Copy+paste+edit.

So between my trip to Canada and starting summer school at the university [I'm taking Upper Intermediate Finnish Level 1 and 2], I took a little detour through Shanghai for 9 days. I was accompanied by my wonderful boyfriend and we flew out June 20th and returned June 29th. I recently wrote Averie the most detailed e-mail about the trip and I thought I'd use that as the basis for this post...


"Let me try and convey to you what's been going on lately... Alright SO: after I got back from Canada, which I already told you about, I had 2 days to prep for that interview, which I also told you about, at Jyvaskyla University. For some reason it was pretty stressful to wake up around 5am and drive to a city that I'd been to before but didn't know my way around at all. Luckily, the university is right off the main road between Tampere and Jyvaskyla so not quite a highway [there's only one in Finland and it leads to Helsinki] but a main road connecting cities nonetheless. I'm sure they have similar things in Africa. After that day, I thought I would get to relax until China but then I had completely forgotten about a conference that I'd volunteered for. The theme was Business Ethics and it was a 3 day event run by the Management Studies Department at Tampere University. I met about a dozen people while working there... all Finns except for me and Oana, who happened to be Romanian! She told me about Romanian groups and gatherings around Tampere and how I can get informed. I seriously have been meaning to answer her email for about 2 weeks now... actually, longer, and I just haven't managed to yet. I'm a little shy about going to these Romanian gatherings because I'm Romanian but here via Canada and I'm sure most people here have families and are older than I am. But nonetheless, it was awesome to speak Romanian to someone in Finland for the first time ever! [Minus when my parents came to visit.]

"So that conference went until Wednesday and then Wednesday afternoon, still wearing my TFS pants and blazer [Thank you Kelly!] I went to meet my soon-to-be pupil! While I was in Canada, a guy answered my ad about learning English and we got together at Coffee House to discuss his goals and motivation and get to know each other a little. I told him I was going to China and we're meeting again next week. After that meeting, I had a bit more extra time and I don't remember what I did with it... but it flew by. Saturday my friend Nina came back to Tampere [she's been working out of town for the summer as a journalist] and I went to Juha's mom's for lunch. Then that night and the next morning, we packed and got ready, took the bus to the airport straight from Tampere to Helsinki and got on the plane to China! So for some reason, between transoceanic trips, I felt like I had very little breathing room... even though I guess Finland-China is transcontinental... but in this case, I would say just transrussian since that's pretty much the only country we were above haha [okay, and Mongolia for like... 30 minutes.]

"Once we got to Shanghai on Monday, around 7am in the morning, we didn't stop moving until Saturday! We fought off sleep by going for a walk in the morning, meeting Juha's dad [Kari] for lunch, going haggling in the afternoon, going back to the apartment, going to dinner with Kari, and following the World Cup at night [while being treated to an amazing foot massage at Bamboo!]. They put these cups filled with fire on your heel and the fire would take away the oxygen and the cup would suction onto your foot. They then moved it around and that would get rid of the dead skin and stuff. Juha was sleeping near the end because he was so tired and it was really funny. We managed to stay up late that day too. But I basically passed out instantly once we hit the sack around midnight or 11pm... I forget.

"My first impression of Shanghai was really positive! I felt like I had a feel for the city right away. It's MASSIVE but it doesn't feel crowded. It's busy but you don't feel rushed. And best of all, in some weird way, it reminded me of Toronto. There was a ton of inequality which was evident by the skyscrapers EVERYFUCKINGWHERE [why yes, I am Canadian] and then the poor families living in certain neighbourhoods right between all the wealth... but I can't say that shocked me [yes, I am Romanian]. It was exactly what I expected to see. And also, Juha and I ended up at this mall that ONLY had luxury stores. I've never seen anything like that before... Hermes, Louis Vuitton, Channel, Dior... all in one mall! He let me go poke my head in the stores and oogle the 12,000e purses [yes, I realize that reading this from Africa must be slightly jerking but it was part of the experience.] I usually never get to see stores like that because I'm never dressed right. Yet in China it was fine because a) we're white [and thus, most likely tourists] and b) the culture itself is more polite than in North America so no one draws conclusions the moment you walk in the store, or if they did, they didn't show it and were really friendly regardless... it seems random but that was something that stood out on that first day. Also, I learned the important lesson that no public washroom in Shanghai is stocked with toilet paper. With 18M people, who can blame them? Thus, BYOTP!

