Nothing like a 9-hour day at school

It was pitch black when I arrived at school this morning, and pitch black when I left. It's amazing just how late 6pm has started to feel- the campus is normally deserted by 4pm, so when I leave in the late afternoon it feels like walking back home from Odegaard at midnight. Thank goodness for the snow- it brightens everything up, even in the dark. It looks like the snow will be sticking around at least until the weekend- I'm glad as I haven't gotten to go play in it yet. A Finnish girl in my geology class told me that last year people didn't have to go to lapland to go skiing, as it was snowy enough to do it near Turku! I'm hoping some Finns with an extra pair of skis adopt me while I'm over here, since I would love to learn.

From one snowy place to another,
xoxo Lexi

I've caught my first cold of the season! I'm actually pretty surprised that it's taken this long for me to get sick, so I don't mind too much that I've become a walking snot-factory. Though this does mean that instead of having adventures this weekend, I've been sticking around the apartment, drinking lots of tea with honey. I think I might venture out into the city today, however, to try and get some work done at the library. It's been snowing on and off since Wednesday, which means that there's still a blanket of snow on the ground, buildings, and trees.






In some slightly scary news, here is what the weather is supposed to be like this week:





I don't think I've ever experienced 9 degree Fahrenheit temperatures before. Maybe I should also use today to shop for a down jacket...

A simple equation for alertness in the morning:

Bare feet + snow = awake

Little Frustrations

I forget how different the education system is here, until days like today. As a general rule, university classes in Finland don't require weekly assignments, and even the assigned work isn't turned in for credit. The entire grade for your 10-week course is often determined upon one final paper or test. This sounds a little daunting, but unlike the American system, if you take a test and fail (or even if you take it and get a grade you don't like) you can retake the same test until you pass or get the grade you want.

Scheduling here also isn't rigid like it is at the UW. Take my experience today- a class, Quarternary Environmental Change, was supposed to start last Wednesday. So I showed up... and then found out that the schedule had changed, that it instead started a week later. So I go to the class today... and find out that the schedule had changed yet again, and while I had written down that the class started at 1, it had, in fact, already taken place, at 10am. I was pretty upset to find out that I had missed the first meeting of this class- I was/still am really excited about it, but due to me being unfamiliar with how changeable time schedules are here, I missed it.

Oh well. Now I have learned to keep checking the schedule online until the day the course starts.

Last Week in Pictures

Monday:


Tuesday:


Wednesday:


Thursday:


Friday:


Saturday:


Sunday:



Good things last week:
+ Sunny days and snowfall
+ Squishy chairs in the library and Sherlock Holmes
+ Slovakian dinner
+ Ongoing home improvement projects
+ Early thanksgiving, complete with sweet potato pie

<3, Lexi

From zero to snow in 60 seconds

When I woke up this morning (granted, at 11 am) the sun was shining brightly through my window, and the sky was perfectly clear. Then I went to brush my teeth, and when I came back about a minute later, it was doing this:



The flurry only lasted for ten minutes or so, and it was still slightly too warm for the snow to stick, but it happened so suddenly! I was going to take the bus to the library today, but I may just walk it- I love being out in the snow!

On Darkness

No pictures today, because my camera was out of batteries.

Things I learned today by forgetting my umbrella:

1). Cobblestones can be veeerry slippery, especially when it is too rainy/foggy to see more than two feet in front of you.
2). The new jacket I scavenged from the laundry room is warm, but not water proof.
3). My backpack isn't waterproof either.

Still, this is the first day in a while that has given me cause to complain about the weather. Most of the Finns I've talked to have told me that it's been unseasonably dry, if not unseasonably warm (a low of 34 tomorrow, then below freezing from Friday on!).

Only now am I realizing just how north I am- even though Turku is at the SW tip of Finland, it is at around the same latitude as Anchorage, Alaska!

Sunset was at 4:28 PM today, and comes about 2.5 minutes earlier per day. It doesn't sound like a whole lot, but it means that by next Wednesday, the sun will be setting at 4:11 PM. On Thanksgiving, the sun will set at 3:39 PM. It's hard to get used to. Last night I went to bed at 7:00 pm, and if I didn't have clocks I would have easily mistaken it for three in the morning!

