Turku

So this past weekend I took a trip down to Turku.  I had been talking about going down forever, but things kept coming up for me, Michael or Toni.  Those are my two friends that live there in Turku.  We met on the facebook game Hobowars, and have been playing that, as well as a couple other facebook games, together for a couple years.  So I took the overnight train down to Turku on Friday.  It left at 8:00pm and arrived in Turku at right around 9am on Saturday.  I bought a ticket for a sleeper car, which normally would be 100 euros, but with my student card (which cost me only 18 euros) I got a 50% discount, so that was awesome.  I was in a cabin for 3 people, but was the only one for the first part of the trip.  We didn't have to change trains or anything, but it made lots of stops on the way down to Turku.  The other 2 guys in my cabin got on in Oulu, about 3 hours in, and that's when they started drinking.  After I finished reading through The Giver, which is in my opinion the best book of all time, I went to sleep and slept pretty much the rest of the train ride.  When I arrived in Turku, Toni picked me up and we went back to his and his girlfriends' place where they had offered to let me stay for the night.  Toni and I decided to walk through the town along the river over to the other side of town where we could see the Castle of Turku. 
The Castle was pretty impressive.  I've heard it's not that much compared to many of the other castles in Europe, but seeing as the only castle I've ever seen before is the one in the Disney logo, it was very impressive.  It was huge inside, took us a good 2 hours to walk through and see everything inside it.  They had restored sections of it to be like it was in the medieval ages, during the renaissance, etc. so it was really cool to see the progression of the architecture and furniture and everything.
After that we walked back along the river to see the city center, and went to meet Michael and Maria (Toni's girlfriend) for lunch.  I had an awesome burger.  It was called a panini, but it was just a big burger with sliced filet mignon instead of ground beef.  It was one of the best things I've had since I've been here in Finland.  After lunch, we went over to see the big Cathedral in town.  It was humongous, and very impressive.  It and the castle were a couple of the only buildings to have survived all 5 or 6 fires that destroyed most of the city several times over the years.  After that Toni and I went to a hockey game, TPS (Turun Palloseura, from Turku) against HPK (Hämeenlinnan Pallokerho, from Hämeenlinna)  Naturally, we were cheering for TPS, and they won 3-1.  It was a really crazy game.  We could only get standing tickets, so it was tiring, but it was insane.  The stadium's capacity is 12,000, and there were 11,820 people there.  It was so loud, and there couldn't have been more than a couple hundred HPK fans, so the cheering for TPS and booing for HPK was awesome.  After the game we went back to Toni's place, where Maria made dinner.  She made Karelian Stew, and it was amazing.  Especially since they had fresh homemade lingonberry jam made from berries picked at their summer cottage, which, surprisingly, goes amazingly well with the beef, pork, and lamb in the stew.  The berries here are to die for.  She also made a blueberry pie out of fresh berries.  Best blueberries I've ever had.  After that, we were all pretty tired, so we went to bed.  I slept on the couch, which was actually pretty comfortable. 
On Sunday Toni had to go to work all day, so Maria and I walked around town for like 4 or 5 hours just seeing the whole town and walking their dogs and just talking about Finland, and Turku and everything.  After a while I went to meet Michael again, and we hung out for a little bit and had dinner, and then I left on the train back for Rovaniemi.  It left at 9pm, and arrived here at 11:30 or so.  I just rested the rest of the day, and then today I've been working all day. 
So, picture time.

The Train Cabin

The beds

Scale model of the castle

The Castle from the inner courtyard

Turku City Hall that sits on the banks of the Aura River

Mermaid Tail sculpture in the Aura River

The Cathedral

The inside of the Cathedral, and the biggest set of organ pipes I've ever seen

And this is back in Rovaniemi, the view outside, at 10:30pm

Anyways, looks like from here on out I'll just be working and waiting to come back to the states.  That's all for now.

Chinese Food

So I just got back from lunch.  I went to a Chinese restaurant here in the Rovaniemi city center, along with 3 other exchange students.  I asked for everything to be cooked like 地道中餐 (traditional chinese food), and it was all amazing.  We all shared Szechuan Beef, Curry Chicken, Sweet and Sour Pork, and my personal favorite, 虾仁鸡蛋 (Shrimp and Egg), which tasted exactly like the Shacks' shrimp and egg,  and of course, good, sticky white rice.

