs and signlanguage to show and tell which song was next) we heard E sing randomly “Keep going but be supersneaky” < another type of Baby Shark and so many other songs. I laughed.

    Our son had his own graduation.

    It was wonderful to see and hear him participate in every event.

    I love E and how funny he is. Parents were laughing as well. Imagine, all quiet location, before sign languages etc and speak started, all you could hear was my son singing baby shark.

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    Car selfie of an adhd mom
    Car selfie. *filter*

    After the graduation of our son, M and I left (E was gonna stay in school to have an end-of-school year with his class), we decided to go to the foodstore. Todays dinner; Indian food and rice.

    Snapshots of today



  • › It started wonderful but ended up me having my first-time anxiety attack..

    Warning: Long post 😅 It’s been a waaay long time for me to post this. I actually started to write this last Monday but finished it now. Sorry that it took time!

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    It started wonderful and fun but ended up with tears and a first-time anxiety attack.

    Hello my darlings, my pumpkins! I apologize so much that I havent blogged the whole weekend but I have (as you read here) been visiting my friend for her birthday.

    But here the pictures and adventures of the weekend come.

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    Thursday ;

    so many transportation and so much stress. Confused and walked around like a chicken. I came to conclusion that, finding the right subway and train in Stockholm is harder than finding transportation and directions in Italy. Even though I don’t know Italian.

    Arrived in Norrtälje in time and waited on my friend Michaela at the bus station. Standing there, with pink-red hair, my demon vest, and all in black, with headphones on, I danced around to Psy—Gangnam Style. Yes, I still listen to that song.

    Went home to Michaela, dumped my stuff and we went out to the town. Super cute!

    We went to a few stores and just walked around. Michaela showed me around. I took some photos with my phone .

    I found some cute stuff, like the wall and flower shelf.

    After that, we met up with P and had lunch (note that I hadn’teaten the whole day), and we went to a place called Ed’s Burgers, which was delicious. Homemade burgers and their chili mayonnaise… oh my god. I could drink it! They weren’t shy about giving fries, that’s for sure!

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    Friday

    The day started with just walking around, grocery store and just relax. We went to a shopping area and the joy i had on my face when they had one of my favorite stores! I bought some makeup there because I didn’t have with me. Eyeshadows, Highlighter, eyeliner etc. Some candy and drinks to drink while being there. After we went to an other store – Dollarstore where I bought my absolute favorite eyeshadow palette and eyeliner!

    Went to Lidl and bought a 2L sprite zero to take with us back to her home. While crossing the road when the light were green, a freaking bus came so we had to rush back up on the sidewalk. He almost drove over us! Even when the light was green for us.

    The shock and adrenaline that kicked in on me was insane! Michaela got mad directly! Before all this happened we said “luckily no one of us is suicidal anymore” and this happened. Oh god.

    Back home we started to get ready. The time was around 4pm and Michaela had made a reservation at a restaurant for us two and her friends. Makeup, fashion, hair fixed, bag packing and off we went.

    Note that it was first time in a while I wore makeup so I automatically felt a little pretty which was so good.

    In my bag i had packed down my powerbank, bottles of Pepsi Max, perfume etc. Typical stuff for me.

    After that we went to the restaurant and a friend was sitting there already. She was early so we sat down with her and after a few minutes another friend of Michaela came.

    We started to order food and Michaela and P ordered alcohol while me and E drank Coca Cola Zero.

    The food arrived and I said everyone to wait “PICTURES TO MY BLOG!” and I took them (E and Michaelas food pictures didnt turn out good so I skip sharing them).

    Honest review of my food ; I had the meat and potato gratin (3rd picture) with Aioli. It was delicious! I didnt eat the tomato though but the salad we got separately, after I removed the cucumber. 8/10 I would rate the food.

    After the restaurant we went to a pub and just had fun. So much laughter, alcohol coming (Pepsi Max for me) and karaoke.  I actually tried a few (3) sips from P’s beer. Fun fact; I like the taste of beer but dislike alcohol.

