End of week one in Graz

Austria is lovely. We feel really welcome. The people we are dealing with are all so nice (except the grumpy man in the service centre that Mette had to deal with..."where are your papers!") and the McDonalds house is perfect.

The weather is cold and it needs to snow now please! We don't mid the cold but it's more fun when it snows. We may as well get some pay off for having to dress up so warm and lug our stuff around the hospital all day long.

The hospital is pretty good too. Nice and clean and well laid out. The walk up the hill is okay as we're probably putting on kilos of weight with all the extra eating so we'll need something to keep the edge off.

The therapy itself appears to be having a positive effect. Lilian is showing small signs of changes, such as accepting the lemon drink earlier today, but we both feel a bit lost and confused. I think we'd feel better if we sat down with one of the staff and talked over how this stuff works. We sort of got thrown in at the deep end on Tuesday and haven't had a sit down talk with anyone about the overall process. We're going to ask for a meeting tomorrow so we can ask some questions and get a better handle on what's happening now and what the goals are. Some if it might seem obvious from a distance but we need a bit of hand holding now we're in the woods.

The physio is my personal favourite class as it's something Lilian really needs to develop. It's funny how different the UK is to Austria in this respect. Our physio Eva is so firm but so nice it makes me feel better. I've always been the hard one with Lilian and Mette needs to toughen up a bit. It is hard when Lilian looks at you and smiles though!

So overall a positive place to be. We feel a bit lost on the details and need to be more assertive with an action plan but Lilian is getting everything she needs and changes are emerging. We were told to plan for two weeks with three weeks as a contingency. I can't see us returning to the UK before the 23rd Dec at this moment in time but...