I am connected to the rest of the world
And thank God for that. The past few days without Internet has been rather 'hellish'. LOL.
Anyway updates on the past few days.
1st Jan 2006
New Year's Day was a lazy day as most shops were closed and we spent it indoors in our now-quite-cosy hostel. Good thing that some of them brought over some movies to watch, so the time spent indoors wasn't that boring.
Today was also the first day we saw snow falling from the sky. It was a very pretty scene, like that from the movies or documentaries. That is, from indoors watching outside. After lazing for the whole morning, we went to buy lunch. Walked around some, but noted that the sky was turning quite dark. ZM correctly predicted that a snowstorm was in the making. After a while, we were indeed caught in the snow. But luckily we found shelter in Hesburger where we settled down for a hearty burger meal. Their Mega Ateria ( I think ateria stands for meal) is Singapore's equivalent of a Big Mac, but maybe a little bigger.
Anyway, the snow storm that we experienced on the way back was way cool, cos I'd never experienced anything like that before. The wind was quite strong, plus the ice was getting more slippery, and the snow was pelting down at an angle, and 'stinging' our faces. The feeling was as if many people were shooting small pellets of ice at our faces. What an experience!
Going to Oulu tomorrow so me and Wei Ling packed up. It's gonna be a long train ride. Who knows what's in store for us in Oulu. One thing's for sure, it'll be colder.
2nd Jan 2006 (lazy to write in full sentences)
- Woke up early, went to the airport to collect luggage
- Train station (pics), busy place, many people taking trains to and from their towns in Finland.
- Saw much of the land on the way covered with thick white snow to Oulu --> looks damn cold!
- Arrived at Oulu after a long journey.
- Met up with Erika, our kummi (student tutor). Went buying groceries. Can't get bedsheet and pillow and blanket cos the shop is closed. =S
- Cleaned room and unpacked luggage! Done!
- Up till now I've seen 2 of my housemates. One is Nima, from Iran and another is from Belgium (think his name is Manu or something like that). Neema seems very friendly to me but I cant gauge for Manu cos he went out with his friends. Well I hope we get on fine. For WL's room, the girls who were there decorated it up a bit. They even have 2 TV sets in the hall! But they're all not around.
- The house I am living in is about the size of a 3 room flat but has 4 rooms, 1 bathroom and 1 toilet. Quite cosy now that I unpacked my stuff into the cupboards and drawers. Maybe I might ask WL to help me decorate my room haha! Cos we're all so bored and it's so cold outside. If you thought you were lazy to get out of the house cos it's tough to decide what to wear, we wear 4 to 5 layers here. So well.
3rd Jan 2006
Today we had some orientation of sorts. We were supposed to meet our kummi (Finnish for Godfather or Godmother, but in this context, it's a Finnish student tutor who helps us with stuff) who would bring us over to the campus. However we were late. Guess what. The kummi wasn't there anymore. WL and I spent some (nerve wracking) minutes waiting for her to appear cos we didn't know how to navigate the place. After about 10 minutes of no show and of cos several frantic calls to her HP, we decided she was either asleep or that she left her HP in her hostel and left for the school without us.
So we decided to make our way there ourselves. After asking some Finns the way, and deciding that they were decidedly as ignorant as us as to where the Faculty of Technology was, we decided to push our luck (let's see where our legs would take us). So we made it to one door, and just asked and asked our way to the cafe which was to be the meeting place. When in doubt, use your mouth to ask for directions. The Finns are very nice and helpful people, and it's good that most people we met can speak some English.
The day passed without incident. Signed up for our Finnish student card, with which we can get train tics and other travel stuff for 50% discount. The student union here is much better and apparently has much more power than the NUSSU we have back home. They are a separate entity from the university (yliopisto in Finnish) totally and they got great discounts for the students and they organize cheap trips for their students to St Petersburg, Rovaniemi (that's where Santa lives) and other fabulous stuff. Way cool.
I'll upload pics later. It's been a long day for me and I've updated the previous entries with pictures. Good stuff. =)
Anyway updates on the past few days.
