This week I joined this group on Facebook.
It feels appropriate to say the least - I'd love to say that I do loads of work here, but that would be a blatent lie.
Right now I've actually got the most work to do than I've had in the entire time I've been here - 2 essays to write and an exam, and about 300 pages of texts to read. Fun times ahead for me given that now doing work consists of going to the library to get a book. If anyone of us actually do any work at all for an hour or so - to quote my French friend - it feels like we need to go out for the evening and get drunk to celebrate how hard we've worked that day!
I really do not know how I will survive at Edinburgh next year. I got an email this week about dissertation stuff as anthropology start them in third year. It scared me, I don't understand the meaning of work anymore!
On to more pressing matters...
It's been a fairly relaxed week this week, we went out on Friday for Chris' birthday. He's one of the fellow British crew members here. Then we went out last night because it was wednesday and we always do. I'm not sure whats happening over the weekend yet but we're certainly going out on Friday and Saturday as there are parties happening. I'm starting to feel the pain of going out so much now which has resulted in a change of drinking habits. Normally we drink cider or beer at preparties which are both 2 euros for one measley small can in Lidl. Thus you need about 10 euros worth for it to be any point. Now we've started drinking wine - one bottle of the shittest wine is 5 euros and that gets you drunker for less money.
I'm doing some quite cool courses this period. Each semester is broken into 2 periods as I've said before, so we're now in the second period of sememster two. I'm doing one which I signed up for really randomly called the Italian Renaissance and it is run by a husband and wife team who are Canadian and only visiting Helsinki for 3 weeks. They're from York University. It's about the underground side, so the normal people during the Renaissance period, and things such as honour, language, power, gender etc. They're so funny and it's really nice to actually be in a class where you're expected to chat, contribute and the lecturers make jokes. There are usually only 10-15 students on a course so its more like a tutorial but no one says anything, and then the lecturers never ask questions, so it's more like a huge lecture at Edinburgh in that respect. However these Canadian two have come in and ask loads of questions - which the Finnish students don't quite know how to handle - so me being the only international student in the class ends up contributing far more than I would actually like to do! But it's really cool as it actually feels more like a tutorial and they're really relaxed too whereas in some of my other classes the teacher just literally stands with their notes in hand and talks for two hours solid. No powerpoint, just them talking and every so often they write a random word on the board. This is where I become thankful that Edinburgh classes are only 50 minutes long so even when a lecturer is dull, you're out relatively quickly. Also at home, it's not noticed if you don't attend due to the size of the lecture group. Here it's blatently obvious.
Today it is; according to wikipedia; the Day of Equality in Finland. We all knew something must be happening this morning as we woke up and there are Finnish flags on every single flag pole. I can see 4 from my room now and I live in an enclosed courtyard! This means that it must be some special national holiday or something tragic has happened. They had a flag day in the autumn when the gunman went into the Finnish school and shot the pupils, for example. However being the non Finnish community that we are, we had no idea what todays flags are signifying.
Also - THE SKY IS BLUE!!!!
It's strange, really really strange.
This is the first time in months that I can remember there being a blue sky and actual sun. That's right, Helsinki does have sun sometimes.
It was funny as in the unicafe (student cafeteria at the university) they shut all of the curtains to keep it dark and not let the sun in. So my Italian friend went to open them to feed her sun withdrawal symptoms since coming to Finland. At which point all of the Finnish people looked around like she was doing something scandalous!! It seems that even when there is sun, people here prefer to live in the darkness!
It's really beautiful today though even if it is strange, I am going to develop a squint I think as we're just not used to this much brightness.
Despite the fact there is still snow everywhere, perhaps maybe, this means that the spring is finally on it's way!
I'm going to Riga on Tuesday until Thursday. It cost 2 cents return. (Plus 18 euros to get to Tampere from here!)
I shall leave with a photo of what I've lived in for the last 5 months of my life. I do love Finland, but sometimes (as the Oslo blogger also said) the snow and the dark just gets too much. I never thought I'd get to a stage in my life where I would say that. This is why I am so excited and so happy about the sun today as its literally the first time I've seen the sun here since October.
This photo was taken at around 12:30 in the afternoon. The "sun" was setting.
