spatny student
It's very strange sometimes living here in Finland. On Tuesday I saw the sun for the first time in about two weeks. When you can even see the sun at all, it's always really low in the southern sky. It gets dark before 4:00 PM these days, too, which means that by midnight it's already been dark for eight hours and everybody is exhausted just because it's so dark all the time. There has already been snow for a while here. Today I had a little accident on my bike while driving to the university: I was trying to go around a curve and my bike slid out from under me and the chain came off. I ended up just walking the rest of the way to the university, was late to class, and I still have to fix my bike.
But there are some really good things here, too. The other day I went with Thomas, a French guy who was in my Czech class who speaks German, as well as Thomas from Austria and Dan from Finland who speaks German to sauna in French Thomas's building, then to a blues band in a bar nearby. We later drank from a bottle of Russian vodka that Dan's (Russian) girlfriend had and French Thomas got really drunk and we went to some kebab restaurant and just ate from the salad bar without buying anything, it was pretty funny.
I also have been going to sauna a lot. There's a sauna on the lake near Lapinkaari (my building) and you can sit in the literally boiling hot sauna (there's a thermometer on the wall that always says over 100 degrees celsius) and then go outside and go for a swim in the near-freezing lake. On my most recent visit to this sauna it was about minus four celsius out and it was snowing, and the lake was only seven degrees celsius. It's pretty funny being in such a hot and steamy room then going outside and walking around in the snow and swimming in the lake and sharing a beer with your friends, then doing the whole thing again and again. The best part is that after a couple goes you don't really feel the temperature differences so much, like, you sit in the sauna after being in the lake and you think it's cold, and then you go for a swim in the lake and want to go back in because it felt warm kinda. And it leaves you so relaxed and happy and clean, and you can breathe so well. Sauna is one thing I will really really miss about Finland.
I made a group on Facebook called "Caleb needs a place to live" in the morning before class the day before yesterday (because I still don't know where I'll be living this spring), and I was planning to in the evening invite everyone I knew in Iowa City in the hopes that someone would know of a place I could sublet. But that evening I already, without telling anyone about the group, had very kind responses from a few people telling me of friends of theirs that were looking to sublet for the spring. Now I'm waiting on a couple responses, and hopefully I can find a good place to live next semester.
My project for myself now is to learn cyrillic handwriting. I've got the printed alphabet down pretty well, I guess, but today Stasia handed me some notes that she had written in handwriting and I was just like, shit, I can't read this. I also need to learn a lot of vocabulary, instead of just guessing with the Czech word or something. I guess, though, that I'm really not as interested in Russian as I am in, say, Finnish or Czech, which makes it pretty difficult to be in this class. I feel like a dumbass the whole time because I am basically the worst student in there, which has never happened to me before. I try to excuse myself with the fact that I'm one of two people in the class who never learned Russian before, and also about half the class speaks Polish or Slovakian natively or has a Russian parent or something. Eh, luckily they have Czech at the University of Iowa though, so I can take that class.
Okay, time for lunch.
But there are some really good things here, too. The other day I went with Thomas, a French guy who was in my Czech class who speaks German, as well as Thomas from Austria and Dan from Finland who speaks German to sauna in French Thomas's building, then to a blues band in a bar nearby. We later drank from a bottle of Russian vodka that Dan's (Russian) girlfriend had and French Thomas got really drunk and we went to some kebab restaurant and just ate from the salad bar without buying anything, it was pretty funny.
I also have been going to sauna a lot. There's a sauna on the lake near Lapinkaari (my building) and you can sit in the literally boiling hot sauna (there's a thermometer on the wall that always says over 100 degrees celsius) and then go outside and go for a swim in the near-freezing lake. On my most recent visit to this sauna it was about minus four celsius out and it was snowing, and the lake was only seven degrees celsius. It's pretty funny being in such a hot and steamy room then going outside and walking around in the snow and swimming in the lake and sharing a beer with your friends, then doing the whole thing again and again. The best part is that after a couple goes you don't really feel the temperature differences so much, like, you sit in the sauna after being in the lake and you think it's cold, and then you go for a swim in the lake and want to go back in because it felt warm kinda. And it leaves you so relaxed and happy and clean, and you can breathe so well. Sauna is one thing I will really really miss about Finland.
I made a group on Facebook called "Caleb needs a place to live" in the morning before class the day before yesterday (because I still don't know where I'll be living this spring), and I was planning to in the evening invite everyone I knew in Iowa City in the hopes that someone would know of a place I could sublet. But that evening I already, without telling anyone about the group, had very kind responses from a few people telling me of friends of theirs that were looking to sublet for the spring. Now I'm waiting on a couple responses, and hopefully I can find a good place to live next semester.
My project for myself now is to learn cyrillic handwriting. I've got the printed alphabet down pretty well, I guess, but today Stasia handed me some notes that she had written in handwriting and I was just like, shit, I can't read this. I also need to learn a lot of vocabulary, instead of just guessing with the Czech word or something. I guess, though, that I'm really not as interested in Russian as I am in, say, Finnish or Czech, which makes it pretty difficult to be in this class. I feel like a dumbass the whole time because I am basically the worst student in there, which has never happened to me before. I try to excuse myself with the fact that I'm one of two people in the class who never learned Russian before, and also about half the class speaks Polish or Slovakian natively or has a Russian parent or something. Eh, luckily they have Czech at the University of Iowa though, so I can take that class.
Okay, time for lunch.