In the previous week so many things have happened that there’s absolutely no way to write about them all. OK, in my previous post I mostly wrote about what school is like here, so now I intend to write about activities that are not directly school related (although the two are really intertwined).

First of all there are a gazillion parties around here almost every day: from private parties to drinking fests which they call pub crawls and other group organized parties. There’s no way that I could handle all of them. Now this may sound like I’m getting old, but believe me, I’ve been sleeping for an average of 5 hours a night in the last two weeks … that’s how hard I’ve been trying to fit everything in and try just about anything that’s on offer out there. So, when it comes to parties, I usually do go, but have become quite selective about them, since there are other more interesting things to do outside of partying.

This previous Monday the Digital Culture staff organized a welcome party for all Digital Culture and Nordic Arts and Culture Studies (NACS) students. There are not that many of us there and programmes share a few common classes, so it was great to get to know people from my own and the NACS programme as well. This was also a nice chance to just chat with fellow students and professors. I really enjoyed relaxed and very informal setting. And I have to say that I am surrounded by a lot of interesting people. The other component that I really appreciate is diversity. In Digital Culture programme there are currently 13 students and I don’t think that two come from the same country (OK there are two Finns). Students come from India, Ghana, Moldavia, China, Greece, the US, England, Finland and well, I’m from Slovenia. We really are a diverse group.

All in all there are around 250 international students at the University of Jyväskylä so you can only imagine what it looks like when most of us show up at a local club. You literally can talk to people from every corner of the globe. It is amazing. And that’s what makes all those parties interesting in the first place, at least for me.

Then on Tuesday there was a reception at the university for all new degree students. I guess this was geared more toward Finnish students as everything that was said during the reception was strictly Finnish. Sure, I could listen and maybe even understand a word here and there, but otherwise I could not even chuckle when everyone else was wholeheartedly laughing. Hm, I guess I’ll have to visit the same reception next year to entirely comprehend and appreciate it. Luckily the rest of the evening was a performance by an a cappella group of 20 male singers. They sung in Finnish, but their performance was so great that I could enjoy their singing even though I understood only words hyvää paivä which were repeated several times in one of their songs.

Then there was a movie night at Richard’s place (Richard is one of the Digital Culture students) where we first ate almost half a kilogram of popcorn and drank beer before we commenced with a movie. We watched Closer. The movie was OK, but nothing really special. Then I was invited to a party in Helsinki on Saturday, but could not join my friends because I had to think about what am I going to work on in my master’s thesis. Now so far this has all to do just with the parties. There’s a whole lot more to life than just parties, as you’ll see in a moment.

I must not forget to mention sauna. But before I go on I must mention that I’ve never been to any kind of sauna before and thus cannot compare it to any other saunas. Sauna in two words: broiling fun. I was amazed to learn that I can sit in 90C room for 15 minutes. Of course you sweat your guts out but it feels unbelievably relaxing. And I guess the whole point is that when you are in sauna you cannot do much more than just sit and enjoy. In sauna sometimes even talking can be too demanding. You must bear in mind who’s saying this: a person that too often talks even while asleep! So there you go, if you really want to shut me up and make me happy at the same time, I have a solution for you: stick me into a Finnish sauna. I know I’ll be quiet only for an hour or so, but is better than nothing, right.

Sitting in sauna is just half of the fun. The other half is definitely going for a swim between three or so sessions that you do in a single sauna visit. There are always showers to do the cooling, but then again, I am in Finland, and I guess that there are just as many lakes as there are showers. In the last week I’ve been to sauna three times, and I’ve been using lakes to cool off twice. Yeah, the lakes are cold and that’s the whole point. My friend Heather who’s been working for years at pools and is a swimming buff, expertly pronounced that water in those lakes is no more than 14C. But I would be wasting precious fun if I used the lakes only to cool off in them, so I did go for a swim a few times already and so far I swam every time in a different lake (except once). Which wasn’t exactly hard to do, as there are almost 180.000 lakes in Finland. Three down, 179.997 to go.

In my previous post I mentioned that I got myself a brand new mountain bike. Yep, it is a red little beast. I guess the bike is nothing special in the MTB world, but it is special to me, because before I got a bike, I was walking at least 15K every day and since my cargo was a week late, that means I did all the walking in the same pair of shoes. My heels and feet couldn’t take it anymore. And then I got a bike. True, it cost me 200 Euros, but it’s a flying machine too, especially if you ride it down a skiing slope, which I did last Saturday. This feat was part of the little mountain biking excursion around Jyväskylä with Heather (who coincidentally got her bike on the same day as I have). Wanting to explore Jyväskylän surroundings meant riding through forests which from time to time meant carrying the bike as some trails were obviously not made for riding, if there was a trail in the first place. I will be doing a lot more of those biking trips around Jyväskylä and hopefully around Finland too. Let’s just hope that the weather doesn’t get too wet too soon.

Because Finland has rather pristine nature it is not that surprising to see lots of animals. I quite often observe squirrels jumping from tree to tree right outside my bedroom window. True, I live in an apartment house located on the top of the hill in the forest. And then, when I go for a run around one of the Jyväskylän lakes I see hares on almost every run. But last Friday when I rode my bike to the city center at around 1000pm I was taken by surprise when a moose was standing in the middle of a bike path. I think we were both equally surprised and scared as we were only about 20 meters away from one another and I have to admit that the animal was of respectable size: it was as tall as I am, maybe even taller. We both stood there for a few moments, but not long enough for my camera to react and make the snapshot. Now, that day I’ve seen squirrels in the morning, a few hares on my evening run and a moose when going into town. So when I was on my way home later that evening I thought to myself: I only have to meet Snow white and it’ll feel like I live in Disneyland.

I guess I wrote about quite a few firsts already, but there is definitely one more that I absolutely must mention. On Saturday night I saw an aurora borealis. It is one of those phenomena that is extremely hard describe, you have to see it for yourself to enjoy the stunning beauty of moving colored veils in the sky. Even if the occurrence was static it would be jaw dropping, but no, these northern lights actually move and change pretty quickly too. I did take some pictures with my digital camera, but they are really crappy. Anyways spotting an aurora borealis was definitely one of my wishes … and I guess that wish was fulfilled sooner than I expected.

This has been a pretty long post. I hope that I’ll be able to find time for posting here more often and write about things as they happen and not a week later. Well, I hope you enjoy reading it and that you’ll come back for more soon.

Have fun, everyone.

Mladen

This entry was posted on Monday, September 12th, 2005 at 2:49 pm and is filed under Culture, Finland, Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.