"Tuesday we went to the Expo. Kari gave us directions for the taxi drivers [who never speak any English] and we spent 8 hours there! There were a lot of tourists from all over China there so Juha got a lot of really shocked looks once those people laid eyes on him. There are approximately 200,000 expats in Shanghai so 'white people' don't get funny looks that often BUT at the Expo, it was obvious that many people didn't come from Shanghai. We checked out the Finnish, Romanian and Canadian pavilions - of course! We also saw the pavillion of the future about technology and sustainability [which was a hot topic among many countries] and special cases that select cities presented of how they were reducing pollution, among many things, and making a difference [Vancouver, Hungzhou, Odense and a special Portuguese house - our favourite]. At the Hungzhou exhibit some Honzhou natives asked to take a picture with us and they were really friendly and spoke pretty good English too! The African countries all had booths in the African Pavilion [minus a few select countries like South Africa]. We went there and visited all the booths of all the countries that we had any ties to. I learned that Obama's dad is Kenyan and that in his hometown [village] Obama is regarded as such an idol for young people to show that they can make a difference. [Hope I remembered/interpreted that right]. Anyway, that made me really happy as I imagined the kids I'd heard about in the slums thinking about Obama. Another thing that really surprised me was that all the people who were presenting their countries in the African pavilion also spoke Mandarin too. It was absolutely amazing to see!

"Wednesday we took it a little easier... I was exhausted from the non-stop sightseeing so while Juha went to the gym in the morning, I went to a massage at this place called Bamboo. Anyway, so I went back there for a mani-pedi because they are so cheap there, but they didn't have anyone there until 2pm for that so I settled for a Chinese massage instead. After I got home, we headed out towards People's Square and ended up at Pizza Hut for lunch haha... I know ... and later Starbucks [in my defense, this was because of the internet!... which they didn't have...] We walked around the area for a while before settling on visiting the Museum of Urban Development. It was actually a really cool museum and they had a small-scale version of the entire city of Shanghai.

"Thursday we took it easy again and went haggling. Then went to the big shopping street: Nanjing Lu and explored The Bund [Western-neighbourhood that looks just like Europe] before heading home.

"Friday we hung out and I can't really remember what we did. We went for dinner with Kari as we did every night and this time his friends Otto and Hilda were there. Otto works for the same company as Kari and him and his wife are from Austria. They also live in Kari's building. They were really nice and we went to this restaurant called The Blue Frog and watched some World Cup from there. Then Juha and I went to a quiet hangout spot to see the rest of the game and enjoy a coffee and a beer. This place was called The Fat Olive and our friend Aline sent us there. We were meeting up with her that night and she had a birthday dinner so to kill some time, she sent us there. After that we took a cab to Bar Rouge, one of Shanghai's hottest clubs. The cover was 100 yuan each [about 12e] and the drinks were more expensive that any place we'd seen up to that point. The club was on the top floor of one of the Bund buildings [Euro-neighbourhood] and the patio looked out on to the river and Pudong [Shanghai's biggest neighbourhood and location of the best known skyscrapers there.] Aline said you can watch the sunrise on Shanghai from there and it's really beautiful... though we didn't get to see this first hand. The money was definitely well-spent, as this place was really, really nice. We spent about 20 minutes chatting with Aline and then she introduced us to her friends. Sadly it was super loud in the club so we didn't get to talk to Aline for long but the music was good!

"I woke up the next day around 11 and Juha's dad was up, playing with the new camera he had bought for Anna, Juha's sister. I chatted with him for maybe 30 minutes before realizing Juha was bed-bound and I went to back to bed for a few hours [I too felt horrible]. He got up a few times to puke... I have never felt so horrible in my life [puking hoorah!]. It was impossible to think of anything else other than the pain and horriblenessness that was our physical condition. We decided this had to be food poisoning [especially since Juha had experienced it before.] We were still weak the next day but we ventured out to Old Shanghai with Kari... and Monday Juha was still recovering while I'd moved on to a cold and whole-body muscle aches. Still, we took a taxi and went back to Old Shanghai. I'd fallen in love with a picture I'd seen briefly on Sunday and I had to go back and get it. We ate at this really nice and authentic place where zero English was spoken, but I really enjoyed the extra-fried food. [Actually. Fried beef and fried rice, yum!] That night we went to a restaurant near-by that looked sketchy but Kari assured us the food was delicious. The menu was also hilarious and consisted of dishes such as: "Fairchild does well and blows up" or "To skin the pig and succeed..." ...neither of which were actual dishes there but I can't remember the exact titles because they just made NO sense. The food ended up being delicious and I gladly would have gone there again, had we had the time.