    Michaela did karaoke with the song “Durch den Monsun” by Tokio Hotel (our favorite band) but I saw she struggled (for the first time) so I went up to her EVEN after I have been saying “Over my dead body you are getting me up and sing karaoke” yet I did and we sang the song together. I sang and we had fun.

    Luckily I didnt have a microphone.  I refused it but we stood there and sang. Afterwards we went back to the table and the laughing continued.

    a random dude had been trying for a long time to try get anyone of us to dance with him. He was super drunk so we refused.

    Instead me and P took pictures together (new friendship has been made since thursday) and I had to guide her to bathroom etc (shes almost blind), we spoke about random stuff, laughed and had fun.

    Im not sure if she gives me permission to be shown in the blog so I have covered her eyes etc.

    After many hours of laughter, alcohol, me chugging Pepsi max (due to me had tried 3 sips of alcohol) we all went home. We were home at 3am. That is insanely late for me but hey, I had fun!

    Yes I used a filter to make my makeup show better on the one where I drink beer and to make my nose smaller (I hate my nose) thats why the glas is curvy.

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    Saturday

    We went out to the town again. Michaela needed to go pick up a jewelry she had at a store where she had engraved names. Afterwards we walked around, went to stores and she showed me an 113 years old café! C R A Z Y!

    They had a kitchen from the very beginning of the start of the café. I love seeing old stuff like that. Thinking of everything that could have happened, the baking, cooking etc. My mind went crazy! Wonder what they actually made on it.

    after that we went out for a walk, looking around and me having my phone is my hand, taking a lot of pictures – almost so I think Michaela got annoyed of me 😂

    The first picture of the fish—oh my god, how insanely full the river was! I have never seen so many, and unfortunately the picture doesn’t do it justice.

    3pm it was time! Michaela had brought tickets to go to Finland! CRAZY! The ride was only four hours but still!! Sadly stuff happened so I didn’t enjoy the trip. I cried pretty much the whole ride (why im not getting into) so I mostly sat and played games while struggling to not let Michaela and L (a new friend) see my tears.

    I saw a pretty sunset so ofcourse I took pictures, but after it became more beautiful, I just ignored it. My head and tears was out of control.

    I regret it today but hopefully another chance will come so I can see it.

    More pictures from the boat comes below and I’m happy that I took all these. Some happiness in sadness. All I thought when I saw the sunset was my mother, she loves sunsets and especially when the sky is pink. I could hear her voice in my head saying “Look Emma, look how gorgeous the sunset and sky is”. It made me happy. Yes my mother has passed away.

    Have I told you all how much I love the sea? I could live on it.

    Saturday Night

    After we came back to the town, we all went out to the pub. Which is where I had my very first in-life experience of an anxiety attack . It was scary. Why I had it, I won’t tell. But everyone i hung out with knows the reason.

    We also went to another pub which in my opinion was cute. A Hard Rock style ish pub. My style you know. Me and Michaela went there earlier on the day because she wanted to show me it. All I could say was “Aw its super cute”. No drinking there tho at that time of the day.

    After a while we started to walk back home to Michaela, and she showed me the town at nighttime, and I wrote some interesting messages on the water (after the low temperature at night and heat of the day) at the bus stop, some very interesting messages.

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    Sunday

    Time to go home. I packed all my stuff, and we took off to Stockholm, where we went, the more confused we got to find the right platform.

    We ended up at a food place and ordered some burgers (I had chicken burger) and sat there for a bit. I got stressed though. Thinking I would miss the train, even though I had two hours before it ledt.

    after the food, we went out so I could take pictures (for the blog ofcourse)  and on the same time have a 🚬 (yes I smoke) and all off the sudden two girls came up and asked for one. Me looking at them and I said straight out “No. You are minors” and they walked away.

    After that we left pretty fast (I didnt want to get asked by more minors – they are sneaky by asking several people at the time) and walked to the trainstation – which took of plenty of time to find the correct platform.

    We sat here for around 1 hour. Just talked about the weekend, how it went etc. I tried to sneak up on pigeons to take pictures up close but no. Ofcourse they ran off.

