This week marks the start of week five in Helsinki. On Thursday I am going to Edinburgh until Monday, so it proves to be a very short week indeed. Last week was a strange week in which I decided many things:
a) I don't like my Finnish class, so have joined a new one
b) I have no hope in hell of passing the Finnish exam in December
c) Due to b) I should enrol on an extra course, so dutifully found a course starting in October on the Central African Crisis... interesting!
d) I want to carry on learning Mongolian after finding a course starting in October. I have now enrolled.
So in short, I am taking 40 credits rather than 30 this semester because I am taking classes- Mongolian and Finnish- for fun rather than the credit allocation. I never ever thought this would happen in my life, esspecially given that I am yet to make any progress what so ever on my essay for next week.

Now I've lived here a month, there are certain things which are starting to strike me about the Finnish way of life. One is that everything seems to be based upon honesty and trust. I've just been reading the Vienna blog, and the same thing is the case in Helsinki. When you go on public transport, you are expected to swipe your travel card at the entrance of the tube/tram/train stops, then press the appropriate button to deduct the cost for your journey. Now, a local journey- 1- costs 1.50 euro, whereas a regional one- 3- costs 5 euros... but there isn't anyone there to check that you pay at all, let alone actually cough up the right amount of cash for your entire trip! Even at the central train station- where one can get the train to Russia- the system is based completely on honesty, and there doesn't seem to be any consideration for the fact that people might not pay.
Its the same in the supermarket. When you buy fruit and vegetables, each one is given a code, and once you've chosen what you want you have to go to the scales, weigh it, then press the appropriate button which gives you a little sticker to place on your bag with the price. Given the fact that food here is expensive, it has crossed my mind on more than one occassion that I could easily exploit the system by either selecting a cheaper number when I weigh in, or adding a few more carrots/potatoes etc to my bag after pricing it up.
But it feels really wrong to take advantage of a system purely because everyone in Finland must be much more honest than the British will ever be! Having said that, I have taken my fair share of free public transport journeys... some due to the fact I assumed there would be a ticket swiper on the actual train (there isn't), and some because I wasn't travelling far so thought I'd get away with it.
Perhaps by this time next year I shall be trustworthy and Finnish when it comes to paying for my travel!

The Erasmus Student Network- ESN- is really active here, which is brilliant, as they constantly have different events happening almost every single night. This week I have signed up for a tour of a chocolate factory- tomorrow, and a tour of the national TV studios. All for free! However the trip I am most excited about is happening on November 1st, where ESN Finland has joined up with ESN Estonia and Sweden, hired out a 1300 capacity ferry, and we are travelling Helsinki-Stockholm-Tallin-Helsinki over one weekend. I am really excited about it, as the ferry will be completely full of Erasmus students from loads of different universites (there are only 50 Helsinki students) and should be an amazing weekend. All for 40 euros!
I have also signed up for the trip to Russia at the end of Novemeber, which will be my 2nd outing in Russia in the last 6 months.

As I said, I am going home next weekend and I am really looking forward to it. As much as I am enjoying life in Helsinki, sometimes it does feel as though Edinburgh is going on without me and by the time I get back in May it will be too late to catch up with whats happened over the last year. I haven't seen my best friends since May due to being in Mongolia all summer, so it will be great to catch up and I really hope that I can persuade them to come and see me in Finland. I think this is one of the hardest things about being here, because as much as you're enjoying your time abroad, sometimes you just can't help thinking "why did I decide to do this?? I just want to go home!" esspecially when trying to explain the ins and outs of your life to people who have only known you for a month.