Today we celebrated Hyunji's (Korean room mate) birthday with tacos, brownie cake and homemade cinnamon rolls. Go ahead and see for yourselves.
The beautiful senator square in front of the Helsinki Cathedral. The running while screaming challenge. Our tutors explained that two people would have to skip this challenge because we were such a big group. I happily volunteered. Our interpretation of a Finnish lake landscape with swans and trees and a lake, obviously...I recognize 2 swans..but I have no idea what those trees thought they were doing.... I love that there is always a seagull sitting on a statue. No matter which statue in Helsinki you look at, you can be sure to find a seagull doing its business on top of it. There's even a joke about it: For decades, two heroic statues, one male and one female, faced each other in a city park until one day, an angel came down from heaven. "You've been such exemplary statues," the angel said, "that I'm going to give you a special gift. I'm going to bring you both to life for thirty minutes, during which time you can do anything you want." And with a clap of his hands, the angel brought the statues to life. The two approached each other a bit shyly and dashed for the bushes, from whence there came a good deal of giggling, laughter, and shaking of branches. Fifteen minutes later, the two statues emerged from the bushes with wide grins on their faces. "You still have fifteen more minutes," said the angel, winking at them. Grinning even more broadly, the female statue turned to the male statue and said, "Great! Only this time you hold the pigeon down and I'll shit on it's head!" Afterparty in the student union house, and announcement of the winner group. We won in two categories: our lake landscape was apparently simply breathtaking and we were able to exchange the lousy paper clip into an awesome sparkly e-cigarette. Yeah. It was a process. We went from paperclip to a disgusting, chewed-on pencil, to a Russian coin of ten rubles to the e-cigarette. It's pretty cool that the student union owns a house which basically serves as a location for student parties. So when a faculty wants to throw a party they can just book a floor of the student union house and don't need to rent a place. Let me tell you, Erasmus in Helsinki is not at all like Erasmus in France, for example. We actually have to do something for those credit points. I'm pretty much already flooded in work: I have tons of texts to read, learning diaries (!) to write and essays to prepare. And it's crazy to think that the first term of autumn semester is already over in 5 weeks. After that we have to sign up for new courses for the second term. Weird system. You know what else is weird? The laundry systems in the student housing apartment buildings! If we want to do laundry we have to put enough money on our cell phone card (?!), so we can call a service number to pay for the laundry service. When the call goes in, three buttons in the laundry room start blinking and we have to choose one laundry machine an press the button to pay for using it. Could they have come up with a more complicated system?! I singed up for laundry tomorrow morning at 8, so I'll stop for now. P.S.: I just found out today that there is a cat café (café where you can drink coffee and pet kitties) in Helsinki, so hope I'll be able to report about that soon. <3 Last Wednesday I went to a Fuksiaiset. Never heard of that before? Well, I had not either! We were all sitting at lunch when Jan, the other German exchange student suggested to go join this event. At first I was hesitant but then I thought, why not? I'll probably only experience all this once in my life. Besides, he said, I could always leave if I didn't like it. The Fuksiaiset is basically an event for Finnish freshmen to have fun and get to know each other...in the middle of the woods. Yeah! So we met up with these people at the main train station and then we got on a bus. I had no idea where we were going or how on earth I would get back home. after half an hour on the bus I thought, ok, there is no way that I can just leave whenever I feel like it now. We were on this island in the middle of nowhere and it was raining. Did I mention I have neither an umbrella or rain jacket?! But here is something about Finns: if they didn't go outside just because it was raining, like we Germans do, they would hardly ever get any fresh air, especially in autumn! Apparently it's time to invest in proper rain equipment! So what did we do? We were divided into groups, luckily I can count to ten, and found myself in group neljä (4), and sent into the woods. There we found different station where we had to fulfill different tasks. For example we had to reunite different bottles of alcohol with their owners, without knowing who likes to drink what. Also, we had to wear a blindfold handing over the beverages. Then there was a sitsit station, remember, the meal, where you have to suggest different songs to sing, and toast to something with mustikka likööri (blueberry liquor - at least I think it was) and eat food ( noodle salad in this case). At another station, we had to perform different movie titles without words or explain certain words. The only thing I could really participate in was the acting-movie-titles station, because most of the other stations required an understanding of the Finnish language. Well, at least I met some Finns, participated at a typically Finnish freshmen activity and got totally soaking wet in the process ;). I know...the quality of this photo is awful, it's all blurry, but it's about as good as my vision with rain-wet glasses... There will be another Fuksiaiset, this time for international students, on the 12th of September. Hopefully with better weather this time!
...to turn the wheel of fortune... ...to get some affordable ice cream...you get the idea!
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About
I am currently studying applied cultural studies at the TU Dortmund and I will spend my 5th semester in Helsinki, at the Helsingin Yliopisto in Finnland, the the country known for its many lakes. Archives
November 2015
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