snippets from a foreigner's life.
so it's been 3 months in finland, close to 3 weeks since i've found my own flat and arranged things to .. close enough to livable.
before moving here, i thought i'd be posting every day about my new experiences and tribulations and about the new sights that i'd witness, with my "foreign" eyes. i thought that you'd all be sick of hearing from me.
for reasons hard to tell, i guess the opposite's happened.
life hasn't been that busy,
but it has the tendency to throw obstacles in the way.
well, some reasons are easy to say. this is my fifth trip to finland, but by far the longest. during graduate school and my first postdoc, i had many friends and colleagues from finland or who had lived there.
so coming here wasn't full of surprises. i received (and still receive) a lot of good advice about day-to-day life, changed some of my habits, yet still learning how it all works.
put simply, the big recurring question in my mind has been:
is it me, or is it finland?
i don't read or speak any of the finnish language, so every little trip out of doors and into the street feels like an excursion into jabberwocky. on the tram ride to work, often i catch myself mouthing the words on signs and billboards, wondering how exactly the pronunciation goes .. but not being curious enough to ask anyone.
oddly enough, on some buses, when i press the button for the next stop, a sign flashes at the front, labeled "stop." it took me a while before i realised it was out of place: why would the sign be in english? my best guess is either that the transit department is willing to facilitate the experience of foreigners, or that the buses were pre-manufactured in an english-speaking country, and it didn't seem like a big deal.
it's not just wishful thinking on my part. for instance, it must be recorded in my debit card that i cannot communicate in finnish or in swedish. every time i swipe it, it takes a few seconds before the display translates to english and asks me to "insert my PIN and press ok."
quite accommodating, that!
suffice it to say that i've been lazy,
been up to my usual ways.
before moving here, i thought i'd be posting every day about my new experiences and tribulations and about the new sights that i'd witness, with my "foreign" eyes. i thought that you'd all be sick of hearing from me.
for reasons hard to tell, i guess the opposite's happened.
life hasn't been that busy,
but it has the tendency to throw obstacles in the way.
well, some reasons are easy to say. this is my fifth trip to finland, but by far the longest. during graduate school and my first postdoc, i had many friends and colleagues from finland or who had lived there.
so coming here wasn't full of surprises. i received (and still receive) a lot of good advice about day-to-day life, changed some of my habits, yet still learning how it all works.
put simply, the big recurring question in my mind has been:
is it me, or is it finland?
i don't read or speak any of the finnish language, so every little trip out of doors and into the street feels like an excursion into jabberwocky. on the tram ride to work, often i catch myself mouthing the words on signs and billboards, wondering how exactly the pronunciation goes .. but not being curious enough to ask anyone.
oddly enough, on some buses, when i press the button for the next stop, a sign flashes at the front, labeled "stop." it took me a while before i realised it was out of place: why would the sign be in english? my best guess is either that the transit department is willing to facilitate the experience of foreigners, or that the buses were pre-manufactured in an english-speaking country, and it didn't seem like a big deal.
it's not just wishful thinking on my part. for instance, it must be recorded in my debit card that i cannot communicate in finnish or in swedish. every time i swipe it, it takes a few seconds before the display translates to english and asks me to "insert my PIN and press ok."
quite accommodating, that!
suffice it to say that i've been lazy,
been up to my usual ways.