    The tears fell down my cheeks while I was on the train back home. Back home I met up with a friend who held me company for 30 minutes before the bus came. I had told her all about the weekend, so we spoke about that, and of course, I started to cry.

    At home, I dumped all my stuff and went straight to bed. I had no energy to stay up. Migraine had kicked in hours earlier due to all crying.

    More photos I took in Norrtälje

    Highlight and.. not so highlights

    Highlight; Finally met my friend after five months of chatting and video ● Dinner at a cute restaurant with two other people where bonds were connected ● went to pubs for the first time of my life ● sang karaoke ● danced with the dude (I write about it below) ● sunsets

    Not highlights; all the tears ● the migraines ● boat (it was no fun for me) and probably more which you have probably read above. Haha! My head is empty now.

    About the dancing with a dude: Remember the dude who had been nagging us, trying to get any of us to dance with him on the Friday night? Well, on Saturday I did. I danced with him, but he was horrible at dancing, so I ended up going back to the table, and we laughed. He sat down at the table next to us.

    Yeah, so this was pretty much the weekend. We had been doing more stuff as well, but nothing exciting, lol!

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    I apologize as well for wrong spelling and weird grammar. I’m writing this on the phone, and the text plus photos in this post make the writing process super slow.



  • › The stress this morning is ridiculous, but I’m finally…

    The day is here and im currently on my fourth sort of transportation.  The stress is real and I can honestly say It’s easier to find where to go in Italy than in Stockholm, Sweden.

    The alarm went off at 6am as usual. I packed pretty much all my stuff yesterday but had to add some stuff before I left for the bus to go to the train station.

    The stress this whole morning/fornoon was insane but now im on my last transportation til the end destination for the weekend.

    Bus, train , subway and bus. All this since 8.12am til noon. Insane.

    And being a Swedish person going to the capital of Sweden and getting lost everywhere is kind of embarrassing. Even if I asked three different staff for directions to find the correct platforms, etc., I still managed to get lost. It was horribly bad with signs of where the platforms, etc., were.

    It’s so bad that I think it’s easier to find in Italy. The bus, the trolley, street navigation, etc. Compared to here. That’s crazy 😅

    I just wanted to pop in here and say good morning and tell you how my morning has been. I’m going to try to get some rest because I’m dead tired, and I need to save battery on my phone. I only have 8% and I’m at my end destination in 30 minutes. 🥴

    I’ll blog more later. Tell you all about today’s adventure etc



  • › You Asked, I’m Here: A New Introduction

    I have new followers and new readers – HI, HELLO AND WELCOME! I hope you enjoy my little corner here on the internet.

    I thought I should do a new small introduction of myself. Maybe you wanna tell me a little bit about yourself? Would love to know 🤗🩷

    I’m excited to share a fresh introduction about myself. I’m someone who enjoys embracing new experiences and learning every day.  I find joy in growth and discovery. 

    This new chapter is all about being authentic, open, and ready to make meaningful connections.

    (I dont have other pictures right now so I use these for now)

    Me, myself and my life

    Hello! My name is Emma and my blog is called Emma Santorini.  Santorini is not my real last name but I took it into my name here on the blog due to Santorini, Greece has been a dream location of mine to visit and I just love the name “Santorini”. anyway lets continue…

    I am a woman born 1990 (woop sweet 90s!) and I am from and live in Sweden. I am overweight due to a diagnosis I have called PCOS. I have weight almost 200kg but have struggled and fought to lose a lot of weight. My journey is not over yet. You will also be able to follow my weightloss journey here in the blog.

    I’m also a mother to a sweet little man (born 2017) who has autism level 3 and is non verbal.

    I am nurse assistant but I am currently studying (swedish;) Barnskötare med specialisering funktionsnedsättning (caretaker for children with specializing npf sorta explanation).  Which means I will be able to help/teach/ be assistant to children or adults with special needs in school etc. My goal is to become a preschool teacher and work with special need kids (autism, down syndrome etc).

    My intrests is (except my family) is beauty, photography, learning new things, music and laugh.