"Tuesday morning we woke up around 6am and by 6:40am we were on our way to the airport. We took a bus from Helsinki to the train station and took a train to Tampere. We talked the 10 minutes from the train station to our place where we collapsed on the couch and watched TWO football games haha. Or at least, I slept; Juha watched.

"Wednesday morning I had to wake up early, which was fine because of jetlag, and head to my course! Later that day, we went to Juha's mom's [Päivi's] for dinner. Juha's godmother/cousin Anne is in town with her two daughters Anni and Oona. So we're constantly referring to Anni, Anne and Anna this week, haha! I stayed until around 11pm. Then Thursday I had my course again... but this time I took a Tylenol in the morning and almost died all day I was SO tired... I decided to act the way I wanted to feel, which was energetic, and I went out anyway. I met my friend Mia and we decided I was going to teach her French once a week. We started yesterday, from the VERY beginning and had a lot of fun doing it. I then went to Päivi's again around 9pm and stayed until after 11pm.

"Friday was Lauren's birthday and I was invited to her mökki [summer cottage] on an island. Here, I don't need to paint a picture because I can just refer the Canadian readers to Muskoka and Georgian Bay, take your pick, we have similar landscapes in Finland! And by similar, I mean identical. It was beautiful! I brought Romanian crepes, which I realized are almost identical to Finnish crepes. Consequently, no one eyed them questioningly. Lauren's parents and sister arrived a few days prior and are staying in Europe for 7 weeks. How wonderful! And what nice people! I had a great time and I know Lauren did too. <3.!

Work as a result of The Hangover.

Yesterday, thanks to my darling boyfriend, I clocked 3 hours of PAID work time. Basically he was too... ill... to drive himself and do his deliveries so I drove him and coached him to smile nicely and be polite to the customers even though all he wanted to do was hurl...

So it all started Thursday morning! The day was looking pretty busy but I was looking forward to the running around - even without the energy. I got up at 9am. Studied Finnish from 10am to 12pm and then I took a lunch break. This break was rather extended because I figured I wouldn't have much time to laze around later. I watched some TV online and ate lunch. Then around 2:50pm I left to meet a friend. We scouted all the second hand and Asian shops in the area; I spent 40 euros. BUT I bought: a really nice sweater, a soap holder, a candle holder, many spices, ghee, some warm GREEN mittens...and some other stuff... In total, I think we walked about 6 or 7km. I got home at 6pm, exhausted, ate a small dinner and ran out the door at 6:20pm to get to Finnish class... another 1km walking there and back... came home at 8:15pm to Nina, Juha and Juuso. Nina brought her brother's dog over for a visit so Juha could meet him too. They bonded before I got home :)
I ate another small, quick dinner and we rushed out the door to pub quiz... another 700m or so walk. We hung out there until about 11something and then Eeva drove me home. The boys said they'd be going for a drink at Semafori and they wouldn't be long...

I got home, exhausted, read a little, watched some Ugly Betty and went to bed around 12:30am.

3:30am - I am awoken by the sound of ... Juha. Anyway, long story short, I managed to get him to bed.

Okay so one down, one to go... I laid in bed... tossed and turned... Juha snored and his stomach protested the alcohol as it tried to make sense of what had happened... the stomach that is. I got up around 5am to check Facebook. I turned the light on in bed and read a little... before I knew it 7am rolls around and nothing. I felt wide awake. And my day went on from there...

I met Nina and we walked to Sokos together. I was impressively coherent all through the day and didn't even feel tired. I later realized that I have a really regular sleeping schedule and this tends to happen to me a lot. I miss a night of sleep and it's fine. If you start missing more, that's when it gets problematic. I was gone for maybe 3 hours or so. Once I got home I found a half-dead zombie-like version of Juha. He'd apparently tried taking the garbage out and walking around the building a few times to feel better but to no avail. Then around 5:30pm he started getting calls from the primary driver who needed help with his deliveries. Since Juha didn't feel up to driving, I drove and he delivered. We did 5 deliveries in 3 hours... one of them was to his co-worker who was also at the bar before.

I was pretty happy about the whole day's events! I earned the first bit of salary that I'd earned in the past ... well... let's just say over a year [because I worked for free in the summer.] And the money I earned offset my shopping splurge from Thursday! Not to mention I felt like I'd really been needed for something! [Which is a great feeling as you seek employment.]



