Finland, arrival

Welcome to my blog! I'm using this as a way to keep friends and relatives informed about what I'm doing without sending a million emails, but if you don't fall under that category I hope you enjoy reading this anyway. My plan is to update every Monday. For this first week might update sooner since everyone will be asking me about my classes. I cannot get my pictures off my camera yet, but when I can I will add pictures to the blog too.

Quick summary, I have moved from Albuquerque, NM, USA to Tampere, Finland as part of my master's degree curriculum with the University of Salford - I'm studying for a degree in film screenwriting. I'll spend three months in Finland then in January I go to England.

Saturday 9/1/2012

After roughly sixteen hours of traveling my first day in Finland was exhausting. I got to the hostel around 12:30, they checked me in but they were cleaning the rooms still so I hung out in the lobby for a bit until they were done. My room was mostly empty when I got there so I had my pick – I chose a lower bunk by a window.

                The rest of the day I spent organizing my bags and playing with me computer. I didn’t want to sleep because I wanted to beat jet lag as soon as possible. I did take a nap from 2 – 4 though.

                When I got up I checked my email, checked FB, Skyped with my dad and little bro. I Googled the closest ATM but didn’t want to walk down there because my feet were sore. I’m not sure why since I was sitting all day, but nonetheless walking was something I did not want to do. I saved the map and decided to store that adventure for Sunday. When I signed off with my dad I decided to take a shower which left me feeling 100 times better. I actually stayed up an hour after that reading an Ilona Andrews novel.

                I was feeling pretty awake at this point but I figured that was the jet lag talking. At 9 I put the book away and once my eyes were closed I was out. I have my alarm clock sitting by my bed (but not set for an alarm) so I would know what time it was when I woke up. Well, some new people arrived around 10:30 and they were talking rather loudly so I woke up. I felt fairly awake and alert so I thought it must be 10:30 am, but it was still dark outside so I was trying to decide if that was a Finland thing. I checked my clock and it said it was 10:30 pm. I had to get out the I-Pad in order to reassure myself that it was still night.  It was night, of course. I was apparently not as alert as I thought so I went straight back to sleep.

 

Sunday 9/2/2012

                Woke up a few times thinking I should be up but looked at the clock and went back to sleep. At 9:00 am I decided I should be awake, but my head was pounding and I had a vague recollection of a dream where Josiah was hitting me with a baseball bat (hmmm?). I dragged myself out of bed at 9:40. My head was better but I was stiff and sore. I had dragged my bags from the bus station to the hostel and while the duffel wasn’t too heavy for me in short distances, I had found that even at the airport it was not travel friendly. However, I needed everything I packed so oh well. Dragging my duffel is the only thing I can think of that would explain my arms being sore (for those who don’t know, my duffel has wheels which is why I was dragging it and not carrying it).

                I got dressed and went over my goals for today.

1)      Get money from an ATM

2)      Buy food

3)      Find the bus stop I’ll need to get to school tomorrow

4)      Explore area near hostel (optional).

 If you are wondering about the buy food part, yes I hadn’t eaten since the plane. The hostel has some free food available, but the airplane food hadn’t agreed with me so eating is not what I felt like doing Saturday. Now however I was thinking food sounded like a good idea again.

I got up, got dressed and set out. I went back inside, got my coat, and set out again. It hadn’t been chilly Saturday and I was actually sweating in my coat when I got to the hostel. It had rained overnight so the ground had shallow puddles and there was a slight breeze. I also wasn’t packing around 150 lbs worth of luggage. I followed my directions to the ATM and found a street with buildings and no obvious ATM. I looked at the stores. One was a restaurant or bar, one was a car park, and two buildings had the word “market” on their signs. Bingo. I walk over and it says it open at 12 on sunnuntai  (soonn-oon-tah-E) (Sunday). It was 10:30. I went back to the hostel and read a chapter in my how-to-speak-Finnish book, then continued my Ilona Andrews novel.

At 2:00 I tried again and found an ATM. What I thought was a grocery store turned out to be a little mall, but one of the stores was a market so I bought my first meal. A microwaveable sandwich (meat was probably breaded chicken but I couldn’t read the label so I’m not sure), a bag of chips (The label says grillimaustettu perunlastu, I decided grill master was code for bar-b-que flavor), and a smoothie for my breakfast Monday morning. It was also the first time I used Euros and I was surprised to find that some of their dollars are not dollar bills. In my change there were some 1 and 2 euro coins and the 50 cent one says 50 cent euro on it…Learned something new!

I enjoyed my mystery meat sandwich and bought a soda from the Hostel. Orange flavored, generic (or at least unknown to me) brand and it was okay. I felt much better and Googled my bus route to orientation on Monday. The bus schedule will even give you walking directions to the bus stop which was exceedingly handy. I typed the directions into my i-pad so I could have them offline. I debated walking to the bus stop but sat down and continued reading my book instead.

Skyped at six, signed off at 7:45 and ate dinner. The sandwich had come in a two pack. This time I had water to drink though. I sat down to type this up and review my list.

Accomplished 2.75 tasks out of 4.

Eh. Not bad. Practically finished #3 and #4 was optional. So fix that to 2.75 out of 3 and I scored a 91% accomplished today. I’m counting that as good.