1st Jan 2006
New Year's Day was a lazy day as most shops were closed and we spent it indoors in our now-quite-cosy hostel. Good thing that some of them brought over some movies to watch, so the time spent indoors wasn't that boring.
Today was also the first day we saw snow falling from the sky. It was a very pretty scene, like that from the movies or documentaries. That is, from indoors watching outside. After lazing for the whole morning, we went to buy lunch. Walked around some, but noted that the sky was turning quite dark. ZM correctly predicted that a snowstorm was in the making. After a while, we were indeed caught in the snow. But luckily we found shelter in Hesburger where we settled down for a hearty burger meal. Their Mega Ateria ( I think ateria stands for meal) is Singapore's equivalent of a Big Mac, but maybe a little bigger.
Anyway, the snow storm that we experienced on the way back was way cool, cos I'd never experienced anything like that before. The wind was quite strong, plus the ice was getting more slippery, and the snow was pelting down at an angle, and 'stinging' our faces. The feeling was as if many people were shooting small pellets of ice at our faces. What an experience!
Going to Oulu tomorrow so me and Wei Ling packed up. It's gonna be a long train ride. Who knows what's in store for us in Oulu. One thing's for sure, it'll be colder.
2nd Jan 2006 (lazy to write in full sentences)
- Woke up early, went to the airport to collect luggage
- Train station (pics), busy place, many people taking trains to and from their towns in Finland.
- Saw much of the land on the way covered with thick white snow to Oulu --> looks damn cold!
- Arrived at Oulu after a long journey.
- Met up with Erika, our kummi (student tutor). Went buying groceries. Can't get bedsheet and pillow and blanket cos the shop is closed. =S
- Cleaned room and unpacked luggage! Done!
- Up till now I've seen 2 of my housemates. One is Nima, from Iran and another is from Belgium (think his name is Manu or something like that). Neema seems very friendly to me but I cant gauge for Manu cos he went out with his friends. Well I hope we get on fine. For WL's room, the girls who were there decorated it up a bit. They even have 2 TV sets in the hall! But they're all not around.
- The house I am living in is about the size of a 3 room flat but has 4 rooms, 1 bathroom and 1 toilet. Quite cosy now that I unpacked my stuff into the cupboards and drawers. Maybe I might ask WL to help me decorate my room haha! Cos we're all so bored and it's so cold outside. If you thought you were lazy to get out of the house cos it's tough to decide what to wear, we wear 4 to 5 layers here. So well.
3rd Jan 2006
Today we had some orientation of sorts. We were supposed to meet our kummi (Finnish for Godfather or Godmother, but in this context, it's a Finnish student tutor who helps us with stuff) who would bring us over to the campus. However we were late. Guess what. The kummi wasn't there anymore. WL and I spent some (nerve wracking) minutes waiting for her to appear cos we didn't know how to navigate the place. After about 10 minutes of no show and of cos several frantic calls to her HP, we decided she was either asleep or that she left her HP in her hostel and left for the school without us.
So we decided to make our way there ourselves. After asking some Finns the way, and deciding that they were decidedly as ignorant as us as to where the Faculty of Technology was, we decided to push our luck (let's see where our legs would take us). So we made it to one door, and just asked and asked our way to the cafe which was to be the meeting place. When in doubt, use your mouth to ask for directions. The Finns are very nice and helpful people, and it's good that most people we met can speak some English.
The day passed without incident. Signed up for our Finnish student card, with which we can get train tics and other travel stuff for 50% discount. The student union here is much better and apparently has much more power than the NUSSU we have back home. They are a separate entity from the university (yliopisto in Finnish) totally and they got great discounts for the students and they organize cheap trips for their students to St Petersburg, Rovaniemi (that's where Santa lives) and other fabulous stuff. Way cool.
I'll upload pics later. It's been a long day for me and I've updated the previous entries with pictures. Good stuff. =)
Greetings from Finland @ 6:33 am
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