Happy Halloween!

I woke up this morning fully intending to not celebrate Halloween. It was too much work; I didn't have a costume; and no one else here was really into it (least of all the Finns). So I lolled around in bed all morning, worked a little on the Finnish paper that I had to do, and put Halloween out of my mind.

And then I went outside. In a small tactical error on my part, I walked 15 minutes to Skanssi, the nearby mega-mall and home of the nearest liquor store, only to find that said store was closed. And walking around outside and in the mall I was struck by how normal everything looked. Today, October the 31st, was just another day in Finland. No last, mad rush on the bags of fun-size candy, no orange and black carpeting the department stores, and most of all, no excited little kids walking around in costume. And then I got really sad, and nostalgic, and decided that maybe it was worth celebrating Halloween in Finland. Especially since this is what the sky looked like at 5:30 pm today:



So I called up a friend, made some burritos, and set out a giant bowl of candy that we could eat while watching back-episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Low-key, but it felt good to know that I was, at least in some part, carrying on an American tradition (did I mention there was a giant bowl of candy?)

Happy Halloween, all!

My, my, was it gray today....

So, um... no trip to Rauma today. I've woken up with the best of intentions every day this week, but after a glance at the murky gray sky outside (it looms, even at 2 in the afternoon) I found the wherewithal sucked right out of me. I spent the morning reading in bed, and even managed to haul myself and my backpack into town to go to the library, though I didn't get much school work done.

Maybe it's a good thing that I have so much downtime this week, because school is going to kick back up in an intense fashion on Monday, as you can probably see from my class schedule. Let's take Wednesday as an example. Yup, that's three classes scheduled at the same time.

I've been in Turku for just over two months now... and have only two blog posts to show for it! As part of a new resolution to keep my family members informed, I've resolved to post at least once a week, even if I have nothing of particular interest to say.

Today was the last day of break for me, and in preparation for my trip to Rauma tomorrow (more on that later) I decided to walk into campus to use their printers. The walk takes just over an hour and is about 6 km (3.7 miles). Even though there isn't much to see on the walk in from Harittu, where I live, to the University near the city center, it's still nice, as you can't go very far in Turku without hitting a patch of trees.


(A is where I live in Harittu, and B is the University).

Sadly, the computer room was closed when I got to campus, so no printing for me. I did manage to get to the library in the city center before it closed. The library has easily become my favorite place in Turku. Not only is it aesthetically pleasing, and a great place to hang out and study, and home to one of the better cafés in Turku, but it also has an amazing selection of books in English. Right now I have Sula, The Grapes of Wrath, the 5th 44 Scotland Street novel, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Le Morte d'Arthur, and Stardust checked out, all in English.


mmmm....

Though today was nice, it was still cold and a bit windy, and since I had some leftover salmon (from homemade salmon burgers!) I decided to make Kirkas Lohikeitto (literally, "clear salmon soup"), a Finnish staple. Lohikeitto is one recipe that I'm going to take back to the states with me- it's so comforting and homey, kind of the Finnish version of chicken noodle soup.

If all goes according to plan, I'll be heading to Rauma tomorrow on a little family heritage adventure- my great-great-grandmother was buried in Rauma, and I'm hoping to find her tombstone and see if there are any records of the rest of the Wallins.

Hyvää yötä!

A short update with no pictures, as I am in the middle of doing my Finnish homework. Rest assured, there will be pictures soon!

My first geology course starts tomorrow, which is, of course, at the same time as my Finnish course, but despite the fact that I will miss two days of Finnish class I'm extremely excited about doing science again! I will be learning to analyze things like this:



The image belongs to google, not me.

I'm glad I'm excited for tomorrow, as I spent a very frustrating day in Helsinki dealing with the American embassy. When I spoke to the man on the phone, he told me all I needed was a police report, but when I got to the embassy (which was strange in and of itself, as you are escorted by a uniformed marine absolutely everywhere you go on embassy grounds) they asked for a passport application and passport photos. I obviously had neither. They wanted me to wait and come back tomorrow with the pictures, but that was just impossible- not to mention expensive!

They ended up processing my application there and then, but it took some doing on my part- in fact, it took me getting irritated and going off on the person I was dealing with.

