Fat Wednesday vs. Valentine's Day

Today there's Valentine's Day. Frankly speaking I hate this holiday. Everyone sends the cards with hearts, presents flowers and so on, but we can express our feelings to beloved person each day... I think that Velentine's Day is far-fetched...
Tomorrow in Poland is Fat Thursady (which is also celebrated in Germany - Fetter Donnerstag). It's traditional feast marking the last Thursday before the Lent. People eat large quantities of sweets. Polish traditional dishes, which are served on that day are pączki (fist-sized donuts filled with marmalade) and faworki (crispy biscuits in the shape of thin folded ribbons).
Beacuse Magda is going on the trip tomorrow, we decided to organize Fat Wednesday. And because today is also Valentine's Day, we connected these two holidays :) Fat Wednesday vs. Valentine's Day - sounds nice :) We made faworki and we had a great fun.

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 :)

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 :))))