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!