I felt bad about this, though, as I felt that I was acting like the stereotypical American- too blasé to do proper research, and then too stubborn to admit defeat or accept the blame. I find that I'm so sensitive to these perceptions here- that Americans are crass, disinterested in the world, lazy- mainly, because I feel that they are not accurate in the slightest. I find that I've shifted my behavior, even- for example, I am quick to show off my knowledge of other countries and world politics- precisely to avoid being instantly categorized as the "typical american."

A high point to my trip to Helsinki was finding an adorable little neighborhood near the embassy- it reminded me of Aloha and off-broadway Capitol Hill. No pictures, as I forgot my camera, but I hope to explore it in the near future!

Meet Little Buddy

I understand why it seems that everyone in Turku bikes- it's fast, safe, and especially easy because Turku is flat. Really flat. Amazingly, beautifully, and mercifully flat, compared to the frequent and intimidating hills of the Pacific Northwest.


The bike path is to the left of the street

The bike lanes in Turku aren't really bike lanes; "bike paths" is a more accurate descriptor. The amazing thing to me is that there is a bike path on nearly every street. Part of what kept me from biking more in Seattle and Portland (aside from the hills) was the knowledge that I'd have to ride side by side with traffic at some point in my journey. Often, bikes don't even need to cross major streets; there are underpasses for bikes under most thoroughfares!


Bike underpass in Turku

Obviously, to bike in Turku, I need a bike. Everyone, meet Little Buddy. I bought him last week at the police auction in Turku, where they were auctioning off around 65 bikes that had somehow ended up in police custody. I'm amazed bike theft isn't more prevalent in Turku, because no one locks their bikes. Around campus, they'll just leave them lying around (sometimes literally).

I bought Little Buddy for 35 euros at the bike auction, but most bikes were going for around 70. Why was mine such a deal? The back brake was loose, the back tire was flat, there were two holes in the inner tube, and what I didn't realize when I bought it (but I'm pretty sure everyone else did) is that the back tire was locked to the frame. This meant that I had to carry that heavy sucker over my shoulder 1km from the police station to the nearest hardware store because I couldn't roll it. All in all, getting the lock cut off, walking a non-functional bike all over campus, and getting the holes in the inner tube patched took about 6 hours.


Little Buddy

Honestly, though, I lucked out in my bike purchase. My bike is sturdy, and is extremely easy to ride (thank you 21 speeds). It has front shocks, which are nice, because I do a lot of riding over curbs and other bumpy things. I've already taken it out on an adventure, but I think I'll save that for a later blog post.

The only downside of biking in Finland I've found is how muddy it gets. I should just start wearing all brown, and it'll be a non-issue!


Finland + Rain + Bike= Mud everywhere

Less than a week

I have less than a week before I land in Turku. Getting ready for this has involved a lot of running around, buying silly things like a year's worth of moisturizer and sriracha.

There's a strange stew of emotions when I think about boarding that plane on Sunday. Excitement is definitely an ingredient, but so is trepidation. Even though I'm as prepared as I probably can be, I know that things will still come as a shock once I'm over there.

To get me (and you!) excited about swapping the Willamette for the Aurajoki, here's a picture of Turku.

Why "Turku Without A Map"?

Coming up with an appropriate title for my travel blog about Turku was difficult. "Year in Turku" seemed too stark and simple, and "Lost in Turku" (which I guarantee you, I will be) was too mainstream.

So why "Turku Without A Map"?

I love maps. I get a map of just about every place I go. Though I currently live in Portland, I don't leave the house without a Streetwise map tucked into my bag. While my need for maps is partly due to my poor sense of direction, it is mainly a requirement for my mode of exploration- I love to wander, and get to know a city by setting off in some random direction and finding my way back. This has worked everywhere I've been so far- Tacoma, Seattle, New York, Rome, London.

Apparently, no maps of Turku exist stateside. Sure, the Turku streets are on google maps, but that is nowhere near as useful as a paper copy I can tote along with me.

So Turku will be two kinds of new adventure- my first experience being completely removed from everything I'm used to (parents, peanut butter, sunlight), and also the first city that I will get to know mapless.

The adventure starts in August- stay tuned!