    I dislike; horses (scary for me), clowns, bridges, small spaces and deep oceans (even though i love ocean/the sea)

    I like; Pepsi max, photo, travel, metal music, write lyrics, chill, hang out with friends, doing makeup and alot more.

    My style, personality and the whole shebang

    My style is kinda odd. Normally I have neon red hair with a lot of makeup. My fashion style is a little bit mix of goth and alternative. Meaning, everything i wear is black and has attitude. Lol!

    What is the blog about?

    My blog is a lifestyle blogger with a mix of photography, mental health, daily life, travel and family.

    I will also write about topics I think is important to talk about such as mental health, depression, bullying etc.

    I want to help people, connect with everyone no matter if you have a blog or not. Special niches, intrests etc. I love connecting with people.

    Photographer

    I am a hobby / amateur photographer. My thing in photography is landscape, travel, macro, windows and details. Yes you read right.. windows. I discovered that winter 2024 and I had to look up the law in Sweden when it comes to that > read my post about the terrifying interaction I had and why I looked up the laws < taking pictures of people’s windows.

    I also take photos of food. Yes you read that right as well. If I try something new, or hanging out with my friends etc. Always snapping pictures of the food so be prepared for food pictures as well.

    I upload a lot of pictures in my blog. Both pictures from my cameras Canon 450D (my companion in crime) and Canon R10 but also with my phone (depends which one i have) thats currently Samsung s23 Ultra.

    I edit my pictures on my phone (yes my laptop is too weak to handle photo editing program) and they always look sharp but unfortunately in the blog…a whole different story.

    Education (Nurse Assistant)

    I studied to become a nurse assistant back in August 2022 to December 2023. January 2024 I started to study my grades up and have been doing that since that time. In August 2025 I’m gonna start study Barnskötare med specialisering funktionsnedsättning (swedish) and I have mixed feelings.

    Nurse assistant education was actually a promise I made with my mom before she passed. It was her dream for to become a N.A. I love helping people and elderly people. Being there when they need help, their extended arm when needed etc.  But after been working at the hospital, different senior homes (this was also before I had my education that I worked on S.H) and what I saw plus experience among the workers… it made me quit fast. I couldn’t stand for how they worked and everything.

    Complains to the boss and the city halls about how it was didnt help so I quit.

    Picture of me when I worked at a senior home.

    when i worked at the hospital and lost -40kg on 3 months. How? I walked 250km per day (not in one walk. several walks per day)

    Worth knowing about me and the blog

    I am self-taught on the language english. I know my grammar and some spelling will be off and wrong. I apologize for that now and in advance.

    I have ADHD so my posts can sometimes be all over.

    I struggle with bad mental health that iam working on to get out. I have been in dark places but I am in much better place now and it gives me motivation to continue.

    My blog is raw (I am honest about things and stuff) and will not hide stuff. The blog is like my diary. Where I can write my thoughts feelings- mourn the loss of my parents- personal struggles- positivity to everyone and what happen in my life.

    Everything is not always positive and sometimes I will be off from the blog and that will due to the fact that it is a lot going on in my head. But I will try to stay active.

    As a small part of a family blogger I will also share posts about my son- what he has done, school, activities, etc

    Future plans

    I have a lot of future plans, both when it comes to my life but also with the blog.

    I will travel and is actually currently planning of going to either Santorini or Mykonos in Greece or Milan in Italy. I haven’t decided yet. I want to “finish” one country at the time but also explore other places.

    I want be able to inspire people somehow.

    I want to expand my knowledge of things like in photography, languages etc

    (ridiculous plan now) I want to be published as a photographer with my picture somewhere. That would be so amazing!

    BECOME MYSELF! Yes my absolute future plans im gonna work hard on is to become myself again. Happy, bubbly, laughing Emma. and ofcourse have my neon red hair again.

    I guess that summons most of it about me and this introduction. 

    Remember to follow me and my blog. You can click subscribe at the bottom right (on phone) or you can subscribe with your email adress (I wont be able to see that one so dont worry).