Thursday, February 8, 2007

finnish dinner after lecture

Today I was on Culture, History and Identity lecture. It was with a new teacher Gerald Porter. He was talking about some british stereotypes and the role of Wales, Scotland and Ireland in constructing "Englishness". I took a book from home in case of boredom, but it wasn't necessary. The lecture was realy interesting. Mr Porter talked very interestingly even about unattractive things.


After the lecture I went to Christian's (one of the tiutors) place for a dinner with finnish traditional food. There were also other exchange students.















As a starter he served us karjalanpirakka with egg-butter. I had tried it before, but these were much better.

Than main-course: roasted meet of elk in gravy souce, pure and carrot salad. I have never tried it before and I realy wanted to know how it taste. Let me describe by one word: delicious :P You should try it!

After that, when we were already full Christian served a dessert. In finnish it's mämmi. At the first glance it doesn't look nice, because it's thick black gunk and look like a sh.. (quess what?). It is made of rye flour, malt of rye flour, oranges, water, sugar and soil. We ate it with sweet cream and sugar. Despite the ugly outlook it tastes nice. Christian said that he doesn't know any person from abroad, who likes it. But we (that is Polish, Austrians, Mexicans) realy liked it.


Thank you Christian for a delicous food, which I can state as a new experience.

Good night :)

Wednesday, February 7, 2007

University of Vaasa

After some time I can say that the University is really nice.
After our arrival here we had two orientation days. We had a meeting with provost, coordinators of tiutoring, student advisor in international relations and many other persons. We learned many useful things like basic information about university, study programmes, Vaasa...
University of Vaasa has four faculties: business, technology, humanities and social science for 5000 students. The campus is located close to the see. Sometime I make my own break in lecture and observe what's outside. The view is realy nice - sea covered by the ice, walking people and shinig sun.

shortly about last 6 weeks

We are here for nearly 6 weeks... - very intensive and productive period of time...

----> We had to choose lectures.
I chose 9 lectures: Cultural Aspects of Management; Semiotics and Cultural Research Methods; Culture, History and Identity; Introduction to studying Multimedia Authoring Systems; Introduction to Multimedia and Hypertext; Introduction to Electroning Publishing; Survival Language Course (finnish); Project and Introduction to Cultural Studies.
I know - it's a lot of them. I have to get min. 30 credits from Univeristy of Vaasa.

----> We had to get used to finnish specific climate.
First days were nice. The temperature was about 0/+2, sun was shining, but after few days it changed for a real winter. It started to snow, temperatues went down (even -24). Neverthless I like it :)

----> We met a lot of new people.
At first weekend me and Magda (my friend and flatmate from Poland) arranged first acquaiting party at our place. Everyone get a label with his/her name to make easier to remember each one. We had a great fun :)

----> We made some formal things (open bank account, register at police station etc.)

----> Had to stop to think about what and who I left in Poland...

----> Arranged our appartment

----> Tried finnish food ;)



Sometimes it was hard. But now I'm happy to be here and enjoy every day :))))

Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Terve!

I would like to welcome to my blog. I'm going to write here more about me, my lectures, exchange friends, my interests and hobbys, parties etc. - generally about my big finnish adventure.
Are you ready to join?
:)