Talked with the owner for a little bit in Chinese, she of course wanted to know how I learned Chinese, so it was really nice to actually be able to speak with a native speaker.  She's from Hebei, in central China. 

Anyways, I should get back to work, just wanted to post, because I'm so happy right now.  Haven't been able to stop smiling since the food first came out.

crazy weather courtesy of the volcano

so the past few days it's been clear out, bright blue sky, beautiful, light from around 4:30am-10:30pm or something like that, and all the snow on the roads, sidewalks, and parking lots and everything has almost completely melted

then the volcano erupted.  It's snowing really really hard out right now, and the temperature went down a few degrees, and it's darker outside

Tommi (my boss) called me this morning on skype (and woke me up) to tell me not to worry too much about the volcano affecting my flight out in late May.  He studied geology in college, so was going on for about 15 minutes about what effects the volcano should and shouldn't have on us here.  I don't remember most of it as I was only half awake, but I do remember that he said that the volcano ash that was thrown up into the atmosphere would normally be blown northwest, but for some reason the strongest winds right now are blowing southeast, which is why the ash has covered Finland.  I didn't connect that volcanic ash with the weird weather until I left work to grab lunch and the weather was so weird.

crazy crazy weather

oh, and i forgot to mention...when i left for work this morning it wasn't snowing or anything, and i didn't think to check the weather report since it's been clear so much lately, so don't have my waterproof coat with me...gonna be a fun walk home this evening :P


Oh, don't know if I already posted this or not, but I am officially done with all of my studies for my undergrad work.  YAY!!!!!

Oh, and Rachel, I asked one of the student tutors if he knew a place where I could get my measurements taken and he said he'll try and find one, and if there isn't one here, I should be able to find one in Turku when I visit there next weekend.
Can't wait to get back!

hmmm...this could be bad

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63E1TM20100415

The link's to an article about the recent volcano eruption in Iceland and how it's halted all flights in and out of Finland and much of Northern Europe, as well as many cross-strait flights from JFK and Newark Airports.  For now all flights are grounded for just a few days, but volcanologists are saying that if the eruption continues it's possible for there to be "intermittent problems to air traffic for 6 months"

I was talking to my boss about it and to try and make me feel better he said "don't get upset, anything can happen, and you can always take a boat..."

not very reassuring


I'll keep following the story and post if things change

school and work

So first, the good news.  I got my ticket back to the states.  I will be flying back on May 25th, and I can't wait! 

More good news, classes are almost finished.  I only have one class left, International Sales Negotiations, and I only have 3 class meetings, with a project due in a week, and then I'm done with classes.  Which means I'll be done with all my undergrad studies...man, time flies.

Now for the other news...

Yesterday I took my survival Finnish exam, and considering how little she actually taught us throughout the semester, everyone figured the exam would be pretty easy.  We were wrong.
I failed the exam.
Every single person in the class failed the exam.
The closest anyone got was the two Dutch girls, who each got around 45% of the questions right. 
After we finished the exam we went over it afterwards with the teacher, so we already know our grades, and she already knows that the exam was too hard and that everyone failed, so I figured she'd give us a curve or something.  She just told us the date of the make-up exam.

So in two weeks I guess we're gonna have to retake it.  Our only hope is that she either changes the exam to make it much easier, which I doubt she will do, or she keeps the test exactly the same, in which case we can just memorize the answers from the copy of the test that a few of us kept.

Anyways, enough of that.  I start working fulltime this week.  I still have sales negotiations on thursday and friday, and then next wednesday, but other than that, I will be working Monday-Saturday, 8-4.  As I'm sure you all know, I'm not a morning person, but I sort of have to work early now.  I was told before I came here that they would be getting me a laptop that I can do editing on, but it doesn't look like that's gonna be happening.  It's still possible that they'll get one sometime, but it's been pushed back so many times now for one reason or another, I just don't think it's gonna happen.  So in the meantime, I work on the computer here in the morning, and then Juha comes in to work in the afternoons, so I just work on translations and stuff on my own laptop then. 

No pictures to post, haven't really done much lately, mostly been working and resting, and that's gonna continue the next little while.  I am looking forward to the weekend of April 24th, as I will be going down to Turku to hang out with a couple friends.  Other than that though, it looks like I'll just be working until I head back to the states.

Again, if anyone has any questions, leave a comment, email, or post on facebook and I'll have something more interesting to write about.