To add the cherry on top of the cake, we made Indian spiced cauliflower and green beans with rice for dinner! It was absolutely delicious... but maybe could of used a few extra vegetables. We didn't take any pictures though. BUT then for dessert, I used the almond-flour waffles I am so fond of and added berries, banana and cinnamon! Awesome. And yes, there was some late night Yatzee! [note the dice.]

Now I gotta run! Päivi and Anna are coming over for lunch!

Huomenta!

Goood morning!
I spent today - so far - sleeping-in and after waking-up, enjoying some coffee with coconut milk and stevia and studying up on my Finnish. So I guess you can tell I'm in a better mood than yesterday and why.

We went to Päivi's for dinner last night after Juha took the Spanish boys ice swimming. Apparently the lake was packed and the door to the sauna was always open because so many people were running in and out - though this didn't affect the temperature inside. It seems we weren't the only ones who decided it would be fun to go ice swimming in -15C weather. (P.S. I didn't go. I walked to Päivi's from home because I hadn't been out yet yesterday so the 2.5 km of fresh air did me some good.) I got to borrow some Finnish children's books and a waffle iron. I can't wait to try out my almond flour waffle recipe! Meanwhile, I have to find vanilla extract in this country... so far, no luck. The liquid version is so rare (or seldom used) that Finns are asking me if that even exists. Seriously, they use vanilla sugar more here.. weird.

So today I have a fridge-full of food to eat, after which I'm kidnapping an apparently zombie-like Anne and bringing her to the grocery store with me! Tonight I have Finnish class at 6:30 and the best part is, I HAVE A CAR FOR THE DAY! This has never happened before, thus the excitement.

There are talks of Andy and Steffy planning a trip to Tampere in mid-April and before that, I'd like to spend a weekend in Jyväskylä visiting Veera. Sadly, I'm sort of broke right now BUT I'm starting up my English tutoring business as we speak so, we'll see if I can gather some students and maybe add €20 to my piggy bank ahah.

Stay tuned for pictures from this past weekend...

Night class.

Bad news. My Mon/Thurs night teacher hurt her back and she might be out for awhile. We had a replacement on Monday and she was completely clueless. According to her, "the worst case scenario is that she stays on as our teacher for the rest of the session" aka until April.

Right now, I think almost anyone in the class can stand up and teach better than she did on Monday. Hopefully she'll be more prepared on Thursday or I'm just going to be really upset.

GMAT is in less than a week. After which I'm going to start the job search and put a lot more effort into my Finnish... and to do that I'll either have to study on my own or find new language schools. We'll see... there's a whole thing with registering to look for employment and unemployment grants that let you take language courses but I'm not currently eligible for this.

Averie got me obsessed with this song: Iron and Wine "The Boy with the Coin"

We might cook something tonight... maybe I'll take some pictures!

Update!

So apparently people actually read this because I've had more than one person ask why I haven't updated in a few days... or actually accuse me of NOT updating. I'm sorry to have done this. I guess once I started getting busy, blogging was ON my mind but not so much part of my schedule.
SO - where to begin?

Since I left off with the language school POSSIBILITY, I went there the next day and they told me to come back Monday after 2:30pm. So yes, that was a crap morning because I had to walk all the way back home and nap off the disappointment for 2 hours. But in the afternoon, I finally checked out this awesome doughnut (is that really how you spell it?) place with my friend Nina so the day did look up at the end!

Friday... what happened on Friday??... I can't remember...Ah yes! I wrote motivation letters and probably went grocery shopping...or something along those lines.

Saturday Juha and I hung out in our apartment for several consecutive hours during one morning - so yes, that was pretty exciting (this hasn't really ever happened before)! We tidied up and I even started my online drawing course. I drew some lines and shapes and a duck and a cow so far! It's actually really motivating to be able to draw and recognize the animal so I'm pretty pumped about that. Maybe I'll upload some pictures of that once I can upload pictures...

Matti and Anne then came and saw our place for the FIRST TIME EVER (Juha's brother and his girlfriend)! We are also now the proud owners of a Nepalese sleeping bag so we can better accommodate Veera, Essi, Xevi and Jose once they come in February! Rushed off to Juha's mom for "lunch" (a few hours late), and hung around there playing Yatzee and Penguin Party before going to see our friend Heikki (re: FB status: He tricks like a champ.) perform in a circus show.
The circus itself was like no other circus I've ever been too because it was on a stage BUT the acts themselves were very impressive (almost all of them). The act we went to see was by Team Unito, which I finally got to meet that day! They tricked for about 6 minutes (a hard feat)!!
Btw, tricking is a mix of gymnastics, martial arts, break dancing?, acrobatics ... it's basically awesomeness all around. Sadly I was a little to short to see everything going on at stage all at once but everyone I knew there had the same problem so I was not alone.
Other acts included pole-dancing 'acrobatics,' a 25 minute drag-queen-one-man-show, an intensely impressive juggling act, and a hilarious MC from Miama via Sweden etc...

