Pitkästä aikaa!

You see I actually learn new things in Finnish! Not everyday as I would like to but well...
I'm just sitting in my room, eating freaking expensive but very delicious Norwegian melkesjokolade (Freia is the best in the world!) which Adam was so nice to bring me from his 10 day long trip to Norway for which I still hate him. Ok of course I don't, I'm just really jealous and now my wish to do a hiking trip along the Norwegian fjørds in one of the next summers is stronger than ever. Well maybe next year! :)

Anyway after a quite interesting week with lots of ups and downs I'm looking forward to a weekend of rest. NOT! 'Unfortunately' I signed up for the so called 'Survival weekend' of ESN. And I think for me it will be all about surviving. I was hoping to be back to 'normal' health again by now, but well if you never rest and just run around like a Duracell bunny all the time, the body has no chance to recover. So I still suffer from regular fever attacks but at least the coughing is gone. And now that my flat is silent for the first time in days (you cannot imagine how much noise 3 Greek girls can make and seriously they never shut up!) my headache almost disappeared. So I packed a lot of warm clothes like my skiing clothes, gloves, a had and of course my hiking boots. Better to have too many clothes than freezing. :D So we will go into the Finnish woods for 2 days including 2 nights (probably around -2°C then) camping in heated army tents which we of course have to heat ourselves. Hihi will be very much fun. Very interesting is that weeks ago the 50 places for this survival weekend were full after 15min and now more and more people are dropping out. All girls! Hahahaha cowards! Well more space in the tents and sauna for us then :P

So much for this weekend. Last weekend was sort of interesting as well.
First I was at another Uniklubi concert and seriously I will never ever again go into a club with is usually for people over 24. It was soooooooo disgusting. The men in their 40s and 50s undressing each passing women with their eyes and when they are drunk they get really hmm don't know the English word but one of the girls I was with at the concert just punched a guy for touching her and seriously I would have done the same. Unbelievably gross! And the women were as bad as the men. If I, at any point of time, wear tight leopard leggings, a black short shirt, a belt and a golden handbag while having a weight of around 150kg PLEASE shoot me! Seriously it wasn't pretty. And when than women in their late 50s dance to Coco Jambo and Mambo No5 it's really time to go. Unfortunately that awful club just wanted to make money and so the band started to play at 0:30! Of course nobody of us knew so the few Uniklubi fans in their early 20s had to wait for around 2 hours and witness this surreal scenery. But the concert itself was great!

Then there was of course also a Halloween party the day before the UK concert. Surprisingly good at least from the music which was the first time not awful club music but really trashy 90s party music. And seriously a party cannot be bad if they play BSB's Backstreets back! :P

On Sunday I did my assignment for my 'Religion in Finland' course and went to a local congregation. :) If you want to get to know Finnish people join a church here! :D It was very nice and I was even invited for a family diner yesterday. :)

Uni is during OK. Tomorrow I have my last regular class in my 'Religion in Finland' course which was really interesting. In the first lesson I was wondering why people study comparative religion but now I'm quite surprised how interesting it can be and I think it doesn't really matter if you studied political science, comparative religion or English literature when you are a taxi driver. ;)

Anyway I started a new course last week: 'Swedish-speaking Finns as a minority'. I was hoping it would help me with my thesis but was worried at the same time that i know already everything they will teach us. Of course the whole history part I heard and read already a dozen times but there are actually really interesting aspects I have never considered or heard of. Well since the course if from the Sociology department I hear a lot about studies and interviews and research and projects which makes it more interesting. Because who would have thought that it makes a differences in the perception of a bilingual Finn towards other bilingual and monolingual Finns to what kind of school (regarding to language because there are Finnish and Swedish schools here) you went.

Ok enough about uni. Need to go to bed and get some sleep before my 8:30am class and the first probably sleepless night in the woods. Wish me luck that I return at all and preferably without a pneumonia or a worse disease.

*kramar*

PS its -17°C this weekend in Lapland! I'm going there in 2 weeks!!!!!

rain, icehockey, travel plans

so it's weekend time after my lecture at 8.30am this morning to which i went after just one hour of sleep (I'm very keen on not missing any class even though my physical condition is very very bad). But since I just have courses on Wednesday and Friday my weekends are kind of ... long. :) Which doesn't make it easier to get some work done, it just makes me lazy. :(
I would love to go out more, ride my bike to Naantali or just around the Turku area but since almost a week we just had rainy days and it is not so much fun to be wet and sick all the time. So usually i have to problems with rain but since this weather will stay like that for another 5 days I'm wondering why Finns get depressed in Winter when you have the beautiful snow everywhere and very often blue sky and actually sun here in the south. One should get depressed in fall when it is gray and wet all the time.



Anyway, winter is coming in big steps. And the most important thing for me this week was that the ice hockey season started yesterday. The winner of the last season of the so called SM-Liiga is TPS, so the team from Turku. They played last night against Hämeenlinna and it was a hard match. One could see that TPS was putting themselves under pressure. As the reigning champion they had to win, which they did in the end but just through penalty shot out. So it was not a very good game but the season is long and I probably have many opportunities so see a few better matches. :D

At the moment everybody is making travel plans and the sign-ups for all the ERASMUS (ESN) trips happened during the past 10 days. Certainly nothing is in my budget or at a time where I'm not able to travel anywhere. So i have to arrange something else for me. I'd love to do a few trips as well but since I've seen almost every part of Finland it is not my Nr 1 priority. Of course Stockholm is on the list, as always, together with saying hello to the Joulupukki (Santa Clause) in Rovaniemi again. i haven't been to Porvoo and Tallin by now, so these cities are a must and well for the rest I have to see, visiting friends in Hki, Tre and Niinikoski is very important as well.
In 2 weeks I'm going to Lahti to see the Finnish summer championships of the skijumpers and nordic combined. That will be the first time that i see Lahti without snow. Will be interesting! Hopefully the competition will be also nice and the results according to my preferences. ;)

So much for now. Have a lunch date and need to discuss the last party night with a few people. But I noticed again that parties are more fun if you are not drunk but almost everybody else is. :) But the problem then is that you worry too much about everybody else. My advice of the evening was 'Stay away from the river!' Since at least 2 people drowned there already this year.

So have a nice weekend or as we say it in Turku: Hauskaa viikonloppua! :)