To be honest, I am not particularly sure what I have done this week. It seems to have passed so quickly that I can’t remember whether it was this week or last week that I did x, y or z. On Monday, we went to Tallinn on a complete whim and nearly missed the ferry back to Helsinki due to buying alcohol. It costs 18 euros for a day return to Tallinn, and as its only 90 minutes by ferry it’s a very viable option to do every so often to pick up some cheap drink. We are considering making Tallinn a bi-weekly event, as literally, drink there is so cheap. Not ridiculously cheap, but I bought a crate (15 cans) of Coppaberg cider for 13 euros, when it is 2.50 euro a can here. The guys spent ages buying cigarettes, only to find out the ones they had chosen were actually ridiculously long and ‘girl’ ones.
On Tuesday, someone decided it would be a great idea to watch l’aberge de espanol, which is a French film about Erasmus students. However, when all 15 of us finally sat down to watch it on the only 17 inch laptop screen in the building, it turned out that Pauline’s copy was without the English subtitles. She is French so doesn’t really need them! And the French weren’t too keen on spending every minute translating into English what was happening. So we decided to watch Thank you for smoking instead, which was ok, but I always feel guilty watching English language films here as even though we always put the English subtitles on, its fairly hard for everyone else to understand what is happening. Although I guess its better to stick to American comedy than the satirical language of us Brits!
Thursday night caused a dilemma, as there were two parties happening, and no one knew which one to go for. We settled on a ‘spies and assassins’ theme night, and everyone got to work making costumes. I say everyone, but really I mean the French, who went out and bought paper plates to make masks, along with face paints and other various costume essentials such as hats and sunglasses. We (the Scottish-Australian contingent) settled for just wearing black and looking a bit classier than normal, but the French weren’t having any of it and I ended up with a Viennese mask, and Gregor had his face painted black for a disguise. Which was accessorised with leaves, naturally.
Anyway, we finally got to the party, to find out we were actually the only people there and the organisers were desperate to get us to stay as they had somehow got an Italian film crew there who were making a documentary about exchange students in Finland (??) and at that stage didn’t have anyone to be in it. Everyone decided that they wanted to leave and go to the other party, but being the Brits that we are, we decided to stay due to feeling immensely guilty about ruining the night for the organisers. So we bargained, got in for free, and set about playing a game which involved having a piece of paper with someone’s name on the back, and a random word. You had to go up to said person, and get them to say the said word in random conversation. Easier said than done when you’re playing with a bunch of second language English speakers who don’t actually know what the word in English is! Then we left, went to the other ESN party, got drunk, danced and went home.
Lecture side of things, I found out that I have a 3000 word essay due in a week and a half time. Now, I knew it was due in on October 1st but I am still living in a world where it is the beginning of September. Kind of need to start doing some reading for it, but it’s an interesting topic: Magic, Religion and Science. I haven’t chosen my essay question yet, but they all look good and we have already done similar work and looked at the Azande and Malinowski’s work in anthropology at Edinburgh. My mum is posting my notes to me later in the week, which will be helpful. This week I also realised that I really enjoy kinship. At Edinburgh I always found kinship studies quite a dull area of anthropology with too many terms and ideas to comprehend. We did a module on it in first year and I decided, no, not for me! However, coming back to it two years later with my knowledge of the discipline and anthropologists, I am actually really enjoying my course here. I took it mainly because there is a comparable compulsory one at Edinburgh in third year, but Levi-Strauss and I are getting along fine! The 4000 word essay at the end of the course might change things though! The only issue is that because the lectures are twice a week, I keep wanting to refer to them constantly in my Anthropology of Religion course, and as the kinship course is ‘in honour of Levi-Strauss’ we are taking quite a structural approach, which although is interesting, I don’t really want to impact on my studies of anthropology as a whole. I’m still a student; I don’t need to stick myself into a ‘school of thought’ just yet.
(Still no wellies, boots or jeans)
