Settling in

The last few days have been busy, productive, and snowy. Yesterday, I left the flat early with one of my suite-mates, Alex, who is in the same program as me from NC State. He arrived in Helsinki before New Years, so he had already figured a few things out. We took the bus into the city-center and I got my travel card, tried to open a bank account (but didn't have the right documents), and got a library card. The library was having a book sale and I bought a neat little field guide to Reptiles and Amphibians in Swedish for 50 cents. It was snowing really hard, so it was difficult to see anything. The city is pretty calm and easy to get around in (although the buses are kind of scary with all the ice on the roads). The feel is a nice mixture of really modern, contemporary places, and older, Russian style architecture. I couldn't really take any pictures since it was snowing so much, so those will have to come later. After we finished our errands downtown, Alex and I went back to the flat for lunch, and I went to the grocery store across the street to buy some food since I hadn't gotten any yet. This proved to be more difficult than I had expected. First, everything was REALLY expensive. And, because of the Finnish language, it was almost impossible to tell what anything was. I spent a good 10 minutes trying to figure out which box contained oatmeal. And if that seems silly, here is an example: The Finnish word for "oat" is: kauranjyville. But the word for "wholegrain oats" is: täysjyväkaura. And the word for oatmeal is: kaurapuuroa. And instant oatmeal is: pikakaurahiutale. And when you see them all together like that, you can see that the root word is "kaura." But when you're reading a sentence like this: "Valmistetaan hyvälaatuisista pikakaurahiutale jyvistä, jotka puhdistetaan, leikataan, esikypsytetään ja litistetään ohuiksi hiutaleiksi" that doesn't stand out so well. So I got some potatoes and carrots and boiled them Eastern European peasant style (no fats or seasonings). Yum.
Then, Alex and I went to check out our new campus. And it was AMAZING. I won't go into the details now because words wouldn't do it justice, but lets just say that it looks like there could be flying cars going by at any moment, and one of the buildings has a wrap around, glass covered, tropical garden that you can eat your lunch in as you look out at the snow. Pictures to come.
My other suite-mate, Anna, works for the German Embassy in Finland. And every Thursday all the Embassy people go to Baker's for 1 euro Champagne happy hour (which is incredibly affordable). So I went and met them there. Everyone was very nice and friendly, but when they decided to leave there and go to a karaoke bar, I decided it was time to go home. You can only have so much culture in one day.

The next day I started orientation for the international students at the University of Helsinki. It was pretty much like every other orientation (6 hours of sitting in a lecture hall listening an inspirational welcome speech from the president, and presentations on how to use the library), but they definitely did their best to make it interesting. And there was even an entire presentation on the correct way to recycle (very different from NC State, where there isn't a single recycling bin in the whole Wood and Paper building. Not even paper recycling). About 90% of the exchange students are European, with the rest from North America, and not a single one from Asia, Africa, or South America. This is also the complete opposite of my previous program at NC State. I'm getting quite a diverse education.
That evening Anna made Salmiakkikossu (a Finnish drink made from vodka and salty liquorice) and we had a "party." The "party" ended up just being two girls from Spain who got very drunk and got in a huge fight over something none of us could figure out, and then one left and the other one stayed. It was awkward.