Classes

So I just finished my second day of classes. They're so different here.

Yesterday morning I had Asian trade from 8:15 to 12:30. Yes, 4 hours. But we had a 45 minute lunch break at 11. But still, long class. I had to leave the class early too, because my Intercultural communications class started at 12:30, and is in the Rantavitikka campus, whereas Asian trade is in Viirinkangas. The two campuses are about 7-8 minutes apart, plus time to put on and take off all the coats, hats, scarves, etc. required for the walk.

I really enjoyed the Asian trade class. The teacher's english was pretty good, and there were some cool people in the class. I sat next to a couple of chinese girls who were freaked out when I started speaking chinese to them, so that was fun. And then there was actually another American in the class (only other one I've seen in Rovaniemi), and we got to talking, and it turns out he's from Birmingham. Small world. He's here with his wife. They're both doing part time studies, and also working with an episcopal church in the area.

For lunch I ate in the Viirinkangas Restaurant (what they call the cafeteria), had an excellent pork and root vegetable stew. It had carrots, potatoes, turnips, and radishes. Very good, and also very filling.

Then we went over to Rantavitikka and had Intercultural Communications, another 4 hour class. We had a 15 minute break in the middle and got out about 45 minutes early, but it still seemed like an eternity. Finns seem to speak really slowly. Not so much in the time between individual words, but they'll say one sentence, then wait about 15 seconds, then say something else. I don't know if they're just doing that so that everyone can understand better, or if it's just a habit many of them have or something, but it made for a really long boring class. The material itself was okay, we basically just did the introduction to what culture is, culture shock, etc.

After class I walked to Prisma, sort of like a Finnish Walmart or some other huge store, which was about 500m or so off a path on the way back to the dorms, so not too bad. Got some food and stuff there, and headed back. I was exhausted from the long classes and everything, so stayed up a little while and read some of The Giver (one of 3 books I brought with me, already finished the other 2), and fell asleep around 7. I woke up around 4 this morning, and tried going back to sleep, but pretty much just tossed and turned and read a little until 9:30, when I got up and showered and everything. Then I walked to Rantavitikka (the one that's 1.5km from the dorms) and had lunch, same stew as yesterday, and went to Survival Finnish.

That was an interesting class. It's gonna be extremely hard to follow, for several reasons. The Finns have 8 vowels, all with different pronunciations than in English. They also have 16 consonants.
The vowels are what really throws me off. For example, a is pronounced like we'd say "ahh", e like the e in pet, i like the ee in see, etc. None of them sound like their English counterparts. And then they have, in addition to our 5, y, ä, and ö.

Also, the way they say things is different. For instance, the Finnish for car is auto, and the Finnish for "in the car" is autossa. Also, if I was to ask "is there any mail for Joshua Courson" at the post office, I'd say "anko sinulla postia Joshua Coursonille" the ille meaning "for."

One of the first phrases we went over was "where are you from", which is "Minkä maalainen sinä olet?", to which I have to answer "Mina olen usalainen", usalainen meaning from the USA, which they pronounce like "ooh es ahh.", so usalainen sounds like "ooh es ahh line in," which I find quite amusing. The Finnish teacher's english is really bad, so she had to constantly stop and think for a minute to tell us the English meaning of any word she said, which is why she just tended to repeat the phrase a bunch until someone caught on and got what she was trying to say. Hopefully it'll get better, but today was pretty bad.

Tomorrow it's back to Asian Trade and Intercultural Communications. However, I won't have to do as much walking, since on Wednesdays, we meet at Viirinkangas for Communications, since there are 2 different teachers for the class.

The weather's been really nice the last couple days. It's been between -5 and -10, which is realy nice. Don't have to bundle up nearly as much. This morning it snowed for the first time since I arrived. I was told it was too cold to snow before, so it made for a nice walk, although a little more slippery since the snow on the ground wasn't packed down much yet.

Now for pictures.

The sign out front of Viirinkangas Campus


The front entrance of Viirinkangas Campus, complete with huge pile of snow out front (you can see part of the front doors behind it)


A bike leaning up against a bench in front of the dorms. This was before today's fresh snow. The bike apparently hasn't been ridden in at least a week.


Well, that's all of them for now. I'll try and get some new shots and post more soon.