Case in point? In the next 2 weeks I've got 4 papers to write and about 6 exams. For some reason my Finnish class has 4 different finals, which I'm not down with at all. Two of them are spoken exams, which I'm preparing to fail with great enthusiasm. I'm already having flashbacks to when I was a music major for a semester and I had to do sight reading and other performance exams. You'd think that for as dramatic as I am I would love to have all the attention on me, but really it just makes me want to pass out. I also have a Chinese final that apparently has a spoken component, but that class has continued in the same way I've already written about (a total cluster....), so who knows what's going to happen there? Although, I professed my love for my teacher the other week (Wǒ ài nǐ! was one of the phrases we were learning that day) and he reciprocated (a kind of choked "me too! hehe"), so my thoughts of coming to Finland and falling in love are right on track. My Special Education class is also coming back to haunt me, with a book exam next week. Throw in some Psychology papers and I'm looking at a fun next couple weeks.
I've also begun compiling a list of observations on Finland, and some of the quirks that I've become accustomed to but won't necessarily miss when I leave:
- Finland is a very environmentally conscious country, but we don't do reusable water bottles or coffee mugs here. I have seen exactly 2 travel coffee mugs, and they were both being used by Canadian students (one of them was drinking Tim Hortons coffee from it. I wanted to cry). Everyone simply refills whatever disposable bottle they bought that day. Obviously people in America do that too, but there are no nalgenes or camelbaks or anything. It's just an odd contrast from North Park, where your social status is pretty much defined by what eco-friendly drink carrier you have. On that note, I got a very strange look from a Finnish friend a couple months ago when I was drinking out of an old jar. Oh, we don't do hipsters here? ok.
- Food is really fresh here and I get the impression that everything is way less preserved than American food. But I simply cannot fathom how I use milk on Monday night and it's totally fine, and then go to pour it on Tuesday morning and it is not only bad, but coming out in chunks. Usually at home you can get away with drinking milk for a couple days after the date on the carton, but here it's game over sometimes before the date on the carton.
- Finnish people really like to stop and chat with their friends. Fine. But on multiple occasions I've been needing to, say, walk up the stairs in the library and have had to awkwardly walk between a conversation because we need to stand about 5 feet apart in a well traveled area and chat. No hate, Finland. Just an observation.
- I may have mentioned my piece of crap bike before, yes? Don't worry, it's still truckin along with no gears or front brakes. So Jyväskylä is a pretty bike-friendly city, since bikes are the main mode of transportation for students. But for some reason curbs at corners are obnoxiously high, and I'm just waiting to go over one and my bike to fall apart beneath me. Granted I think my bike was made before they started putting shock absorbers on bikes so that may just be me (and all the other exchange students who bought barely-functional used bikes).
- Finland doesn't do previews before movies. At least before the movie I saw, but it was at midnight so it may have been different. Previews are my favorite part!
Oh, and because I always try to include some picture evidence that I'm having the time of my life:
I thought this was yogurt and granola. It was soured milk and granola. Read labels much? It might not have tasted awful, but the consistency was that of mucus so I didn't get far enough to consider the taste.
My computer thinks it's cute and won't turn this, but it's horrifyingly clear what it is anyways. I may have spent a couple hours last night as a Finnish teenager. It was a cultural experience for sure. No regrets.
