Week three in Helsinki has consisted of lots of alcohol and lots of football. At a great expense given that the standard price for a pint of the cheapest beer is 5 euros, even in the student bars.
On Thursday Finland were playing Germany in the world cup qualifier, so naturally, being the Finland loving erasmus students that we are, we all pottered off to the pub to watch it. However, as I've said before, being on exchange in Helsinki seems to be synonomous with being German, meaning we were constantly jeered and booed by the Fins whenever the Germans scored. The score was, incidentally, 3-3, and it was an amazing game to watch as whenever Finland scored Germany casually popped one into the back of the net a few minutes later. Finland were damn lucky they didn't loose it in the last few minutes!
Then last night we went to the pub again, this time it was to watch Chelsea v Man City which was an interesting game with a red card for John Terry. However, I was more interested in the other screen as Derby (my home team) were playing Sheffield United. Its crazy how many devout Finnish fans the English clubs seem to have. Last night there were shirts for both Chelsea and Man City, but also for Man United, Arsenal, Newcastle and Southampton. There was even a strong Sheffield fan base, but sadly I was the only Rams supporter.
I have now had 2 Finnish classes, so I feel I will definitley be fluent in no time. I wish. My class has 60 students, the teacher doesn't speak English, and all I have learnt are verbs but have no idea how to turn them into an actual usable form. In a way it feels slightly pointless learning Finnish because everyone here speaks such good English. But that is the Brits abroad mentality which I don't want to have, so I'm going to persevere with the Finnish. The main usage for my language skills will be for reading signs and in the supermarket. In terms of spoken language, Finnish may as well be Latin, as no one other than the Fins themselves speak it and I doubt I will ever be in a situation where I will have to speak the language. Which is sad, as it sounds so beautiful. The English usage here is completely different to in say, Spain, where "everyone speaks English" as there, Spanish is actually useful. Here, I am essentially living in a trilingual country, where Swedish, English and Finnish are used on a day to day basis by everyone and in shops you are generally spoken to first in English, then in whatever language you reply in.
On Tuesday night we went to a toga party organised by the social sciences faculty. It was really fun, as at first, there were only a few people from my building going, then eventually we managed to persuade the French to come out too. It was a quite strange event in the sense that its the first party we have been to where it wasn't dance music being played, but instead we attended the Big Cheese with the Spice Girls, Las Ketchup (with all of the dance moves courtesy of the Europeans) and Westlife. Its amazing how naked some people can get when it comes to dancing wearing a bed sheet, put it that way. The Italians were loving it and spent the evening telling everyone they were the real Romans...
It still hasn't quite dawned on me that I am here and the idea of being here as a university student is to do work. I am yet to join the library or get my student card. I still haven't registered with the police and in general, haven't particularly achieved much on the administration front. One thing I have established, however, is that Edinburgh appear to have no idea that a) I have changed my degree from Linguistics and Anthropology to Anthropology with Development, and b) that I am in Helsinki. I have now recieved multiple emails from Linguistics welcoming me to third year, details of my new DoS aka the one I had last year and from the linguistics department, and as of yet nothing from anthropology. I have emailed them though, so hopefully it will all become clearer soon as on my myed I am currently signed up for an array of courses starting next Monday in George Square!
I need to start reading some Levi-Strauss for my class on Tuesday. I missed the Friday lecture as I forgot to set my alarm, so it doesn't bode well if I then don't do the reading for the next lecture. I've already had to phone the parentals to ask for a loan until my erasmus grant comes through as I've somehow managed to spend about £900 of my student loan in 3 weeks. Its technically not my faut though because I've been buying flights to come home in October and Christmas at £200+ a time and have had to pay in advance for various other things such as "essential" trips to Lapland and St Petersburg in December. All is good on the travel front. I have established that I can go to Tallinn - mixture of bad communication and hard to understand ferry rules- on a few boats each day which do carry under 21 year olds. We might be going to Tallinn tomorrow actually, but we haven't decided yet. Its 20 euros for a return trip.
Things have got slightly easier here on the social front, although my favourite quotes of the week have to be: "sorry, I don't understand you, you are too English" said by an Italian and "I think your accent is amazing but I have no idea what you're saying" said by a Russian. Both in reference to my English skills. People in my building are starting to talk to each other a little more, and its now common place in the evenings for there to be a corridor party somewhere in the block. The only issue is that the amount of doors requiring unlocking mean that even if there is something going on you won't know about it unless you know someone who lives on that corridor. Its worse than Pollock in that respect. I never lived there in 1st year but I understand that you could go anywhere in your house. Here, you have to unlock 3 doors before you reach your corridor, each requiring a different key.
In reference to my aims for the week last week, I don't think I have achieved any of them other than going to the gym. I have been 3 times and every time I have been it is full of pregnant ladies. Joy. I still have to buy wellies, boots and jeans. So all in all it has been a sucessful week, even if not on the shopping or the academic side of life!
