I'd say this has been my best week in Helsinki so far. This week was the start of the second block of teaching and I think now, two months in, people are finally becoming comfortable with each other. I think the first few months were a constant battle with the language barrier, whereas now in general, we all understand each other and the non-natives have got accustomed to the native accents.
On Wednesday we went to a halloween party run by the society for international degree students. We had the party to ourselves- we arrived and there were about 10 other people at the club, plus us: about 15 or so. Then all of these other people left leaving us dancing away in the club alone until the wee hours of the morning. It was great as everyone dressed up and made a real effort- I was 'white trash' with two of the German speakers and we made dresses from bin liners. We also had the corpse bride, phantom of the opera, a male angel and various random halloween esque creations. However, this was not the climax night- this came on Friday night where the accommodation assistants were running a party in our basment with free drinks. Here EVERYONE from the international block was dressed up and I'm really glad that we all put in such an effort, as none of the Fins did. We then went to a club night in the student union, and then walked around Helsinki at 3am in the 3'c temperatures trying to find a new club. We didn't as they all shut at about this time, and eventually headed back home for an after party in someones room which went on until 7am. Saturday was quite a somber day due to the hangovers so we went out to a Thai buffet.
Friday night:
Wednesday night:
Then Sunday bought the partying again- we went to a gay club and got wasted, and I met a Finnish "pop star" named Cristal Snow ... actually I just googled him, and low and behold he was actually not lying! He appears to be very famous in Finland, and was one of the choices for representing Finland in Eurovision this year. All of his songs have been in the Finnish top 10. So yes, anyway, I met Cristal Snow and we took lots of photos together. It was pretty funny as he just started talking to me then was like "why do you have such a British accent?" and I said, "because I'm English?" and he was like "oh my god, thats amazing! The English accent is so sexy". Then started to tell all of his friends whilst I stood there saying hello like a drunk idiot.
One thing I did notice last night was how ok we are with gay or lesbian couples in the UK. I mean, we were in a gay club, what did people expect?? But it was ridiculous, and embarassing, that when two guys started making out all of my friends started taking photos, laughing and just generally acting like idiots. I really do not see what the big deal is: you wouldn't be doing that if it were a guy and a girl, so how is it any different now? I'm a bit of a regular in the gay triangle in Edinburgh even though I'm straight as a lot of my friends are gay or bisexual, and I don't mind going out there so we do. The irony is, it wasn't even my idea to go out to this club last night, so I just assumed everyone was cool with it. But they clearly weren't and it really annoyed me!
Today I went to my new classes: Mongolian and one called Central Africas Crisis. Mongolian didn't really happen as I turned up and no one was there. Granted, there are only two students in the class, but the teacher wasn't there either. There was a sign on the door but it was only written in Finnish so that wasn't very helpful, although it did give an email so I am going to make a wild guess and email it, to explain that I came but couldn't find the class. Then I went to my Africa class and it may as well have been in Finnish too. With all due respects to the teacher, she can not speak English. I felt so bad thinking that though as I was probably the only one in the room who speaks English natively, but even so, no one could understand what she was saying at all. I got about 5 lines of notes out of a 2 hour lecture. We have to buy a text book so I think I will just study using this and hope for the best, which is a shame as it looks to be an interesting course.
My best friend from Edinburgh is booking flights to come and see me tomorrow. He can't come until January but I'm really excited about him coming. I'm also going to Russia in a week on Thursday which will be fun, we went to a meeting and sent off for our visas today.
I hope next week is as good as this week!