Sunday I saw Anne for a couple of hours and she gave me so many great ideas for things to do from now on in Tampere that I don't think I'll spend anymore time looking for inspiration on what to do! One of these things included going to volunteer somewhere before if you can get turned down for a job for not speaking Finnish, you can't get turned down for volunteering! AHA!
But also, I do feel my Finnish is improving... over the past 2 days at least.

Monday I hung out with Heikki and we went to the bank (fail.), to the post office, to some store with a Swedish name (Clos...) and finally, grocery shopping at a BIG grocery store (first time in Finland)!
[Oh and back to the language school who told me I can join a non-beginning course which I went to today for the first time ever! - But more about that later.]
Then at night I went to my ENSIMMAINEN [first but with : on the 'a'] Finnish class. It moved at a pretty good pace I think because I'd already studied the material we did in class but it was nice to review it in the structure of a class so I wasn't bored at all. Apart from the two Estonian girls in my class, I definitely think I'm near the top of the class. There's one other guy who has studied Finnish before though so maybe behind him but ahead of the others who were just learning:
mä, sä, hän, me, te, he +olla (to be) for the first time.
Then I got home and made a big meal of SEVEN stuffed peppers and a tomato salad - very Romanian. The meat in the peppers was a little bland but it was my first try so I was pretty happy with that!

TODAY I went to my very first daily language course in the morning. This was very very different from the course I had last night. There were about 25-28 people in this class (vs. 15-16). Most of them had been in Finland 2-4 years and I think they (maybe) understood more than me but their language skills were really limited. Otherwise, the class progressed really slowly because the teacher tries to get everyone involved but I think that's important. I want to keep going to this class (and the other) because I think daily and sometimes 2-times/day will help me improve a lot faster than just one of the courses. I also think that since both teachers speak Finnish all the time, I'll get more used to it and eventually start understanding more too.
THEN after class, I had a nightmare of a time at the bank but here it is in point form:
- take a number and wait... (times are cumulative)
- 20 minutes and I'm no closer to being helped.
- 22 minutes and the numbers finally start being called.
- 25 minutes and I go in.
- 27 minutes and I'm out with my new VISA ELECTRON BANK CARD!
"Go use it" the woman at the bank says.
- 28 minutes I put my card in the machine...
... 28.3 minutes, my card has been eaten.
... 29 minutes, ask a lady if she speaks English (she doesn't)
... 30 minutes, we go up to the info desk together and she explains in Finnish that the machine ate my card.
- 30.5 minutes, the woman hands me ANOTHER number to wait in the queue.
- 30.75 minutes I complain that I've already waited.
- 31 minutes, there's only one woman in front of you, she says.
- 41 minutes, still waiting.
- 42 minutes, get called in.
- 43 minutes, the bank woman goes to get the card.
- 53 minutes, she comes back and says "I couldn't find it so I have to call someone who can always find it... if you can wait awhile..."
- 60 minutes.... "the card has disappeared. We have to order you a new one."
- 61 minutes: "can I take out some money now?" She says: "You have to go to the teller to do that." "No offense but I've been waiting an hour..." "Okay, okay, we'll do it here." (And thank God for that because in Germany I FOR SURE would've been sent back to the teller because that's PROTOCOL.)

Went home and ate lunch. FASCINATING !
Studied for the GMAT for over an hour.
Juha picked me up and took me to TYY (Tampere University of Technology) where Heikki was teaching an acrobatics class from 4-6pm. Class was really fun but I am now tired. BUT I do realize I one can be IN and OUT of shape but one can also become IN or OUT of shape... so I'm hoping to make the leap back to "into." [That means I want to improve haha.] And also look for ways to maybe get into the Tampere gymnastics scene... but one step at a time. [Oh! And this class was good practice for my Finnish because I learn little words, one at a time, and you hear them repeated over the course of the two hours.]

SOOOO in summary, I now finally have a weekly schedule:
Monday - Friday: 9am - 11:30am (Morning Finnish Class)
Monday AND Thursday 6:30pm - 8pm (Evening Finnish Class)
Tuesday: 4pm-6pm (Acrobatics class - if they keep me)!

That's about it for now. I'll do my best to update again ASAP but I also need to catch up on my GMAT studying. =O